BTL ISSUE 04 MISTAKE 실수 | Page 76

I tried “taming” as I got closer to people whether it was intentional or unintentional whatsoever. I tried to fill in the blank between one encounter with the next by the romance of waiting. But I'm a coward. I always waited for someone full of anticipation yet I couldonly show the back of myself or nothing. Ultimately, it became a form of fear, not romance that drove me to people. So I just began to be my shitty self again. I thought the term ‘taming’ would never come natural to me. She couldn’t even breathe without mechanized care. Fumbling for pain pump. Dying. Seeing her with too much pain, I became un-selfish enough to wish that she’d be dead soon if she had to die. But then I wanted more time to stare into her eyes and wish for the impossible. We had several months, so I guess I got what I could get. Now, I have to explain about myself. Yes, Emily. You’re mad at me because I didn’t come for Anne’s funeral and still never once visited her grave for all those years. For one reason, Anne’s gone past But as I observed: the ‘taming’ people are too often in chains. The most crucial mistake humans do while loving is that when you love someone, you try to anchor them down by your sides holding their wings with both hands and thinking, “He'll never leave me.” They want the word ‘forever’ marked with sizzling iron. But for most of the cases, all that’s left are scars for both. Taming becomes a dictatorship. Your love becomes the burial. death. She’s there where the wind blows. Also, I still bear my critical mistake. When her heartbeat was slowly dying, she blindly reached for my hand and asked where she was; if it’s heaven or hell. I kissed her good-bye and whispered back that it's night and we’re going on a trip to the ocean, the place where Anne always wanted to go since she became sick. I just wanted to put the last smile on her face before she dies but the pain shoots till now. The last word I could tell her was a brutal lie to give her relief. Anne was different. She never tried to tame you because she knew that we're more likely to hurt the rose than taming it. She knew that the word ‘forever’ can't be marked because no human being can stand the forever. So Anne didn't say she loved you forever and ever; she'd say she loved just the way you were. People may say it's awful that she never loved deeply. It's not true, Emily. It's the opposite. She loved more than any of them could do for what they call ‘forever’. She loved not by a chain but as a song. But she's done her own crucial mistake while loving too. Anne tried to ditch me when she found out that she was gripped by death's shadow. Maybe she didn't want me to suffer after her death. Or maybe, she was just the same coward as I am. We were very much alike in that way, our Achilles of scars. Do you remember, Emily; when she laughed, as she walked, as she talked, as she sang……… Sometimes, the memory of her slips, and I realize that I will forget her, yes. But I know that Anne will forgive my forgetting because Anne and I and you, we are all just a very small grain of life mixed with mistakes, mistakes, and more mistakes. The mistakes that we can’t even pinpoint to one’s fault because our life is just entangled; mixed up with millions of mistakes intertwined. Anne and I; we were searching our way out of the crucial mistakes of chained love when Anne screwed up and I screwed up and we all screwed up and the truth can't be denied: the scars are left, our small infinity scrambled - but I want to love it. I just want to love the imperfectness of presence the way it is as Anne told me so many times. Every moment, I just need a small piece to remind me that when I wished for the impossible for months by her side, I was still having the impossible After she got sick, I used to visit her when she was halfconscious. I knew that she was going to die. It was cruel: it just seemed impossible that her arm could hold that many needles. just by loving her. I always feel her when the wind blows. That's enough for me, always.