Some Love Doesn't Last Forever...

I met him online when I was about 13 and he was 14. I was living in Johor Bahru (JB) and he, in Kuala Lumpur (KL). At the time, there was no Facebook or MySpace to connect us, only mIRC and ICQ – the ultimate messenger service about 13 years ago. We started out as online chat buddies hanging out in the mIRC channel. After a while, he started to approach me personally through private chats. He was such a caring and funny person that when he asked me to be his girlfriend, I said yes even when I did not have any strong feelings towards him. I think at the time, I had succumbed to peer pressure. I was an introvert person back then and did not have many friends. Listening to the stories of boyfriends from the girls at my school made me want to have one too. But it was impossible for me at the time because guys shied away from me due to me being overweight.

After a few months of having an online relationship, he wanted to meet when I came over to KL. I was scared. What if he doesn’t like me? What if he was just like the other guys who thinks I’m just a fat, ugly girl? What if he’s embarrassed of me being fat? But that was not the case. Rather, it was me who had a problem. He wasn’t what I expected him to be from the pictures he sent me; he wasn’t my type of guy. A silly expectation of a 14 year old teenager. But despite everything, he was able to accept me for who I am and that was enough for me to quell whatever difficulty I have in accepting him.

Another year went by and when he stuck with me throughout the year, I started to fell in love with the caring and funny side of him. At 15, I was having some difficulties at home. My parents was always fighting and it was driving me crazy. On top of that, I have to sit for my PMR that year and so I turned to him whenever I feel like I was on the verge of losing it. But that didn’t last long when he had to leave for boarding school. I was devastated at the time. I missed talking to him so much because we only managed to talk at least once a week for about fifteen minutes.

The further the distance, the more it made me want to be closer to him. That became a motivation for me to study and excel in my PMR. I wanted to get out of the house. I wanted to run away from the constant shouting and fighting and the only way for me to do that without becoming a troubled teenager was to go a boarding school. But I already had a specific school in mind. His school. That way, I get to kill two birds with one stone. When I received my excellent PMR result, I was delighted. I could apply to any school I want and so I did. But my time at the school only lasted a year because by then he had finished school and was heading for varsity.

The one thing we had in common was our love for multimedia and technology. So it was a no brainer that we wanted to study the same course in the only university that was offering that course at the time. When we finally got to varsity together, we were inseparable. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together. We went shopping together. I even followed him around when he was out with his mother. By then, our families have already accepted our relationship and each of us was already like an extension to each other’s family.

Of course, there were ups and downs in our relationship and just like other relationships, we may have been together on and off for almost 6 years. We were going so strong for so long that it had me believing that we were meant to be together ‘till death do us part.

Which it did.

We were sitting for our finals early 2006 when he started to get sick. He was having a coughing fit and fearing that it could turn into something sinister I told him that he needed a doctor. But everytime I did, he just shrugged it off as nothing. After finals, he came to to visit me in JB to spend time with me. Little did I know that it was the last time I would ever see him ever again. After his visit, he went on a trip with his family to Penang and Kedah and that was when things started to turn nasty.

What was supposed to be a family vacation turned into a nightmare when he was admitted in and out of the hospital. At the time I never really did get to talk to him due to his worsening condition. I wish there was something I could do just to hear his voice again but with the distance and his condition, I became helpless. They were on their way back to KL to get the best treatment for him when he started coughing blood. Worried about his condition, the family brought him to a specialist hospital in Ipoh. He never made it to the specialist, though. He died about five minutes away from the hospital.

That fateful February evening, I was about to have tea when I received a call from his sister. It was a call that changed my entire life. It took me a while to register what she was saying but when it hit, it was enough to make me crumpled to the floor.

After the funeral, I was devastated. I didn’t eat for 3 days and I almost didn’t make it back to campus for the new trimester. In fact, I almost didn’t graduate because I was so depressed after losing him I fell very sick. I was crying every waking hour for 3 months that it had me wishing to never wake up. Most of my waking hour was spent with him, facing life and facing the world without him was unimaginable for me.

Of course eventually I got better. I am even happily married now. They say everything happens for a reason, I guess it does. But there will always be a piece of my heart for him. From time to time, that piece will remind me of him, it will remind me that I still miss him and that in some ways I still love him.