Death is inevitable. Every person’s life will cease to end at one point or another. That much is uncontrollable. What is controllable, however, is the legacy a person decides to leave upon the world. He or she could either be remembered by everyone or completely forgotten. I was set on being remembered. I didn’t want to be just a vague memory in the back of everyone’s mind. I wanted to leave my own impact on the world. I wanted to change the world in a positive way. Then, I met him.
I was never a cheesy romantic. I didn’t believe in a happily ever after. I knew there was no such thing as a happy ever after, because every person will die at some point. This just makes every moment in life more meaningful. I guess, in a way, he changed me. He showed me life could have a happy ending. Although he didn’t change the world like we both dreamed, he became my entire world. He couldn’t change the world, but he changed my life for the better. In the end, that was what mattered most.
We met on the precipice between autumn and winter, when the leaves had lost their vibrant color and turned a somber grey. Our meeting had been, in every sense, unconventional. He had caught me in an abandoned alleyway with blood running down my arm, and I had caught him with six packs of cigarettes. We had watched each other slowly decline into darkness. One day, he got fed up, and in a moment of heat and emotion, he revealed the real reason why these habits had started.
“When your emotions take over your entire life and you feel completely trapped, you find ways to express the clogged up emotion that’s been simmering in your body,” he said, unshed tears glimmering in his eyes.
“And you think that smoking two packs a day is the way to go? You think completely killing your lungs like that is the way to go?” I asked, passion flooding every fiber of my body.
“And you think you’re any better? You think cutting away every part of your body is the solution?” he fired back. At that point in time, I realized that it was impossible to help him when I needed help myself. We had to heal together.
As we slowly recovered together, I realized my feelings for him were stronger than anything I had ever felt. Although we had our dark and bright days, we worked through them with determination and love. We knew recovery would not be easy. If anything, it was the trials and tribulations we faced that shaped our relationship as it is. Although our relationship was not perfect, every moment was cherished, locked in the recesses of my heart.
“If I died, would you remember me?” he asked me one day, in a random moment of reflection.
“It’s not if you die, it’s when,” I reminded, clutching his warm hand in mine.
“No, you’re wrong. A person may die physically, but their soul is eternal. It lives and thrives in the minds and hearts of other people. You can leave the world, but you’ll never leave a person’s heart,” he said, with an assuring confidence and a burning fire in his eyes. That was when I realized he was everything to me.
“Why do you think people perform acts of violence and hate toward other people?” he asked me on a dreary day, a cigarette hanging loosely from his lips.
“Spit that out. I thought you stopped,” I frowned, plucking the lit cigarette from his lips and extinguishing it with the heel of my foot.
“Some habits are the hardest to break. But seriously though, why?”
“I dunno,” I mumbled, “maybe it’s because marks of hate are always more certain than marks of love. If someone marks you out of hate, you can be sure they hate you. If someone marks you out of love, is it really love or is it just lust?”
His eyes widened.
“Wow,” he breathed out, “if I ever did anything I might possibly regret to you, would you think it is out of love or out of hate?”
“Even if you killed me with your bare hands, I would think it’s out of love,” I chuckled lightly.
They say a person’s life is defined by moments. Every moment spent with him has changed my life in some way or another. He taught me more about life than anyone ever could. He turned my life around for the better, and I did the same for him. I don’t even know where I would be without him. Every moment with him was filled with brightness and laughter. Every word he has ever uttered has been engrained in my mind and locked deep in my heart. He was the world to me, and it completely broke my heart as I watched them lay him into the ground only two years after we met, his eyes shut peacefully, face void of color, and not a single trace of breath coming out from his nose or mouth. As I write this down, I remember everything that has ever happened in those two years like it all happened yesterday. He couldn’t leave his own legacy on the world like he dreamed. He left his legacy on my own world, though, and that was something worth remembering for years to come.