Chapter 107: What makes you miss something

The whole day I played Maplestory because I couldn’t bring myself to do anything besides completing my book review and geography assignment already.

There was something odd missing and the certain pang of emptiness even as I whacked at stumps, slimes, snails and pigs, it didn’t register. I knew I was missing something.

I knew I was missing cheerleading. And then that inevitable snowballed to missing people, missing events, missing places, missing objects…missing emotions.

I didn’t get a proper chance to talk to Rachel since Valentine’s and only managed to do so briefly yesterday during Colosseum. Short but…fulfilling.

I remember how I missed my rugby team bady during the first few weeks of secondary school. It was my first encounter about missing something, about missing people in your life and that first pang left an indelible enough impact on me to remember it to this day.

I miss people who have stepped into my life and out of it.

Truly. To this day I asked myself the question why did such a thing happen and why did not such a thing happen? She writes the word love but did she truly love? To think only 2 years ago, I would have brought Atlas to his knees to stop time for her.

Certain experiences in your life shape you and it is not so much of the environment that you’re in that shapes you but instead the people who surround you. I know I speak for the 2007 batch of TKSS students when I say I miss the place and I want to be back there again.

But the engima about how you miss someone is baffling. Especially when one places it in the context of an emotion. How can you love someone when the person is not physically there? How can you miss someone if you say you don’t love them?

I remember how I asked my friend why she didn’t attend school for a week and there were tears welled up in those eyes. I knew something bad happened and that wiped the smile of my face. And she said her mother passed away.

There were two things that I felt there and then and something later.

The first being an initial feeling of guilt mixed with sadness for her. Guilt because I had asked such a question and sadness because of someone who had been very close to you ascending to the Father’s kingdom.

Then I felt the rush of gratitude and willingness to embrace her. Why? it was because she was honest. She told me straight to the face what had happened and I knew that if such a thing happened, i would feign ignorance of just say that I was sick but she didn’t. And for that, I thank her. I wanted to hug her and tell her sorry but all i could do in the middle of a lecture was to pat her head and give her reassurances that everything would be fine.

I can never imagine what it would be like to lose someone so close at this age. Never.

Then, there’s this other friend who’s always beaten at home but the smile that she brings to school is priceless. And I think I’m one of the few she bothers saying the truth for her bruises to and I thank her for that.

A: Why’s there a bruise on your leg? did you fall?
B: Huh…no lah
A: then what happened?
B: My..my mother
A: Are…are you ok?
B: Ya, ya I’m ok

And I’d give her the sympathetic smile. There has always been the feeling in me to just take her away and save her from all the shit at home but there’s only so much I can do to help and to make her smile is just one of it. I hope she continues smiling everyday.

You know what’s the one thing I miss most? That other half.