That Someone

"Maybe, some people enter your life to create wonderful memories before they leave. It's hard to come to terms with that, whether they walk alive or dead. The only thing we can do is keeping that person alive in your memory as long as you can. That someone doesn't need to always please you like a lover, but they can make you happy. That someone doesn't need to cheerish you like parents but they can give warmth and they are always ready to protect you. That someone doesn't need to make you laugh all the time like friends but they can make you smile. That someone who you won't go into hysterics when they leave but they will always be in your memory forever"

Being Nice Paid The Price

"Remember, nice guys finish last". the last wisdom my uncle bestowed me before his passing. 

 Those words occasionally linger in my head every now and then, reminding me like a post-it that was taped onto the hard drive of my brain. I never really understood what my uncle was trying to say back then. One of the first traits everyone i know associates me with is 'nice'. Nice looking, nice hair, nice handwriting, nice. The word NICE seems to be the first thing anyone realises about my personality, like it was written on my forehead. Being nice wasn't something i developed rather it was a trait i was born with. From the days of a prepubescent boy, i was categorized as nice. Nice, nice and nice. 

 "I'd always have your back no matter what" i said to my best friends. 

 Being nice became a habit, a habit of being courteous, being gentlemen-like, to being, well, nice. I was comfortable with the term nice. The habit of being nice branched out into being soft-spoken, altruistic, trusting and above all, hopeful throughout the years. The word wasn't just a mere compliment but it became my identifier. Mr. Nice Guy. 

 From the days i began to understand life, fragment by fragment, piece by piece, i was led to believed that being nice gets you everywhere. Being nice towards myself, being nice towards others, being nice to other living creatures, even being nice to objects. The satisfaction that gleamed on my face when i accomplish to uphold the term each day started to dampen as i realised it came with a price. 

"I'll see what i can do to help" i replied in an assuring tone. 

 The price that came with being nice wasn't in the form of material. The price was bigger, more terrifying than i imagined it to be. When the bill arrived one fine morning, I was speechless and never in my life was i ever so lost for words. The glee on my face disappeared. The sparkle in my eyes dampen. The fire in my heart started to extinguish. It was a moment of realisation that those 4 words that occasionally haunts my recollections was true after all. Was i indenial all these years? Too selfless? Too absorbed in basking in the thank you's after every occasion that required me to be, nice? 

 I can't help but agree. 

 I weep. I wailed. I realise i cant pay the bill. I was stuck. For a moment there, i was absolutely brain dead. I had no idea what to do next. I moved around the room trying to make sense that what my uncle said was right. All along he was and i was too oblivious to believe it. I turned around and took a good look in the mirror. I understood, now, what he meant. At last, I knew what to do. I needed to change my look. 

 "Enough, you've never appreciated me, you only needed me because i was nice to you, the only one who was!" i screamed back. 

 The first day i erased nice off my sleeve was the day i felt superior. I know it's wrong to feel like a bitch, but it felt good to not be someone's bitch. I took off the necklace i was so proud of. I concealed the tattoo that stamped nice across my forehead. I drowned myself into morbidity and selfishness, not a stench of nice was on me. I was different, contrast to who i was. An abstract figure that i never thought would be concrete. 

I started seeing the world differently, although the world remained unchanged. For the first time, i felt more powerful, more angst, harder than i was before. It felt oddly, good. Mr. Nice Guy was gone. No more. Buried six feet deep down with his memories. I felt more enraged, more hungry to be the top dog.

 "..I feel so alone.." 

 The new found fame soon became a fallout. I lost friends, i lost trust, i lost almost everything. I sacrifice the years i invested in being nice into being a monster. Far worst, i lost myself. I never actually explained what the bill stated when it arrived that made me spiral out. It was grotesque. The bill was actually my heartbreak. Being nice caused my heart to break. Made the fire extinguish. Made the dream, a nightmare. The heartbreak took its toll for the worst as i began to understand life more vividly. I completed the puzzle, the piece i pick up everyday on life. My heartbreak, my realisation that being nice had its price was devastating. Being nice didn't mean to be soft-spoken or gentlemen-like but it meant to put others before you. Selfless. Altruistic. 

 The price it came with completely turned my beliefs a 180 degrees. Being nice allowed anyone to come in and anyone to leave. Being nice made me vulnerable. Being nice was not being able to let myself be above others. Being nice welcomed temporary figures. Being nice carried baggage, not just my own but everyone else's too. Being nice allowed the chance to deny the truth. Being nice fogs your logic. Being nice leaves you satisfactory but at the same time leaves you wondering. Being nice lets anyone take you for granted. Ultimately, being nice breaks your heart and that's when you know, being nice paid the price. 

Forever isn't always, Forever

It's funny how we conform into our bubble believing that some things in life are permanent, immortal and forever. In reality, forever is fictional, almost non-existent to any living creature that inhabits this mundane planet we call abode. Forever cease to exist within the boundaries of literature and art, nothing more. Ironically, our sentiments makes us believe that forever does exist, no matter the contradiction. 

 Forever, they said. Forever and ever and ever. Forever and Always. 

 I thought i knew what forever was, how long forever is and that forever is the promise made out of sentimental gestures. The word forever provides a strong support, almost as an embrace that is so tight and everlasting that regardless of anything, it won't be broken. For-ev-er, 3 syllables, lingers within with a warmth, a word rolled off the tongue with such assurance of it will always be alright. 

 They told me, from time and time again, "forever" and "ever" and "ever", and i believed it each time. I was foolish to believe it. One last time, i asked, "you promise, forever?" and "forever and always" was the reply. It didn't occur to me that someday forever had its end.

 The day i realised forever was never there to begin with, my world collapsed in a catastrophic chaos. My beliefs, all this while, was just an empty shell? How my emotions has devoted itself into being assured its nothing to be afraid of? Nothing lost? Nothing? Forever was really nothing. Forever never really meant to be forever. Forever was just meant to caress my insecurities, my fears into believing that it will be forever. Forever didn't mean shit, not to me anyways. 

The realisation hit me harder than anything can physically impact me. I was hopeful, naive to hold on to the concept that forever meant something, that forever DID exist beyond the stories i was told, beyond the movies i saw, beyond anything that was impossible made possible because i believed that forever existed in my realm. I believed in many things that made me intransigent towards the bad's of today. I was old-fashioned in a sense that i believed in love at first sight, i believed in miracles, i believed in being chaste before marriage and above all, i believed forever existed. 

 "Forever was a lie, you're a liar!" i screamed. 

 It's a giant lie, the whole lot of it. Forever was nothing more than an empty promise. I mean, come on, realistically, who could ACTUALLY live up to it? It's too permanent, almost rectifying the many odds of life itself. The promise made with forever dangled in the end are promises that don't last. It doesn't add up half of the time why it doesn't last as it should but at the same time it was fiction, in all its glory anyways. 

Forever never meant to last forever because forever was just too long for anyone to live up to it. Forever was the final saying of "yes, i'm all yours", "yes for a lifetime". i mean, really? 

 Forever was meant to give hope to the broken, to lead hopeless romantics like myself to believe that forever was more than it was worth. Forever was pure and simple, crystal clear of its concept to last for eternity. 

 Bullshit, forever was never yours to say or for me to believe in. Forever was meant to be in books, to keep a story alive for decades to come. Forever wasn't yours to comfort me with, forever wasn't mine to keep. Forever, a 7 lettered word you present me, out of spite with assurance that you indeed will be here, forever. Bullshit, forever was just an empty promise you decided to comfort me with. Forever, i don't believe in it anymore because forever isn't always forever, forever is full of it.