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I cleaned out a box from a closet in my parents’ house today and found a small, folded scrap of paper.  When I opened it, I found this note:

Dearest Kelly,

Maybe in this life I won’t have a chance to be with you again, but I hope I will have that chance in the next life.  I will wait for you.

(in Chinese)
If I can return to live again, I will still and always choose you.

I will miss you forever, and I love you.

Yang


It is dated 8/23/97 … almost 9 years ago.  It had been three years since I left Taiwan and two years since we broke up.  He had come to visit me in Los Angeles … the first time he had ever left Taiwan … the first time anyone in his family had ever been on a plane.  He stayed for a week, and we drove all over Southern California seeing the sights.  At the end of the week, he told me that he had come with the intention of asking me to marry him, but in the end we just kept running into the same walls that had come between us and that same hope two years before. 

When I drove him to the airport, every fiber of my being wanted to get on that plane with him because something in me knew that if I let him go,  it would be the last time I would see him.  Right before he boarded the plane, he kissed me and slipped a small scrap of paper into my hand.  With that he was gone.  Thirteen years since we met, nine years since we last saw each other, eight months since we last spoke, and seldom does a day go by that he doesn’t somehow enter my mind. 

Sometimes I walk alone at night
When everybody else is sleeping
I think of him and then I’m happy
With the company I’m keeping
The city goes to bed
And I can live inside my head.

On my own
Pretending he’s beside me
All alone, I walk with him till morning
Without him
I feel his arms around me
And when I lose my way I close my eyes
And he has found me

In the rain the pavement shines like silver
All the lights are misty in the river
In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight
And all I see is him and me for ever and forever

And I know it’s only in my mind
That I’m talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say, there’s a way for us

I love him
But when the night is over
He is gone, the river’s just a river
Without him the world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere
The streets are full of strangers

I love him
But every day I’m learning
All my life I’ve only been pretending
Without me his world will go on turning
A world that’s full of happiness
That I have never known.

I love him … but only on my own.

~On My Own, Les Miserables

5 thoughts on “”

  1. I think I might be identifying to much because this made me cry. It just makes me so sad that you gave up the love of your life and now Toshi is there.(as much as I like him, he’s NO Yang) And you know I can’t help thinking Toshi must be some kind of crazy because he has to know on some level that he will never be the love of your life. Doesn’t he want more? You need to get out of there for awhile. My spare room dried out! And by the time you get here I’ll have the house clean again. Besides, all your travels shouldn’t be to just Asia, tho they have enough for 3 lifetimes of travel. Think about a week in Germany. Remember we leave in Dec. And think of all the money you’ll be saving not having to stay at a hotel. P.S. Don’t think I didn’t recognize who is in that picture.

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  2. is there any way you can find him again?
    if at all possible, that’s what i’d do.
    (yeah… that note he wrote made me cry too… that kind of love? the one that transcends lifetimes… that’s the kind we all should experience…)

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  4. Wow. What a profound post….it made me think about a lot of stuff and I can relate to it too. My ex of 4 years and I broke up 2 years ago and I got rid of all the cards, letters, pics, and stuff (it wasn’t a pretty break up)…but every now and then I’ll find something that I forgot to get rid of, sitting in the bottom of a drawer or something. It’s hard when that happens, and what people don’t understand is how you can still hurt when you have a new person in your life. A new love doesn’t erase an old love or all the feelings you once had. Have you heard the song by James Blunt called “Goodbye My lover.”?  It’s a sad song…the part that gets me is the part where he says, “And I still hold your hand in mine at night, when I’m sleeping.”
    blah.

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