i already forget how i used to feel about you

Tuesdays with Morrie is undoubtedly the most emotional book that I've ever read. I know it's supposed to be an uplifting book but I was left so vulnerable after reading it, reduced to a pathetic weeping state, balled up in my bed crying uncontrollably.

i don't even know Morrie but i feel like i do. i really felt connected with him just through the writing of Mitch. it felt so real, so personal. When Morrie died, it felt like I was losing a very dear friend. I don't think I have ever cried while reading a book before. I only cry when I watch korean drama (scoff, yes scoff). But I don't cry that easily, really. In those dramas i felt like i could feel their pain since i felt close to the characters. I even felt like i knew them. their pain was my pain. I didnt cry in Titanic/Windstruck/Pearl Harbor or anything like that. maybe cos they are movies and i cant really identify with the characters. But this time, it really felt like a personal loss.

I'm terrible with goodbyes. I'm terrible with loss. I don't understand how people can say its an uplifting book. True, the stuff that Morrie taught were insightful and true. But i still felt so incredibly betrayed even though i knew he was dying right from the start. I feel like ive gotten to know him through his teachings and his thoughts. I really don't like death. I really don't like goodbyes.

I know its natural and that it's all part of being alive. It's not so much death that I hate but the thought of leaving people. I can't imagine living without certain people in my life, like my family. When the day comes to say goodbye to my grandmother or my mother, I don't know what I will do. I can't even handle the thought of living without them. I used to cry just at the very thought of losing my mother.

I remember thinking once when I was in primary school that I must not love my mother too much because I knew I would have to say goodbye one day and that if I loved her too much it would hurt me more than I could bear. Yes, I was morbid that way even as a child. There was this part where Morrie taught how you had to throw yourself fully into emotions to fully experience life. How you had to give in to fear to conquer fear.

And that takes strength. I'm too scared of looking loss in the eye and 'say take those I love, I do not fear.' I can't, I just can't. I don't ever want to let go of the ones I care so much about.

I guess that is why I have increasingly closed myself up as I grow older, wall up my heart so that I become impenetrable to a certain extent. Because loss is inevitable and along with it comes hurt. If you don't love, you don't hurt. i think for the first time in my life, i see that i am afraid to love.

Of course I know too that if you dont love you dont live. Life is about relationships and if you shy away from them and refuse to give of yourself to others that you might as well be dead. "love each other, or perish," Morrie said. I see his point, I really do. I agree that love is the most powerful force this world has ever known. It is the only thing that keeps the world going. It is because of love that relationships are borne; it is because of love that we are even here. It is because of God's love that we are forgiven and born again.

Yet, can someone teach me how to deal with loss? i know people have said that love carries on after death, that the relationship lives on in the heart. people also say that precisely because life has an end that you should treasure every second together because time together is limited. Others have said that having submitted everything to God, we should not be too upset when He chooses to take it away from us because it is all in His will. Or that death has only brought a person home to God, to paradise, away from this sinful world.

Yeah, that's all true. But it doesn't help. It's not going to lessen my pain of losing them. I'm glad they're somewhere better, I know I will always love them, I know I don't have any right over them and it's not in my position to demand they be with me. But it doesn't mean that I don't hurt or ache or despair in their absence.

this is why, all you people better live long blessed lives. I, on the other hand, am going to load up on fat, preservatives, everything chemically processed and hope I die young. I know it's damnit selfish. But hey, someone's gotta go first.