My favorite song was playing on the full volume, beating the sound of a rainstorm in the middle of the night. The intro of About You made it seem like we were living a scene out of a movie ending, while driving on a empty highway, with no one else but just two of broken soul together. I cried my heart out along with the midnight rain — thanking the sky for crying with me. The haunting vocals of the song filled the corner my shattered heart, pushing it to the edge that it shattered even more. I kept my stare straight to the road, couldn’t bring my eyes to see you holding your tears. You were carefully driving on a slippery road by keeping one hand on the steering wheel, and the other on my shoulder to comfort me, while I know in my head that you were carelessly slipping away from me.
We just got back from a funeral — a funeral of our dreams.
‘How did we get into this situation?’
— a question that we asked ourselves million times that night. None of us seemed to know the answer to that, no matter how hard we put our logic to map out on where we went wrong.
I’m a big dreamer, at least that’s what most people said. Once I dream, I dream big and will hold dearly to it. And that’s exactly what I did, I clung to the thoughts of us in the future so tightly, but no one told me it would hurt that much. You, on the other hand, were the one who taught me to let loose of the rope that I tied to our dreams, convincing me that we would still be able to reach it. That’s what you always do anyway, taught me something the opposite way of how I usually did it. I taught you — who were once not a big believer of dreams and chose to go with the flow — how to dream, and you finally have your own too. Oh, we were so different yet we complement each other, then how did we get into this situation?
We talked about someday, someday, someday. Someday I’ll learn to drive just to pick you up from the airport. Someday we’ll visit my hometown together to taste its cuisine. Someday we’ll pursue our masters in different countries at the same time together. We were clearly drowned by our own dreams, we put ourselves in a blind spot.
Truth is, our faults were pretty much written all over the place. But with this concept of dreaming that we got, we were so fixated with our dreams and plans that we couldn’t see them, though they were clearly eating us alive from the inside. Instead of being a shelter to each other, I became your midnight rain and you became my thunder. They still complement each other, with midnight rain usually there’s a thunder, but do they still belong together?
That’s how we get into this situation I guess — we were a midnight rain and a thunder who got dreams for a future together. And well you’ve guessed it, when the two are combined, they became a rainstorm in the middle of the night — loud, chaotic, and scary.
You pulled up on the right lane in a dark road. The rainstorm were still dancing and singing outside, as if inviting us to join them. Oh, but we don’t need the invitation because we were a rainstorm too. You stopped the engine, you turned off the music. There were no silence, only the sound of water falling to the car hood, and the sound of thunder — ah, the sound of our kind. With swollen eyes after hours of crying, I still kept my stare straight to the road, still unable to bring them to you. You covered your face with your hands, slowly letting your guard down and finally letting the tears fall. I rarely see you cry in front of me, and when I did, I’ve discovered another layer of sadness — but I felt less alone that night because at least I still got you. I wrapped my hands around you, and you let your thunder gave in to the rain. The rainstorm outside stopped, as if giving the spotlight to us.
In that moment, we were comfortable of being a rainstorm, not the kind that was loud, chaotic, and scary; but instead the kind that soothes your mind when it’s loud. And that’s how we know the love we had was indeed real and sincere.
We spent the rest of the midnight grieving over the dreams that we had buried. We cried, cried, and cried, until our hearts couldn’t take it anymore.
I know way too well that they will still leave their grave, only to became ghosts that will still haunt me every day. The ghosts that will still follow me everywhere, making it hard for me to get through my days. The ghosts that will make me scared of dreaming again, scared that I will have to hold another funeral.
You turned on the engine, the song came in again, breaking the silence after the rainstorm find their way home. This time it really felt like the ending scene of a movie, but the kind where both the main characters didn’t have the good or bad ending, it just left you hanging — wondering what will happen next for them.
