sunsets

Sunsets are hideous. Not the colour, but the implied meanings underneath.

 

 When I was 13 at my boarding school, walking from the hostel to the dining hall during the evening was dreaded. There was one time where I woke up late because I slept after prep class in the evening, I remember waking up feeling so lost inside and I wanted so badly to run away. I missed my home and my family and this place felt like a punishment for something that I didn't do. The evening sunset was only making it worse.

 

I remember walking through the classroom blocks to the Kemahiran Hidup workshops on my way to the surau, crying a little bit because I couldn't bear living like this. I couldn't fit in, I felt unwanted. 

I remember the colour of the evening, so sickening, so orange, so sorrowful, so tormenting. There was a subtle cruelty in sunsets, like it was designed to tap into the sadness in your heart, the orange was unrelenting in its pursuit to search and unearth that emotion in you.  

When the hostels are empty, you could hear the faint noises from the field. Balls bouncing off somebody's feet and the cement court, shouting and whistle blows. They were complementary to the sunsets, it was a transitional phase from day to night and it felt so lonesome if you remove yourself away from the scene. 

I remember years later, I finally found a reason to make the sunsets more bearable. A person. A face.

 

Sunsets aren't that bad, if you're not alone. A simple companionship is all you needed to make it feel less tragic. And so began those years in my life when I no longer dread sunsets, that evenings are cool too, as long as I'd be experiencing it with you.

 

But evenings are the euphemism for something else, and without knowing it, you too are my own sunset. You were the phase, you were the transition. You once made the sunsets tolerable, that colours are irrelevant, time bears no meaning, sunsets and sunrises do not matter, as long as you're here by my side to live our truth. 

 

But alas, here we are now. I'm fighting my own sunsets, my own life failings, my torn apart dreams. I wished for you, I'd beg for you, just to make everything feel right again. But the truth that once was ours couldn't make it to forever, we have to make do with what we have, and we could only wish time would make us feel whole again.