To Exist Is To Live And to Live Is To Be Together

By Aysha Assan

"I think we have a say in who we love and care for but we can't choose the people we fall in love with." I said after the long silence.

"Why do you think so?" she asks me.

"I don't know exactly how but my mind chooses the most random people to be in love with. Sometimes the people are ones I disliked the most in the beginning. Sometimes it's someone I've talked to only once. It doesn't make sense, the criteria for falling." I say frustratedly.

"Maybe it doesn't have to be complicated. Love could be the simplest of feelings." She paused. Turning her face towards me, she smiles. "You just have to feel it. Romantic or not, platonic, parental any kind of love, you just have to feel it. Occasionally express it, sincerely" she finishes with a tilt of her head.

I look away, towards the vast sea in front of me, the sand on my feet, the little kids making a sand castle a few feet away from us.

"How do one express it?" I ask, my head down.

"Just be there" She answers in a heartbeat.

"Just be present, be together with the people you love."

She crossed her legs, tapping off the sand sticking on her knees.

Now I look at her, her hair slightly drenched, sand on her face and I saw her eyes shine with the setting sun's colour.

"Be together", I said to myself as I turned my head to watch the sunset. We sat there, together, as the world happened around us.

2 weeks later, I write a letter addressed to her.

"I once asked you how to express love and you asked me to be present, be together. I tried. I tried loving the people I love and being with the people I cared for. Through all of that I learned that you were wrong about one thing. Love is complicated. Love is hard. It's hard to give and even harder to receive. It’s not easy to be with and be present or be together. It takes patience and a whole lot of hope. and you gave me that hope. From all the people I loved, you were my favourite person to be together with. And I'm thankful I got to be together with you as long as I did"

I close the envelope, stamp it and put it in the fireplace. I watch it burn slowly at first then rapidly turning to ashes. 

'To be together is to be apart after', I thought. But I also know that to exist is to live and to exist is to die. But to live and die you have to be together, with yourself, with others, with your world.

By Aysha Assan