“What do you think is the loneliest object in the world?” he asked.
I was reading our old messages when I came across the question. I remembered it was almost 3 am. I was lying on my bed, lights out, with my phone screen lighting up my face. Well, obviously a weird topic had to come up in those hours. If it wasn’t from him, then without any doubt it would come from me.
“The loneliest object??” I scoffed at how absurd he could be sometimes.
“I’ll go first. The loneliest object in the world is a thrown-away plastic bottle. Always got thrown away after being used. We know it is not gonna be one with the soil, not anytime soon… so it just has to be there existing, waiting for its previous owner to pick it up and own it back. But you know, it is unlikely going to happen because it is a bottle made out of plastic. It is just one of many. To be replaceable and abandoned, what’s lonelier than that?”
Reading his message, I started to remember how much I loved listening to him talk. He had always been a storyteller. In between those lifeless corporate zombies around me, he was incredibly alive. His head was overflowed with interesting ideas, a series of eye-opening life lessons for me to learn, and the other things that sometimes I don’t quite understand. It almost felt like he knew everything… except for the things that I knew, which made him think that I walked so bravely in such an extraordinary living path — and that made him want to learn from me as well.
“Wait, let me think.” I continued, “For me, a missing toy is definitely lonelier than a thrown-away plastic bottle! You used to play with it, spend most of your time together… You love it so much but you lose it. Time passes, you’ll forget about it, and you’ll find a new toy. But little do you know, your toy only knows you for its whole life. It is forever yours, waiting for you to realize that it is now in the invisible corner somewhere, hoping for you to find it. But you’ll forget about it… and it’s going to spend its whole life being dusty and lonely.”
“Ohhh that’s a good one! Mine was intentionally thrown away and yours was accidentally lost. Completely the opposites but both are just as lonely.”
I saw myself being so intrigued by the question that I came up with a few more of the so-called “loneliest objects in the world”.
“Oh, another one! A band-aid! Some things were made only to cover scars and thrown away in the bin right after you heal. Can you imagine how lonely that is? and you know that they used you merely for that, but still, you give yourself anyway. Or a diary! You have to listen to someone’s rant every day without expecting them to listen to you back. They write on you, never about you, they call you dear — making you think that they love you when they just want to use you as an ear without a mouth… I literally never thought that there would be so many lonely objects.” I said, ending my almost endless suggestions.
He replied, “Honestly can’t decide which one is the loneliest. I feel like every single one of them is badly hurt and I want to start appreciating my stuffs even more now LOL”.
I stopped reading when the realization suddenly hit me…
…of how much I liked us, how much I missed you, and how much I envied her.
I stared at the moon through my window, and the moon was seemingly staring back at me. We were both alone in this moment. The phrase I love you to the moon and back — what does it mean? Does it mean the moon is only a temporary stop? How is it fair for the moon? So many things crossed my mind as it was almost 3 am. You see, my favorite thing about our conversation was the way we talked about the things that were not about us… whereas right now I could only do without you, expecting myself to have the answer as I was still struggling to make peace with your departure. I stared at my phone screen, once again reading your absurd question, “What do you think is the loneliest object in the world?”. Two years ago, we couldn’t decide on one object. But maybe now I could.
The moon.
The moon orbits the earth at the same pace, always. Knowing too well that the earth wouldn’t do the same, knowing too well that the earth would only orbit the sun, knowing too well that it could never shine on its own.
Why couldn’t the earth orbit the moon, instead of the sun?
Well, how would I know? I’m not a science geek like you. I knew that you would know… and sometimes I wish you could explain to me like you used to. Even if it takes hours, days, months, or forever, I would listen. Maybe it was simply how things should be, as it was the predetermined way for the moon, the earth, and the sun. Or maybe it was a choice, just like how I chose to keep my world revolving around you, despite understanding that we might never meant to have anything more than whatever this was.
If you were still here, you would probably come up with plenty of logical reasons as to why the earth couldn’t orbit the moon and why it would never happen — not even in a million years. You would explain to me about the damage it might cause, how it would affect everything, how the earth would die if it stopped orbiting the sun… or you would probably say that it just simply can’t because that’s just not how things are supposed to work.
But if I could be honest with you, more than anything, I wish you would tell me that I shouldn’t rely too much on the coincidences between the way our galaxy worked and the chronically tangled situation that we were in. Tell me that I was not the moon, you were not the earth, and she was not the sun.
Talk to me about how the moon was not the loneliest object in the world.
Come back. Prove me wrong.