I woke up by my own voice. A long forgotten and buried name had come out of my mouth forcefully and briskly. I was not dreaming. I was sound asleep. Why? Why a name from so long ago!

I lay in my bed staring out into the darkness. I scarcely think of, or look back upon, the past. Why? I am not sure I have an answer. When occasionally I chatted to my old friends from my youth, I hardly talked about the past only the present. Why did I wake up by calling out his name at 2:30 AM? I am quite certain that he is not on the same continent as me. Therefore, it couldn’t be as if a ghost or soul traveling through time in the dark of night.

My mind keeps wondering, and fragments of memories keep coming into play. I didn’t want to remember or think about them, it was the past.   I am living in the present, I like the way I turned out, I am happy as myself. But why, why did I call out and be awakened by his name in my sleep? 

I couldn’t go back to sleep. The question of why dominated my thoughts. Finally, I picked up the phone and dialed the number to a far away corner of the earth. It is so remarkable that both of us chose to live far away from where we had grown up, and still keep up with our friendship by voice only. It is not like others who had faded away like the smoke into the air.

“May be he is just thinking about you?” that’s all she said. Was it? We changed the subject to where her next traveling destination is and other things. Then, “Maybe we should try to meet in Taipei in the near future!”,  “Why meet in Taipei?”, “So, we can look him up.” How absurd we were! She was as curious as I was, but we wouldn’t admit to it. Why???

The possibility of us meeting in Taipei is slim to none – I guess we both really do not want to look or face our past at all, but the inquisitive mind distracts us. Maybe we both understand that to keep living in the present, is our best bet! Maybe this is what life is all about – going forward no turning back!