Hitomi wo Tojite

Your love forever
Hitomi wo tojite kimi wo egaku yo sore dake de ii -- Hitomi wo Tojite, Hirai Ken

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I can only sit here and listen to this song, known in English as "I Close My Eyes", while I scan through pictures people have taken from back home. I wish I could be with them, but part of me wonders if I would have truly been a part of those events, had I still existed in that land.

And then it hits me:
Had I not left, what would have become of me? Would I truly be better off living there than here, even after I consider all the things that have happened to me? I wonder what would have occurred in its place back home? Would life go on, much in the same way as before, only different? Who would be around me, still? Would I be the same person? It's a lot to ask, I know, but these are the questions I wonder day and night, now, in this place where things seem to affect me in more negative ways than one could possibly imagine in absence.

And I think of Nic. I had loved him; he had loved me, and maybe more than that, but the past cannot be changed, and the present is where I live, now. There are things you regret as you move through life, but there are reasons for those things you missed out on, and the things you accepted to occur in the other's place....

And I really begin to look at the person all the pictures I'm seeing focus on.
And it hits me harder.
And I laugh, in spite, perhaps, but most definitely at the irony, and the longing.
The lyrics I posted above are translated roughly as, [Your Love forever. I close my eyes tight, and I see your smile flash momentarily]. And as bad as that translation probably is, I'll let you know, I felt it. I feel it. Could it be that I fell in love with Reagan?

Is that this strange desire to lean out and kiss his lips, and let him know I love him? Surely a fool's fantasy would seem more plausible; more feasible in the least! Yet, here I sit, with those thoughts in my mind, and not a regret about them.
I lost one to Death, and walked away from yet others. Was I saving them from destruction or myself? Or am I leading them to it, all of us playing unwittingly into yet another trap of Free-willed Fate? The Learned say History repeats Itself, but why is it that I find that no matter how much time we spend learning History's mannerisms and past, we still find ourselves in the same positions, if only with different names and places involved?