To live for the hope of it all

Mikaela Dela Cruz

Some people become a part of our lives long before we realize they are only passing through.

At first, she was simply someone I happened to talk to. There was no particular reason for us to become close, no single moment that changed everything. We just kept finding ourselves in the same conversations, staying up later than we intended, and slowly becoming a part of each other’s days. 

I learned the things she liked, the stories she had told me before, and the little things that could make her laugh. Somewhere along the way, talking to her stopped being something I did and became something I looked forward to.

Maybe that is how it happens. Someone enters your life quietly, stays long enough to become familiar, and somehow becomes difficult to imagine without.

I met her at the beginning of summer, though I don’t remember the exact day anymore. What I remember is how quickly we fell into a routine. We would find reasons to see each other, sometimes with other people and sometimes just the two of us. There was never anything we needed to call a date. We were simply together often enough that it began to feel natural. Summer made it easier to spend time together without having to think too much about what would happen afterward.

We had nowhere we particularly needed to be, so our afternoons often stretched into evenings. We would walk around with no real destination, stop somewhere for food, and sit longer than we planned because neither of us wanted to be the first to say goodbye. 

Looking back, I think those moments made me fall for her. Nothing about them was extraordinary. They were simply ours.

I began to notice the small things without trying. I knew what she would order before she said it, which songs she would skip, and the stories she always returned to when she had nothing else to say. I started saving things to tell her later because I knew I would see her again. When something good happened, she was one of the first people I wanted to tell. When something went wrong, talking to her made it feel less important.

By then, she had become part of my everyday life without either of us deciding that she would be.

I think that was also the time when I started hoping for something more.

There was never a conversation where she told me she wanted a future with me. She never promised that we would still be doing the same things when summer ended. But some moments made me think it was possible. She would hold my hand when we crossed the street, lean against my shoulder when she was tired, or tell me that she wished the afternoon did not have to end. None of those things meant what I wanted them to mean, but I kept them anyway.

I started building a future out of moments that belonged only to the present.

I thought about where we could go after summer. I saved places I wanted to take her and remembered things she said she wanted to try. When we talked about the months ahead, I listened carefully, hoping to hear myself somewhere in her plans. I never asked whether she imagined me to be there because I was afraid that asking would change whatever we had.

So I let myself believe.

Maybe that is what hope does. It allows us to live inside a possibility before we know whether it will become real. For a while, I did not care about certainty. I only needed to believe that there would be another afternoon like the ones we had already spent together, another weekend when we could find somewhere to go, another summer when I would still have a reason to wait for her message.

Then August came, and everything began to feel slightly different.

It was not one particular day that changed things. She did not suddenly become distant, and we did not have a conversation that ended whatever existed between us. There were simply fewer afternoons together. Messages came later. Plans became harder to make. The days that had once seemed endless began moving faster, and I became increasingly aware that summer was running out.

Every time we met, I wondered how many more times we would do it. When she had to leave, I wanted to ask her to stay longer, even when there was no real reason for her to stay. I began memorizing things without meaning to—the places we went, the songs we listened to, the way she looked when she laughed. I think some part of me already knew that I was trying to hold on to something that was changing.

Still, I hoped she would make it easier for me.

I kept my afternoons open in case she wanted to see me. I turned down plans because there was always a chance she might ask me to meet her. Sometimes I would stare at my phone for hours, convincing myself that the silence did not mean anything. I told myself she was busy, that she would call later, that there would be another day. I could have filled those hours with anything else, but I kept choosing the possibility of her.

Maybe I was really living for the hope of it all. I did not need her to promise that she would stay. I only needed her to give me another reason to believe she might. Another afternoon, another conversation, another message asking if I was free. I kept taking those little moments as proof that there would be more, because believing in more was easier than admitting that there might not be.

I think I would have accepted almost anything if it meant I could keep pretending there was still a chance.

The painful part was that she never had to ask me to wait. I did it willingly. I gave up the afternoons she never knew I had saved for her, cancelled plans she never knew I had cancelled, and spent nights waiting for messages she never promised to send. I was building my days around someone who had never asked me to build anything around her.

Maybe I was the only one treating our time like something worth keeping.

While I was memorizing the places we went, the songs we listened to, and the way she looked at me, she was simply living through the summer. I was saving every moment because I was afraid it would be the last; she could enjoy it without wondering how many more there would be.

Maybe that was the difference between us. I was already grieving something that had not ended yet, while she had never thought there was anything to lose. Maybe the cruelest part was that I was already afraid of losing something she had never thought she could lose.