Loving, Losing & Learning: A Love Letter To The Lost.

"Don't talk of worlds that never were: The end is all that's ever true. There's nothing you can ever say, nothing you can ever do. Still, every night I burn, every night I scream your name; Every night I burn, every night the dream's the same." - Robert Smith ("Burn" by The Cure)

As a writer at heart and a student of storytelling by practice, I've taken notice to certain subtle moments in the histories of characters. At the moment, only three of those moments out of thousands featured in the Comics, Films, Television Series, and Novels that I've invested time in are the few that I can relate to in my life as a human being and essentially just another character among billions of others in my dimension: The silence of Dean Winchester as he stared into an active fireplace and watched a photograph of the recently-deceased Jo Harvelle burn to ashes at the end of "Supernatural"s fifth mid-season finale entitled "Abandon All Hope", Dr. Paul Weston's lonely walk into the larger awaiting world after his last therapy session in the closing moments of "In Treatment", and the bittersweet spiritual surrender of Robb Stark right after he grieved over the corpse of his slaughtered loved ones at the end of The Red Wedding on "Game of Thrones".

Those moments featured men in the aftermath of critical points in their respective journeys, all having worked incredibly hard to achieve a particular goal and having lost in their quests to a degree: Dean failed to kill Lucifer and stop the impending apocalypse at the cost of the lives of some of his friends, Paul failed to get his family back after his divorce and mid-life crisis and ended up truly alone for the first time ever, and within one single night, Robb lost an entire war. On a more personal note, I lost something in my life that meant an incredible lot to me too: The affection of the only girl who ever truly mattered in my life. Not recently, evidently, but for the first time ever, I'm finally coming to terms with it. And that's the point of any journey, according to Peter David: To come out at the end of it with a brand new perspective, otherwise there was no point to any of it at all.

Anjelica Hatzialexandrou. An always welcome wild card in my life since the first day I met her. A wild card because she came out of left field three years ago and changed me like no other person or situation ever had. While I'm sure that the times I spent with her will always be some of my most treasured and precious, as of recent conclusions I can't help but to acknowledge the objective fact that things are the way they are between the two of us and that I've lost her, probably forever, due solely to my own arrogance and flaws.

In 2011, when I was twenty, after a summer of rejection and a lifetime of disappointment for me in this area of my life, there she stood against the wall of the Westchester Square train station in our hometown of the Bronx: New to my story and possibly the one who would vibrantly change the course of the tide in my ever-suffering love life. The day was September 21st and we'd been speaking over the phone and over the internet for weeks but this was the first time that we were meeting each other in person and I wasn't the least bit disappointed in the person who I was truly meeting for the first time; She was as deep as Kate Tempest, as beautiful as Emilia Clarke, and as intelligent as Lisa Randall. As the day continued and we got to know each other, I continuously pondered about how much I'd lucked up and hoped that she'd give me the chance to be with her that I was secretly hoping for by the time our first date was through together. And what an ending to that first date it would turn out to be.... I kissed her. Much against our mutual shyness, that is, but the attraction between the both of us was undeniable.

Our date that day had to be cut short because her dad had called her to remind her that she had to come home to cook dinner and take care of things at their home but that was all fine by me because she'd agreed to see me again before we parted ways for the day. And, believe me, I wanted to spend as much time as possible with her from that moment on. And so it was: I had a girlfriend for the first time in years. One who I was more than lucky to find, much in the vain of how I imagine a pirate would feel after discovering a treasure chest in the undercarriage of an enemy ship while only having raided it with the intention of stealing common rum in the first place. But, as the Native Americans used to say: "The unaimed arrow never misses."

We saw each other again a few days later and spent the entire day loitering in the Barnes & Noble of Bay Plaza, she and I bonding over our mutual love of literature. She'd mentioned, off-handedly, to me a few days beforehand that her dad's birthday was the day after and I thought it would be a good idea on my part to give him a gift, something that she said was unnecessary, but I was already ahead of the curb and had bought him a CD collection of The Who's greatest hits. It was a shot in the dark since I had no idea what type of music he favored but while she was home that night, she sent me a text message telling me that he loved the gift, something that I was very happy about. And a few days later, she invited me to meet her family. I was frightened, admittedly, especially after the wretched ordeal of racism and vitriol that had turned out to be the case when I'd met with Jenna's family in Staten Island two years earlier but, for my new love Anjie, I'd have done anything and so I obliged. I'd gotten lost on the bus ride to her house that day but when I finally got there, albeit late, I had reached the house before her dad even got home. The interim period was spent with me continuously and obsessively asking her if she thought her dad would approve of me and the like, things she positively reassured me of every time I asked her.

When he did get home from work that day, he and I got along so well that we sometimes forgot to even include Anjie in our conversation. I told him about the "Fallen Angel" & "Supernatural" crossover script that I was in the process of submitting to Peter David and J.K. Woodward, he told me about his job as a salesman, I told him about the doomed scholarship I'd won years prior from New York Film Academy, he told me about his Greek heritage and upbringing. It was a fantastic exchange between two guys, who for all intents and purposes probably shouldn't have even gotten along due to cultural differences and societal conditioning, but the overlying fact remained that he and I had one pretty big mutual interest in common among others: His oldest daughter. Something that he made clear to me by letting me know how precious she was to him and how she only deserved the best, two things of which I not only simultaneously understood but also respected as well. I felt from then on as if he were subtly trusting me with one of the most important things in his life and the last thing I wanted to do was let him down. To this day, to simply say that I was grateful for the way he accepted me into his family would be an understatement on my part.

The weeks passed and Anjelica and I continued to see each other. On our off time, I continued my work on my "X-Men" montage series and she continued her courses in College. All was right and I was happier than I'd honestly ever been in my entire life before.

Then, one night, she and I began talking about politics. Our politics were practically identical to one another's seeing as how she's a liberal and I am too, but she disagreed with certain stances of Malcolm X's while I defended them, feeling that I knew the context of much of his ideologies better. Pretty soon, what should've been a petty disagreement, as it would've been nowadays considering that I'm older and more mature than I was back then, morphed into a gargantuan blowup between the two of us. I wrote about the experience on my blog but that only added fuel to the fire. Fortunately, after a long conversation between the both of us, we talked things through and agreed to disagree on the subject and continue our relationship.

Over the course of the next few times I visited her at her home, things were good again as if that entire incident had never happened at all. During one of them, she and her dad were discussing the pros and cons of College as we watched "The Lost World: Jurassic Park" and much to my joy she actually agreed with a point that I'd been making for years before I even met her: That, essentially, College is a sham used by the rich to keep the poor broke with the goal of attaining diplomas that are already flooding the world's overpopulated work forces and hence the underlying value of the pieces of paper that so many people have sacrificed years of their lives to attain is depreciated due to way too much supply and too little demand. "Thatta girl," I thought to myself. Anjie was incredibly smart, always saying things to make me appreciate something about the world, whether philosophical or tangible, from a different angle: The role I usually played for everyone else in my life, ironically. I've often wondered since then if that aspect of her personality and role in social situations was what subconsciously attracted me to her in the first place but I'm convinced that it was many other things about her too that I simply couldn't resist either.

Another time, she and I were treated to dinner at Crosstown Diner by her aunt, Stephanie (Or is she her cousin, I can never remember), and we helped Stephanie write an essay for class the rest of the day. Before I left her house that day, Anjelica drew me a picture of a sailboat - something I've cherished ever since. That weekend, as I woke up sometime in the early afternoon seeing as how I had no traditional job to go to at the time and had long-since graduated from High School, I woke up to a text message from Anjie.

It read simply: "I'm happy."

'How come?,' I texted back.

"Because I'm watching all these reality shows and they're looking for what I've already found with you. I love you, Dai," she replied.

It was from that moment on when she stopped being a girlfriend to me and when she became the proverbial "one". That "one" who you hear about in the Television shows, that "one" that you read about in all the sappy Nicholas Sparks books, that "one" who old folks tell their grandchildren and great-grandchildren about decades after meeting their lifelong spouse the way my mother's maternal grandmother used to tell me about the Husband who made her a widow before I was born, though she herself had passed away before my eyes only a little bit over a year before I met Anjelica.

Did I get along with this girl? "Check," I began to go over a mental list in my mind that day. Get along with this girl's family? "Check." Overcome an obstacle together? "Check." Have much in common? "Check." Did I love her? "Double check!" Did the girl love me? Well, that had always been a tricky one in the past but for the first time in my two decades of searching, having my heart broken by constantly being rejected or cheated on more times than I can admit without forfeiting my dignity, cruelly being told that I was either too ugly or too fat or too nice to date, and after having despaired over all of that stuff time and time again, I was finally able to say it to myself with the jovial grin of a man madly in love: "Check."

From then on, she and I became inseparable. I saw her at least once every two days and it wasn't long before I was confident that she was ready to meet my family too. The month before I met Anjie, I'd celebrated my twentieth birthday that August by having all of my friends and most of my family over to my Grandparents' house to view my montages on a projector in my living room. I thought it would be nice to do so again that November but when the day came: Nobody showed up. Except Anjelica. And in many ways, that situation has come to epitomize her role in my life in more ways than one.

It was November 11, 2011, a Friday, and the day was growing short. I'd ran out and bought pizza pies and some DVDs, and rearranged things in the house so there'd be more space for everyone earlier in the day for a party of which I'd obviously overestimated the attendance of. "Supernatural" was in it's seventh season by then and the episode "Season Seven, Time For a Wedding!" was going to air that night. I'd never missed an episode on it's original airdate before but I even considered ending that streak if it provided the basis for a good night with what I thought would be a gathering of friends and family. However, by the time Anjelica's dad dropped her off at my place, things were quiet as could be and while I was disappointed in what I took as a snub from my friends, I was more than grateful for Anjie to be there. Anjelica met my mom and briefly met my brother that night, too. Both absolutely adored her.

I showed my mom and Anjie the majority of my massive "Supernatural" montage series until they both grew tired of it's length (it's still the longest series I've done to date with forty-two entries in it's collection). They talked for a long while and I remember bringing one of my Jonah Hex prints downstairs from my room to show Anjelica as a possibility of inspiring her to contemplate renting a table at New York Comic-Con the next year so she could sell her amazing artwork. We all had a good time that night and Anjie left in the morning. It was the first time when I ever truly felt saddened by a girl parting ways with me, even if it were just for a little while, but that only proved to me that I'd finally found someone who I could honestly say I loved to spend time with so much that I wished they'd never have to leave my presence. The only other person that'd happened to me with at that time was with my buddy Joseph on the train ride back from seeing my all-time favorite band U2 play at the then-existing Giants Stadium in New Jersey.

But that was just it, wasn't it? Anjelica wasn't just my lover, she was a friend too. I could speak to her about anything, I loved to hear about her days and we could watch movies all day long together and analyze them to the smallest of details and never even have to get physical with each other. To me, that's the definition of soulmates and that's what we were together. Two peas in a pod.

Somewhere in mid-December, I attended Stephanie's annual Christmas party with Anjelica and her dad and sister. Though I'd gotten along with her family and all, I admittedly was terrified of meeting practically ALL of her family that night. Her immediate family liked me as far as I knew, sure, but what if that wasn't the case with the rest of her extended family? I was a wreck and decided to spend most of the night as a reclusive wallflower who didn't speak unless spoken to. What was innocent insecurity might've been perceived as cold stoicism though and I think a lot of her family might've gotten the wrong impression of me. Even with that being said though, I actually did have a really nice time with them all, just in an introspective way, I guess. The way I am in most social situations. I could count on the number of my fingers how many times I'd seen my own family gather together in such a nice and beautiful way the way they all did and that night felt to me like what the true meaning of Christmas was always supposed to be about: Unity.

Anjelica looked so very beautiful that night, I remember. She always looked beautiful, but especially so on that particular night. I don't think I ever took the time out to tell her things like that back then but if I could go back, I would do so in a heartbeat. She and her dad dropped me off at home and I watched the first season finale of "Homeland" before calling it a night.

That Christmas was an okay one, not the best nor the worst, but the one thing that actually stands out to me about it today was the phone call I got from Anjie that day. She and I could speak for hours about anything, it seemed, but by her being the sweetest girl I'd ever known, it turned out that she simply had taken time out of her busy day with her own family to wish my mother and I a Merry Christmas. They say the devil is in the details and it's true: It was little things like that which made me love Anjelica more and more every time she did them. Her consideration was an undisputed one.

When she was done talking to my mom, Anjie and I made plans to go to the movies to see "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" before the year was out and that's what we did. It was on December 30th when she texted me asking if it would be okay for her dad and sister to come along too since they'd been waiting to see the film themselves. I didn't mind but I made it a point to warn her of the immense amount of sex and violence that was involved with that story considering that I'd already read the books beforehand. She said it wouldn't be a problem and so the day went on.

That day, I got to her house on time, something that had became a sort of running joke between she and I because of my chronic lateness which has been pointed out in more areas of my life by more people than I care to admit. Because I didn't get a chance to see her on Christmas, I decided to keep the gift I'd bought her a secret until she and I were alone some time in the day. It was a royal blue sapphire ring that I was sure would put the biggest smile on her face when I got around to showing it to her, whenever that would be that day.

It was a very cold day out but we were all too excited to see the movie to care. On the ride there, U2's "New Year's Day" played on the radio in her Dad's truck, which thrusted she and I into a discussion about the band, my all-time favorite, which regrettably turned into another debate between us - this time about who was the better guitarist: U2's Edge or Pink Floyd's David Gilmour, an argument that she enlisted her dad into, a move that I felt was one to overpower me with. I had felt belittled but I wasn't going to start a bigger fight over it or anything. In fact, now that I look back on it, if that situation had occurred today, I probably would've dealt with it better by simply agreeing to disagree in the first place having learned my lesson about the diversity of human beings being the beautiful thing about the collective whole of mankind and my acceptance since those times of the fact that everyone in life simply won't always agree on certain things no matter what.

When we got to the movie theatre, they wanted popcorn and I got a little anxious because the movie was about to start and the line at the concession stand was long and didn't seem to be moving. I can imagine that this is one of the things I'd done that day, albeit unintentionally, that got her fed up with me but the truth is that it was nothing personal whatsoever, I just get that way at movie theatres when I'm amped-up to see something I'd been waiting on. When I was thirteen and "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith" came out, I was so adrenalated to see the final chapter of the saga I loved so much that I angrily shot up from my seat next to my mother and brother and found another because the two of them were simply irritating me with the amount of noise that they were making with their candy wrappers. My impatience is a flaw that I can admit to these days (and wouldn't have back then) but I've worked on it since and still have a ways to go with it.

Halfway through the film, Anjie pulled me closer to her and complained about what was then probably the fifth sex scene in the film within an hour. I didn't really know how to respond except contemplate the fact that I'd warned her about it beforehand to begin with. The film was fantastic though, to me at least, and I thought it was philosophical and honest in it's portrayal of the workings of the world. It didn't hurt that my hero Trent Reznor did the score for it either, I suppose. Funny how things work out though. The first trailer of the first film I'd ever seen with Anjie was for "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo" and the day we actually saw the film together marked the practical ending of our relationship together.

On the ride back to her place, I'd gotten a call from a number that I didn't recognize and tried feverishly to figure out who it was who'd called me while we were in the theatre. In response to that, I made a joke about Skynet signaling the end of the world because in "Terminator 3: The Rise of the Machines," technology went haywire across the globe in the days before the evil computer program wiped humanity out with a nuclear holocaust. One thing lead to another and I began ranting to her about my theories of time travel within the series and others and it wasn't long before she told me to stop talking about it. I knew it wasn't the most interesting topic to her but I simply hate uncomfortable silences so much that, even to this day, I have a habit of talking in excess when those moments come around.

Perhaps the many urban legends that Bronxites had told over the years about the Bay Plaza movie theatre was true: That it was a cursed place destined to ruin the relationships of whatever couple went there together, I thought to myself as her dad pulled up to their place. I'd let the fiasco about the "Terminator" theories slide by that point, minutes later, but that phone call was still bothering me. I didn't get many calls and the fact that I didn't recognize one kept nagging at me, though I didn't necessarily want to make a call to find out who it was. Had that happened nowadays, I wouldn't have thought about it twice but one lives and learns. When we got upstairs, everybody went their separate ways and Anjelica and her dad wound up sitting on the couch watching videos on YouTube together while I kept obsessing over that missed call and had begun texting the number awaiting a response. I could hear the two of them talking but I had no idea that they were talking to me and was under the impression that they were both talking amongst themselves. And while that was simple human error on my part, I acknowledge the fact nowadays that I had my priorities out of order in that moment and probably should've been paying attention to what was going on with my girlfriend and her father in the first place while in their home.

However, the next thing I knew, there was an angry scream in my direction. It was Anjelica. "Oh, my god! Will you get off the fucking phone and come sit here!," she screamed. The first thing that rushed into my head was when I was in the fourth grade and my teacher Ms. Giordano called me up to the front of the room to check my homework, which was incomplete, and she tossed my notebook across the room and encouraged my classmates to laugh at me while forcing me to pick it up. "Forgot to finish it, my foot!," echoed the loud voice of the young Italian teacher from ten years prior.

I didn't like being screamed at, it had always been a sore spot with me because of corrupt teachers and other figures from my childhood, but I didn't say anything though. In that moment, I was so caught off guard that I didn't know what to say anyway. I sat by them and watched the Greek music video that her dad wanted to show us and petted their dog, ironically and perhaps karmatically named Mia (the first girl who'd cheated on me in High School). When the video was done, I shook her dad's hand and headed for the door. Before I left, he asked me if they'd see me the next day for New Year's Eve and I lied. "I might stop by," I answered before taking a glance at Anjelica's angry face staring back at me.

I had spent my accrued monthly Google AdSense money that was left over after buying the ring I'd purchased for Anjelica, and had forgotten to give to her, on the Metrocard to get to her house that day and I was left to walk home by myself, though her dad had asked me if I needed a ride back home beforehand: A proposal of which I'd refused, not wanting him to go out of his way for me in the middle of Winter. As I made my way past the desolate neighborhoods under the Whitestone Bridge, my phone vibrated with a text. "Rico?," it read from an apologetic Anjelica. I didn't reply to it, I was so hurt and simultaneously angry.

As I continued the walk and got closer to my home, however, I couldn't help but notice that the tenants on one of the top floors in a high-rise along the expressway had formed the word "Peace" on their balcony in Christmas Lights. If I were a religious or spiritual man, I probably would've taken the hint but I didn't. Instead, I did the opposite and made the most regrettable and utterly stupid decision I've ever made in my life so far. I once read somewhere in an interview with President Clinton where he stated that most of the dumbest moves of his life were made out of anger or exhaustion and I should've listened to him about the former. When I reached home finally, I sat in the blistering cold for about half an hour on the steps of my Grandparents' house and recalled the incredibly angry look that was on Anjelica's face as she watched me leave her home earlier that night. It stayed with me until I fell asleep hours later.

The next morning, I called up my friend Rhetta to talk about the situation. However, just as the conversation had begun, the phone call dropped and she created a post on my Facebook wall continuing the conversation. As the hours past, eventually the trouble began when Anjelica inevitably came across it. We argued back and forth to the point where Rhetta simply took the post down, but that didn't stop the two of us from going at it in our Lovers' Quarrel: We simply carried the argument over into the private messages until I simply stopped writing back and went to hang out with my oldest friend Krishnan for New Year's Eve.

While on the train back to Kris' place in Parkchester from the nearest 7-Eleven where we bought snacks to feast on later in the night, I'd sent Anjelica's father a message from my phone telling him how much I appreciated his friendship and kindness towards me. He was thankful but told me that he refused to take sides in our ongoing argument, which I respected and was appreciative of. The walk home from Kris' house shortly after the ball dropped at midnight was a sad one. There I was: A sad and lonely log in the streets walking through the crowds of happy and joyous people who were celebrating a brand new year as colorful fireworks went off in the skies above our heads. I wanted things between Anjelica and I to go back to how they were before that day at the movie theatre but when I got home and logged on to Facebook, she and I began speaking again through messages and she told me that she thought it would be best for us not to see each other anymore. It tore me apart to agree with her, though I really didn't want to end it, but I wasn't about to fight for a partnership that she didn't want to be in anymore. I'd lost my best pal in the world that night.

We messaged each other very sporadically throughout 2012 and it would be a long while before Anjelica and I would see each other again. But, as seems the case in our unusual relationship, life simply brought the two of us back together again. Though, the next time would be through unexpected events.

It was March and I'd been single again for a few months and found myself on a date with a girl named Sarah. She seemed kind and was pretty enough, I'd always thought, though I still missed Anjelica. But, things had ended between Anjie and I and there was an entire world to explore, I thought. I showed up to the Asian restaurant in Manhattan with a rose and my best foot put forward and things went well, it seemed. She was a "Supernatural" fan and so was I, she was studying mixology at Bartending School and I was still working on the "X-Men" montage series. We got along great and spoke to each other for months until that June when I asked her to be my girlfriend and she swiftly rejected me:

"I'm going to be very honest," she wrote, "I was not prepared for this at all. I think I might have mislead you and I appreciate and am very flattered that you feel this way about me but I don't understand how you could want to be with me. We did get to know each other and our conversations were great but we haven't known each other long enough for those type of feelings to have developed I feel. In my eyes, we are acquaintances and nothing more. DaiQuan, you are a nice guy and all but I'm not looking for a relationship with you."

I felt screwed over again. I was screwed over again. Here it was, I'd made my intentions clear from the beginning and we'd even met in an environment designated for people looking to date in the first place. I mean, what was the point in her seeing me time after time or speaking to me for months on end about a potential relationship between the two of us if she was never interested in me? I wasn't too shocked at how things turned out though, no matter how illogical her reasons for rejecting me were. Afterall, I was never known as the most lucky guy on the planet when it came to dealing with the opposite sex, nor was I ever thought of as the most attractive guy either. None of this had been new to me by the age of twenty and Sarah's rejection was just another among many more before her. Things were simply back to square one for me: Back to before Sarah, back to before Anjelica, back to before Jenna, or Mellissa, or Mia: Pretty much back to the days of Junior High School where I got rejected in senior year with a letter in my yearbook from Marlene Otero after three years of her opportunistically acknowledging my presence only when she wanted gum or help with anything physically strenuous or with school projects if we were in the same class.

But like those days after Marlene when I was a child, life moved forward after Sarah's snub too and the months went by. Summer passed and Autumn had come. Before I knew it, it was November and Anjelica and I were talking again but not over anything ideal unfortunately: Her father had passed away.

George was a humorous guy. Very vibrant, very open-minded, and very special. My relationship with my own dad had all but practically ended when I was nine and had come home to a living room where there was an empty space in between two boxes where his television set used to be. I'd grown up in apartments across the Bronx after that with my mother and brother raising me through my adolescence and with my mother's parents helping us out from time to time, all things of which I was grateful for and had molded me into the guy I had become by the time I met Anjelica a month after my twentieth birthday but through meeting her, the type of girl I'd waited my entire lifetime at that point to to come across, the situation had gifted me something else too: A new dad, her's. He was a guy who took an interest in me, accepted me for who I was, and took me in emotionally. I'd always been happy to spend time with him and was even looking forward to a fishing trip that he'd promised me before Anjelica and I broke up, so when I heard that he'd passed away, I felt nothing but complete remorse for the potential times we didn't get to spend together.

His wake was held on November 6, 2012. It was Election Day that day and I'd voted for President Obama's re-election bid early that morning to clear my schedule for the rest of the day: A day I'd spend mostly being nervous about because I was going to see Anjelica again for the first time in nearly a year and we'd pretty much stopped speaking to each other before I got the news of her father's death. I decided to suck it up anyway and go to the wake since she'd invited me a few days beforehand and made it clear that he actually liked me quite a bit when he was alive, even after our break-up, or so she told me anyway. As I got dressed in my room that day in preparation to go to the wake, the strongest ray of sunlight briefly shone threw my window and illuminated the entire room; It was a beautiful thing and uncanny in the sense that sunlight rarely ever made it's way into my room at my grandparents' house because it had always been blocked out by their neighbor's rooftop which was positioned only feet from my window. Anyone who knows me, knows that I'm one of the least spiritual people around but there was something I found magical about that.

Later on, while standing at the end of the platform on the uptown side of the six train in Parkchester, I stood with butterflies in my stomach staring out into the distance at the beautiful purple-orange Autumn sunset and fiddling with the "Game of Thrones"-inspired brooch of The Hand of the King that I had in my pocket and intended on placing with George's body before he was put to rest. When the train came, the butterflies intensified with the worrisome anticipation of seeing Anjelica again. About half an hour later, I was standing in front of the Funeral Home and letting out a heavy sigh before I walked into the dreary building set with dim lights on the inside and the sound of Pink Floyd, both George and Anjelica's favorite band, playing in one of the rooms I had yet to walk into.

And then I did. George had been cremated so there was nothing for me to pin the brooch on to, so I kept it in my pocket. Anjie was there on the other side of the room, obviously sad - a sight I hated to see - with people consoling her but doing her best to keep a brave face on things in front of all her family and family's friends. She was now tasked with the newfound responsibility of leading a household at the age of twenty and it was obvious that the road ahead would not be an easy one. She hadn't seen me yet and I walked over to her and tapped her on the shoulder since her back was turned to me as she finished up a conversation with the Priest, her dad's friend who he'd told me about when he was alive, and was there to deliver a prayer for him in death. Upon her realizing that it was me when she turned around, she hugged me with a smile on her face, though her amazingly deep turquoise eyes were bloodshot from obvious crying. I wanted to console her more than I was able to at that moment but I knew she had other stuff to attend to and I didn't want to take up too much of her time.

Being the shy person I am, I seated myself in the back of the room on an empty couch where a friendly older gentleman handed me a plastic shot glass. I found his quirky disposition to be a joy and he told me that it was a Greek tradition to drink Cognac at a funeral so I made an exception to break my long-held personal no-drinking policy just for the night. I had never been too big on drinking because of my father's unhealthy habits with the vice when I was growing up but one drink wouldn't hurt I figured. It was good, I must say, but one shot of that hot stuff was enough for me. As time passed, many members of Anjie's family I'd never met before introduced themselves to me as I sat alone: A nice blonde lady in her thirties - a cousin of Anjelica's dad's, I believe - conversed with me about how I knew Anjelica and seemed thrilled to hear that she and I once dated. "Well, lucky you," she said. I smiled. "I could see why, she's a great kid," the woman continued as she poured herself a glass of Cognac. And it was true: Anjie really was great, I thought to myself as I looked up at her at the front of the room as she consoled her father's friend. Even when she needed consoling the most, she was there for others.

As the sobbing friend of her father's took a seat, Anjelica made her way to the back of the room where I was sitting. "Are you okay?," I asked - a stupid question I quickly thought right afterwards. "No," she answered. As if mutually nostalgic about a time since past for us, our eyes locked for a few seconds. "I don't really know what to say," I quipped awkwardly. She giggled. "I just wanted to say that my father always thought very highly of you, even after all that stuff that happened," she told me. I smiled at the memory of her father and told her how appreciative I was to have known him. After the high-point of the service, I gave my regards to Anjelica and her sister Ariana and went back home. I was glad that I went that night and as a parting gift to the memory of her dad: The United States re-elected President Obama to another term in office that night, something that I knew George would've been as proud as much as he'd have been happy about, had he still been alive to see it happen.

It was a couple days before Christmas that year and Anjelica and I were talking to each other for the first time since I'd last seen her at her father's wake. She'd sent me a message on Facebook out of the blue and I was so grateful that she and I were on good terms again. She told me all about what she'd been up to over the past year, I told her about how I was doing with my life and what type of stuff I was up to. Eventually, the conversation went deeper and I asked her if she thought we had a chance at getting back together again, an idea to which she said she thought we did. To say that I was ecstatic at that revelation wouldn't do the idea justice whatsoever.... I was elated!

About a month later, we decided to hang out. It was January 26, 2013 and the city was just recovering from a blizzard but I didn't care: Nothing was going to stop me from seeing the girl I'd affectionately been calling "Moon and Stars" since the day I met her, not the cold weather or the long walk to her house in it. The day began nicely: We ate at Crosstown Diner and then went to see "Mama" starring Jessica Chastain at the then-existing Whitestone Theatre. The movie was alright but nothing to write home about in my opinion. I was just happy to finally be around Anjie again that I didn't really care about what we saw that day. I find that most of my time spent with her is like that on my part: The plan of the day is always irrelevant to me, as long as I'm in her company.

On the walk back to her place, she told me about her dad and revealed to me that he'd died of cancer, something which I'd never known until she told me just then. It was a gloomy subject but I had no problem lending her my ear if that's what she needed. In fact, I was happy about her getting out to enjoy herself for once, considering the fact that all of the chaotic changes in her life since her dad's passing were still very fresh and needed time to adjust to. When I got her to her doorstep, finally, she told me that I could come upstairs to warm up before we called it a night and so I did. It had been a little over a year since I'd been at her place and nothing about it felt slightly different: Walking through her front door was like walking through a time machine in some ways and the routine was the same; I'd pet her vivacious babyface dog Mia and wrestle with her curious heel cat Bandit and the quiet desolation of her neighborhood provided a serenity to the atmosphere that couldn't be duplicated.

The night went on after we got settled in from the cold and there was nothing left to do but talk then, so we talked about the past. We talked about the good times, the bad times, and all the points in between. We talked about the present in which she stressed that she was so busy in that she wasn't quite ready to contemplate being in a relationship just yet, and we talked of all the possible futures and of all the "what-could-bes" until finally we were in each other's arms again and all was right where it belonged in the universe again, or my version of it at least. Just for a little while.

The next month, February, I'd caught my grandfather's fever and ended up much sicker than he'd gotten and for much longer than he had been too. My theory is that the virus had strengthened in him before latching on to me, which would explain the reason as to why the term "sick to the stomach" to describe me at the peak of my fever would've been an understatement. I was deathly ill and delirious. Too sick to get out of bed and too weak in the mind to make sense of most of what was going on around me either. However, only one of few things provided me comfort during that time, I remember, and the most vital one was the drawing of the sailboat that Anjelica had drawn for me when we were together which I'd since framed and placed atop the Cable Box located at the foot of my bed.

On the 10th, as the fever faded, I found myself waiting at the bus stop for the four bus at the Hugh Grant Circle. It was below zero and the untouched snow was still knee-high because it was the weekend and the sanitation crews hadn't plowed or shoveled much of the city's snowfall yet. But Anjelica needed a cell phone charger because her's had broken and I had so many of them to spare that it would be criminal of me not to have given her one, or one to anyone else who needed one during such a dangerous blizzard for that matter, so I disregarded her pleas for me to stay home and to continue to get better and stubbornly insisted on trekking to her house to get to her what she needed. The visit didn't last long but the kiss she gave me on the cheek before I left meant the world and it was so nice to be appreciated like that again. I still hoped to rekindle our relationship at that point but being a believer in the philosophy of all good things taking time to come to fruition, I felt that perhaps when she was ready, the beautiful thing I was hoping for would come to pass for us again.

By March, I'd finished my Direct Care Counselor courses at Bronx EOC on Bathgate Avenue which I'd began, originally, simply as a way to avoid continuing the degrading routine of waking up every morning to report to a city Welfare Office on the Grand Concourse and being forced by the most insensitive of city workers to swipe the identification card they'd printed out for me, as if I were cattle being herded through the gates of an Abattoir, at the program's required Back-To-Work sessions that I had to attend daily in exchange for the services that my mother and I needed by that point because her unemployment benefits had been depleted in the two years after the job she had taking care of my great-grandmother ended when she died at the age of ninety-four.

I had all the necessary certifications by then and was looking for employment with my newfound trade. I'd been on one interview by that point, which ended in disaster because the man doing the hiring kept making it a point to condescend to me in our very first meeting, and was joyously able to sign myself off of the welfare that my mother had signed us up for when a private residence for people with mental disabilities in the West Bronx, named Angels Unaware, hired me to work part-time on the weekends. The job was easy, I worked the night shift, and there was nothing much to do but browse the internet on my phone for twelve hours until the morning crew arrived to take care of the residents.

It was early April and I got a message from one of the classmates that I'd attended the Direct Care Counselor courses with one night. Her name was Amanda and she was pretty cool. We sat next to each other in class during the two months we were in class together and it turned out that she liked me. She was pretty and extremely smart, the top in our class by far as I recall, and it turned out that she liked me and wanted to be in a relationship with me. I considered it for a few days, honestly, but ultimately decided to reject her because I thought it would be unfair for the two of us to be in a relationship when my heart was truly in another place: With Anjelica. I liked Amanda but my love for Anjie outweighed everything else and wasn't something I could turn off, nor wanted to even though Anjelica had asked me to consider dating other people, though she'd also told me that she believed that there was still a chance for us somewhere down the line. But a chance was all I needed, no matter how slim. To me, even if the statistics showed that my chances of getting back with Anjelica were microcosmic, I'd have chosen her over anyone else because just a microcosmic piece of the love I felt for her still outweighed whatever else I could possibly feel for anyone else.

Perhaps karmatically, however, I was fired from the job at Angels Unaware about a week later when one of the workers there falsely reported to the Director that I was sleeping on the night shift when he came in that morning. A strange thing to even be considered getting fired for, though it wasn't true in actuality, seeing as how the two women I was working with during the night in question were fast asleep upstairs in the camera-scanned living room and neither of them got fired. Such is life though and it wasn't long before I found myself a new job with the Cerebal Palsy Associations of New York State just a day after posting my resume online. The new job paid me five dollars more, per hour, than the previous one and I worked two more days than I had been at Angels Unaware so things worked out for the best in that sense.

As with everything else though, things transitioned. The heavy rains began as we passed the deep point of Spring and by the time I knew it, it was Summer. Anjelica and I were speaking quite consistently since the last time I'd seen her sometime in March and we were both getting along again like old times, though we still weren't together.

It was June 21, 2013, when I'd gotten off of work and headed down the street to catch the forty-two bus at West Farms. It came quicker than usual, I remember, and the ride to Anjelica's house on the air-conditioned bus that day was a blessing, I remember thinking. She and I had a nice day together and we took it slow in the early summer heat. After going to a restaurant in her neighborhood and strolling along in simple conversation, we sat on the swingchair in her front yard together and took photos of the two of us while listening to Florence & The Machine. It was moments with Anjelica, like such, that I treasured when they came around and longed for when they seemed out of reach. Nobody else in my life made me want to spend so much of my time with them the way she did.

I wouldn't see her again until eight days later on the 29th when we went to see "Man of Steel" together at the AMC in Bay Plaza. Sometime before the film began, she told me that her hands were cold on the account of the theatre's blasting air conditioner, so I tried to warm them with my own but it wasn't long before she took them back. "Oh, well," I thought to myself. They were her hands afterall and I'd never force a woman to do anything that she didn't want to so I didn't think a second thought about it. We both enjoyed the film that night and I took her home afterwards.

The weeks ahead were filled with sweltering days of work that I didn't look forward to and sweat-filled nights spent alone turning uncomfortably in my bed at home where turning on the air conditioner would simply incite an annual battle of wills between myself and my grandfather, who - to this day - monitors every appliance in the house like a vulture and makes it a habit of complaining about the electric bill, even though he never paid much due to the senior citizen discounts that he and my grandmother had received for nearly fifteen years by that point.

Somewhere early in July, I'd received a friend request on Facebook from one of my former classmates from senior year in High School who I hadn't seen in years, four and a half to be exact. It was a girl who we all knew was trouble back in the day but one I never had any problems with. Everyone called her by her nickname, "Chaos," including her own family. Days went by and she began to offer me sex numerous times, telling me that she had a crush on me back when we were teenagers and that she'd always felt a chemistry with me - something that some of my friends from back then had mentioned off-handedly to me back then but I only took with a grain of salt considering that nobody had ever thought of me that way before as far as I knew. We'd lost touch when everyone and their mother transitioned away from MySpace shortly after I graduated from High School and had subsequently defected to Facebook. I refused her unlike how I'm sure none of my friends or even my brother would've, since I was still in love with Anjelica, and Chaos quietly unfriended me not long afterwards. To this day, though, I'm confident that I made the right decision because she had a boyfriend merely a week later anyway.

It was July 22nd when Anjelica messaged me out of the blue, something that I immediately found abnormal considering that it was I who usually started our conversations on Facebook after my cell phone service had been shut off. Small-talk ensued between us and I told her what I was up to: Watching the first season of a genius television series that I'd recently discovered starring Rachel Nichols called "Continuum". When that topic faded, she told me the real reason why she'd messaged me: Because she had a new boyfriend.

I was crushed.

All that time I spent hoping that we'd rekindle our relationship, all that energy I'd spent exhausting myself over her in my head, all those times we spent together over the past six months.... did none of it mean anything to her? I knew she'd told me to see other people and all that but didn't my commitment to the chance of us being together again, that she'd mentioned, mean anything?

"I think you're a really great person deep down. You were so sweet to me. And I really care about you to tell you this cause I want you to find somebody. And you will. I know you will," she wrote to me, eerily reminding me of Sarah. But I wasn't hearing any of it, I simply went off and ranted and raved and cursed her out and wrote mean-spirited Facebook posts about her and unfriended her from my profile, which was essentially my life, considering that that had been my only form of communication with anyone outside of my immediate family who I lived with.

Days went by, my mean-spirited posts continued, and I'd entered the darkest chapter of my life since Joseph and I had caught Mia making out with her ex-boyfriend under the overpass of Lehman High five and a half years earlier. As my mean posts continued, Anjelica messaged me again - this time berating me for the names I was subtly calling her in my posts. "Nobody owes you anything, DaiQuan, including me!," she wrote. While that was objectively true, I thought, that didn't mean that I hadn't deserve a second chance to be with her. I mean, how would it look if a Boxer worked his way through the ranks and after clearing his way to the Champion for a rematch, he was passed up for the title fight in favor of a different challenger who wasn't even the number one contender. And that was how I saw myself in the situation: As the number one contender who'd been screwed out of his prize fight. Tired of the fighting, I simply caved and took down the posts I'd written in blind human rage and simply wished her well just to be done with the whole thing. I was through and I didn't speak to her again until a few weeks later when she messaged me on my birthday in August to wish me a happy twenty-second year. That was considerate of her, I thought, but I was still extremely angry about what had happened between us in the weeks beforehand.

Autumn came and September brought with it many surprises: First, my dad and I reconciled our differences and began hanging out regularly, then Joseph's ex-girlfriend Katherine extended the proverbial olive branch to me in hopes of ending our chapter of not speaking to each other because she felt that I'd taken Joseph's side two years earlier in an argument they had about their son together, my godson Baby Joseph.

It was October 17, 2013, when my brother picked my father and I up down the street from my job in West Farms in his truck - my brother's fourth since buying his first at the age of twenty-one on the day of my High School graduation back in 2009. It was the first time my father and brother had seen or spoken to each other in three years (or five years if you don't want to count my dad's unexpected visit to my great-grandmother's wake in 2010). It was a great day and the type that is few and far in between. We reminisced about the times that we spent together as a family during me and my brother's childhood on the drive to Brooklyn that day before eating out at a nice chicken restaurant called "Wings" and we browsed through Best Buy before crossing the street to watch the Nets game where Jason Kidd had his jersey number retired that night in a pre-game ceremony at the Barclay's Center. The "Cain Men" (a name that my father calls the three of us last-remaining males in his family's bloodline) were back in business after so many years of animosity and bitterness driving a wedge in the relationship between our dad and us after his divorce from our mother and departure from home.

Ten days later, I was home taking in the final hours of relaxation provided by the weekend by watching the "Homeland" episode entitled "The Yoga Play" downstairs with my mother in the living room. Then the scene where Saul Berenson walks in on his wife Mira wining and dining a younger and more attractive man in their dining room, after having his trip cut short, played out. "I feel you," I said to Saul in my head as the scene closed and I thought about Anjelica and the similar choice she made to Mira's a few months before to pick her current boyfriend over me.

Almost immediately afterwards, I checked my Facebook notifications on the smartphone that I'd bought over the summer, now that I was able to pay the bill frequently, and like a kismet miracle, I'd received a message from Anjelica after months of no communication between she and I. We talked cordially as the adults we'd grown into, and should've been when we were dating each other two years before, and we both apologized for all that had happened over that past summer. It seemed my Autumn of mending broken relationships like the ones with my dad and with Katherine was continuing it's streak with Anjelica as the latest person in my life to have extended an olive branch to me, one that I gladly accepted knowing how good of a person Anjelica truly was at heart and because I've always believed that everyone deserves a second chance if they're sincere.

We'd almost immediately made plans to hang out with each other and I looked forward to it for days. On the night of Halloween, my mother and grandfather had gotten into a vicious argument over the chain of command when it came down to my brother's twin daughters - a topic, in my opinion, of which my grandparents have never respected the boundaries of or the rights of my parents as first-time grandparents to my brother's children - but all I could think about as I fell asleep early the next morning with few hours to spare before I had to be up for work was seeing Anjelica again when I got off in the afternoon.

My workday on November 1st consisted of me rushing through my daily paperwork in the morning, taking care of my consumers as fast as possible by noon, and clocking out with quickness at exactly 3:00 PM. Afterwards, I walked the long walk from West Farms to Westchester Square where I arrived, on time for once, to the sight of Anjelica sitting in the park on a bench, totally unaware of my presence, while she read the text message I'd just sent her which read "To your right". The bright sun and clear blue sky was a gift to us since the forecasts all over the news predicted rain that day but fortunately not one drop fell. And, boy, did that rebellious sunlight provide me with yet another gift: Simply the sight of Anjie; Her almond-brown hair showcasing her beautiful face and her incredible ocean-green eyes illuminated in the bright unwavering sunlight overhead. A sight to remember, I was confident of.

We got on the uptown six train and took it to Pelham Bay Park and we caught the twelve bus to Bay Plaza from there. Travelling with Anjelica was always a fun thing to do: The conversations were always great, she's never hard to lay your eyes upon, and the time spent travelling with her somewhere always seems to go by faster than in any other situation. She and I could talk for hours about anything, it seemed. Later on, we found ourselves waiting to be served at Applebee's when our waiter pointed out my CM Punk shirt with enthusiasm. It was great: I was spending time with Anjie, the "Best in the World" was getting his due praise because of me, and the weekend had begun!

Anjie and I conversed as we ate our mozzarella stick appetizer and we discussed the events of that past summer again. She told me about how the guy she'd called a boyfriend for a few months turned out to be a real prick and I went more into detail about my reasoning for the strong negative reaction I'd had about her decision in the first place. The conversation cleared whatever vitriol was left and we moved on from the topic. From there, we saw "Twelve Years a Slave" which the both of us thought was a phenomenal film and as we left the theatre, like a testament to the theory of Universal Synchronization, Anjelica and I ran into my father and his wife Rochelle. Ironically, they'd been in the same auditorium watching the same film as we were and had things been off by a second, we probably wouldn't have even noticed each other. I introduced Anjie to them and they offered us a ride back to Anjelica's place which we accepted and ended our night.

As the weeks passed, Anjie and I began hanging out again as much as we used to before the temporary hiatus of our friendship that past summer, and arguably before we ever broke up at all. It was a great time! We saw each other whenever we could and she introduced me to the "Hunger Games" universe which I became obsessed over and immediately bought all the books and DVDs and memorabilia that I could after we went to see "Catching Fire" together.

Us being the snobby intellectuals we are, the next film we'd go to see with each other would ironically be the one to dominate the Academy Award nominations when they'd be announced in the weeks after: "American Hustle". We originally wanted to see "Out of the Furnace" together but it was a limited release and wasn't playing anywhere near us in the Bronx. After dinner at Applebee's, she and I killed the time we had before the film began by talking in the waiting area of the theatre. Though we were supposed to see each other before Christmas came three weeks beforehand, we didn't get the chance to because she'd caught a nasty cold and wasn't in any condition to be out in the elements. To my surprise, however, she presented me with a gift while we were waiting for "American Hustle" to begin: It was a leather-bound journal similar to John Winchester's on "Supernatural". No girl had ever done anything like that for me and I was even more appreciative of the moment when she took my arm and rested her head against it, making me feel more wanted and appreciated than anyone had made me feel for a very long time.

When the film was over, we caught a cab and I took her home where I hugged her tight and told her how much I loved and appreciated her before she went in and called it a night. She'd come to mean so much to me that it was hard, even for someone who was talented with words, to describe it. "It" being the astonishing simultaneous feelings of euphoria and grace that she'd single-handedly filled my life with again.

The next week, I saw her again on the eve of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. We found ourselves seated across from each other in a booth at Crosstown Diner once again eating mozzarella sticks, my favorite finger food, and the both of us were in high spirits. I was looking forward to watching "Game of Thrones" with her at her house afterwards, and so we did. When the first disc of the first season was complete, however, we spoke to each other. I could feel that it would be one of those deep conversations.

One thing lead to another and I asked her about us being in a relationship again. It was a topic that I'd stopped bringing up to her since two months prior when I had a bad day and was thinking about the two of us not hanging out anymore due to what I felt was a lack of progress on the romantic side of things, which was something that I still really wanted. "If you really care about someone, it shouldn't matter if you're together romantically or not and to give up on them because they won't return your love to you in the way you want them to would prove that there was an ulterior motive in your kindness all along," she texted back to me about the topic. And like a bag of bricks, the truth that she spoke had hit me causing me to realize my own gargantuan selfishness, though I had always indeed actually enjoyed spending time with her one way or another - it was just that there was always still just a tiny part of me hoping that we'd be together again. Overall, it made me stop asking her about the idea of a possible rekindling of our relationship from then on.

Everything that came after I asked her that question for the first time in months that night was honest. She told me that she was still young and not ready to settle down at that point in her life yet, and it was something that I understood and respected. She told me that the feelings and excitement that I used to bring to her life didn't seem existent anymore and that though she really did care for me still, it wasn't in the way that it used to be: She still felt happy when I texted her every morning or when we saw each other but that her interactions with me had become on par with that of her other friends and not that of a lover.

"Butterflies don't last forever," I thought to myself as she politely rejected the idea of us being together again for what might've been the hundredth time. She told me that she was admittedly curious about other guys and that I owed it to myself to open myself up to the possibilities of life too. It hurt me, in only the way that feeling as deeply for someone as much as I did for Anjelica could, to hear the words that she was saying to me but in the deepest part of my heart, I understood what she was saying and didn't hold any animosity towards her for doing what she felt she had to do. She was so honest with herself in what she was saying that she was able to cut down every point I made, the most vital I could think of being the fact that eventually it didn't matter who she found herself with because the excitement phase of the relationship with them would eventually end anyway in the same manner that she was seemingly over with it for me by that point.

None of my points ultimately mattered and knowing Anjelica as well as I did, I knew that when she'd made her mind up about something that she was going to see it through. That was one of the things I'd always admired about her but this time she'd made her mind up about me and there was no way that I could change that, not in a thousand years, and not even with our incredible history with each other. She told me about all the hopes she once had for us and that the idea of us starting a family together had once crossed her mind before but I knew that there was no point in talking about those things anymore, let alone hoping for those fantasies to come to pass because they were simply that: Fantasies. And our hypothetical children were just ideas by then and they'd probably never exist to carry on our shared legacy.

There was nothing else to be said and nothing else to be done.

Before I left that night, we engaged in one final kiss, the first in a very long time, but I knew that this was our ending. Maybe not in every capacity, but probably in what I knew was the most precious one.

In the end, I loved, I lost, and I learned. I began that chapter in my life as one person and came out through the other side as someone else: A more appreciative person, indeed, and someone who's learned to appreciate what they have while they've got it. And learning is the most important part for any character in any story, right?

In the words of "Supernatural"s Chuck Shurley:

"No doubt, endings are hard. But, then again, nothing ever really ends.... does it?"