# If You Must Leave, Remember to Take Yourself Along > On the melancholy of endings: relief when a chapter closes, and the stubborn hope that something might still turn. - Author: Charliefoo - Published: 2024-07-23 - Last modified: 2024-07-23 - Canonical: https://foo-z.com/en/blog/diary22/ - Category: Life Musings - Tags: Minimum Cost, Life, Simplicity, Daily Life --- **Song: If You Are Going to Leave** **Artist: Deserts Chang (Zhang Xuan)** **Album: If You Are Cold** **Year: 2008** --- **Note:** When I open the first page of a novel, I wait to perfectly comprehend it on the last page before closing the book. When I press play on a movie, I wait for the final frame to linger on the screen before drying my tears or laughter. The moment I meet them, I wait for their parting glance, to remember them forever. Absurd waiting, absurd hope. Yet it happens more than once. Smiles and sorrows layer upon each other more than once, yet for some reason, we keep walking forward without wavering. Waiting for the end while being pushed onward by time. We, who fritter away our brilliance in waiting, are either ultimately wounded by our own prideful stubbornness, or we vainly rely on this shred of obstinacy to savor the bittersweet taste of anticipation. But, even for these things we've always been waiting to happen, it seems when we finally have to face departure, we are all equally fragile. So fragile that we linger in familiar places, wander through memories, and nurse our wounds. I've tried counting down the days to live by, tried desperately to pre-dig a grave for my own sorrow, tried a thousand times to make myself believe in tomorrow. Yet it all seems equally futile in the end. "If you are going to leave, please don't look back." Perhaps only this mutual promise works: you can wave goodbye, but don't look back at me. Even if the word "no" has taken root in your heart, don't. Walk forward back-to-back, and when you leave, remember to take yourself along too. Leave the familiar ground, leave the life you've been waiting in for so long. So that perhaps, after circling around, we can finally face each other and fully voice the "I don't want you to go" that was in our hearts back then. --- **Lyrics:** If you are going to leave If you are going to leave Don't look back, don't look back If you are going to look back If you are going to look back Don't look at me, don't look at me Look at me, tear-streaked face standing on the street, silently watching you go Why don't you try to keep me at all? A world for one is not as good as you imagine What must I do for you to know? I want you not to go I want you to look back If you are going to leave If you are going to leave Don't look back, don't look back Look back at me If you are going to leave If you are going to leave Don't look back, don't look back If you are going to look back If you are going to look back Don't look at me, don't look at me Look at me, tear-streaked face standing on the street, silently watching you go Why don't you try to keep me at all? A world for one is not as good as you imagine What must I do for you to know? I want you not to go I want you to look back If you are going to leave If you are going to leave Don't look back, don't look back, don't look back at me > The site's RSS feed address has been updated. Please resubscribe, dear readers! --- > 💡 Thank you for reading! Feel free to share this article or write to me to exchange thoughts.