So, I'm feeling pretty weird about Luca being here, as it turns out. I spent a solid hour on the train back home last night feeling sick to my stomach about it and trying to work out why. I figured, it's kind of like I'm dipping my toes in a swamp I crawled out of three years ago and suddenly those boys are grabbing at my ankles. What I mean is, they haven't changed since high school. Haven't grown at all, as far as I can tell. And they keep bringing up people and memories that I had no intention of ever revisiting. And Colin's still an intolerable little prick. And Luca still looks at me with those "someday" eyes. And I'd be lying if I said I didn't encourage him. The decision to dip my toes in that goddamn swamp is entirely mine.
Whenever we're around each other we revert, if only physically, to how we were with each other before. Like, before we even dated, back when we were still best friends in middle school. And that'd be fine, except we did date, and he sort of ruined me for a really long time, leading up to and including now. And this is the thought that occurred to me in that regard, as melodramatic as it may seem: he is the closest thing I have ever had (or likely will ever have) to an abuser. I escaped from him, and I left him behind, and now the thought of him catching up and approaching me again, be it physically or emotionally, is nauseating. But as with any case of abuse, my feelings are more complicated than that.
I don't want him flirting with any of my friends here, 'cause that's a sore spot for me, but at the same time I don't want him flirting with me 'cause, y'know, it literally makes me sick. His last girlfriend cheated on him and left him to live with one of his best friends, and I'm sorry for him but there is a palpably large part of me that relishes the karmic vengeance entwined with his suffering. And I feel sick about him being here and casting this shadow of my past over my present, my friends and my life here, but I still want to cling to the idea that we can be friends just like we were before, that we can explore Shibuya in search of TWEWY landmarks without him looking at me the way he does. But he does.
The other day, he and his friends were supposed to meet me at the train station within twenty minutes. They made me wait for over an hour. I had no way of getting in touch with them, so I had no idea if they'd even boarded the right train, or died, or whatever. I couldn't just leave, couldn't stomach the thought of them showing up with no clue where I'd gone or where to go or how to get there or anywhere else. I wouldn't leave, even if they never showed up. So I just stood there and waited, my hunger and anger growing evermore tangible. Dana had been waiting for us at the lounge, and I told her to go on ahead. I blew up at Izzy, instead of calmly approaching the conversation I'd wanted to have with her. I teared up, furious, as soon as the four of those stupid boys appeared at the top of the escalator in perfectly good spirits, seemingly unaware of how long they'd made me wait for them. And Luca smiled at me with those sad, sorry eyes and I turned and stormed ahead without a single word to any of them. They followed behind me in silence, like dogs who knew they'd done their master wrong. Finally, I snapped at Luca in the 7/11. And as it turns out, they were late -- not for any rational reason, like having gotten lost on the way or boarded the wrong train going in the opposite direction or anything understandable like that, no -- simply because they'd dawdled. They'd taken their sweet fucking time. Luca knew I'd been waiting for them at a station twenty minutes away, and still, it took those assholes over an hour to get to me. And I was so angry, mostly at myself for having waited on idiots and made Dana wait and blown up at Izzy, but I was even more overwhelmingly angry that, after all this time, absolutely nothing has changed. While I've been in Eugene, working to become a better person, Luca's been in Santa Monica spending all of his time with the same fucking idiots, and he hasn't learned so much as consideration, responsibility for his actions or even basic courtesy. And I don't know why I expected more from him, but I did.
I'm not the same person I was in high school. Not even close. I look at old pictures and I feel like I'm staring at someone else entirely. The basics of my self are all there: the hair, the happy faces and the unsubtly sad ones, the poses, the body I hated so much at the time. But the people in those photos aren't my people anymore. I barely know any of them now, including myself. The me in those photos is a stranger just as well. That sad little girl with a bad haircut who desperately loved and defended her abuser.
And now he's here. Not just in pictures, but in my present. I see myself in those purikura above, the self that I learned to love and to be deserving of love, that only emerged when I left him; the self that found a family and a life in Eugene, grew from shattered foundations with the strength of my friends and bloomed entirely anew. And that old boyfriend from high school who ruined my youth is standing in those pictures with me -- the present me, that I worked so hard to cultivate without him -- and I can't properly convey how fucking terrifying that is.
Ultimately, I don't think I can adequately explain just how complex my emotions are in this realm, as I'm still clawing my way through them, but the gist is this: being around Luca makes me feel ill. I attribute this to the emotional abuse I sustained by him, recovered from, and am now being reminded of by just how unchanged he is. I don't think spending a lot of time with him here will be good for me, so I will spend a little bit of time with him -- as much as I can take -- and then I'll be done with him. Ideally for good. I want this trip, this climactic dream of ours to run around Japan together, to be the long-awaited end of our story. I need to accept that things will never be the same between us as they were back then, back when he handed me his iPod and I listened to "Mad World" on repeat all sixth period. I'll never be the same as I was.
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