This feeling isn’t going away. Like an alcoholic I’ve relapsed, but instead of poison that glistens in a bottle, mine just festers and bubbles against the walls of my throat. I wish it would go away. The promise of a happier me made me want to go out of my way to find a cure, but now that it’s gone, I lack the strength to even look at my face in the mirror.
I wish I could stop crying. It’s coming out in bursts right now, right in the middle of when I’m driving. I wonder what I look like to others. I don’t really talk to anybody. I wear black all day and sweaters at night, I have cuts that no one will see, but they sting and they itch and it’s not enough, but at least I could make myself bleed. I wonder how look in someone’s eyes. Sad. Miserable. Numb. Fake. Happy.
They made him stare blank at a wall, Perspiration wetting his brows, While serendipitously with pompous "integrity" -- They restructured his mind like the nest of a honey bee… Oh the glorious ignominy of sitting there like a bloke subject to other people's pity, Sorry and helpless as a freaking cactus tree in a lush Amazonian tranquility…
When I was 15, the most important thing in the world to me was being liked by everyone. People would unload their heaviest baggage to me and I grew to accept that it was my duty to share the load, putting the pieces back together when they fell apart. Still, altruism comes with reward. If everyone else’s happiness was like currency, I was loaded. And what value could I place on my own well-being?
So when a dear friend told me she loved you, I fought my hardest to shut those feelings down. It started as a joke, but I knew that she meant it and everyone else seemed to accept that you belonged to her. And I was willing to let you go because you were my high school crush and she was my lifelong friend.
But you held on for dear life when I tried to forget you. You called me at midnight when we should have been sleeping. You drove to my house when I refused to meet you in public. I learned things about you that no one else knew. You wanted to be a doctor and you called BS when I couldn’t justify wanting to go to law school. Your cousin worked for a hospital in Switzerland and your grandmother has dementia. You were a health freak and you disapproved of my eating habits. You had never smoked or drank and you intended to keep your body clean. Damn, you had this moral chokehold over me. From then on, whenever I had a moral dilemma you kept my conscience clear; most days I didn’t even need to ask you out loud. You made it so hard for me to feel guilty about keeping you my secret, but that was all part of the adventure, wasn’t it?
You were angry when another boy publicly professed his interest in me. You were angrier that I didn’t have the heart to tell him no. I am truly sorry that we both suffered when I gave in to fear of public disapproval. You ignored me for weeks. Just when the days grew longer and brighter again, I begged my other suitor to please let me go.
And then you called me at midnight again. But this time it was different—you demanded to know why I couldn’t give that boy what I had promised him. Fighting back tears, I told you that someone else had stolen my heart years ago,and I couldn’t keep up the pretense any longer. You pushed my buttons until I admitted it was you. I expected to render you speechless; surely I had shattered any semblance of friendship we had left. In disbelief, I heard you whisper words of reciprocation.
You were leaving for Europe the next day, and I would travel to Mali the next week, but you promised me a letter for each day you couldn’t hear my voice. Sixteen days later I returned to find sixteen unopened letters. No matter our rocky past, you have always kept your word.
You gave me the first inkling of a summer romance, down to the horror I felt when I realized the end of summer meant the end of us. I should have had more faith in you. I longed to tell you I loved you, that I wanted people to know about us if it meant I could kiss you in public and buy you gifts for no reason. But I let myself believe that your friends would never understand us, and remember, a friend’s approval was worth more than money to me. So I watched us slowly fade into nothingness, and eventually I heard whispers about you carrying on with another pretty girl. This time, you let me let you go.
And then college began, and we were in the same city and she was not. I’d be lying if I said I truly tried to forget you. I can’t pretend I didn’t notice when you ignored her phone calls as you studied in my bedroom. But for both our sake, I learned to fight that curiosity. By then I was thoroughly convinced that you had never felt anything for me, that I was a silly little girl who had quite the imagination.
All the same, I could see you hurting when your ties to her were broken forever. I wished I could feel your pain for you. In this tiny window of opportunity, I longed to tell you how much you still meant to me, but I couldn’t bear to cause you any more pain. Try as I might, I just can’t be selfish with you. Somehow that was enough comfort to help me forget you for a time. I knew that staying away was easier for both of us, so finally my life entered a time without you.
Life brought me a boy I thought I could love. He turned out to be the broken-hearted remains of your college roommate. I know the sight of me with him disgusted you on some level, and a small part of me took delight in that fact. I had finally gained the ability to dismiss you from my mind. For several glorious months, you were not the one who roamed my dreams freely. The one who replaced you was certainly no saint, but it was a relief to be desired by someone who insisted on holding my hand in public with no regard for what people would think. I could finally breathe.
Your roommate and I were too dark and twisted to last. Thank you for defending my honor when you found out he had hurt me. “Don’t forget, we were friends with you first.” After three years and many sleepless nights spent obsessing, it was comforting to know that you considered us friends. If only you knew that I screwed up first. Unfortunately, detaching from him meant that your room was taboo, and I didn’t see you again for six months.
But again, karma refused to let me avoid you forever. We took the MCAT on the same day and you insisted that we catch up after. You were the exact same person, and I had changed so much. You were still determined to follow in your cousin’s footsteps and become a doctor, and you still called your mother multiple times a day. You were willing to drink the casual beer every now and then, but you never let it interfere with your studies. Meanwhile, I realized what you had known all along..I wanted to go to medical school too.We were hired for the same job and suddenly I had an excuse to see you all the time. Your smile is just as beautiful as I remembered. I had forgotten how a single sentence from your lips could dazzle me for hours. You insisted on meeting up every week, unknowingly tearing down the careful walls that I had built to protect my pitifully mended heart.
You have a knack of shattering my fragile reality every Halloween. This year was no disappointment. I had every intention of spending another night in the library, but something was drawing me toward this party. You were drunker than I’d ever seen you, and of course your roommate was there. I had just worked up the nerves to go say hi to you……and then I saw you. With a girl. Whom I knew. And so I dealt with it in a way I am not proud of, but the only way I could see fit. I drowned my sorrows in that liquid hell. A blackness descends over my memory thereafter.
Moments later, it’s like I’m waking from a dream. Your arms are wrapped around my waist. You’re holding me up; I can’t stand on my own. And….we’re dancing. Every wish that I have had in the last 4 years is struggling to resurface from the land of unforgotten desires. Your grip tightens. You brush a strand of my hair from my cheek and tuck it behind my ear. Suddenly, your lips are inches from mine. Consider those walls broken….forever.
Every fiber of my being is fighting to remember why I cannot go down this road. For a moment I consider ignoring that overwhelming voice in my head telling me to stop you. This could be the moment….perhaps I owe it to my 15 year-old self for walking away so many years ago. All I have to do is turn my head to the left, and you’re mine.
For a second I’m 17 again, and you’re slowly but surely breaking my heart. Even then, I could count on you to be my moral compass. Part of me hopes that you will always do this for me. It took 3 years for you to become my friend, and 4 for you to break my heart for the last time. So no…I cannot let this happen. Even if you felt half the passion that I am feeling now, you would do this right.
I tear myself from your grip and I pray that you can’t see that I’m crying. “Don't be stupid”, I finally manage to whisper in your ear. A sober wave of understanding passes over your eyes. With a nod and a smile, you’re gone. The blackness descends again. I come to, and you’re back with that girl I am slowly beginning to despise. You may not even recognize her anymore, but to me, she will always be the one to whom I forfeited your affection that night. The two of you put on your jackets. You’re going home with her. Good lord, the weight in my chest may suffocate me.
Before you leave, you find me struggling to keep it together on a couch. (Your scumbag roommate is monopolizing the other one with his lover of the night.) You ask me if I’m okay. I ask if you’re going to let her take you to her room. You deny anything short of honorable intentions. You’re lying, but I appreciate the sentiment. God, I hope you can’t tell that the thought of you is tearing me apart again. But I rally. I fool you long enough to make you believe that I will be okay and I practically push you into her arms. I don’t even understand my actions anymore.
The next two weeks are agonizing. I failed an exam on Monday for the first time in my college experience. I lost the elections that I had been campaigning for the last 4 months. I failed another exam. Despite all this shortcomings, I knew there was a way to set myself free of your chokehold. My college experience will always be tainted by the baggage I thought I would forever carry of you and what we could have been. And if I am done with college, then I am done with studying for classes I don’t care about and I am done dealing with petty drama for which I have no time. Best of all, I will finally be done fantasizing about you.
I owe myself one final conversation with you. I should have told you years ago when it might have made a difference. But I know that if I never tell you that I loved you, I will never stop looking at you like a world of expired possibilities. So I tell you everything. I am an open book now; I have no more secrets to hide from you. I have given you this very last piece of me, this story that I am now sharing with the world, and now you have nothing left to take from me. In this naked, vulnerable state, you surprise me yet again.
You say of course you remember that summer we shared, trading sweet nothings in the golden years before college stripped me of the girl I used to be. You weren’t a good guy back then, but your feelings were real. We were real. Sometimes you also wonder about what we could have been, and these past few months have been just as confusing for you. This gives me hope, but it is a pale hope next to the fantasies that I have quietly built in my mind. You speak as if we were a future that was never meant to be, and you are absolutely right. And so I thank you for your honesty and I bid you farewell. This time I mean forever.
It’s New Year’s Eve, and for the last four years I have longed to kiss you at midnight. How wonderful it is that I will not be heartbroken tonight.
Well, I'm in a shitty fucking mood, and you seem to be as good a person as any to bitch to. Congratulations, random unlucky fucker, it seems yours is the name I picked out of a hat to spout my angsty teenaged woes to. Name's Hal Str... Hal. Just Hal. And I have a fucking problem.
8=D < Strange choice, perhaps the mutation left you colour blind?8=D < Regardless, aneigh distraction from the cold, pleasant or otherwise, certamely has its place in the terribully icey night. 8=D < It would only be right to repay the kindness with open ears.8=? < So tell me, what woe is this that cannot abide silence?
I hate it when I want to read doujinshi on almost any pairing in a series and then can't find anything at all -_- It isn't as disappointing if I have a really obscure pairing I'm trying to find but when I'd accept almost anything and there are still no options? sadface.
