December 3, 2013

  • the boy with the gray eyes

    I’m kind of over getting told to throw my hands up in the air.
    So, there.

    - Lorde, Team

    -+-

    This Thanksgiving was the first time that I didn't spend the fourth Thursday of November with my own family.  I'm used to a modest dinner of Filipino food, half of the food cold from sitting at the dinner table since being cooked early that morning, but still tasting of love and care.  I'm used to going to Wal-Mart, Best Buy, or the mall with my family for the incredible Black Friday extravaganza.  This year was different.

    This year, on Thanksgiving, I woke up in the familiar spot, where I used to wake up everyday during that long summer.  In the early afternoon, I opened my eyes to the sight of his high school senior portrait resting on his desk, his throngs of books, his various pieces of bacon memorabilia.  I felt his hand around my waist, and for that instant, it almost felt like these last few months of living thousands of miles apart never even happened.  I rolled over to wrap my arm around him, and his eyes fluttered open while his mouth uttered a groan of exhaustion.

    I asked, although I already knew the answer, "Do you want to wake up yet?"

    In response, he grabbed me and restored us to our previous sleeping positions.  He punctuated with a simple, "No," and we fell back asleep, entwined.

    Throughout the week, there were little moments like this.  Moments where he put his arm around my shoulder and pulled me in, and I saw a glimpse of our past together.  But as a whole, these moments were fleeting.  As a whole, the week was far from being reminiscent of our wonderful summer together.  As a whole, it was clear that we were dying.  That is, if we weren't dead already.

    I spent Tuesday night meeting his oldest sister, who invited me to her wedding next May.  Wednesday evening, I spent dinner with him and his family.  I spent Wednesday late-night with his friends at the same beach where we first kissed.  I spent Thursday night meeting his aunts, uncles, grandparents at Thanksgiving dinner.  Friday night, we again spent time with his friends.  On paper, it sounds like an amazing, intimate week.  But by early morning on Friday, when we were supposed to be falling asleep, I was sobbing in his arms.

    In response to my weeping, he implored, "You have to talk to me."

    I wept, "How am I supposed to end up like these girls who you've been with, and you ask them to hang out whenever you're in town, and then you just act like nothing ever happened?  How am I supposed to become friends with you and pretend that nothing ever happened between us?"

    "I don't know.  We don't... have to pretend we never happened," he stammered, looking for the right words.  His arms tightened around me, "I don't want to think about that yet."

    I waited for my crying to die down, and explained, "We're never going to be the same again.  We're never going back to the way it used to be.  I know it, and I accept it, but... I miss it."

    He sighed, "The circumstances are different. I know it sucks..."

    We agreed that our attachment to each other had severely deteriorated.  He asked how my life was, citing that I wasn't emotionally healthy when I saw him at Georgia (i.e. my lovesickness for him), and I was offended that he described my missing him as some sort of emotional illness.  From there, my sadness increasingly transformed into frustration.

    He went on to explain that he'll always care about me, when I started becoming truly upset.  I, too, heaved a sigh, "Please, don't comfort me.  I really do appreciate that you want to comfort me, but it's just absurd that you're giving me this talk again."

    He replied, "I know I shouldn't comfort you, but I just want to say that it's normal.  It's normal to be upset about this."

    "I know," I told him.

    I tried to tell him more about my thoughts on the week, when he interjected, "Can we not talk about this anymore?"

    I fell quiet, and silently rolled back to my side.  He put his hand on my shoulder, "I didn't mean it that way.  It's just... it's late, and I feel like we talked about all we need to talk about."

    "I know."

    With that, we fell asleep, and we never mentioned it again.

    By Saturday, we were two distant people sitting under the same roof.  We didn't have any last dinner together.  No last date, no final celebration before he left.  He cutely requested a night with just the guys for his last day in San Diego, clarifying with everyone that he was "kicking out Christa for Bro Night," which I completely understood and admired.  But my eyebrows admittedly rose when he promptly invited a slurry of girls to said Bro Night, even publishing a Facebook status publicly announcing the location of his bonfire party, inviting as many people as possible to show up -- an invitation extended to everyone in the vicinity... except for strictly and specifically: me.

    Honestly?  Maybe, at another time, I would've become some varied level of jealous, or I would've expressed how strangely he went about this -- even if he had at least not called it a "bro night" before inviting all the girls, that would've been enough to quell any red flags for me -- but by Saturday night, my attitude had already blossomed into, "Well, fuck that."

    Let me lend more understanding of what happened throughout the week that escalated into my apathy.

    I have always been fine with (and even thoroughly enjoyed) the way he would always incessantly troll me, playfully insult me, and poke fun of me.  Behind it all, I always knew that he really liked me and cared about me.  He would punctuate each prank with an affectionate hug or kiss, and he would never fail to reaffirm my importance in his life.  Throughout Thanksgiving week, the scale felt absurdly off-balance.  He playfully slapped me around, and followed it with no redeeming qualities.  He insulted me non-stop, and punctuated it with only laughter.  When we were with his circle of friends, where he used to hold me by the waist with ridiculous amounts of affection, he instead sat with his back facing me, and I felt more like the stranger in the room than I did when I first met any of them.  (When I expressed to him on Friday night that I missed the way he would hold my hand and hold me by the waist, he simply explained, "C'mon, that's PDA," and I restrained myself from snapping at him that I was the one that was anti-PDA before I met him.  During summer, he literally apologized to me for holding me all the time.  It's a dumb point of critique, but it bothered me.)  It was quickly getting to the point where I was questioning how much of it was done jokingly, and how much did he actually care about me behind all of the playful punches.

    At one point on Thursday night, he asked, "Can you get me some water?"

    I fished for a Please? when he jokingly replaced it with, "Bitch."

    I smiled through my sigh, feeling my back crush under this last straw, and I apathetically grabbed the empty cup from his hand, "I think I hate you a little."

    When I came back with a full glass of water, his expression seemed permanently set in puppy-dog eyes, "Do you actually hate me?"

    I'm a lot of things, but I'm not one to lie.  "Uh, kinda."

    He understandably replies, "whyyyy"

    I told him earnestly, "You've been really mean to me since you got here.  And I even like it when you troll me, 'cos I think it's hilarious, but you've been, like... especially mean to me since you got here."

    For the rest of the night, he made a deliberate effort to show that he still cares, but we fell out of it again by Friday night.  When we walked back to my car Friday night, I told him, "You keep being really mean to me, and I'm getting kind of sick of it."

    He beat himself up about it, "I just... I didn't want to give you any expectations... but I should be treating you better.  I can treat you better."

    I quietly thought, 'Well, I sure don't have any expectations, that's for sure.  So, good job there.'

    His finals are next week, and he'll be back in San Diego soon.  I don't even know if I'm excited for it.  Maybe when he comes back, we'll be full-fledged friends.  We parted ways on a strange note.  In the morning, he was exhausted and grouchy from "Bro Night."  I don't even think we kissed at the airport.  It's strange watching us decline so readily.  We've barely exchanged a handful of texts since he left -- we used to webcam/text/call all the time.  I can't help but truly feel like I'm watching something, well... die.

    I used to have such optimism for the two of us.  I used to see the world in pink.

    Now, I just hope that at the end of this, there will be enough left to salvage a friendship out of the wreckage.