The Boy I Could Never Love

Confession

Being incapable of processing my experiences saw most day-to-day occurrences slip by unnoticed. My stress and anxiety stayed on high alert in defense of the wall I lived pushed up against, rendering the memory of an event to last a day or two, maybe a week at most before I forgot it.

The best description would come from a dream you remember having, but can't recall. The act of trying distorts the memory of it further. The dream exists, however, remains unable to be reached. Likely, a noise, person, or feeling functions as the only thing you identify it with.

Waving to my friend continued as my situation worsened. A fact I began to realize while giving accounts of my life in return. It occurred to me that I should remember more than I did as there existed chunks of time I held no recollection of, and trying to think back to those events proved impossible without a direct resource to tell me what transpired.

The more losses I experienced, the more I told about my life, trying to do everything I could not to forget. Telling my friends so they could act as a reminder would function as a failsafe. This stopped working when the memory of containing friends started slipping in a similar fashion.

Shutting out all that didn't matter at any given moment helped me endure. Living in this dream-like state, I could not afford to offer thoughts to the things that did not exist around me. If something did not remain present, it became unimportant. Not only did focusing on remembering get overwhelming, but it saw me hurt more times than I could count. Ultimately, it left me without the capacity to evaluate more than my immediate surroundings

This, unfortunately, meant that outside of our being together, there came many times when I forgot my friend existed until I saw him again. Besides, being around him always felt safe, and safety stood out as something I could not afford. The idea existed as nothing more than an illusion. A beautiful illusion, but an illusion nonetheless.

*There came days when I would walk into a room, see my friend, and wonder how I forgot him. It happened with my girlfriend too, but unlike him, I saw her outside of school. I remembered her, just not what we did. More and more I found myself thinking: He is my friend. I have a friend. That is a thing I have. I must be a terrible friend and person to forget a whole person and friendship.

Sitting with my friends became stressful as I continued to forget them and our time together. It felt as though there existed no excuse for my failure. Seeing no way to tell them without hurting them, I tried making new memories in hopes these would stick. Yet, when not standing in front of me, he no longer existed as my friend or otherwise, and she faded into the background.*

A few months went by and my friend told me he had a confession but refused to tell me what it was. *The fear of forgetting he wanted to tell me something drove the need to know. He did not understand the importance and told me I had to wait. Sure enough, my girlfriend asked what I thought it was later that day, calling upon me to scramble in order to recall our morning conversation. This made convincing me to remain patient, exhausting when he arrived a few minutes later. My friend said he needed to show me because it wasn't something he could tell me. Conceding, albeit begrudgingly, I deferred to his wish.

End of day came, and the repeated conversation managed to hold the memory, but no confession stood in sight. I gave him grief just before we left as I started getting annoyed. On the way home, I look up for our final goodbye, thinking I might just flip him off today.* But, rather than his face and moving hand, a notebook pressed against the glass.

Written horizontally across the page, big enough to cover the whole paper were the words I LOVE YOU. My face dropped as I watched the yellow monstrosity drive away. I couldn't think, my feet wouldn't move, and the backs of my eyes hurt at how wide they got. I felt numb. This being the first time a boy said he loved me, I stayed like that until someone spoke beside me, prompting my fight or flight, and tripped over a snowbank. They walked away laughing at my clumsiness, and for once, I didn't bite back.