The Bitter Side || PJM

Tastes like Friendship

You need to find the right distance with people.

Too far, you'll lose them. Too close, you'll feel suffocated.

People aren't made up portraits you've written down and know like the back of your hand, they're definitely not predictable and it's hard at times to trust them when all you receive is disappointment and never-ending lost hope. I've always felt like an outsider looking in, cut off in my own world; a transparent bubble while everyone's voices keep intermingling, feeling there but not really there. I see them, and I think to myself, what has life offered to them? What kind of hardships did they go through? Did they go through the amount of scars that decorate my body? The wounds I've held so long in my heart until they blossomed into my skin seeped through my flesh were now a part of me. Every day, I grow stronger, every day, I face new fears; new challenges that threaten to bring me down. But I'm a brave sailor, courageous enough to tackle the wide distances of the oceans and the passionate waves that crush the breath out of my lungs.

That's how I felt every time one would hit my heart with an insult, a rock splitting open my ribcage, causing another swollen, purple scratch that was not going to fade any time soon. But they said that the invisible wounds were always harder to heal, and they were right.

But I managed to live, I managed to cope with all the shit life tended to throw on my already packed up road. Sometimes, I struggled through all the issues, all the thoughts running as wild as horses in my head, but I managed to dull them during the day, I managed to shut them out and lock my head in.

I thought I was safe. I never appreciated interacting with people too much. Like I said before, you needed to find the right distance with people, you couldn't just open your heart when one wasn't ready to accept it.

The heart was a room, locked with files and folders and piles of junk. It was a safe haven, a sanctuary my soul always returned to when it was drained. We all tried at one point in our lives to keep it hidden, to lock our emotions in and force itself towards the back of our mind.

But there's bound to be someone that opens that door, peeps in, and beckons it to come and play.

It always happens, always.

I resent my heart for that, for trusting someone so easily without my brain's consent.

But it didn't work that way and we all know it.

"What's going on in your life these days?" Jimin asked me one night during our summer vacations. He was a good friend of mine, having just met recently at a mutual friend's birthday party. It was awkward at first, because I had never been really good at getting acquainted with boys. I always had my pre-judgmental thoughts about them; their boisterous nature, their endless teasing smirks and their macho vibe, not to forget the sexual innuendos they loved using at every moment they got. But I got used to it, as I got used to Jimin's presence. We didn't go to the same school so I didn't hang out with him often enough to know his ways; but from what I could gather, he was a very charming and easy-going guy, sometimes a bit too confident with his male ego. If I were to compare him to an animal, it would be to a peacock. He walked with a stride that appealed to everyone, as if holding a big sign saying 'hey look at me, I'm handsome and charming and the whole package' and I was a bit jealous of his outgoing, social butterfly personality.

So you would know what's coming next...Charming boy, good personality, great confidence, what more would you like in a perfect boyfriend?

That was exactly what Jimin aimed to do. He loved flirting around with girls, being the perfect image of someone who was interested enough yet was too unreachable to be grabbed. He was a cunning fox that twirled girls around his little pinky then manipulated them with his strings. To my surprise, I found out that he had actually never dated anyone and was still a 'first rated quality' as my friends would put it. This seemed weird to me, because the way he acted, it always looked like he was aloof and a bit too good in his skin. But like I said before, I never really understood people and their actions so I was not really in any position to judge, to be honest.