You Changed Me

Number 2

I looked at him from behind down the depressing middle school hallways. I felt his pain without seeing him hurt. I just knew. I knew him before I knew him; partially because my friend stalked him, and partially because I could tell he was different.

I know you probably stopped listening right after you heard the word 'stalk'. My friend knew everything about him, and the day i met him, she told me she was going to get his number. I didn't ask how, but i knew she wasn't going to find it from him. She'd never spoken to him in her life. I understand why she wouldn't, though. He was a pretty intimidating guy. He had beautiful black hair that fell below his eyes, and i quite honestly didn't know how he could see, let alone if he had eyes. He was tall, too; much taller than me. He never wore anything but black, and was paler than me, which was saying something. #2 was like a shadow emerging from darkness, and I couldn't just let him run off. I was too curious.

I guess they were right when they said "curiosity killed the cat".

That night, I went online and added him on Facebook, and ended up saying something so awkward, I blocked it out of my memory, but gladly, whatever it was seemed to entertain him. I befriended him quickly, and fell for him even quicker. He spoke and acted as though he was from the early 1900s, calling me his "love" and taking things slower than most guys would prefer. He was gentle, and also one of the strangest people I have yet to meet in my short life. He was twisted, masochistic, melancholic, and absolute perfection to me.

I told him I had fallen soon after, and he returned my useless feelings like they were diamonds, keeping them locked away, as though they were going to run from him, or they were going to be stolen. He thought of me as a porcelain doll, never trying anything, and never treating me as anything less than a princess. I thought he loved me. I think he might have, too, if he wouldn't have had her.

She wasn't all that pretty to me, but I guess everyone's different. She had shoulder-length blonde hair, was a year older than him (three years older than myself at the time), and wore three times the eyeliner she should have. I would've been fine with the eyeliner if she did it well, but she didn't. The only positive about her to me was her body, everything else wasn't something i could sit and look at constantly and tell i loved it. Honestly.. it made me wonder what I looked like if she was better than me.

Soon after, I asked him to come to the Journey scene with me (aka the skating rink). He was annoyingly late, but seeing him made my heart race too fast to care. He ambled over to me with his slouch that made his hair bounce a little. He almost faded into the darkness because of how much black he wore, but he was hard to miss among the smaller kids my age.

We didn't tatlk much that night. I was honestly too scared to. He offered to buy me a Coke several times and i wouldn't let him even after he took a couple swigs of it so it wouldn't be too formal of a request. He also offered to buy me the questionable pizza that was offered, but i declined and just watched him eat, facinated. I studied him; his face, eyes, soul. He looked up at me once, and said curiously,

"What?" He cocked his head to the side, and looked through his hair at me with eyes I knew were there, but couldn't quite see. I responded, laughing slightly,

"Nothing." and he laughed and kept eating the questionable slice.

That night nothing happened, because he had to bring his little brother, and had to leave early on top of all of that. Honestly, though, I was just glad I could see him. Our limited words didn't limit our conversation. We looked at each other, and skated. Besides my falling once, things went well, and it wasn't even that bad, because he went around and helped me up.

.

I came home that night and listened to Your Guardian Angel by The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, and i thought of him. He self-mutilated, and I saw his scars that night at the rink somehow through the fog and marijuana smoke. He made me worry, worry slightly more than I had for most people in my life, and I told him that. He told me not to worry, because he'd been doing it for a while. I don't really think I ever cared about the fact that he had scars, I just wondered what on earth made him feel as though that would help. I didn't ever understand at that point in time just how much pain releases your fears and dissapointments in life. I was too pure, too unexperianced at the game of life to understand what pain even felt like. Oh, pain, such an odd thing.

I remember my favorite conversation between us as though it was yesterday. He told me that day that every time he looked at me he wanted to kiss me. I knew the feeling, becaus it was mutually shared. His lips were large, and seemed soft. I'd never been kissed, but I'd imagined it plenty of times. I'd always wanted him to be my first.

We went to the skating rink again a week after that conversation. Everything was normal between us, better if anything. He met my friends and things of that sort, and he wooed them. Then the 11 o'clock dance came... it was after skating was over, but before anyone wanted to leave. Around that time, they sometimes threw out toilet paper rolls and let us throw them around the place. He caught one and then grabbed one from the kid in front of me and handed it to me. I giggled, because it was in a morbid and sick way, sweet.

Then he sat in the corner and didn't talk. I sat next to him and repeatedly asked him what was wrong. He just shook his head and whispered,

"It's nothing..."

Eventually, he had to get his shoes on (or rather his huge ass combat boots that I would never admit I wanted), and looked down at me, because I was still sitting down, and asked in a sneaky way,

"You want to come with me?" I nodded excitedly, and he held out his and, and walked me to his shoes.

"Raven," he asked, gently, "do you really want to know what's wrong?" I nodded, and he leaned in.

For one moment, I swear to you, time had slowed down, and everywhere else besides the two foot radius in which we were standing, it completely stopped. I pulled back for a second, remembering his existing relationship, and he nodded at me as if to say 'love, it's all going to be alright', and leaned back in. His kiss is still the best I'll ever have.

When he pulled back from that magical moment, I was kind of hyperactive... I ran to my friends asking "DID YOU SEE IT?!?! HE KISSED ME!!" and they were all saying "no, but I'm so happy for you!" And then he ran out of the door, a shadow in the night. I never saw him again face to face after that perfect night.

The day after that kiss changed my entire life. My best friend came over, and it just happened to be that she knew him. I told her everything about that night... she screamed and giggled along with me, and then we ranted about her relationship problems. I was texing him that whole time, and I don't really know if he knew exactly what he was doing to me, but it was messing with me. One moment he loved the fact he kissed me, and now, with my best friend here, he decided that he regretted it.

I asked him why, and he said it was because of his girlfriend. I understood that, I guess... but it was the next thing he said that scared me.

At one point in our relationship, I told him that he needed to choose either me or her, and that i wasn't going to rush it, but he needed to tell me at some point. At that moment, he told me,

"I choose her."

I don't think I remember much after that. I'm not even sure if my friend was there. She might have not been there yet and I might have gotten everything mixed up... all I knew was that one moment I was listening to World Around Me by Escape the Fate and singing along, then I was crying, then my knees buckled and I was on the ground, crying my eyes out. In the back of my mind I was wondering why I was on a bathroom floor letting myself go through the pain I was going through, but right then, I lost all my will. There was no point in surviving in this world if this perfect guy wouldn't love you no matter what you did, and instead of you he chose a girl who you knew wasn't quite as good as you. You couldn't save him from himself anymore, and you can't save yourself at all anymore.

I cut myself for the first time a couple nights later. I grabbed a pencil sharpener, took one of my dad's tools that seemed reletively good enough to break it apart, took the razorblade, and sliced myself open, crying my eyes out and begging for salvation from a god I didn't believe in at 1 AM.

Nothing productive happened after that in our relationship. I found he deleted my number from his phone, he stood me up once. Nothing that could effect me much more than what he'd already done.

I'm just surprised he's still alive after knowing he caused someone that much pain, quite honestly.

He doesn't live where I do as far as I know. I haven't talked to him in a while. I don't really ever want to.

I hope he's happy, wherever on this planet he happens to be.