I’m not the jealous type. At all to be honest. I grew up watching girls my age claw and rip at each other’s throats for what they wanted but couldn’t have. I was brought up to recognize that every single human being has its strengths and weaknesses, which cannot be outshined by someone else without consent. I was given the ultimatum a long time ago; to be constantly pining over the success and fame and good fortune of others, or to make something for and of myself. I chose the latter. I guess I just don’t have the time to sit around and wish for things. The things that I have, I earn. From my job, to my small apartment, I have spent countless hours working to achieve a goal of success. But I’ve learned that there are only a few things in life that you can’t work towards and one of those is love. And even so, I don’t hold a grudge towards anyone who ever has, or ever will break my heart. Most of my relationships started as friendships, and I live by the mantra that all of the people I let into my life mean well, even if their actions don’t mirror that. There is good in everyone, I believe that, so I’m the girl who keeps her exes as friends, who doesn’t let a mismatched romantic situation turn into something that creates enemies. I’m friends with who I want to be friends with, and that’s it. Nothing less, nothing more. I’m not jealous, I’m not trying to hurt myself even further, I just don’t give power to the thought. As John Green said, you can’t choose if you get hurt, but you can choose who hurts you. And I have liked every single person who has ever broken my heart. And as for the boy who has yet to break my heart, well, I like him best of all.
But Ed hadn’t been the first. And sometimes, after a night of one of those whole body cries, where I end up with mascara all over my arms and legs from something that he said that wedged a knife into the loose stitches of my heart, even when I drill the fact that I’m not one of those girls who cries over boys into my head, I’m convinced he won’t be the last. But he means well, and I know that. But he wasn’t the first. Evan was.
Oh Evan, the boy with the heart of gold, who convinced me that everything was very, very temporary. That no matter how permanent something feels, it’s all part of a bigger cycle. Like the turning of leaves from summer to fall, the way the days get shorter as the months progress, and how a friend of a friend can go from meaning absolutely nothing to everything; from holding a space in an empty room to filling up your heart with just their presence. It all falls apart, in the end, and the vicious cycle completes itself. But I don’t think he ever spoke a bad word about anyone, and I think that’s what I liked about him. I wanted to be like that; to abandon all of the negative thoughts in my head and ride away with him into some fucked up version of happily ever after where no one ever cried, or got hurt, and everything was sunshine and rainbows. And I’m also convinced that’s what did him in, in the end. His inherent “goodness” made me feel so inadequate. He called me beautiful and kept treating me like I was the most important person to him up until the minute I walked away. To this day, he still hasn’t said a bad thing about me to anyone. He probably tells them the only thing I ever instilled in him, “she means well.”
And then there were a few in between, and then there was Ed. Ed, Ed, Ed that little sarcastic 22 year old shit who drives me absolutely mental with his weird snap chatting pictures of the crease of his elbow that he thinks looks like his ass. And I hate him and love him for it at the same time, just like I hate and love the fact that he can drink me under the table and still wake up without a hangover. He’s not conventionally attractive, and he knows that, and he doesn’t let it stand in the way of him being able to get what he wants from me, or anyone else. He’s got a permanent smirk on his face that turns into a genuine smile when it has to and when he means it. But he’s the jealous type, and I can understand that because of the emotional turmoil he put himself through after the breakup with the one who shall not be named, or mentioned, or even thought about. He let her hurt him so bad that I think there will always be a permanent difference about the skin on his neck right where that necklace laid. I know he won’t admit it, because it goes against his lighthearted 22 year old on-top-of-the-world character, but he’s afraid of someone like me doing the same thing she did to him. And maybe I will, in the unforeseeable future, and I know that I will be sorry for hurting him if that does eventually happen, but maybe it won’t, and we’ll ride off into our own fucked up version of happily ever after where we wear onesies made out of money and watch Friends reruns until our muscles have atrophied.
