Letters To My Men

Closure Pt. I

As I mentioned, Fried Noodles stopped talking to me a week after my confession. That destroyed me. It destroyed me because he left me without the closure I thought I needed to move on.  It destroyed me because he hurt my friends. They told me it was not my fault he stopped talking to them as well, but I knew deep inside that it was. Perhaps he just wanted to get rid of anything that reminded him of me, anything that had a remote connection to me. 

I refused to let that just be it. I was not letting him get rid of me that easily. It had taken me months to build my way up and become close friends with him, I was not willing to simply give up. I continued talking to him, less than before, but still. His lack of enthusiasm when replying was like receiving a bullet shot one after the other. Eventually, I had to resign to his will and stop talking to him. At first I was mad, but then someone told me he was depressed. I thought I had stopped caring but as the words slipped my friend's mouth I felt a lump on my throat and before I knew it, I was in bed, staring at the ceiling and wondering what had caused him to be depressed.

I genuinely worried about him. I was unable to stop caring. 

So I still looked for him at dinner time. I still looked for him in the hallways. My mind was so occupied with him that I still had dreams about us together. And they felt real. Too real for him to decide that we could not be together. 

But the heartache I would feel with every micro rejection was too much to bear. So I tried to kill all hopes. 

As prom night approached, something deep inside of me insisted that he would take me. There was literally not a single rational reason of why he would, but a small part of myself insisted that he would take me as a form of closure. That it was a way of apologizing for breaking my heart, a way of giving me what I wanted and a way of feeling better with himself. I spent weeks daydreaming about the pictures we would take. He would be in the middle of talking and I would be looking at him, my left profile showing, grabbing him by the arm and smiling. On another picture, he would have a serious face and I would continue to smile, pressing my face against his shoulder. 

"If he does not take you to prom, I will." My best guy friend said. 

Fried Noodles did not take me to prom, but I still went. And I still insisted on taking a picture with him. 

"Here, come, we're taking a picture."

"Just me and you?"

"Yes, don't make it awkward..."

I have our first picture together hanging in my room. My friends tell me to get rid of it, but I love the way I can see my heart racing, my face blushing, my hands threatening to start sweating. I love the uncomfortableness on his face and the way he is holding my waist. We would make a really cute couple, I am telling you. 

Prom night ended and I could not say goodbye to him. I knew it was the last time we would see each other. He was off to university and I would stay in town for my last year of high school. I knew that as soon as we walked out the salon, our story was over. I never got the closure that I needed, but there was nothing I could do. When I saw the top of his head get into a cab, I knew he was out of my life. 

But life is a continuous coaster that takes unexpected turns.