Alex & Joan

Friday Night

It was a Friday night. Your life in college slowly settles down on you like a second skin. The recent weeks passed by in a maelstrom of requirements, homework, and paperwork and it was enough to fill in the hollowness in your chest. But as you sit alone by the window with no one to share your loneliness with but a bitter cup of cheap coffee, you look out at the city. The hustle and bustle of the cars below were giving the highways and crossroads a pulsating gleam and you basked in the scenery thinking that maybe it could make you feel alive for a little while.

You did just that for a couple moments, just lulling yourself into the blaring sound of city life that's reduced itself into plain white noise on the other side of your window. And you wished nothing more to reduce your feelings into plain white noise just as well because maybe, feeling numb is much better than feeling everything – everything that used to be. It was the constant reminder of Joan's absence that solidified that hollowness in your chest that even when you feel absolutely nothing, you still feel it terribly deeply.

You tear your eyes away from the city haze and placed your empty cup on your study desk. There it sits together with the concert tickets Joan had bought for the both of you. The artists were no one special, just a local band who writes songs about pretty girls and teenage rebellion, but the promise that she'll watch it with you was what made it special. Everything that includes her makes it special, to be honest. And maybe that's why you were so engrossed in the idea of the future because you thought that you'll get to spend it with her.

And maybe the reason why you were so engrossed about Joan was because you have created this idea of her in your head and twisted your mind into thinking that it's really her you fell in love with. No no no no no, you tried to argue with your mind. You tried to grasp memories of her that'll justify that everything was real between the two of you. And for a moment, you thought you were right, but the thing about memories is that we remember them in a way we'd want them to, not exactly how we're supposed to.