paper dolls

< To the Guy Friend I Used to Have the Biggest Crush On

written 6/28/18

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it's funny, you know —

Even though it's been years since I last lay in bed, crying over you, there are still times when I look at you and everything just starts crashing back in one enormous, relentless wave. All it takes is one unexpected moment — a stolen smile, an unprecedented meeting of our gazes — for me to remember everything we used to be.

Everything we weren't.

Was it really just two years ago, when my heart, my soul, the very essence of my being used to revolve around you? Sometimes it feels like yesterday. Other times, a lifetime ago. Sometimes I have a hard time recalling anything. Sometimes, I remember too much. From the day we met — a coincidence I used to call fate — to our first (and last) dance, to the night we shared doing nothing but watching the stars — everything, everything. I still remember the sound of your laughter, the way you flex your hands — and then shake them — out of habit. I still keep the letters you used to write me (it was a thing everyone did in camp, and the two of us merely hopped onto the bandwagon), the memory of the day you slipped one into my hands before disappearing on another one of your adventures superimposed in my mind's eye. I treasured your raw, blue-inked, handwritten words like a sigil.

I remember the feeling of your arms around me, the feeling of being loved, the feeling of finding home in someone who wasn't family.

I treasured it, too.

Back and forth, back and forth — that was how we went. We were a pendulum, and the monotony of our movement was both tiresome and inexplicably thrilling.

I remember everything like one would remember a bedtime story, a love song from 2012, a dream —

And maybe that was all it was. That would explain the sensation I felt when you'd confessed to me that night:

When you'd confessed that you loved my best friend.

Maybe the ice-cold spark that shocked me to the bones upon hearing the truth was what waking up felt like.

Writing in hindsight, it's actually difficult to describe what I went through, all those months after. Still we swung on that pendulum of ours, except now it was you who initiated all the momentum — I merely clung on in the distant hopes of reaching a point where it'd be easy enough for me to let go.

I knew I couldn't. I don't think you noticed at all.

Things weren't the same, although we did everything as usual. We still laughed. Shared smiles. Stayed up late texting, under our blankets, many miles apart. But it was funny: knowing that everything that used to be precious to me — everything I used to treasure like my life's secret — was no longer even mine. On the other side of the glass (one that had one of those stupid DO NOT TOUCH signs on it) you chased after someone else — someone who was too damn beautiful and perfect and lovely to hate.

Someone who — we both knew — didn't love you back.

Did you have any idea of the position you put me in? Perhaps you were too kind, too dense, to notice. I became the middleman in all your attempts to grab her attention — yet it was the most distant I'd ever felt, from either of you. You'd wait for me outside my classroom and rant about your unreciprocated feelings — and I'd offer empty consolations in return. Maybe — just maybe — because you were an embodiment of my feelings, too.

And I couldn't come crying to you about those, could I?

There were times when I despised my friend with all my heart, sobbing in the shower because god why is this happening why am i so close why am i so far why doesn't she love him back why doesn't he love me

back —

It was the most tiresome thing.

You continued to run after the back of my best friend, and, under the cover of the night, I'd sprint after you. Sometimes I wanted it to end. Other times, I didn't. Because some part of me knew — yet refused to acknowledge — the truth: that this race the three of us ran, around and around in circles, was the closest I'd ever get to you.

Ever.

And it was, for the longest time.

I don't know when I stopped. Or why.

Maybe you'd finally leapt over a chasm I was too frightened to cover. Maybe, somewhere along the road, I'd slowed down. Tired. All that I know is I stopped chasing, stopped trying —

and it made me feel empty, for a long, long while —

And then it brought me peace.

I still carry that peace with me, every time we meet. Everywhere we go. As I walk alongside you on the way to the school gates, ranting about how pointless tests are; as I knowingly keep my distance a few steps behind while you attempt to strike meaningful conversation with my best friend. It's still a weight on my chest, of course it is — although now, it's something I've grown accustomed to — welcomed, even. This time, the line I've drawn between you and me is crystal clear. It doesn't matter, if I'm the only one who knows of it.

It can be my little secret, as long as it keeps me away from you.

Don't take it the wrong way (you probably won't — you're too dense for that) — I still treasure everything we've been through — although now, it's for the best that I keep it under lock and key.

Maybe for a while.

Maybe forever.

I won't lie — you were probably the biggest crush I'd ever had. Sometimes, in the middle of laughing at a joke one of our friends crack over lunch, all I hear  is your laughter in my ear. Sometimes your face is still the first I search for in a crowded room. Sometimes I catch a smile you give my best friend — and catch myself wishing it were for me instead.

Only sometimes.

And that's the funny thing about it all, don't you think? How fate brings two people together, tangles them up in the cruelest way possible, and then straightens everything out again like nothing ever happened? How it's possible to meet then like then love then utterly, completely hate someone — and then be forced to coexist with them after the whole escapade?

How people like us are forced to live with the memory of it all, and no assurance whether the other person shares it too?

It hurts. Just a bit, but not enough for me to wish it never happened.

It still remains as one of my life's most precious memories — one of the things I'll always remember.

And maybe — just maybe — under every glance laugh touch joke whisper hug smile — you haven't forgotten, too.