Love is Not Bullshit

29⎮Goodbyes

I barely saw Julian for the rest of the summer. He was on my mind relentlessly and since I couldn't be close to him in this moment, I couldn't know how he was feeling this precise morning, I went back to the beginning. 

I thought back to my first fantasies when he was Katia's boyfriend and I orbited around them like a lost astronaut searching for a planet that wasn't yet on the maps. I thought back to the start of the year when I didn't give myself the possibility of dreaming anymore; Katia was gone and with her their relationship and that should have meant that the biggest obstacle between I and Julian had been removed. And yet, on the night of Adrian's birthday party I had discovered that I was the biggest obstacle to my dreams. It wasn't Katia or any other girl, it wasn't even about whether Julian could ever like me back. It was about having the courage to accept that not only I liked a boy but that I could act on it. I've always been afraid of my dreams becoming reality. One thing is dreaming in the comfort of one's mind, safe in the knowledge that all your thoughts will remain yours only unless you decide to share them. When they become reality, they move away from your control, your dream ceases to be something you can model and reshape as you like, it becomes something exterior to you. After I kissed Julian at that party, I had the possibility of allowing what I had fantasised about to materialise in front of my eyes but that meant losing my hold over it, I didn't know what would happen. I thought back to how sincere he'd been with me, not hiding behind what he felt, what he wanted, but wearing his emotions on his face. Maybe that was why I liked him so much, he wasn't afraid to like me, he wanted me to know how he felt.

I wondered how he could be so open about his feelings towards me while keeping all his other emotions guarded. Maybe because he'd made himself vulnerable to me on this front, he didn't want to expose all of himself. But what is a relationship if not two people coming undone in front of each other. I'm not saying that two people in a relationship should know everything about one another but if not open books, they should at least want the other person to flip through the pages of said book. I was aware that the time we had spent together was only a paragraph of his book. And maybe that paragraph was significant, maybe it was written in bold or cursive writing to show how it impactful it had been even if brief. But at the end of the day I knew it was only a paragraph in what I knew would be a rich, exciting book. Maybe Julian had wanted me to look through the pages, to read between the lines and understand how he was feeling, what thoughts he was thinking. I don't know if I was looking with the wrong eyes, maybe for too long I'd regarded him as a mystery to be solved, a closed box I had to open and he wasn't a mystery at all. Maybe he was just a boy with his fragilities and insecurities like all of us. If I'd just listened, maybe, I would have heard his unspoken words. 

I looked at my parents and how their small smiles, their long silences, their whispered words, their soft kisses, the way they looked at each other... all of that said I see you, I understand you, I love you. Maybe I didn't see Julian, I was blinded by myself, by my own insecurities and fears about the future and I had projected that onto him. Without wanting to, I had added my own weight on his already burdened shoulders. I played in my head the conversations we had about his gap year. I should have listened and encouraged his attempts at creating something for himself instead of dismantling his hopes by pointing out each and every flaw in his plan. I thought back to when we would complain about assignments and exam pressure without seeing that his worry was slowly corroding every aspect of his life. I should have paid more attention, spent more time studying together, maybe that way I would have seen the tiredness in his eyes without dismissing it as normal. Of course it's always easy to look back and see where the problems were, in the moment you notice different things, pay attention to the wrong details.

I feel guilty that he was suffering then and I hadn't picked it up. I feel guilty that he's still suffering now and I can't do anything to alleviate that pain.