Self-Deception

Summer showers were, in a way, a rarity during this time. I narrow my eyes. It seemed as if someone was waving at me from the other side yet I couldn't decipher their blurred features. My poor eyesight was to blame, and maybe so was the rain. The beady droplets stained the glass pane of the convenience store in such a way that it distorted the view of the street, rendering the people on the other side unrecognizable. I sat there, Shin Ramyun in one hand and chopsticks in the other, humming to the melody of the upbeat song that blared on the store's speakers. Uncaring whether the identity of the waving person was left to obscurity, likewise with my own.

I glanced at my phone once and then twice, desperately hoping for a notification. "He loves me," I reassure myself. "He's probably busy" were my futile attempts at soothing my anxiety which were laughable, embarrassing even. The rain continued, yet the sun and the sweltering heat remained untethered and indifferent to my pain. What an oxymoron this weather was. I distracted the naïve 15-year old me by observing the couples that came inside the convenience store, even if my chest swelled with envy. I would have burst into tears out of frustration if I were to stare any longer. True love waits or so the optimistic say. "This was probably a test of faith," I think to myself. What a joke. He texted me a month later. His reply was curt but it was stupidly more than enough for me to keep hoping and praying for any sign of consistency. "It's alright, we all have priorities," I replied. It took three months before he replied. At this point I demanded for an explanation.

Apparently he found pleasure in the idea that someone was desperately in love with him. He was confident enough to the point that he believed that I could absolve him of all his sins, like a confessional to a clergyman. He was a man who cared not about the reprecussions of his actions even if it would've almost driven me to suicide. Still, I convinced to myself that I loved him. My mind listed a hundred reasons why I should stay with him, none of which were ever truly convincing.

To realize that, at that certain point of my life, my entirety was equal to a text message was humiliating. I fell in love with a selfish man and convinced myself that he would stay by my side even if the entire world turned against me. It was truly inconceivable how I fell in love with someone who found delight in something so sadistic. Still, people like me remain foolishly enamored by empty promises, obscured by things too good to be true, marred by droplets of rain that blurred my view of the street, or by mirages on another sweltering summer afternoon where I allowed myself to fall in love and fool myself once more.