PERFECT PLACES

Jonathan (8)

So all that stuff, about being lonely for most of the week except for when I'm with her, I wrote that on Thursday. It's Monday now. I didn't think I was going to be back, I thought I was done writing here again. But I'm back and I feel horrible about it.

Jess went to the student club on Thursday night, the night I wrote that stuff. She went out for drinks at the bar on Friday night. She went to a house party and then the club on Saturday night. Then on Sunday night, a night that we usually spend together, she went to trivia at the student pub.

I went to see her this afternoon. I knocked on her door and she opened it with a smile. It was obvious after talking to her for thirty seconds that she didn't find it weird that we hadn't seen each other in five days. She said she missed me and gave me a hug and asked me what I have been up to. She asks me this every time she sees me, right at the beginning. What I have been up to. Every time, I say something vague. I say I've been studying or hanging out with Cole (who I haven't seen since the party) or with the people on my floor (none of whom I've ever hung out with). She never asks for details about these things because I think she can tell from the way I answer that I don't have much interest in talking about what I've been up to. I want to be in the present, I want to know how she is and I want to make memories with her.

But the weekend had taken a toll on me. I hadn't talked or seen anyone since my one class on Friday morning. So this time, I answered her truthfully.

"I haven't been up to anything actually. I've been moping around my room all weekend and didn't really do anything. It was pretty lonely."

She looked at me with surprise, and then confusion, and then concern.

"You should have told me. Why didn't you go out with Cole or your floor or something?"

"I haven't talked to Cole in three months. I'm not friends with anyone on my floor"

I don't know why I was saying these things. I don't know why I was letting these words come out of my mouth. I was going against the rational decision that I had just made a few nights before. I was letting my emotions take hold of me and I really didn't want to keep talking. I had already said too much. I started thinking about ways I could backtrack out of what I had just said, but I couldn't think of anything. And before she had a chance to respond to me, I started crying.

I cried because I had never outwardly expressed these problems to someone else before, someone real. I cried because the emotional importance of the moment was too great to control, and I knew that admitting these things would force Jess to look at me in a different way than ever before. She would no longer see me as another normal college student, who had a social life outside of our relationship, who was spreading their time and efforts equally between people and engaging properly as a student. She would see me as someone who is a loner, someone who is depending on the only person they talk to to experience any real human interaction at all.

But I knew Jess. I knew that she was empathetic, and caring, and non-judgmental, and loving. I knew that she always tried to see things in a way that was as understanding as possible. She wouldn't just jump to the conclusion that something was wrong with me and that I was a loser who didn't know how to make friends. She would ask me how it all happened, what led to this horrible reality. She might even help me try to fix it, encourage me to get back on the right track. But I stood there crying with my head down for longer than I thought I was going to, because I was still terrified to look up and face her reaction and realize the reality of the situation and what it actually looked like from an outside perspective. I was scared to face the problem head on, outside of my head, with the only person in the world that I desperately wanted to not worry about me or look at me differently.