Palindrome

Six

Chapter 6

Am I capable of love?

More so, could anyone ever love me?

What is love in an essence?

A bunch of chemicals, words people scribbled onto paper, a definition of mutual happiness shared between two people, a generic Instagram comment when you have nothing to say. None of it makes sense. When I was with Abraham, I knew I liked him.

But I don't think I ever loved him. I simply liked him well enough. Real relationships don't settle for well enough.

So I've been told.

Nagi says she loves Nico. Ma says she loves Papa. I guess if you had to put a term on romantic love it's that adoration that fills up in someone's eyes when they look at their partner. That heart leaping feel when you see them. Gut-wrenching sinking when you're away from them.

Again, never been in love.

This is all a big whole concept conspired by the books I've been reading to up my English SAT score. Javed says it helped with his. He got a freaking 1580 on his first try so it's easy for him to talk.

On top of that he had the nerve to say it wasn't that big of a deal. But then again, Javed's always been that way. He undermines everything he's done because his parents never think it's enough. And I wish I could do more for him, I really do.

There's only so much you can do when your best friend lives miles away.

Javed and I knew each other from middle school. We were in the same homeroom class and had a bunch of others together. Yet we were never close. It took him a move to California to start texting me. I was organizing my closet in the middle of the night when he called me. When I asked, why?

He said, he felt like it.

So we were as inseparable as you could be over the phone for all of eight grade and freshman year. Javed would literally facetime me in the middle of class. Then sophomore year rolled around, and he started getting busy. Forget calling me, he barely responded to my texts.

He's been doing well though.

Is it right for me to complain? It's not as if he would do anything differently than everyone else in my life.

I still miss him.

In the way that I miss when things were simpler. I miss the time when he talked about coming over for the summer. I miss the time when he told me about this one cheerleader hitting on him. I miss the time when Ma thought we were dating.

Sometimes I wondered too, what would it be like to date your best friend.

We'll never know I guess.

Because I don't think he considers me his anymore.

Which I guess brings me back to my question of the day. If I feel this empty inside, I don't think I'm really equipped to love someone. All those poets, dreamers that tell these pretty tales of falling in love. When I wake up I know they're not true. Reality instead is split into fragmented pieces of glass. Those that chip at you. In some cases, ones that you use against yourself.

God how do therapists sit and listen to all this shit inside a person's brain?

I can barely keep up with everything in mine. They spend literal hours trying to puzzle out the pieces behind several people. Speaking of, therapy is a weird-ass idea.

Spilling your problems to a complete, figurative stranger doesn't make any sense. How is that supposed to work at all? Heck, I could rant out my problems to Siri, why pay five hundred dollars for someone to remind me that I'm loved with a good life. I already knew all that.

This could be the south Asian upbringing talking.

Mental health's a big stigma. It's not a real thing or illness to most. Shaming and exerting an insane amount of pressure on teenagers is but normal. Not that all brown parents are bad.

They're different, they don't understand because there's a way they've been raised. Immigrants who don't see eye to eye due to how vastly different two age groups are. At the end of the day, all that work they put in is for us. So that ultimately we can be successful.

Ma says that I'm accustomed to a certain life. Which is why if I ever wanted to become a starving artist, she would be strictly against it. Once again, it's not because they'd bad or that they don't love us. We're just distinct, parallel lines with the same slope.

If I ever went into therapy, I'd tank the entire time. There would be this overarching guilt I'd suffer from throughout the session. Another thing we'll never know.

I try telling myself I don't need help.

My mind tricks me into thinking I don't.

But I do.

And I know it.

Making it so much harder to deal with the unspeakable thoughts. I wish there were a set template to figure out if you're depressed. Maybe Mayo Clinic, WebMD, and Doctor Wikipedia could help me.

There's that one saying isn't there. You can't love someone until you love yourself ya da ya da ya da. But what do you do when you can't remember the last time you ever liked anything about yourself. I'd like to believe I don't outright hate myself. At the same time, I don't love anything about me either.

My hair's okay if that's any disclosure.

I'd never go as far as to say I love it though. I suppose this is the part where I search up the literal definition of love to even everything out.

Oh great, even google can't agree on a set definition for love. At least now I have a kick-ass list of movies that people have cried to. Time to go watch Fault in the Stars and indefinitely question why Tris is dating her brother in said movie. Sweet Home Alabama! Yay incest!

Which also causes me to wonder, can love simply be defined as a sorry excuse for the mistakes that we make in life. She was in love, so she did this. He was in love, so he did that. They were in love, so they condemned several people to death.

That got slightly dark towards the end.

Oops.

Basically I've learned that I shouldn't be writing my essays at three in the morning. I'd wager to say that a diatribe of my thoughts isn't what was asked of me. So, Mrs. Rivers, you'll be receiving a generic document filled with quotes from Shakespeare instead for my extra credit assignment.

Much appreciation,

Aarohi