Who can comprehend? If the one that’s ever gotten the closest I’ve pushed them away.
Am I destined to be numerously accompanied, yet privately alone? How can it stop?
There is no one to run to for help… no one talks my language.
If I once asked you to take me away once I got off the track, today my mind has tricked me to push you off from it.
I’ll watch you fall into the dark so that my mind and soul can once again be healed.
Once again, like always."
Interacted Wings
Chapter 1: Abstained Afterimage
I remember the day I realized my feelings for you were real, that day where I felt the world could get lost in their ignorance to the extravagant and modern so-called “demoralization”. I decided I would turn around to face them all, no matter the number. There is nothing that can intimidate me now that I’ve found my original preferences which I’ve hidden over the years from estranged influence.
What about the time left? Yes, I am to wait for long enough to expose myself to loss of consciousness. I pray to the alternate person of me that I can stay in a monotonous state of mind until the moment awaited becomes a reality. If that day is to come and make us both feel happy, I’m eager to fight myself until then. I’m optimistically determined not to look back to previous events. My last countdown ended in disappointment for the other, I walked away in shame and pride as usual. Nothing rare, I’m used to being the one to turn away.
I wonder though, I have been able to wait up until now. Years have passed and I can only love you more. Distance means no burden. I believe that, perhaps, that is the reason why my heart hasn’t stopped beating for you. Your voice is sufficient to brighten my apathetic days, just by knowing your eyes can see no one but me enlightens me thoroughly.
I speak what comes to me when I project the image of you in my mind, from beautiful words to saddening facts. Yet, look at me! I’ve fought to keep you for myself along the creeping years and your unstable decision taken. I understand you’ve left behind someone meaningful and I might not yet be able to fulfill such a distinguished place in your heart. I will keep on fighting though, because I believe that this feeling born is something I have been looking for.
My beloved, time may stand before me and my corrupted ways of loving, but I stand with faith to prove to you I can become what your heart requires and deserves. I will not cease until I see that pure and luscious smile of yours drawn in the one I love the most. Please forgive me if I nullify my own determinations, understand that it would only mean I wasn’t worthy.
The sound is off. I am welcomed back to reality by the consecutive sound of the falling rain. I notice it was after the time I was supposed to call my friend, Jessie. I rise from my bed and walk towards the door willing to find the house phone and call her. I open the door slowly and walk out to the hallway between my room and the living room. The house is silent now that my music has ended. It’s on gray days like these is when I miss ‘her’ the most, days where I am left alone in the house on a cold and rainy day of winter. I have no desire to speak to Jessie at this moment, yet I had failed to call her for the past two days. I grab the phone while I look around the kitchen.
In the dept of my thought I had forgotten the world is still moving. I blew off the fact that I have to eat twice a day. I walked to the refrigerator and looked unenthusiastically inside of it. By my common dislike of availability, I closed the door of the fridge and grabbed a bag of chips and bottled water. I walked back to my room quietly, thinking of everything in a blank state of mind. I lied in my bed and dialed Jessie’s number.
After a minute of ringing, Jessie picked up her phone. We started babbling about her casual and nonsensical concerns. I forced an understanding voice while I intended to blend into her abstract world. It is interesting how her world revolves around superficial circumstances while I live in such an austere, extraordinary dimension. I listened to unimportant information from my friend as I wait for the perfect excuse to hang up.
Once the light of the sun is no longer visible and the night falls quicker behind the stormy clouds, I sneak out of the pointless conversation and finally escape from it. I close my eyes after I bitterly watched two hours pass by unused. How tiring and sad to force double masks for me and the world.
Temptation once again fused within my solitude. It’s in times like these when me and my opposed mind think as one. I no longer wish to talk so I refuse to call anyone else, this including my love, Eve. I prefer to power up my computer and hope for her to be there. I look through my unorganized list of contacts wishing she was among those names, yet the only name I could see was one I felt involuntarily attracted to.
His name was simple, yet allusive. I picked him out of the indifferent list of people and began to talk to him. He stands higher than most in matters of sentimental importance since he has been the only one that never hated me after my unsupported refusals. Every time we spoke in deep thought felt like if, for a moment, he could cruise around my world with understanding interest. We got closer word after word but only to an accustomed distance, once he tried to dig any deeper inside my mind, I closed myself and locked him out as if my alternate self rejected his proximity. I somehow cherished him, the one whose identity could not be renamed for matters of intriguing dignity.
I unconsciously emit devotion to that comparable person until the time comes again that I flush away all existing ‘temporary’ emotions. The lack of loving company drives me into an endless cycle of rejection, which I illustrate as an eager desire to be loved but an inner contradiction to what I shallowly believe in. Once again I’m left in confusion before my late bed time. With my eyes closed, I navigate my demented dimension before finally I fall into sleep to the endless sound of the rain.
[ The World ]
I came back from the place I can freely radiate my social behavior. This is where I meet my daily acquaintances with cheerfulness after moments of stupid, mental concerns. I wonder what my flower is doing out in the real world.
I stay quiet waiting for my music to start playing as I get lost in thought for one minute. Somehow, I’m pleased that my disposal of useless feelings has happened again, soon enough to considerate the love I claimed towards ‘him’ another temporary emotion. I have lied to myself as usual, thinking this loneliness could be permanently replaced with an online conversation of an old relationship. Everything is projected as garbage, errors that I’m not supposed to allow myself to commit.
I wake up in the middle of the night and felt as if I had slept for a long time from a glance to the past to the now unimagined future. Every reality that’s become part of my world is hitting me as it takes away the little desire I had to go back to sleep. My tears flow like the questions in my head. I am offered to see the truth and the thing that could have been.
Once again, I share my mind with a voice I call my conscious, a guide who would be seen by others who are strangers to this experience as a sub-conscious. This other side of me that allows me to see what my heart tries to hide, that dares me to confront what my principles of innocence would prohibit is talking to me as if I was having a truthful conversation within myself.
I wonder deep inside my heart from the influences of the mind, what is it that I want?
If I am to please my other ‘self’ from other’s pain and suffering, would it be enough to feed the revengeful memory of what once was?
Yes, I was replaced by the first person I liked and the one that would introduce me to love. His name was Daniel and he was one of the best-looking boys in our elementary school. What began as a curiosity of a child towards a physically-attractive person would end in the most memorable event of my life. Memorable was never being thought of as such a detestable word like what time and memories have made it today. My friends told him that I liked him without my consent. Soon, the whole class knew.
Since the day he asked me out it all began. Everyday I felt beautiful, I felt smart and superior because I had the boy the rest of the girls wanted. But yet again, we were no more than children.
It was until one day when the rain fell upon us like an open water gate and the small school sunk in mud and dirty water floods. I was meant to go home but I was scared my hair would get wet and look bad. I was afraid Daniel would change his mind about me so I waited for him to walk me home, that way we would both get soaked and it’d be no burden.
His eyes looked down to the watered sidewalk on the lifeless street we stood at. He murmured words not clear enough for me to understand fluently, yet, his expression told me everything. I didn’t want to accept the fact that he was leaving me because I didn’t know why. I suggest it was my reaction that made him see I wondered about his unexpected decision so he confessed he loved someone else.
I was too childish, he said. I was too scared, he said. We were in fifth grade and he wanted someone he could call his girlfriend and that, obviously, wasn’t I.
I collapsed for an instant and stared at him with no other expression but the one that told him I was going to break down. Time stopped, along with my strength.
Finally I broke down. My tears fell along with the heavy rain upon us. He turned away and began to walk back to the school. The image of him vanishing in the distance encouraged me to put my remaining strength together and scream at him. “It’s Adrianne, isn’t it?” My words were heard from the middle of the silent street.
After the exhausting and shameful yelled-out question I had gotten an answer. His opinions that clearly told me I was nowhere near to what she was to him. He said I wasn’t enough for him or anyone because I was ugly.
I let it go. The image of the one I loved blurred out among the cold and heavy rain.
He didn’t leave empty-handed because he had just accomplished to destroy me.
That day I cried the most tears my eyes have ever shed. Living life now felt like it had been written to go wrong for the rest of my days. I answered no phone calls nor was I home for any visitors. It was the longest one week of my life before summer finally came to put my suffering on pause. Not seeing him for a couple of months would help me pull myself back together.
I heard my friend say that he was glad his first kiss was with Adrianne and not me. Somehow these words hurt me less than I expected them to. I began to think of him as someone whose eyes can’t see beyond the appearance. What Adrianne was wasn’t more than a pretty face. Her arrogance caused for her to be seen like a spoiled boyfriend-stealer by my few friends. Of course the rest weren’t much different from her because they saw her as a lovely, lucky girl.
Summer went by quickly before the morning I heard the news that would brighten up my life a bit. Adrianne was moving to a foreign country, not surprisingly, our neighbor country so-called “The Land of Opportunity.”
It was the first time after so long that I could openly welcome a smile to myself again. The next school yeah began without Adrianne. Now it was Daniel and I again. The love I was expecting to discover transformed into the worse emotion I’ve ever felt. I was afraid of love and believed not in anything that could be considered part of it.
That year I never spoke to him again even when we shared the same class room. He always tried to talk to me by sending me silly notes through his foolish friends. I could do no more than ignore him and pretend my life was better without him. After all, he had taught me a lesson. I learned who I am and what I deserve.
Nothing happened in the whole year except on our graduation. After we were all saying good-bye he came up to me by himself. I could see in his eyes the sadness that we were all feeling but beyond those obvious and noticeable emotions, I could see nerves and interest when he walked up to me.
“I’ve loved you all along” he said. I stared at him with no expression in my face expecting him to continue speaking, but instead, he turned his back at me and walked away slowly as if meaning for me to catch up to him. I did not. Instead, I turned around and walked the opposite way. I was told by my parents I was moving to the United States the next school year and I wanted to let him know but I didn’t. It wasn’t quite the farewell I wanted to give him, but at least it was officially over. He had stepped out of my life getting away with his one last lie. He might be gone from now on and we might never see each other again, but one thing I’m sure of it’s that I will never forget him, and I surely will never forgive him.
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