This Is An Apology | August 4th, 2013
Hi. If you don’t read past this first paragraph, I won’t blame you. I mean, it’s only been about five months since we last spoke to one another in person. And I know what you’re thinking. “You’ve got a lot of nerve” and “What the hell are you doing here?” I’m not expecting replies or sympathy or hugs or any of that bullshit. Fuck all of that. I’m here because I’m tired. I’m here because I can’t stop thinking. I’m here because I feel as if I should be. I’m ready for you to be angry. Don’t worry. I can take it. I can take anything you dish out because I stopped caring about what people said to me and what people thought of me and how people treated me ages ago.
There is a point to this post, and I’m getting there. I suppose I should start from the beginning.
It was December. There was no snow on the ground, but the air was still and cold. We stood together in the school theatre and my world came crashing down around me. Anxieties boiled to the surface, and I swear to God, you ignored it all. And I thought you’d be spending the night with me, but you left and never came back to my house. That night, I sat with my back against the bathroom door, stifling thoughts and clenching my fists to make my hands stop shaking. You’d known this moment was inevitable and so you ran in the opposite direction. How could you when all I ever did for you was hold your hand when you had moments similar to this? I didn’t realize how unfair these thoughts were until later. I guess I was just scared at the time. Scared and stupid and terrible.
The next day, while you and all of my friends in the theater group were away at a competition, I ended up in the principal’s office for fifteen minute, and detention for an hour, and lunch alone. Nothing felt right. Everything was empty because I wasn’t good enough to attend the one act event. Everything meant nothing to me. It was just one of those days.
Arrived home. I’d heard from you five times that day, and I didn’t reply to any of your texts. Quite frankly, I didn’t give two shits about what the fuck you’d been up to all day because I couldn’t shake the weight of loneliness from my mind. All I needed was to sort through the mess in my mind.
That’s when I started to feel that maybe there was something in my life that wasn’t good for me, and that I wasn’t good for anybody around me, especially you.
I wasn't angry with you for long. Mere days at the most. I never brought it up to you because I got over it.
On my birthday, the one day that I fail to feel anything like myself, you brought me a birthday present. My co-workers kept singing Happy Birthday and I wanted to break every bone in their bodies. I wanted to go the fuck home and sleep until it wasn’t my birthday anymore. I wanted to stop existing. And then you came in with a birthday present. All of the people I worked with had slimy little smirks on their faces, and I had never been angrier in my entire life. So I yelled, not at you, but at them. They all knew that I hated my birthday, and they all knew that they were making me angry, but I don’t think they realized just how much I wanted everything to end in that moment, because why would I be angry with you for giving me a gift? But that’s exactly what you thought, and I still feel like the biggest shithead in the world, even though I told you it wasn’t you I was angry at. It was them. I could tell that you didn’t believe me.
Over the next few months, we grew even further apart. I was getting angry listening to you talk about the lives of other people like you knew them personally. Like it was your business. There’s one conversation that I remember vividly, and it’s the one about the girl who moved here from Aurora. She walked past our study hall table one day, and then you guys were off. You hated her guts already and she’d only been with us for one short week. You guys were talking about rumors. They say she’d done stuff with guys. They say she’d been a part of a threesome. They say she’s a whore. Your words were laced with venom. You didn’t even know her.
Literally the next day, said new girl sat down right next to me in our human relations class. She said that since we had the same name, we should get to know each other. She begged me to let her read some of my poetry, because the day before I had said something about wanting to be a writer. Then somehow we got on the subject of boys. She’d told me that the guys here were a lot nicer than the ones in Aurora. She asked me if I was dating anybody and I told her no. She told me that it was okay, because she’d never even kissed a guy.
You know she switched schools because those rumors about the threesome were ruining her life, right? God, you didn’t even know her. “But it’s so hard when you’re shallow as a shower.” Remember that song? This line kept playing over and over and over again in my head whenever I heard you talk about someone else’s life. It made me angry.
Eventually, I got over this as well. Can’t be angry about something forever, right? I mean, she really was a lovely girl. I just wish you’d disliked her for all the right reasons, instead of stupid rumors. But then in January and February, I fell into one of my Interludes, during which everything feels meaningless to me. Getting up in the mornings was the hardest part because I couldn’t find a reason. The blue walls of my bedroom seemed to be pressing in on me. The air outside was thick and suffocating. Breakfast sat heavy in my stomach like an anchor telling me not to leave my house that day. On days I didn’t eat, the caffeine pills would eat at my stomach lining and by third period, I’d be tired again anyway. Everything seemed to lower in tone, like the world turned itself down, but only I could see it. Nothing was interesting, and why waste my time on things that aren’t interesting? I remember sitting in my room, staring at my ceiling for hours because I couldn’t bring myself to get out of bed. There was no point. It was a cycle. Wake up. Hate myself for waking up. Lay in bed for three hours as I empty myself. Get up when people start asking me why I’m still laying in bed. There were days that couldn’t end fast enough, and I’d find myself wishing that the day would go by in mere minutes just so that I could go back to bed.
Nights that I didn’t sleep were the worst. Thoughts of blood evacuation plagued my mind and there was nothing I could do to stop it from happening. I’d lay there with this itch under my skin for hours, but I never gave in. Not at first, anyway.
During the Interludes, I can only feel a handful of things. Dread, Anxiety, Fear, Loneliness, Emptiness, Frustration, and Anger. In that order. Every morning. When I stopped feeling these things towards the end of the day, all I could feel was Exhausted. There was nothing I could do to drag myself out of the Interlude. It just happened. It became a part of me and I had to learn how to live with it. There was no “let’s talk about it” or “get over it” or “sleep it off” because there wasn’t a thing that could fix it. I knew this for a fact because it wasn’t my first Interlude. All I had to do was wait it out.
The worst part of this whole thing was acting myself. Pretending that I’d woken up that morning with a reason to take another breath and pretending that smiling and thinking and talking and living didn’t take all of my fucking energy was the most difficult thing about the Interlude. I couldn’t let anybody know that I didn’t want to function, so I convinced them that I was the one who put the “Fun” in “Functioning.” They bought it. Of course they bought it.
However, if there were times that I didn’t have to act myself, then I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t speak, wouldn’t think, wouldn’t react, wouldn’t interact. Especially if I was around you, because I thought you would catch on without me saying anything, because at the time, I couldn’t put anything into words. Words weren’t safe. Words reveal far too much and speaking wasn’t at the top of my List of Favorite Things To Do. I trusted you and I knew that I could tell you anything, but I just didn’t want to talk about it. I’d gone through this before with you, and you would always fill the silence with your own voice, but I guess this time was different. You hadn’t talked to me outside of school in weeks.
And so with Caraphernelia by Pierce The Veil on repeat during study hall, I would write stories about people who were sadder than me, living sad, meaningless lives all on their own with nobody to hold their hands. You were perched on a chair next to me in study hall, and you left me alone on most days. I thought you understood. I thought you were giving me space, letting me ride out this Interlude, letting me attempt to come out of it with wrists intact, but you didn’t understand and I couldn’t explain it to you because I didn’t understand either. You started pushing me away when I needed you the most, so wrapped up in your own fucking problems like you were the only one who was allowed to have them, but at the same time, I felt as if you were sick of me. I mean, we practically spent every fucking day together in our first semester of our senior year. You had your own issues to sort through and I didn’t want you to get tired of me. At least, that’s how it felt to me at the time. A month later, I found myself at the end of the Interlude. The color was beginning to seep back into the world. And then you had the audacity to accuse me of ignoring you when my silence went so much deeper than that.
How can you say that I ignored you when I felt as if I didn’t exist to you outside of fourth period? Speaking to me was never a forty-five minute window, when I was conveniently placed next to you at a study hall table. I was alive even when you weren’t looking at me. Out of all of the nights, the weekends, the days off, and holidays, did I ever cross your mind? Because I thought of you every day and how I didn’t have anything to say to you because I didn’t have anything to say to anybody and how you had things to say to everybody who wasn’t me.
You weren’t the only person who admitted to feeling as if I’d been ignoring them, but you’re the one that hurt the most. I feel like people forgot I existed when I wasn’t in front of them. The thing about people is that people do that all the time. People were never that important to me, but when I stopped existing to you, it was as if the Interlude turned into a lake and the thought of you turned into a weight tied tight around my ankle. I sunk down to the bottom again, and then I had a reason to feel the way I did.
And then you were gone. I was angry, so I let you leave. I’m still not sure who I was angry at. You or me? Maybe both.
A few weeks before graduation, you messaged me, like the idea of leaving high school physically hurt you. It never phased me. You started it with the words “I fucked up” and as I read on, I couldn’t stop thinking about how right you were with the first line, but the rest of the message was wrong. You still didn’t understand. So I responded. Sent you a poem I’d written the month before, but I don’t think you understood that either.
I started it with “We’re all on the verge of drifting off like helium balloons without anchors.” It means that none of us are forced to stick around. We could fuck off at any given moment for whatever reason.
“We are arrows pointed in different directions.” You and me.
“And years after it happens, I wonder if we’ll even remember one another.” I felt that since I’d stopped existing to you, the times we spent together would stop existing to you as well.
“Changing is one thing, feeling as if you barely know yourself, that’s a completely different story.” This was me acknowledging the Interlude.
“Things just started to fall apart.” Again. You and me.
“It was just my world, though. Everyone else was fine.” The Interlude.
“There was a big bang, and suddenly we stopped.” You and me.
“Every day was just another blank page, but where the fuck were our pens?” This was us as we stopped writing our lives together.
Fast Forward through the poem to “And oh, what a pair. There’s nothing you hate more than life’s bullshit, and there’s no one I hate more than myself.” This should be pretty self explanatory, but let me bottom line it for you. I get that life sucks for you, but that can’t be the only thing you ever pay attention to. As for the second part, that’s been a fact for years now and I doubt anybody even knew it because I don’t let it control me. Everybody has a box of Bright Sides, but the thing about Bright Sides is that they can’t take away the pain. They can only distract. I feel like you never once saw those things. You never once acknowledged the happy parts of your existence because you were convinced that there was nothing but shit in store for you, but it wasn’t true. Why didn’t you open your box of Bright Sides? Why couldn’t you see that you were not a mask made up of family issues and college class payments and a broken down car? Maybe then we wouldn’t be here.
The rest of the poem describes how it felt the first time we did this whole thing in sophomore year. I know it hurt. Oh, do I fucking know. Can you blame me for pulling the plug on things?
Then, you asked me if I even still cared about you. Of course I did, and you asking me that question meant that you still cared, and that made me angry. I told you that I learned to live without you, and that was the last of it. Did it hurt? Did it fucking hurt to read those words attached to the name of your “best friend?” Did it feel like the end? Did it look like the last five years of your life sitting on a sinking ship? Did you cry? Or did all of that only happen to me?
You wanted to know if we could talk about it and I wanted to know what the point was. We had less than a month left until we graduated. You're going to college. I'm not. You've got a future. I can barely see tomorrow. And like most days, I couldn't find the meaning. There wasn't a point. I mean, there was. I wouldn't be typing this entire thing out at four in the goddamn morning if I had just opened my fucking eyes and TOLD YOU THIS IN PERSON, but I thought I was saving us the trouble of leaving each other again. Now I just feel empty. Would you believe that emptiness weighs a person down? It's like a weight, riddled with guilt and anger that sits inside your chest. Emotions are weird because they're like, in our heads, but we can feel them all over, like tendrils leaking from the tops of our bodies and throughout to reek havoc.
And then I had to pretend that everything was fine. I had to pretend that seeing you walk right past me every fucking day didn’t feel like a punch in the gut. We danced around one another like strangers at a subway station, gathering briefcases and bookbags, attempting to get to our destinations on time. Just business as usual. I don’t think anybody noticed.
Fast forward a month or two. My phone was in my pocket. I was getting ready to leave work when I heard the sound of a dial tone. I checked my phone only to find that I was on the line with your number. I’d deleted you from my contacts months ago, because why would you want to talk to me after what I said to you? But I still had your number memorized. Still do. How the fuck did I call you if you weren’t in my contacts? I’m pretty sure I backscrolled through my recent calls list, because you were the first person who called me on that phone. Pocket dialed. I was on the line with you for 36 seconds. It felt like an earthquake, but it was just your number on my LCD screen. What hurt the most was the text you sent me, telling me to let you know what I needed if I’d called you on purpose. I couldn’t sleep that night. And I nearly called you back eight times.
Little things sit around my house that remind me of you. The wax mushroom you brought me from camp still sits upon my shelf. I can’t bring myself to get rid of it. Your cerulean jacket was wedged in between my bed and the wall. I found that in June. My sister took if so that I wouldn’t have to look at it. Letters you’ve given me still sit inside binders. Pages that you wrote your name on that I still have in my journals, tattoos that feel more like scars.
There's a few videos on my channel that you're in. I can't watch them anymore. They give me anxiety. There's one in which we're dancing to "Tiny Dancer" by Elton John in Hali's bedroom on a Friday night after a football game. Do you remember that? You probably don't. I have to hear that song every single night I work at the grocery store. The York radio station kind of sucks and they play seven Elton John songs a night. One of them is "Tiny Dancer." It never fails. I tried deleting the videos, but I can't. I might be able to watch them again someday without feeling like the world is ending.
Sometimes, I feel fine. Like this was the right decision. Cut negativity out of your life and you’ll be fine, and it's not that you were the negativity, it was that we were the negativity, or so I thought. But other times, everything hurts. Memories. Pictures of your face set me off like no other, and I want to pull a metaphorical trigger on all of these thoughts. The thing about Negativity is that I can never tell where it's coming from, but I know that it's there. And it's still here. Does that make you feel any better knowing that it was not you who was making me feel like I wasn't myself?
Fall Out Boy once sung "I want to hate you half as much as I hate myself." Except, no I don't. I can't. It's not happening. It was never meant to happen that way.
This is an apology. A public apology. Long overdue. Just another thing to add to the metric fuckton of fuckups I’ve put between us.
It’s not fair for me to blame my last anxiety attack on you and it’s not fair for me to expect you to read my mind and it’s not fair to expect you to understand what the fuck I was feeling. And it wasn’t your fault. God, no. Blaming yourself is never the way to go, and I won’t blame myself either. Shit happens to good people with bad friends and I’m so fucking sorry.
I’m sorry for not opening up and telling you why I stopped speaking to you. I’m sorry for pushing you away, because you most likely needed me a time or two and I failed to be there for you. I’m sorry for treating you like shit because you never deserved that. I’m sorry that I’m selfish as fuck and I’m sorry that my last words to you were me telling you that I could live without you and I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m so fucking sorry it hurts and I can never say it enough times.
Everything that happened between us turned into a double sided shotgun, and the walking fuckup that is me pulled the trigger and we both ended up hurt in the end.
I don’t believe that there is a way to come back from this. It’s a hot fucking mess. I won’t blame you for not forgiving me. I’m expecting you to not forgive me, and I'm sure all of your friends feel the same way. Fuck, if they don't think I'm a cunt, then they're wrong. I just need you to know that you were the most important thing in my life for years. You were a Bright Side when the world went Monochrome, or when a shadow fell across my world, and then you weren’t there. I needed you to understand and I needed to apologize. You asked for an explanation last time we spoke. Well here it is, all lined up chronologically, delivered systematically, with Technicolor phrases and words you deserved to hear months ago.
If you take anything away from this, let it be the box of Bright Sides. Don’t ever be afraid to open it, look at all of the things inside of it. A sonnet of Right in a novel full of wrongwrongwrong. You are alive. Don’t let yourself become a sad story because you’re way more than that. A three-dimensional, full color, flesh and bone, living, breathing, human being.
The thing about humans is that they’re like knives. It's the only way I know how to explain it. They sink in deeper over time, and when they leave, they twist themselves out of the hole they've created inside of us.
When they push us away, they leave gaping holes that throb and bleed.
When they come back into our lives, they push themselves back into their hole and it hurts all over again.
When we push THEM away and they try to hang on, we run into them on the streets, in the high school hallways, like strangers on the subway. There are new holes forming. They took us by surprise.
I'm tired of holes.
You're probably tired of holes, as well. I'm sorry for making a new one.