Parachutes
WARNING: Look away if you don't want to know too much about me.
How would I describe him? He isn't beautiful, someone you'd stop in your tracks for. He doesn't stand out. He always has this gentle expression, and laughs easily. To my fourteen year-old self, he was an existence that nourished me. No matter how sentimental that makes me sound, it's true.
I met him in high school. We were classmates and bonded over music like most socially inept kids. I mean, I don't want to drag him with me into my teenage social inadequacies, but there it was: he talked to me even through my shyness. I went to a private Catholic school that was co-ed, and as most people who did can tell you, it was all about athletics, parties, and being popular-rich kids of Manila style. Hell, our school was in a gated community where you needed cars with specials stickers to enter. It was most definitely a heirarchy. If you didn't smoke, do drugs, partied hard, weren't part of any sports teams, not funny, rich, or attractive, you didn't exist. As an overweight, bookish, and withdrawn girl, I blended into the background like a wallfower. I had a handful of girlfriends, but they weren't the show-off types either. Which worked for me, since I didn't want attention and buried myself in books and music anyway. I was okay with not being noticed.
He saw me, though.
During recess, he would sit down beside me with his guitar. Even from the first time he did that, I wondered if he was a half-something, because his hair was this shade of light brown that drew my attention. So were his eyes, under the bright whiteness of our classroom. I never asked him about it, not wanting to scare him away or say something weird. I didn't know why he sat down beside me, in the first place. It was an ordinary miracle.
It was 2003, and we were obsessed the most with Coldplay. He would scribble "MAKE TRADE FAIR" on the back of his hand, not knowing what it really implied, simply because Chris Martin did it. We were completely blindsided about our love for the whiny, forlorn, and sometimes frenzied crescendo of their music that I think we forgot how to be shy to each other. The friendship came easy, in the middle of lending each other our CDs and him playing the guitar while egging me to sing along. Sometimes, after my tennis trainings at the courts way back of the school, he would hang out with me while we downed bottles of Gatorade and split a package of Hansel cookies. If you asked me what we talked about on those instances, I wouldn't be able to tell you. It was probably pretentious talk about music. We couldn't get enough.
That February, or was it January, Incubus was coming to Manila for the first time, and we planned to watch it together with a couple of other friends. Before Coldplay, Incubus was our main preoccupation. We would blurt out random lines from ‘Make Yourself’-my favorite Incubus album-and were besides ourselves with excitement. I remember wearing a black shirt, complete with pin badges shouting my worldly punk references, low-waist jeans, and my favorite pair of red hi-cut Chucks, wondering if he would think I was kind of cool. It wasn't my best moment. He thankfully didn’t notice my outfit, because he couldn’t talk about anything other than how cool Mike Einziger was. He even shouted to my ear that he wanted to grow an afro like his. I think I laughed. Maybe that was horrible of me. But it was a fun night, and we didn’t shut up about that concert a month after. You never forget your first moshpit.
Well, to be fair, it wasn’t always music: he would also tell me about the girls he liked, wondering how to ask them out, and pried about who I was interested in. There was someone I was vaguely crushing on then: one of our batchmates who was a drummer and a rock climber who dressed up pretty well, enough to be flashy. Even in my awkwardness then, I loved dressing up and was already a fool for boys (because really, they were hardly men back then) who did it well. I had never talked to him, he was in all aspects a stranger, yet I had my eyes on him for something completely superficial. I doubt he even knew I existed. When I admitted it to my friend, he only grinned. "So that's your type," he said. Or maybe something else-I don't remember because all I knew was that I regretted telling him about it. Like maybe he would think I was shallow, or something.
My sophomore year in high school was bearable, thanks to him. We didn't eat lunch together or anything awkward that would cause people to tease us, but we were closer than just classmates who happened to talk to each other. I thought, with a shy ache, that I wanted to be even better friends with him. I never had a crush on him-this isn't that kind of story, at least not then-but I just knew that whatever we had was something I held in my hand as something precious, even then.
The summer before my junior year, I barely met with anyone and only did one thing everyday: play tennis like a crazed maniac at Makati Sports Club. I spent the whole summer with the Philippine Junior National Team coach everyday, completely satisfied with the exertion and his unique company. Coach Bobot was this boisterous man who fed me tennis balls and kare-kare while signaling with his Marlboro cigarette. He made me laugh a lot but also whipped me into shape. He would scream at me about my forehand being "noodles", his term for weaklings because noodles are soft (not the best analogy, but I didn't say that to him out loud), or shout "Takbo, Nina, takbo! Bawal mahinhin dito!"-run, Nina, run! No damsels allowed here!-as if I wasn't already panting and wheezing in exhaustion. But it was invigorating, and I thrived in that atmosphere. He was tough on me, pushing me to my utmost limits. No one has screamed at me as much as he did, or probably ever will. Maybe Coach Bobot has forgotten me after all these years, but I will never forget him and his rough, but well-meaning, regard.
Before you think I'm some kind of hotshot athlete, I'll tell you now that I wasn't. Far from it. I was simply in love with the sound of whacking neon yellow balls across the court and couldn't get enough of the feeling. Some people had rebellious phases in high school-I had a tennis phase, and that summer was the apex of my obsession. I wasn't amazing at it, but to me back then, there was no better satisfaction than hurtling balls across the net with other trainees in the brutal summer heat. It was a simple joy. I felt invincible.
There's no other way to say this without being insufferable: I lost a lot of weight that summer. It wasn't my goal, but I remember my mother being over the moon that I was "taking care of myself"-maybe that's why she had agreed to the exorbitant prices that a national-level coach required. I didn't miss the spark in her eyes whenever she saw me off to tennis, proud that I was finally going out of my bedroom and talking to other people, even if it was primarily a fifty-year old, pot-bellied athletic tyrant. The moment when I realized how much my body had changed was when it was time for school again. I dropped three sizes and had to buy a new set of uniforms, to my mother's delight. The face that stared back at me from the mirror was sunburnt, with sharper edges and eyes that suddenly seemed much bigger. It didn't seem like that much of a big deal to me, though. I still didn’t have breasts, and kind of still felt like a child.
I wasn't ready for the reactions I would get once school started again. During our third day back, I was in one of the bathroom stalls peeing. One of my classmates from the year before was talking with another girl whose voice I didn't recognize.
"Have you seen Nina? She's probably bulimic right?" she said.
"Yeah, she's the grossest," the other girl replied.
If I didn't know about the viciousness of teenage girls before that, well, I found out in the most spectacular way. I'm not proud of it, but I stayed in that stall for twenty minutes, crying, wondering if that was what everyone thought. High school was a subtle sort of hell. I still think that now.
Later that day was the first time I bumped into him, as we weren't classmates anymore. I can still see the surprised look on his face when he saw me. He didn't say anything though. He just drew me in for a quick hug and asked how I was. The conversation eased back into place as if the summer didn't happen at all and we didn't notice how we've both changed. He had seemed a bit taller, his laughter a notch deeper. I already felt better, despite the whispers of "bulimia" and "trying hard" that swirled around me like daggers. He chattered happily about Radiohead and asked me about the films I watched over the summer. Whenever I saw him rounding the corner, I felt relieved, like nothing had changed.
There's no getting around it: on my junior year, so many boys started paying me attention and asked me out in ways that I didn't have time to adjust to. I was so aware of how much of a cliche it was, to be this sort of high-school butterfly: the overweight nerd who came back the next year looking like a completely different person. It sounded like a joke, and I bemoaned the fact that I was the real-life heroine of that overused plot line. Didn't I watch enough movies like that? But I won't be a hypocrite and say that I didn't enjoy the attention, because I did. I was still a young girl, after all. But it was a struggle. I struggled with the fact that people were talking about me, saying things that were untrue: that my head had grown bigger because I was now suddenly popular with the guys, that I wasn't as smart as I seemed, that I only cared about being thin and puked in the toilet after every recess and lunch.
I was a mess, to say the least. There was no way I could get out of that unscathed, and I think I still carry scars from those days, even now. We were all kids, but then again, kids could be the most brutal people on the planet without even trying.
In the middle of all that ruckus, I somehow fell in love for the first time. He was one of the "popular" boys in school, although saying that now makes me cringe. It was nothing remarkable, just one of those puppy loves that had seemed like life and death back then. He was charming in this lazy way that was so encompassing, it even shaped the way he walked. Looking back, I didn't stand a chance against him: it was like he knew all of my buttons. I liked that I only reached up to his shoulders, that he was long-limbed, and always smelled good. He taught me how to shoot a basketball properly, how to kiss, how he wanted to be touched. He watched my tennis matches intently and I would cheer for him during his basketball games. I could pretend and say our relationship was completely innocent to make it seem like it was all gossamer, sparks and youthful playfulness, but it wasn't. We were both selfish. He hurt me, I hurt him-it was a boring, dismal story that followed us until our early college days. It was real, though.
To put it plainly, the story of my first love is a bitter pill. We didn't know any better, we were simply too young to be that in love, yet still, I can taste that heartbreak as if it was yesterday. No matter how young or old one is, a heart that breaks is something as real as the air people breathe. Some people can even hear it shattering out loud. The rare person will hand you shards of it back, even when you don't deserve it.
I heard that for the prom, my friend had wanted to ask me out as his date. He didn't ask me, maybe because I was falling in love then, waiting for that someone to ask me out. Even now, even though he never asked me officially, it's still one my biggest regrets that I didn’t go to the prom with him. Although regret is a big word for something that happened way back in high school, for an event that doesn’t even mean anything. He would have been a wonderful date, I think. After the prom, instead of making out in a hotel room like what eventually happened to me (I don’t know, I guess was acting out my high school cliché story with Mr. Fairly Popular-he very romantically told me that a buddy of his had fucked his date just a few minutes before on the very same bed. No, I don’t know why I still kissed him back), I think he would have taken me out on a drive and played the songs that we liked the best. Something non-committal like that. Or maybe we would have had sex, I don’t know. I can’t say these things for sure, especially now that I’m older. It seems like I was a different person back then.
It was senior year when the boyfriend broke up with me for the first time. Yes, the first time. I was a mess, and if I could give one advice to any high school girl, it would be not to fall in love. Your mothers are right-you are much too young. Don’t be stubborn, because I promise you that it’s the friendships that you make that will make or break high school for you. I would have been happy to redo high school all over and just have fun, no feelings involved. At sixteen, love is the last thing you need. Romance, maybe, and some fooling around to let off some hormonal steam, but love? Don’t touch it.
As I was saying, I was a mess, and all my other friends were sympathetic. I couldn't count how many times I heard “you’ll find someone better” during that period of time. I didn’t know why they were telling me something so painfully obvious that it didn’t need saying. It wasn’t that I wanted someone better: I wanted him, and he broke up with me. I was crying all over the place and failing a subject for the first time in my life to the point of having to do remedial classes. It didn’t help that everyone was saying, “this isn't you, Nina”. I mean, I knew I was screwing up big-time, but I just couldn’t help it. I was crushed.
The next day, my friend, who had kept a respectful distance from me and my ex-boyfriend when we were together, stood there in front of me, and I understood that he knew. It was a crowded corridor, right before the bell rang in the morning. He didn’t care that anyone else saw as he wrapped his arms around me. Maybe I looked like I was on the verge of crying, again. I felt him squeezing me tight. It was brief, yet I was surprised by the warmth I found there. Time stopped in that corridor, and for a moment, I felt a semblance of okay. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I wonder if he knew just how much he helped me, that day.
As we moved on to university, there were other boys that came into my life. Relationships and half-relationships that had to happen in order for me to grow up. It was like I had this self-destructive streak all along and I had to cleanse myself of it. Needless to say, I got hurt a lot. More than half of the blame is on me, though. It was as if I wanted to be hurt, and I attracted all the wrong ones because of it.
I saw myself in a different light whenever we met up, though. We rarely saw each other then, but somehow, managed to squeeze in a meet-up every couple of months. Nothing changed, we were still hung up on music-it was The National when we were in college, maybe because it was just the right amount of mundane and fucked up. We still talked about our relationships with other people, our dreams, the random little projects we wanted to do. He even helped me color-grade my thesis film for free-and I don’t know about you, but that was so, so generous. He went to all my birthday parties (which were mostly lame excuses to drink myself into a stupor). He commented on my blogs in Multiply, saying that I should write lyrics for the songs he’s been writing. He was constantly there, even though we didn’t see each other regularly, and it was reassuring, in a way. I didn’t think it was because he was still interested in me, if he even ever was. We were just special friends, I guess, a leftover relic from high school. Nothing ever happened between us. He had a slew of girlfriends, and he would ask for advice sometimes. I remember thinking I was the worst person to ask. But he made me feel like I was still the nice, guilless girl he met in high school, and it comforted me to think that I was still that girl in someone’s mind. Even if it was untrue.
There was one time when he picked me up from my place and we had coffee at a nearby Starbucks. We both had our laptops, and we were just copying films and music from each other. As we filled up each other’s hard disks with our new discoveries, we talked about everything under the sun, in our usual comfortable way. When he stood up to go to the toilet, the sudden silence was jarring. I was newly aware that whatever we have, whatever linked us together, was tenuous and temporary. There was nothing binding us together. A sudden feeling of despair and acceptance lodged in my throat. It was one of those surreal moments, where it’s as if you are watching your life from the outside. Yeah, that’s what it felt like. That Starbucks branch was really cold, and I shivered in my thin shirt. When he came back, it was as if I already lost him.
When he drove me back home, I selfishly wanted to kiss him. How would those thin lips feel against mine? Would he gasp in surprise? Would he kiss me back? Shouldn’t we fuck, at least once? Those insipid thoughts zipped across my brain as we drove down SLEX. I didn’t have the chance to cherish what would be one of the last nights we hung out together, just the two of us, because I was so preoccupied by his profile, by the inevitability of not having him in my life. I said goodbye that night, and he smiled, like always, and gave me a hug.
Surely time was also a culprit. But mostly, it was probably just my rotten personality.
We grew apart, and allowed it to happen. If we weren’t connected on social media, I honestly wouldn’t have thought of him at all. The last time I saw him was a couple years ago. It was a birthday of one of our old friends, and I didn’t expect to see him there. He was in the middle of the living room, playing the guitar and jamming with strangers. Even though the room had a high-ceiling, everything was covered in smoke. When our eyes met, I gave him a little wave and he smiled at me. I can’t even remember what music they were playing-it was that hazy a memory. All I could remember was the smoke.
After their set finished, we didn’t even talk past “nice to see you again’s”. It didn’t occur to me then how irregular that was, how cold. In my head, it was just what it was: proof that human connections are temporary, and, in essence, unreliable. I had swept all of the warm memories under the rug by then, unconsciously. Like they meant nothing.
But I was wrong, yes? If I dug deep enough, he was a presence that I kept warmly, at the back of my mind. Like proof that I could care for other people, with no strings attached. But is that even true? Didn’t I expect something in return, even from him? From everyone else?
He's about to get married to someone who looks utterly good for him, if his joyous Instagram posts are to be any indication. And here I am, writing this short, what is it, episode, about our forgotten friendship-it reeks of loneliness, doesn't it? It just makes me wonder about the paths we choose to take, and how wildly those paths diverge without us even noticing. We just move along like we never moved anyone else’s hearts. Frankly, it's painful.
I just took the time to write this, knowing that it was real once, however muddled it was. Like, hey dude, I was twice in love with you, did you know? When I was sixteen, and when I was twenty. I wonder if you knew, and if you did, why you never said anything. Even from this distance, it's bittersweet.
You getting married has nothing to do with me, I'm not harping on that. I guess this was just a long-winded attempt to thank you for saving me in high school. No matter how far away we have floated from each other, you were a really, really good friend to me, and I know how rare that is. In another universe somewhere, a fourteen year-old girl didn't have someone like you and was lonely. You were a beautiful existence in my life.
I'm glad you saw me.
How would I describe him? He isn't beautiful, someone you'd stop in your tracks for. He doesn't stand out. He always has this gentle expression, and laughs easily. To my fourteen year-old self, he was an existence that nourished me. No matter how sentimental that makes me sound, it's true.
I met him in high school. We were classmates and bonded over music like most socially inept kids. I mean, I don't want to drag him with me into my teenage social inadequacies, but there it was: he talked to me even through my shyness. I went to a private Catholic school that was co-ed, and as most people who did can tell you, it was all about athletics, parties, and being popular-rich kids of Manila style. Hell, our school was in a gated community where you needed cars with specials stickers to enter. It was most definitely a heirarchy. If you didn't smoke, do drugs, partied hard, weren't part of any sports teams, not funny, rich, or attractive, you didn't exist. As an overweight, bookish, and withdrawn girl, I blended into the background like a wallfower. I had a handful of girlfriends, but they weren't the show-off types either. Which worked for me, since I didn't want attention and buried myself in books and music anyway. I was okay with not being noticed.
He saw me, though.
During recess, he would sit down beside me with his guitar. Even from the first time he did that, I wondered if he was a half-something, because his hair was this shade of light brown that drew my attention. So were his eyes, under the bright whiteness of our classroom. I never asked him about it, not wanting to scare him away or say something weird. I didn't know why he sat down beside me, in the first place. It was an ordinary miracle.
It was 2003, and we were obsessed the most with Coldplay. He would scribble "MAKE TRADE FAIR" on the back of his hand, not knowing what it really implied, simply because Chris Martin did it. We were completely blindsided about our love for the whiny, forlorn, and sometimes frenzied crescendo of their music that I think we forgot how to be shy to each other. The friendship came easy, in the middle of lending each other our CDs and him playing the guitar while egging me to sing along. Sometimes, after my tennis trainings at the courts way back of the school, he would hang out with me while we downed bottles of Gatorade and split a package of Hansel cookies. If you asked me what we talked about on those instances, I wouldn't be able to tell you. It was probably pretentious talk about music. We couldn't get enough.
That February, or was it January, Incubus was coming to Manila for the first time, and we planned to watch it together with a couple of other friends. Before Coldplay, Incubus was our main preoccupation. We would blurt out random lines from ‘Make Yourself’-my favorite Incubus album-and were besides ourselves with excitement. I remember wearing a black shirt, complete with pin badges shouting my worldly punk references, low-waist jeans, and my favorite pair of red hi-cut Chucks, wondering if he would think I was kind of cool. It wasn't my best moment. He thankfully didn’t notice my outfit, because he couldn’t talk about anything other than how cool Mike Einziger was. He even shouted to my ear that he wanted to grow an afro like his. I think I laughed. Maybe that was horrible of me. But it was a fun night, and we didn’t shut up about that concert a month after. You never forget your first moshpit.
Well, to be fair, it wasn’t always music: he would also tell me about the girls he liked, wondering how to ask them out, and pried about who I was interested in. There was someone I was vaguely crushing on then: one of our batchmates who was a drummer and a rock climber who dressed up pretty well, enough to be flashy. Even in my awkwardness then, I loved dressing up and was already a fool for boys (because really, they were hardly men back then) who did it well. I had never talked to him, he was in all aspects a stranger, yet I had my eyes on him for something completely superficial. I doubt he even knew I existed. When I admitted it to my friend, he only grinned. "So that's your type," he said. Or maybe something else-I don't remember because all I knew was that I regretted telling him about it. Like maybe he would think I was shallow, or something.
My sophomore year in high school was bearable, thanks to him. We didn't eat lunch together or anything awkward that would cause people to tease us, but we were closer than just classmates who happened to talk to each other. I thought, with a shy ache, that I wanted to be even better friends with him. I never had a crush on him-this isn't that kind of story, at least not then-but I just knew that whatever we had was something I held in my hand as something precious, even then.
The summer before my junior year, I barely met with anyone and only did one thing everyday: play tennis like a crazed maniac at Makati Sports Club. I spent the whole summer with the Philippine Junior National Team coach everyday, completely satisfied with the exertion and his unique company. Coach Bobot was this boisterous man who fed me tennis balls and kare-kare while signaling with his Marlboro cigarette. He made me laugh a lot but also whipped me into shape. He would scream at me about my forehand being "noodles", his term for weaklings because noodles are soft (not the best analogy, but I didn't say that to him out loud), or shout "Takbo, Nina, takbo! Bawal mahinhin dito!"-run, Nina, run! No damsels allowed here!-as if I wasn't already panting and wheezing in exhaustion. But it was invigorating, and I thrived in that atmosphere. He was tough on me, pushing me to my utmost limits. No one has screamed at me as much as he did, or probably ever will. Maybe Coach Bobot has forgotten me after all these years, but I will never forget him and his rough, but well-meaning, regard.
Before you think I'm some kind of hotshot athlete, I'll tell you now that I wasn't. Far from it. I was simply in love with the sound of whacking neon yellow balls across the court and couldn't get enough of the feeling. Some people had rebellious phases in high school-I had a tennis phase, and that summer was the apex of my obsession. I wasn't amazing at it, but to me back then, there was no better satisfaction than hurtling balls across the net with other trainees in the brutal summer heat. It was a simple joy. I felt invincible.
There's no other way to say this without being insufferable: I lost a lot of weight that summer. It wasn't my goal, but I remember my mother being over the moon that I was "taking care of myself"-maybe that's why she had agreed to the exorbitant prices that a national-level coach required. I didn't miss the spark in her eyes whenever she saw me off to tennis, proud that I was finally going out of my bedroom and talking to other people, even if it was primarily a fifty-year old, pot-bellied athletic tyrant. The moment when I realized how much my body had changed was when it was time for school again. I dropped three sizes and had to buy a new set of uniforms, to my mother's delight. The face that stared back at me from the mirror was sunburnt, with sharper edges and eyes that suddenly seemed much bigger. It didn't seem like that much of a big deal to me, though. I still didn’t have breasts, and kind of still felt like a child.
I wasn't ready for the reactions I would get once school started again. During our third day back, I was in one of the bathroom stalls peeing. One of my classmates from the year before was talking with another girl whose voice I didn't recognize.
"Have you seen Nina? She's probably bulimic right?" she said.
"Yeah, she's the grossest," the other girl replied.
If I didn't know about the viciousness of teenage girls before that, well, I found out in the most spectacular way. I'm not proud of it, but I stayed in that stall for twenty minutes, crying, wondering if that was what everyone thought. High school was a subtle sort of hell. I still think that now.
Later that day was the first time I bumped into him, as we weren't classmates anymore. I can still see the surprised look on his face when he saw me. He didn't say anything though. He just drew me in for a quick hug and asked how I was. The conversation eased back into place as if the summer didn't happen at all and we didn't notice how we've both changed. He had seemed a bit taller, his laughter a notch deeper. I already felt better, despite the whispers of "bulimia" and "trying hard" that swirled around me like daggers. He chattered happily about Radiohead and asked me about the films I watched over the summer. Whenever I saw him rounding the corner, I felt relieved, like nothing had changed.
There's no getting around it: on my junior year, so many boys started paying me attention and asked me out in ways that I didn't have time to adjust to. I was so aware of how much of a cliche it was, to be this sort of high-school butterfly: the overweight nerd who came back the next year looking like a completely different person. It sounded like a joke, and I bemoaned the fact that I was the real-life heroine of that overused plot line. Didn't I watch enough movies like that? But I won't be a hypocrite and say that I didn't enjoy the attention, because I did. I was still a young girl, after all. But it was a struggle. I struggled with the fact that people were talking about me, saying things that were untrue: that my head had grown bigger because I was now suddenly popular with the guys, that I wasn't as smart as I seemed, that I only cared about being thin and puked in the toilet after every recess and lunch.
I was a mess, to say the least. There was no way I could get out of that unscathed, and I think I still carry scars from those days, even now. We were all kids, but then again, kids could be the most brutal people on the planet without even trying.
In the middle of all that ruckus, I somehow fell in love for the first time. He was one of the "popular" boys in school, although saying that now makes me cringe. It was nothing remarkable, just one of those puppy loves that had seemed like life and death back then. He was charming in this lazy way that was so encompassing, it even shaped the way he walked. Looking back, I didn't stand a chance against him: it was like he knew all of my buttons. I liked that I only reached up to his shoulders, that he was long-limbed, and always smelled good. He taught me how to shoot a basketball properly, how to kiss, how he wanted to be touched. He watched my tennis matches intently and I would cheer for him during his basketball games. I could pretend and say our relationship was completely innocent to make it seem like it was all gossamer, sparks and youthful playfulness, but it wasn't. We were both selfish. He hurt me, I hurt him-it was a boring, dismal story that followed us until our early college days. It was real, though.
To put it plainly, the story of my first love is a bitter pill. We didn't know any better, we were simply too young to be that in love, yet still, I can taste that heartbreak as if it was yesterday. No matter how young or old one is, a heart that breaks is something as real as the air people breathe. Some people can even hear it shattering out loud. The rare person will hand you shards of it back, even when you don't deserve it.
I heard that for the prom, my friend had wanted to ask me out as his date. He didn't ask me, maybe because I was falling in love then, waiting for that someone to ask me out. Even now, even though he never asked me officially, it's still one my biggest regrets that I didn’t go to the prom with him. Although regret is a big word for something that happened way back in high school, for an event that doesn’t even mean anything. He would have been a wonderful date, I think. After the prom, instead of making out in a hotel room like what eventually happened to me (I don’t know, I guess was acting out my high school cliché story with Mr. Fairly Popular-he very romantically told me that a buddy of his had fucked his date just a few minutes before on the very same bed. No, I don’t know why I still kissed him back), I think he would have taken me out on a drive and played the songs that we liked the best. Something non-committal like that. Or maybe we would have had sex, I don’t know. I can’t say these things for sure, especially now that I’m older. It seems like I was a different person back then.
It was senior year when the boyfriend broke up with me for the first time. Yes, the first time. I was a mess, and if I could give one advice to any high school girl, it would be not to fall in love. Your mothers are right-you are much too young. Don’t be stubborn, because I promise you that it’s the friendships that you make that will make or break high school for you. I would have been happy to redo high school all over and just have fun, no feelings involved. At sixteen, love is the last thing you need. Romance, maybe, and some fooling around to let off some hormonal steam, but love? Don’t touch it.
As I was saying, I was a mess, and all my other friends were sympathetic. I couldn't count how many times I heard “you’ll find someone better” during that period of time. I didn’t know why they were telling me something so painfully obvious that it didn’t need saying. It wasn’t that I wanted someone better: I wanted him, and he broke up with me. I was crying all over the place and failing a subject for the first time in my life to the point of having to do remedial classes. It didn’t help that everyone was saying, “this isn't you, Nina”. I mean, I knew I was screwing up big-time, but I just couldn’t help it. I was crushed.
The next day, my friend, who had kept a respectful distance from me and my ex-boyfriend when we were together, stood there in front of me, and I understood that he knew. It was a crowded corridor, right before the bell rang in the morning. He didn’t care that anyone else saw as he wrapped his arms around me. Maybe I looked like I was on the verge of crying, again. I felt him squeezing me tight. It was brief, yet I was surprised by the warmth I found there. Time stopped in that corridor, and for a moment, I felt a semblance of okay. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. I wonder if he knew just how much he helped me, that day.
As we moved on to university, there were other boys that came into my life. Relationships and half-relationships that had to happen in order for me to grow up. It was like I had this self-destructive streak all along and I had to cleanse myself of it. Needless to say, I got hurt a lot. More than half of the blame is on me, though. It was as if I wanted to be hurt, and I attracted all the wrong ones because of it.
I saw myself in a different light whenever we met up, though. We rarely saw each other then, but somehow, managed to squeeze in a meet-up every couple of months. Nothing changed, we were still hung up on music-it was The National when we were in college, maybe because it was just the right amount of mundane and fucked up. We still talked about our relationships with other people, our dreams, the random little projects we wanted to do. He even helped me color-grade my thesis film for free-and I don’t know about you, but that was so, so generous. He went to all my birthday parties (which were mostly lame excuses to drink myself into a stupor). He commented on my blogs in Multiply, saying that I should write lyrics for the songs he’s been writing. He was constantly there, even though we didn’t see each other regularly, and it was reassuring, in a way. I didn’t think it was because he was still interested in me, if he even ever was. We were just special friends, I guess, a leftover relic from high school. Nothing ever happened between us. He had a slew of girlfriends, and he would ask for advice sometimes. I remember thinking I was the worst person to ask. But he made me feel like I was still the nice, guilless girl he met in high school, and it comforted me to think that I was still that girl in someone’s mind. Even if it was untrue.
There was one time when he picked me up from my place and we had coffee at a nearby Starbucks. We both had our laptops, and we were just copying films and music from each other. As we filled up each other’s hard disks with our new discoveries, we talked about everything under the sun, in our usual comfortable way. When he stood up to go to the toilet, the sudden silence was jarring. I was newly aware that whatever we have, whatever linked us together, was tenuous and temporary. There was nothing binding us together. A sudden feeling of despair and acceptance lodged in my throat. It was one of those surreal moments, where it’s as if you are watching your life from the outside. Yeah, that’s what it felt like. That Starbucks branch was really cold, and I shivered in my thin shirt. When he came back, it was as if I already lost him.
When he drove me back home, I selfishly wanted to kiss him. How would those thin lips feel against mine? Would he gasp in surprise? Would he kiss me back? Shouldn’t we fuck, at least once? Those insipid thoughts zipped across my brain as we drove down SLEX. I didn’t have the chance to cherish what would be one of the last nights we hung out together, just the two of us, because I was so preoccupied by his profile, by the inevitability of not having him in my life. I said goodbye that night, and he smiled, like always, and gave me a hug.
Surely time was also a culprit. But mostly, it was probably just my rotten personality.
We grew apart, and allowed it to happen. If we weren’t connected on social media, I honestly wouldn’t have thought of him at all. The last time I saw him was a couple years ago. It was a birthday of one of our old friends, and I didn’t expect to see him there. He was in the middle of the living room, playing the guitar and jamming with strangers. Even though the room had a high-ceiling, everything was covered in smoke. When our eyes met, I gave him a little wave and he smiled at me. I can’t even remember what music they were playing-it was that hazy a memory. All I could remember was the smoke.
After their set finished, we didn’t even talk past “nice to see you again’s”. It didn’t occur to me then how irregular that was, how cold. In my head, it was just what it was: proof that human connections are temporary, and, in essence, unreliable. I had swept all of the warm memories under the rug by then, unconsciously. Like they meant nothing.
But I was wrong, yes? If I dug deep enough, he was a presence that I kept warmly, at the back of my mind. Like proof that I could care for other people, with no strings attached. But is that even true? Didn’t I expect something in return, even from him? From everyone else?
He's about to get married to someone who looks utterly good for him, if his joyous Instagram posts are to be any indication. And here I am, writing this short, what is it, episode, about our forgotten friendship-it reeks of loneliness, doesn't it? It just makes me wonder about the paths we choose to take, and how wildly those paths diverge without us even noticing. We just move along like we never moved anyone else’s hearts. Frankly, it's painful.
I just took the time to write this, knowing that it was real once, however muddled it was. Like, hey dude, I was twice in love with you, did you know? When I was sixteen, and when I was twenty. I wonder if you knew, and if you did, why you never said anything. Even from this distance, it's bittersweet.
You getting married has nothing to do with me, I'm not harping on that. I guess this was just a long-winded attempt to thank you for saving me in high school. No matter how far away we have floated from each other, you were a really, really good friend to me, and I know how rare that is. In another universe somewhere, a fourteen year-old girl didn't have someone like you and was lonely. You were a beautiful existence in my life.
I'm glad you saw me.