kagablog

It was becoming one of those things. In her mind it was over.

She had run away, gone across the world to Australia to be in a band, it was a huge opportunity blah blah blah. They always knew it was coming, he supposed, it was one of those unspoken things that they both knew was there. He secretly hoped that since she never brought it up, she would change her mind. She avoided it for only one reason; she didn’t want to disappoint him and break his heart, but she knew she would.

It wasn’t that she didn’t love him; for the better part of three years she was more than positive that she did. There were times when she was sure she loved him so much that it would physically hurt her. On those nights, when she lay in her single bed waiting for him, wondering if he was with someone else, wondering what would happen to them, if he really loved her, she was convinced her heart would literally burst. He’d put her through a lot at first, but she’d stayed with him. She was convinced they were right for each other. She was convinced she could help him.

He knew he’d made her wait a long time. He remembered the first time she told him she loved him, they were drunk. She had a dark red ring of red around her mouth. She touched his hair around his ear. She made eye contact then stared out the window.

He thought she was just saying it, had only been a few months. Afterwards he wondered if she knew him well enough to mean it. He suspected that she didn’t. Maybe she wanted it to be true. Maybe on some level, so did he.

She felt that, she knew he wasn’t ready, knew that one day he would be, so she waited.

She cried a lot. She got drunk with her friends and made out with random boys in clubs.

Her friends took pictures of it, and bragged to him. She was trying to hurt him, but he never showed her how felt. He’d shrug his shoulders. He’d tell her they weren’t committed to each other, that she was free. She didn’t feel free. She felt anchored down, tied and bound to feelings that felt entirely involuntary. She tried to take space. She took holidays with friends. She tried not talking to him for weeks. She went on real dates with guys who had real jobs, guys who offered to buy her dinner and presents. Her mom met and liked a couple of them. She thought it would be so much easier to have feelings for them, and she tried to, but she couldn’t make herself.

He spent a lot of time alone. He read a whole collection of plays. He drew. Sometimes he got drunk with his friends, and other times he hung out with his female friends, the ones she was jealous of. Sometimes they hung out one on one, other times in groups of three or four or five. He continued calling them honey and darling. It was easier because they didn’t mean anything to him. When he spoke to her, he just called her by her name.

Petra. His tongue popped over the p. She liked the sound of it, the way he said it. Somehow, he made it sound beautiful, exotic even.

She was jealous of all of them, he was right. She spent hours dissecting the conversations she overhead him having on his cell phone. It ate her alive, made her feel less special, not just to him, but as a person. It made her wonder who she was, what the point of her life was. It made her hate them, and hate herself for feeling that way.

She wondered if he’d slept with them, or made out with them or fooled around with any of them. She wondered if it mattered. She wondered if any of them were in love with him too, if they’d told him and he pretended he hadn’t heard them either. She wondered if any of them would continue to pursue it, pursue him, sit waiting, even as they pretended they didn’t. They were all intelligent, like her. She knew because she knew them all.

It took him a while but he woke up. She dated other people, one a little more seriously than the others, and it hit him. If he didn’t get over his crap, his fears, his bullshit, his past, he would lose her. I mean, enough with the self pity, he told himself. Get ahold of yourself man. Go get the girl. So he did. It took some work, some winning over. They were deliriously happy for a while. They told everyone how much they loved each other.

He felt the need to shout it out, tell everyone, call her his girlfriend, his love. It was like that then. He needed to make up for lost time. He had to make it up to her. They both felt it, even though she never said it, she never admitted it. But it was there. He had been selfish once, so she reserved the right to walk away anytime. She didn’t think she would, didn’t think she could, hoped that he would take it better, hoped and prayed that he would come with her. Deep down she knew he couldn’t. She pretended that it hurt less than it did because it was easier. The truth is, it was the only thing she could do. She was seeing the world. She was living her dream. She was experiencing all the things she’d read about, visualized, all the things she’d always wanted to do. It was just the beginning, she knew. Just the start of the life she wanted. The thing is, she’d always imagined that she’d have the life she wanted with him. She always imagined that they’d get married, have a nice house by the beach, raise kids who were artsy like them, but more practical.

He used to picture it with her too, they used to talk about it all the time. It embarrassed him, so he didn’t admit, but he liked that picture a whole lot. Loved it even. Maybe more than she did. Maybe he needed it more.

They talk sometimes now. He still pines, sometimes in public, and sometimes she tells people, mentions it here and there, but she tries not to. It was her decision, even though it didn’t feel like one to her at the time. It felt like what she had to do. It felt like the inevitable. They still send each text messages sometimes. They talk on facebook and on myspace. When people ask, they say there are no hard feelings. When it hurts to talk about it, one or both of them change the subject. They always tell people that they’re still friends. It’s easier that way.