Saturday, 16 May 2009

• A Generic Love Story pt. 4

  A Great Escape

  I told Will about the kiss the next time I saw him. Even though I suppose I didn't owe him anything, I needed to make sure he knew the truth, so that he would know that I cared for him.

  The hurt on his face... He was mostly upset that Clayton, his friend, would do such a thing to him. Clayton still feels guilty about it from time to time. I decided I couldn't do that to Will anymore, or cause Clayton to have to choose between me and his friend. I called Clayton that night and told him it wasn't fair to Will. I told him we couldn't see each other anymore, except as friends. He understood, but neither of us wanted to hang up, because then it was over. As soon as my phone hit its cradle, it would be the last time we could talk about how we felt about each other. We only got an hour of sleep that night.

  Instead, we talked about each other. We talked about the future. We talked about school, and God, and memories. We merely listened to each other breathe at certain parts, rather than hang up and let whatever we had go before we absolutely had to. I said I love you once to him, and he returned it. I'm not sure how I meant it, if I meant it romantically or as if I cared about him. He never asked, and I never questioned it myself. We never discussed it again. Clayton is the sort to take those things at face value, when that's how they're meant.
  

  Letting him go didn't last very long. He walked me to my babysitting job a week later, and we stood at the pond. He was going to leave me there and walk home by himself. I hugged him and we stood, arms around each other, looking at each other with our foreheads together, for the longest time. As I watched him I wondered if he missed me the way that I missed him. I wondered if he thought about me, or if letting go of me was easier. I don't know who kissed whom then. No one initiated the action, we just came together like there was nothing between us in the first place.

  I begged him not to go. He stayed, called his mom and said he was still at school and would walk home later. We stayed in the grass, in the sun, by our pond, kissing and talking. I realized I wanted him. I couldn't be without him. Will and I couldn't be together, we had so much to work out, but I couldn't avoid Clayton. I didn't have the will power.

  We spent a month in limbo. He wanted to ask me out, but couldn't, thinking of Will, always in the back of his head. We were never official, just seeing each other. Not many people even knew about us. I didn't want anyone else and neither did he, but there was always Will to think of. I still loved Will, Clayton knew that, and he was still Will's friend. He didn't want to hurt him anymore than we already had.

  Finally, Will told me he wanted to try to get back together. I agreed. It was so much simpler. I was enamored with Clayton, but I loved Will, so he and I should be together.

  I asked Will if he would mind if, when I told Clayton Will and I were going to try and work it out, I could kiss him one last time. Will said he'd rather I didn't, so I respected that. I wished for weeks that I had kissed him goodbye - I felt that lack of closure was what lead me to still be unable to stop thinking about him. We had never really tried being together. I never got to hold his hand in public. I never kissed him where people could see. We hid everything, and though relationships like that are exciting, desperate sort of things, they don't tell you anything about what it would be like to really be a part of another person's life. After all that time, I still wondered.

  But I loved Will, and I put Clayton out of my head as best I could, resigned to be friends with him and that's all. I wasn't about to lose him, and he wasn't about to let me.

  Things were good for a while with Will but we started fighting again. After months (I think it was early May, 2008) he broke up with me, after a long, drawn out fight in his room, with other people in the basement and everything. He yelled. I yelled. We both cried. He apologized over and over again and I kept asking, "For what? Why are you apologizing?" And then I realized, we weren't going to survive this one. He was apologizing for the fact that he wasn't going to let me leave that room still his girlfriend. He was apologizing, not so much because he was breaking up with me, but because he was breaking my heart.

  That time, I didn't call Clayton. I didn't call anyone. Friends assumed that I had done the dumping part. Will was asked constantly if he was okay, and I was loved, cared for, yes, but there was nothing gentle about it.  There was no nuturing, for the simple reason that they didn't think I was the one who needed it. After a few days, Miranda asked me, "Hey, are you all right about all this?"

  "No," I said. "He broke up with me. I'm not at all okay with this."

  No one had even bothered to ask. Which if you think about it is kind of flattering - they thought he wouldn't be able to break up with me - but it hurt then. It didn't help that I was in denial about it. I was certain Will and I would get back together. That we would be okay. But he was adamant (which is the best thing he could have been, looking back). We were friends. Nothing else. He wanted to move on.

  Once my denial was gone, I delved into what I suppose was a manic depression, though more situational than clinical. I went through stages where all I wanted to do was cry and lay in my bed. I didn't eat for days at a time. And then, all of a sudden, I'd be seized with the idea what I was wasting my life, and I'd go on an adventure. See a concert, explore around my neighborhood, do something stupid with my friends.

  I spent the summer with several guys, not wanting to be tied down to anything. As long as I had someone to make out with, I was happy, and that I was all I expected out of them. I loved Will, I didn't want anything serious. Clayton and I had developed what seemed to be a healthy friendship, and I would tell him about the people I was seeing, and he didn't seem too ecstatic, but was mostly bothered, it seemed, by the way they were "treating me." He didn't like them, he said. "It's like you don't even matter to them."

  What he didn't realize is that they didn't matter to me. They were my friends, yes, but they were friends with whom I could have nothing romantically serious, and that was all I wanted. If one of them had treated me really well, I would have ran away as fast as possible, for fear that they were getting too close. None of them were jerks, but we had a mutual understanding that whatever we had was nothing substantial. I couldn't deal with substance just then.

  I lost touch with Will that summer, and with Clayton. His family always travels, and he's the kind of person who is never standing still, always busy doing something. I was afraid to call him - we talked on the rare occasions he was online. I didn't want him to want me, and I didn't want to start wanting him. I didn't know it then, but I was scared of the way I felt about Clayton, and the way I felt about Will. I didn't want that pain again, and didn't want to put Clayton through it.

  He deserved so much better than what I could give him. He deserved better than me.

  To be continued... (By the way, I didn't have my laptop for a while because my powerchord broke, so that's why this took so long. I'm so happy to be back, you have no idea, haha.)

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