Conflicted Love Chapter 4

Have you ever looked at a picture of someone, and felt so happy to be able to see them, and so heartbroken that it's just a picture? I look at a picture of Lua, a girl I knew a few years back. I loved this girl, but she had no such feelings for me, it seems like their's a trend developing. 

Gorgeous girl, long brown hair sliding all the way down to her waist, beautiful dark brown eyes, and the best smile i've ever seen, even better than Katelyn's. I remember that she moved from Portugal to our town when I was twenty-two. She was a few years younger than me, a senior in high school. I met her through a mutual friend, and we became very close. Where Katelyn won't listen to my problems, this girl would. She listened and talked and acted like she truly cared, and in hindsight i'm sure she did. 

However, I am a c**t. I loved her, I needed her to love me. I would complain, more like bemoan incessantly, about how she doesn't love me, and why can't she? What's wrong with me, that the guys you do love don't have? She would tell me it's not my physical atrociousness, she would tell me that she adores me, cares about me, but just doesn't love me.

Desperation, that's the emotion that constantly filled me when I would talk to her. i would crack, constantly, crying with my head down on my old wooden desk. My hair flopping into my face, matted by tears. What the f**k is my problem? Why can't anyone love me, and why can't I not care? 

It was just about two years before she'd had enough. I realize now why she decided that we should never talk again. I mean this is a girl who did care about me, but had to constantly be berated with brazen accusations like 'I know you don't care about me, you're just using me as some entertainment while you wait for someone you actually like to show up.' I guess, in some way, I did to her what I was angry at her for doing to me. She cared about me, and I rejected her. I didn't reject her as a girlfriend, or a lover, but, I guess, I rejected her as a friend. I wanted to be her friend, but the thought of how I wasn't good enough to love turned me into, or perhaps more appropriately, unleashed my seething douchiness on one of the most amazing women i've ever known.

What i did to her was so much worse than what she did to me. She didn't, or couldn't, force herself to love me, that was her crime. And as punishment I stood in front of her and spat on our friendship, not intentionally, not because I didn't want to be her friend, but because the demon inside of me had to be unleashed. I don't know if I had no control over it, or if I just tell myself that to absolve some responsibility. Whatever the case, I know I wanted to be her friend if that's all she could see me as. I wanted to be there for her, and I wanted to love her forever, even if it was unrequited. 

I don't blame her for not loving me, and I don't blame her for cutting all ties with me. Blocking me from her life, and moving away, even though that was for school not because of me. But I still have a picture of her, I keep it in the back of my closet, behind clothes that are too small, and the old VHS tapes. I have one picture of her that I took. She's leaning against the door of an old warehouse, where we were going to an art show, her hair dangling down to her lower back, the corner of her cheeks being pushed out by her lips, and her smile being as magnificent as it ever was. I look at this picture, and I smile, but I also feel like i killed something inside of me. That there was something wonderful that I had in my heart, and I stabbed myself through to remove it. 

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I feel a bit of resolve this morning. I mean, i'm angry, which is a much more useful emotion than sad and depressed. Katelyn and I had planned on going to a play last night. Some modern day imagining of The Count of Monte Cristo. I had asked her if she wanted to go for the last three days, even though it'd originally been her idea, and she kept saying yes. She said yes everyday until the day of the play. At least she didn't say on the day of the play that she didn't want to go, she just didn't say anything at all. 

My messages went unanswered, until 7 o'clock this morning. That's when she told me that she'd not been feeling well, that she had woken up feeling like s**t, and went back to sleep. Unfortunately she didn't wake up until after the play would've started. I mean, I guess that makes sense. Even though I sent my first text to her at 8am yesterday, my second at noon, third at two, and my last at five. On top of Facebook messages in between those times. I guess it's possible that she woke up, felt too bad to check her phone, felt too bad to go on her computer, and was so physically trashed that she couldn't be expected to think about maybe telling me she wasn't going to go.

I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the night before she'd had her mouth glued to the neck of some guy while his hand was up her skirt at a party. So what if I had to console her as I drove her home because he'd decided that they shouldn't go back to his place. That's what friends do, right? I mean sure, I was kind of unhappy that she thought that it wasn't rude to let some guy wet his fingers in front of me, knowing how I feel about her. I guess that's just me being selfish though. I mean, at least I know my place, i'm the guy who has to hold her, after sitting in my car for thirty minutes, at four in the morning, waiting for her to get tired of feeling his mostache in her mouth and his fingers in her c**t.  

I had to hold her though because she was crying. I mean, i'm not surprised, who wouldn't cry after such rejection, after being treated with such disregard? I'm sure there is no way that she got ahold of him, or vice versa, and went over to his house last night. I'm sure i'm just being ridiculous to think that my best friend would blow me off, leave me alone holding two tickets to a play she wanted to see, while she went over to some stranger's apartment to get fucked. No way she would do that, she's my friend.