Me vs. You

No dawn

No day

I’m always in this twilight

In the shadow of your heart

"                    Florence and the Machine

 

 

There he was again. It seems every corner I turn he's there. Those same awkward eyes, tilted body ready to sprint away like I’m a demon, messy hair and that same look... fear. I turn on my heels before he can react and turn the corner heading down a different corridor.

What's wrong with me? Do I have a booger?

I duck into the bathroom and throw my bag on the floor. I wash my hands and look at myself. I'm not hideous, I'm not gorgeous either, but there's no reason he should fear me or at the very least give me that look...

Maybe he secretly loves me and can't bring himself to talk to me because he's afraid he's going to profess his undying love for me in the hallway in front of everyone!

...No f*****g way.

I'm an idiot for thinking that. He's a preteen boy who thinks girls are yucky. Why Lord! Why was I cursed to love him so! How I could I even love him, I'm only 11!!

I leave the bathroom and head to class; he’s long gone by now not wanting to run into me again for sure.

 

Every day it was the same thing, sometimes he could stand to say hi and hold a two word conversation with me but not for very long. It seemed he was always running from me like I'm Godzilla.

 

I am exasperated with this kid.

 

It was the beginning of the school year when I met him. I had just transferred to a new class, new kid status above my head. As I walked to my classroom, the kids seemed nice enough. I was 9 and it was 1996. We were all still innocent back then. All about Barbie’s, Transformers and Fraggle Rock, there was no room for bullying in our Care Bear existence. I figured I would integrate fairly well. I stepped into the room and surveyed it. Nice enough, a layout of desks and chairs and a section that was carpeted surrounded by a bookcase, for reading and sharing I presumed. And then as my eyes swept the room... I saw him. I stood frozen in that moment, and oddly enough the moment has been frozen into my memory. A standstill event that I will never forget. The moment I fell in love and the moment that would cement in me forever this man... this boy... my other half.

 

He was leaning on a chair looking around. His floppy hair, a gray shirt 1 size too big for his small frame, there was nothing extraordinary about him, if anything his lack of luster was what scared me the most. He wasn’t the glowing popular kid surrounded by all; he was a random boy casually awaiting the start of class. My mind was a jumble; it was racing faster than I could think. My heart was beating so hard I thought it might be visible through my shirt, my body temp rose and all I could think... I love him... this is the man I will marry... that's him.

In that moment a girl bombarded me, introducing herself and talking about the class. My vision of him was blocked but I had seen enough. I felt as though I lived a lifetime in that moment and I knew my life was never going to be the same. That boy... forever embedded in my mind. I would do anything I could to get closer to him... to know him and eventually make him mine.

 

Talk about obsessed.... yes I f*****g was. I was head over heels with him, I was ready and willing to do anything he asked of me. I would have baked him a cake if he wanted me too!! Ridiculous? Yes I was. I was also on the brink of sexual exploration and boy did he do it for me.

 

Truth was... as crazy as I was and as obsessed as I was. What I felt in my heart was overwhelming love... I had never known it before but when I saw him I knew. I had no doubt in my mind that he was the one for me. He was beautiful in my eyes. And if it weren't for self-doubt and fear I would have told him a thousand times that I adored him, but life is what it is and that day sparked the beginning of a long journey of humiliation that I would endure.

 

Love is a strange thing, it creeps up on you and grabs so strongly that you feel as though you are suffocating. At times it can be your only solace and at other times it can be the thing that you abhor the most. It can work with you and against you all at once. Through the years that I suffered from love sickness, I could not think straight. In the back of my mind I saw his face, at night I would stay up and think of him and what it would be like to have him. I was plagued; I was a leper to myself that I could not escape from. I had less and less to talk about, I began to realize that the things that once mattered did not anymore. I felt as though I was aging by the minute and I could not stop it. I was just a kid and I was madly in love with a boy who could not see me clearly.

 

Life is strange and unapologetic.

 

It throws you into situations that you wish you could escape from and like a bully it holds your head under water till you feel as though you would drown then it pulls you out and laughs in your face.

 

I spent my days trying to stand out in his mind, trying to make myself a special entity and not knowing if I was succeeding or failing miserably. All I knew was that I was a fool and I could not stop myself. I spent my schooldays humiliating myself and it seemed as though all of our classmates were aware that I was in love with him except for him. Every moment I spoke to him, touched him it was bliss. But for every time he spoke with me, it was double the times he ran away from me as if I was the swamp monster from hell.

 

That first year was the worst and the best. I went through some mania as I tried to figure out a way to stake my claim on him or forget him all together. I tried to rid him from my mind like a curse but every time I did he would somehow, without noticing, worm his way back in burrowing deeper into my heart like some kind of deadly spider. I would scream in my head, it’s over! I hate him! Never again! And he would waltz into the room and I would melt, inside my whole being would sigh and relax as if his very presence existed just to cause me this delicious torment.

 

It would be 3 years before we had a real honest to God conversation. We were 11 and it was 1999. We both qualified to be in an advanced math class that met before class at 7am. Me and him, we were always early. The first time, I got there early and the classroom door was locked so I walked to the stairwell to sit and wait. Once I pushed the door open there he was. Our eyes locked and for a moment I thought it would be me this time, I would be the one to turn and run like death itself was chasing me. But we were trapped, bound by common courtesy we were forced to stay perfectly still in that moment, we had to endure.

 

I probably scared him to death back in those times. He was always the one to sit and I was always the one to stand. He would never look up at me, never. All I could do was stare at him for fear he might just disappear in a blink. I fantasized about reaching out to touch his mop of hair but I resisted and internally this spark I had once held turned into a full on flame that I thought would burst through me, but it never did. He didn’t run and I didn’t burst into the big pile of crazy I was, we just talked. Talked about simple things like Pokémon and video games, things snotty nosed 11 year olds talked about.

 

Eventually a classmate found us out after a few of our morning rendezvous sessions and then it was over. Just like that in a blink of the eye it was all over, our routine had been shattered. The look on that kids face when he saw us, as if he were internally laughing. Laughing at us, laughing at how we were so oblivious to each other. I hated that kid, I hated them all. After that moment I had realized that for day’s maybe even weeks we had both met at this exact spot and enjoyed each other’s company, when had that become comfortable, I wondered.  

 

That same year I got my first boyfriend. It lasted three days and it was also the first time I used someone for solely my own benefit. My friend at the time convinced me to take pity on him and date him and I obliged because maybe just maybe I could incite jealousy in another.

 

Total b***h right! But how could I resist they had the same homeroom. It was my only chance to let him see; hey I may not be available forever. So I dated this boy and boy was he handsy always trying to hold my hand and wrap his arms around me and he even tried to kiss me on the lips! But f*****g hell I would let anyone be the first that was not him. So after the first day I avoided my “boyfriend” until we “broke up”. But that first day I milked it till I couldn’t any longer. I waltzed into their homeroom before the bell rang and wrapped my hands around my so called boyfriend while talking to friends. He could see me, he had a clear shot at me and I turned and with the best seductive eyes I could muster I shot him a look that could kill. I pooled all my feelings into that one look, that one look that said this could be you; this could still be you in an instant. We locked eyes and I saw it, saw the pang of guilt the pang of anger and regret. He stood then and I watched him walk out of the room. I immediately broke the embrace and stood up. I had succeeded but in what I thought.

 

So I soldiered on. We would pass each other in the hallway and not even glance at each other. Sometimes we would walk together down the block to the train station exchanging few words, I was just happy to be in his company. Sometimes we would steal glances when we thought the other wasn’t looking. I would never know that the day I made him jealous he went into the stairwell to calm down. I would never know that a mutual friend we had would go out and talk to him. I would never know that she would confirm to him that I liked him. I would never know that she would say she knows how he feels and he should just tell me. I would never know about those moments… well I wouldn’t know for a long time.

 

I never gave anyone a proper goodbye. I was 12 and I was going back to my old school to finish there before high school. During the weeks before school started a former friend called me to tell me that he told her that he did like me and that was all. I didn’t believe her, but deep down I did. I had forgotten about him, I had chalked it up to a freak time in my life the feelings I held for him. I would move on to greener pastures I thought, I would find other crushes, he was just a crush, just one crush.

 

How f*****g stupid I was.

 

I would never escape him. Like a flood he crashed into me that very first day I saw him, he crashed over me like a wave until every inch of me was filled with him, with his essence and without knowing it he left me broken and ruined. For every guy that crossed my path after him they were never enough, they were never him, they were never what he was. What little I knew of him was enough to make every other boy seem so ordinary. They weren’t him.

I began to think that I had lost him for real this time. We had no way to contact each other. I didn’t have his phone number and he didn’t have mine, the internet was still new to us and giving each other email addresses and aim names wasn’t second nature yet. So how would we find each other again? I began to drop into a crazed delirium, I began to wish on stars and birthday candles, if it was meant to be we would find our way back to each other again, wouldn't we? It had to happen didn't it? It was all too perfect to just be a moment in time, wasn't it?

 

Later I would realize that by some freak chance I had gone to that school for two years. My father had decided to have my mom pay for my school and he would pay for my brothers, but my mother didn’t want to pay so she put me in public school. Then by some freak chance she decided to put in the bi-lingual class out of everything, why bi-lingual all of a sudden. Moments collided perfectly so that I would end up there, so I would meet him, so I would fall in love with him and ruin my stupid f*****g life with his stupid, stupid face. 

Author's Note

This is my first attempt to make public some more in depth writing. All mistakes are mine and credit to Florence and the Machine which was the inspiration. Thanks for reading!