The Loss Of Friends You Didn't Have 1/1

When I first met you I was a little annoyed. That day I had stubbed my toe getting out of bed, couldn't get my hair to go the right way underneath my hat, lost my toothbrush,  and realized I had woken up extremely late and now my whole routine was messed up. You know the feeling when you just feel messed up either because you haven't slept enough or too much? Yeah, that was it. 

Then I saw you.

As over-rated as people seem to think you are you made my entire day feel, and I didn't think this was possible, even more out of wack. Your cold stare and warm smile made me feel intoxicated and my head wasn't working properly. To put it simply it was the worst feeling I had ever felt. But somehow, somehow I wanted more and more of this dizzying feeling. I honestly don't know how you did it, it must have been one of those secrets that I was never attractive or charming enough to figure out. 

Then you wrote. It was amazingly the most logphilic thing I had ever seen. You must have some sort of disease because that was sickening how much you seemed to write. The writing never ceased and the words kept flowing from the pen to the tattered black notebook. Nobody had seen this sacred tablet of scribbling and scratching that managed to make sense to you, and maybe others if you had ever let them see it.

I had wanted to try this new thing as well. It didn't work out. The chicken scratch by some means, at its best, managed to become average or mediocre poetry. I didn't know what it was compared to yours. So in some hope of you letting me see the sacred tablet I showed you my knowledge of language.

You were encouraging at best and polite at worst. I believe it was at the point where I yelled out "Just show me the fucking lyrics!" where you pulled out that tattered notebook/sacred tablet of words.

Then you showed me.

It's utterly amazing how marks on a paper can make such sense and astonishment in one's head. That was the time when I said "I'm stealing them," and ran away clutching the notebook, the spirals sticking into my chest.

You consented, but only after ripping out most of the pages. That left me with 5 songs worth of lyrics. Trust me, that was enough to make me smile.

My balance was set right since the first time you walked through that door.

Days passed, and so did months. We were doing well, you can decide who I mean when I say 'we'. But every passing month, week, day, hour, minute, second I fell deeper into your icy hazel eyes. Such a warm color in your eyes was deceptive. Each time I looked I went farther and farther into the freeziing brown water of your irises. Everytime I would try to come back up there was ice in my way and I was trapped. Trapped underneath the water of your eyes. I was repeatedly saved by someone breaking the ice and pulling me up by saying my name or strumming a tune. Then I would gasp for air and try to recover from being underwater so long. The weird thing was you wouldn't save me. You would keep looking straight into my eyes, forcing me to drown and the lung out of my lungs. 

Sometimes we would touch,  whether accidentally, like a hand brush, or on purpose, like a pat on the back. Most likely it was accidental. However these caresses didn't feel like a mistake to me. Looking at you, you would just mumble an apology and look down at whatever it was we were doing.

I wish you wouldn't apologize because it sounded more like me apologizing to you. My eyes would be downcast and my slight smile from our touch gone. 

Then came the day you didn't say an apology.

Then you saw me.

Our touches were much more frequent and purposeful than they were before. Anyhow we still weren't admitting this to ourselves because we didn't like guys supposedly. We weren't fags, right? We were not gay. We just had a close relationship, like best friends. 

Even though we would stare and just like I floated submissively in your eyes, you started to as well into mine. Nothing made us happier, I remember. And unlike before when your eyes were two dark, icy, and dangerous lakes, they were now the warm stream down the hill where I would proke and prod  for things unkown just like a 7-year-old boy would down at the real stream or brook down the hill.

I wish we would have acknowledged this sooner. It would have saved us a ton of aches and pains. Every night before I would sleep I would think of you and the things we had shared that day and how much I wished you were here beside me. But I had never been the first move sort of person. 

Then I saw the truth.

It wouldn't work. This is so wrong on so many levels. We couldn't possibly love each other. We were just confusing a good friendship for....something else. 

But sometimes the truth is just a really good lie to keep the sorrow and ache away. That is what we were doing. And this is the biggest good lie I have ever and probably will ever see. The regret I feel now for lying to you and getting you to lie back is too much for me to bear.

I did consider trying to get you back into my arms again. But by the time I had even thought of that plan I shoved it back down.

I couldn't get you back into my arms if I had never had you to begin with. The stupidest thing I have ever done was watch you pass me right by. I should've made the first move because you weren't going to.

I can't help but hate you. If I didn't hate there would only be room for love. And the love pains my head and I get this heavy feeling in my chest. The bitterness only makes me frustrated. And I can live with that, that is how I lived before I saw you.

I see me.

I don't like what it is I see, but at least I can see it, right?  I can only wish upon you the best of luck in the depths of my brain where carebears and rainbows dwell. I can only be polite to you on the outside. I can only hate you secretly, in the part of my heart that has frozen over. And I can only love you, Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III, in the very tiny bit of me that hasn't gone ignorant and where it is okay to be bittersweet and to feel pain and clicheness to the maximum.


-Patrick