I find it hard to get things into words these days. The blank screen is so intimidating, I don't know how I can just bleed all over it.
In some ways, I've been feeling better - better in myself, I've been able to rest, see a few friends, rebuild my life. In other ways, I feel miserable.
I think things are going to be okay, but it's so easy to dwell on the past.
We've always been close, in more ways than one - whenever we'd drink in high school, we'd kiss - I remember James taking photos and how upset I was when other people saw them.
We never talked about it, even. It was like a game, I think. I feel so stupid even thinking about it. I've done it all my life, playing these games - a boy in school when I was as young as eight, we'd go into his bedroom and kiss, playing games where I was always the girl - I don't know why I worry so much about it now. He's a model now, heterosexual, beautiful, thinks of me as... silly, childish... and sometimes I want to tell people how he was as a child, and then I remember he was exactly that... a child... and it was all silly games... did anyone else play rather sexual games as a child? I don't know why it matters, I just wonder.
But with Rich, the game was too serious. We were getting to an age where it wasn't childish and cute, it was dangerous, confusing... I get flashes of horrible scenes of my past with him. No, not horrible... beautiful, but devastating. So many times spent crying in bathrooms over him... he was still pretending, and i wasn't. I remember being so drunk a few years ago, and getting so wound up about it all I literally made myself sick crying - James sitting in the bathroom with me, rubbing my back and telling me it was okay, and I kept mumbling 'but i love him...' until I passed out.
But I did love him. I do. And I know he loved me in a way, once upon a time. I make it sound so cruel, but it wasn't always. He was always there for me, at the best and worst of times. He always made me laugh and smile, he always understood... no, not always... he understood everything except 'us', but then neither of us has ever understood.
And so, nearly six months ago now, when the games stopped being games, or at least become more risky games, I didn't question it. A kiss, as always, his hands moving in the dark, silence except for heavy breathing and hearts racing, feeling him hard against me, his lips everywhere, pulling me closer... and I didn't question it, didn't stop it... maybe it hadn't been games after all. Who would take a game that far?
An awkward breakfast. Avoiding the topic. Weeks passed, and then he slid into bed again, a similar sequence of events, and the time in between became less - and I should have spoken - said something, figured out what it was he wanted, but I was just... content, naively. And gradually, the sparkle in his eyes disappeared... and he'd seem so cold in between, so I'd long for him to come to me, so I'd see that warmth in him once again, feel loved, feel anything...
I remember the first time he brought someone else home, and I lay awake and listened and cried as silently as I could, until I thought I'd never stop, I can still remember the agony - the way he'd apologised tearfully in the morning and I'd flinched when he touched me, and cried with anger - and how he'd cut himself to prove that he was hurting too, and I hated him for it - so fucking selfish, always making it about him.
I'd gone to my parents, him calling frantically, leaving a million messages getting more and more hysterical by the second, and I didn't tell my mum what was wrong, but she saw how I'd cry harder when the phone went off - she took it from me, looked at the name on the screen and calmly turned it off - my lovely mother, seeing the source of the pain and doing the only thing she could to remove it, for a period of time anyway.
It took me a long time to forgive him, and I foolishly thought it would make him stop... but I've spent endless nights in the same agony ever since. And I'm not entirely sure how I've managed to bear it.
And I want to rewind to that first kiss at 15, and push him away. I think that's the only way I'd get to keep my best friend. |
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