Forgiveness

8/1-24

Today I met Noah Moran. 21 years old and since yesterday, an idiot who wants to become a human resources specialist. This was the second thing he told me, which I retroactively regret prompting, and I almost right then stopped listening to him. He asked me about the book I was reading, and had never even heard of Dostoevsky. 

I hate living in a collective. 

9/1-24

I had lunch with Noah today. He stopped me as he was walking into the building’s entrance when I was leaving after my lecture. I had Rogers again, and again he kept ignoring my answers when he wanted an unrevised response which he could tear down to prove he does in fact know more about a subject that he had studied for over 30 years. Noah practically dragged me to lunch, he was late to his third lecture but insisted that we hang out. I get that some people don’t care about what they study or what they’re going to dedicate their lives to, their working lives at least, but I also get that I hate “some people”. “Some people” don’t understand the point of studying an art for its enjoyment’s sake, and not some other subject for the sake of becoming well off. Worse is people who choose a subject which will lead to a shit pay and don’t even enjoy it. Noah is worse than “some people”, and he’s starting to grow on me. He doesn’t care about anything, he talks loud enough for the entire cafeteria to hear, and he barges into lectures late and disrupts everyone. He doesn’t care if anyone likes him, and he’s worse than anyone I’ve ever met. I’m hounding him to get a beer with me.

10/1-24

Noah hasn’t read anything since grade school, he has established himself as a person beneath me, but he does not give a shit at all. He places himself beneath everyone for the same reason; people are authentic against those whom they despise. 

He has no verbal manners or etiquette, but he talks to strangers as if they’ve been friends forever. He doesn’t say thank you or please to anyone, he eats my food and compliments my work, but doesn’t thank me for cooking for him. He agreed to go to the local student pub with me on Friday night. 

13/1-24

Despite what I had thought, Noah does not handle his alcohol well. AT ALL. We sat at a booth alone, and not even through three beers he starts chatting up everyone who passes. We sat right next to the door, and I got to witness the most idiotic conversations in my life. Noah asked everyone their names, their majors, their ages, how single they were, how into guys they were, or how hot they thought he and I were. I choked on my disgusting pot of fermented wheat. Noah threw himself at anyone who actually entertained his incessant interrogating, and he made out with two girls and three guys right in front of me. I made a joke out of telling them how to kiss better, bite him, pull her shirt down, pull his hair, and the idiot that Noah authentically is, actually did everything I demanded as if I was the lord of the orgy. The poor souls of the friends to Noah’s victims sat next to me, and in turn became my own victims. None read at all. Two studied medicine, one studied mechanical engineering, two studied law, and one wasn’t even a student but just a tag-along of one of the medicine students. 

Noah and I drank beer, we took shots of jäger and rum, I forced him to try my favourite whiskey, and I’m glad I have my job to finance last night and, I hope, many more nights. 

It seems I am Noah’s only friend. 

16/1-24

I’m losing inspiration to write and now it seems I have to force myself to do it. 

27/1-24

Today I simply told Noah I was stressed, and he freaked out. This morning I said, verbatim, “I have so much to do. I have to be at the library all day for work and my paper about The Castle of Otranto is due at midnight.” Suppose I said it quite emotionally and in a complaining tone, because this irked Noah to the point of calling me annoying and said that I have a tendency to repeatedly complain about things that are in my control. He said it so condescendingly, as if I had asked him to psychoanalyse me and give me life-changing advice. He said I should think about my actions and react appropriately rather than complain about it to him.

Sure, I see the point he’s trying to make. I hate the hypocrisy he’s maintaining. Every single day he tells me he’s tired, how he misses his asshole ex, and how schoolwork is incredibly exhausting. He complains more in one sentence than I have done in our entire friendship, which has lasted a few weeks.

I’m incredibly annoyed and I have to finish writing an analytic essay about the gothic patterns in a book which is almost 300 years old. My back hurts and I am exhausted.

6/2-24

Since I last wrote Noah and I have reconciled, in a way. We met the day after our argument and he acted like nothing happened, so I said nothing about it. 

Last saturday, while we were drinking in his room, he asked to kiss me. He said it so plainly to me, and I know from first-hand experience that kissing someone means nothing to him, he’s obsessed with his ex. I told him no. I still see somewhat of a romantic quality in carnal pleasures, a perspective I seem to be unique with. 

10/2-24

Someone keeps using my dish soap without my permission. I know it’s not Noah, who was my initial suspect, because he doesn’t use it. He rinses his dishes off with water and then eats off of them without concern about bacteria at all. 

11/2-24

Today I met Oliver, a new member of our stupid collective housing. Noah and I met him in the kitchen an hour ago, and as soon as Oliver left the kitchen Noah said, still with the lad in earshot, how attractive he found him. I hope to God Oliver didn’t hear, I can’t bear embarrassment. 

18/2-24

Noah kissed me yesterday. We were drunk in his room - again - listening to his music as I am banned from playing anything remotely outside the sphere of ear-bleeding mainstream pop. He has asked me a few times, always while drunk.

It’s not a big deal, I know. I have kissed people before, even people I didn’t even like just for the sake of kissing. 

He didn’t ask this time, and I felt like one of the idiots he kisses at bars just to pass the time. Still, I wouldn’t DARE to express my displeasure to him, otherwise he’d call me overemotional again. We’re not that kind of friends, I guess.

It lasted for just a second and he smiled at me with such a moronic grin I felt the animalistic urge to put him in his place.

7/3-24

Noah told me today if he were to study my subject he would kill himself out of boredom. Did not feel great to hear, but I've learnt to lower my expectations of him. 

I've been speaking more with Oliver, he's one of the few people in this condemned age who actually enjoys literature. He writes, he reads, and he asked me to read some of his poems. That's one of his major flaws; poetry. Poetry is for lesser writers who can't articulate themselves properly and therefore (vänder sig-- sub-något) to fragmented sentences in a pathetic attempt to leave the reader wondering about its meaning. Its meaning is worthless if every reader gets a different idea of the subject completely. The art of leaving details out and not forcing explanations down the reader's throat is derivative in all modern poetry. I, of course, haven't told Oliver what I think. His work is rather good, he is at least not one of those ostentatious free verse poets.

8/3-24

Oliver likes Hume, Kant, Descartes. He loves Sappho, the Shelleys, Hobbes. He likes them for the right reasons too, not for the pictures they create and provide, in a consistently pretentious manner, but for all the world-shattering and socially interrogative matters they bring on and dissect. 

14/3-24

Oliver asked me out on a date, I think. He asked me if I wanted to get coffee with him tomorrow. I think, maybe I even hope, that it's a date. Still, it might be complicated to be romantically involved with someone I live with. Someone I'm actually forced to live with unless I want to spend half my worth moving out. 

Noah thinks it's a date, but we'll see.

16/3-24

It wasn't a date, at all. Sure, it felt like one while we were talking. We even sat on the same side of the table instead of opposite one another. 

At night, however, hours afterwards, I actually found out it wasn't a date. I thought Oliver had been interested in me, but I saw him make out with Noah in his bed when I had come back from the loo. Drunk again, Noah suggested I join them, but I saw the red on Oliver's cheeks and knew that sharing spit with Noah wasn't just a joke or something to pass the time. I didn't say anything on the matter, I shared Noah's banter and told them to enjoy the room. I stayed in my room and got even drunker, and my headache is making every line blurry.

It wasn't a big deal, I suppose. I don't want to know if they stopped at making out, but Noah didn't check on me after I saw them or today. I don't know if I even want to see him at all.

30/3-24

I haven't seen Oliver in a few weeks. I see Noah every day. He's still going on about his ex, and he always insists on sitting so close to me his breath smothers me. I doubt he ever brushes his teeth. I doubt he cares about toothpaste more than dish soap. How the hell does he get anyone to make out with him? 

His ex, they were never even together, lives in another city and in total they probably met less than 10 times. They were friends with benefits, which is a completely absurd concept to me and it makes it even more absurd that Noah has let their "relationship" bother him so much even after several months. They still keep in touch and I guess that's what makes it linger.

I've noticed a pattern. When Noah's ex hasn't texted back in a while, Noah creeps closer to me for physical validation. He touches me more than a friend should, and while it makes me uncomfortable, I doubt it counts as harassment. I've, for once, actually spoken up about how disgusted physical contact in general makes me feel and how much worse it is when Noah touches me like that, but he tells me he would touch any of his friends like he does me. I've never seen Noah talk to anyone "as a friend", it always ends with his tongue in someone's mouth.

I used to tell Noah to break contact with his ex, but now I hope they talk forever until they die. 

20/6-24

My term ends in a week, and since Noah disappeared my grades improved so much I was granted a scholarship which let me move into my own apartment. I wouldn't wish living in a collective on my worst enemy. 

I don't talk to anyone anymore. It's my birthday and I haven't spoken a word to anyone in two weeks. My English professor asked me how I was doing and told me - unnecessarily - that I looked tired. 

21/6-24

I walk back to where I lived months ago, and I go to the forest. I go just to check. Noah was reported missing by his parents a week after I last saw him. 

I don't like drinking anymore. I actually went to the doctor a while back, and now I take promethazine every night just to sleep.

I read more. I work more. I write more than ever, short stories for fun and essays for school and often for extra credit. 

I don't miss Noah. 

22/6-24

I suppose I did put him in his place, rather violently and just as (animalistically) as I had imagined. I think about him a lot, and while I don't miss him I miss parts of him. I miss his function as my friend before he ruined it all. He forced my hand. The police would've disregarded me if I had gone to them. I am stronger and taller than Noah was, we were friends, and we were drinking. I know my tolerance, and one glass of Red Label wouldn't have made me as foggy and dizzy and tired as it did. 

I am stronger.