Care or Dare?

Here I was. Jumping off of my ex-girlfriend’s roof because of a dare. She had sworn we were fine, and she wasn’t mad, but things took a turn once we played truth or dare. I had chosen dare since I thought I was safe, but when she drunkenly dared me to jump off her roof to see if my “commitment issues” have been resolved, I took the challenge to my chest and quickly climbed to the roof from her balcony. This wasn’t just a dare anymore. She was seeing if I had changed, even though she didn’t want to commit either. So there she was, already taking what she said back.

“I didn’t actually mean it! It was a joke,” she and her increasingly anxious group of friends have been trying and failing, to talk me down for about twenty-five minutes now. Honestly, the drinks we had made my body too warm to care about anything else but this dare, and it wasn’t just about proving that I had changed, it was more than that. All my life, when someone asked me to take something seriously, I was too wrapped up in how it would affect me to consider how the other person felt. I guess that’s just what you do when you’re too caught up in your own head, but that isn’t an excuse for the things I’ve down. It’s just context. A repeated pattern of context that’s way too predictable. This dare is my promise to change that.

“I’m sorry… For everything,” I don’t feel like myself. My body doesn’t want to do this, but my mind is just so locked on to this. I want to change. I want to change so badly that I would stand on this unstable roof and nearly freeze to death over a small dare from my ex. How deep in rock bottom can I get? Maybe something will hit me harder if I jump. It’s only about 10 feet, nothing deadly. I don’t know why everyone is making such a big deal. I’ve done worse things to others.

“Would you stop being so stubborn?! You’re always like this,” That took me off guard, making me stumble and fall from the roof, and all of a sudden it got cold. Forget cold. It was below zero, and snow was attacking every exposed surface on my body. The muffled yelling of my name was the only thing keeping me awake long enough for me to be pulled out from the snow I just fell in. I couldn’t feel anything, and wouldn’t have known that my ex was hugging me if my eyes weren’t open. Everything was either freezing, burning, numb, or all of the above.

“I’m always like this?” I sounded like a shell of myself as I asked her the question. My throat was scratchy and my body has just processed the feeling of illness from being out here in cold for so long. So even when I try to change, I’m still just the same?

“Yes, dummy, you do the same things, regret it, blow up, and then regret it even more. I shouldn’t have pushed you like that though. I do the same thing so I should know better,” I shake my head at her guilt, and sit up slowly, slowly feeling my body warm up more. 

“I see…” I mean, what else was I going to say? What else could I say? I was freezing, emotionally unstable, and not a bit surprised at the same time. On top of that, my ex and I haven’t talked like this in about a year. Before this, we would make eye contact for five seconds and avoid saying anything we wanted to. Then she suddenly invited to hang out with her friends, “just like old times.” Though from the looks on her friends’ faces behind her, it seemed as though they really just pushed her to invite me, and I don’t see why. We’re all adults here, and if people need space, and unhealthy amounts of binge-watching cartoons, then so be it. It’s not as if we were exactly good for each other anyways. There was always this sense of pressure, and though we were both pretty loyal, we just couldn’t cave and be together like everyone thought we should. It wasn’t like we didn’t think kindly of each other after we broke up, we just didn’t think kindly of ourselves, and blamed ourselves for why the relationship didn’t work out. I think some space was needed, and no one really knew about our feelings of built-up resentment, so they probably came to the conclusion that it ended on a petty note.

“My friends pushed me into inviting you tonight. It’s not like I didn’t want to see you but-” I finished her sentence. I knew what she was going to say. I knew exactly what she was going to say.

“You’re still blaming yourself for not living up to the expectations. It’s okay… I am too, but that’s pretty obvious,” she just nodded her head in agreement. Our relationship was like a room that forced us to look at the things we liked least about ourselves and only resulted in the increase of that self-hatred. We were loyal, too loyal. To where we did things we didn’t want to please people that didn’t care when we cared the most, and unintentionally hurt those who actually cared. So, when people close to us talked to us about how our relationship was destroying us, how they genuinely wanted us to drop the act and take this seriously, we just blew up at them. And when the people that just cared for the relationship, and not us, encouraged the continuance of it, we nodded our heads, and listened, even though it hurt more than what we could ever imagine. I guess it was just a matter of time before things broke and changed. We understood each other, but that only made the distance and self-hatred grow, so it was time to face it, and that’s what we did.

“So, the next time you come over, no more truth or dare?” I was sat all the way up, able to clearly see a genuine smile on her face for the first time tonight. We were finally ourselves again, and I could smile with her again.

“Definitely not,” and that was the beginning of a beautiful, pressure-free friendship. Crazy what a dare can do, right?