I love you, Bye

I never wanted to transfer but I ended up learning at three high schools. Hilbright was never my choice; I despised the idea of learning at a small private school with stuck up knobs. Nevertheless, I found myself putting on that blue, white and red uniform ready for my first day of school.

On the very first day, I got a hundred percent on a geography test and the physics teacher said I had a lot of potential. The other teachers told my classmates that I would be intense competition academically. Cue the boys becoming intrigued by my expertise and a number of the girls hating on me. It was a good thing that I had grown thick skin due to my previous schools. I was the least social part of myself then so it was hard for me to fit in and find real friends in the school.

One day when I was alone in class, two senior boys started a conversation with me. They told me stories about the school and about the girls in my class to pass time. The more I talked to them, the more I started to interact with the seniors.

Though I never liked the school at first, one person made me change my viewpoint. It was an incredible day; the day that I sat by the window and started a conversation with one handsome gentleman. That simple unexpected conversation was the start of a romance, comedy, drama, action filled story.

As normal teenagers do; we shared social medias and began talking every minute of every day. It was an experience of fast replies, 3 am talks, deep conversations and everything in between. The ideal teenage love story but only that it wasn’t as dreamy and cliché rather a true story with an actual twist. We chatted all day long as friends little did I know that my heart skipped a beat every time he messaged me. I would smile and laugh at his silly jokes and I couldn’t sleep without saying goodnight to the king on the other side of the line. I was even replying to his winky face emojis with heart emojis.

Despite the obvious infatuation, I still thought we weren’t more. ‘Just friends.’ I thought until the day that he popped the all so famous question. No kind of happiness came second to that. I remember the way I jumped out of my bed and danced for a whole minute. My five minutes of craziness kicked in as I lost my mind. It was a rarity that the guy I liked actually felt the same way for me. After all the fuss I made you’d think my answer was an obvious yes but no it wasn’t. I had ridden off my high horse when I put two and two together. I viewed dating as a way of searching for an ideal spouse and from our many conversations I figured that he viewed dating as an enjoyment of teenage hood. Just the thought of an inevitable break up changed my answer into a no. A no that was painful to say.

Nevertheless, we agreed on remaining friends though I knew I had dug him six feet under. I was the villain of my own love story and I hated it with a passion. Little by little, we recovered from the awkwardness and fell back into the good ole days. At school, we’d sit and talk for hours and over the phone, it was the same all round. We were in so deep that he said the three magical words and I reciprocated.

With every conversation, I told him all there was to know about me and he did the same. I was blinded to the obvious fact that I was leading him on once again. In reality we acted like just friends but under the covers, I matched my first name with his last. They say you never forget your first love, and in those years I was making memories that were going to be impossible to erase. That time made me believe that one doesn’t really need physical intimacy to fall for a person. But just like any girl in love, I could feel gravity but I didn’t know I was falling.

‘Just friends.’ I thought for the longest of time even when he called me cutes and I called him Munchking. Even when he called me bebe and I sent him heart eye emojis. School days were over and it was time to break for holiday. We were still physically awkward and our farewells resulted in awkward handshakes and weird hugs. It was only one day when the two of us were left in a classroom that the physical barrier was broken. Our conversations reached lengths deeper that void space and our hugs were as many as sand on a beach. The feeling of my head on his warm chest was one so heavenly and would be greatly missed. His delicious scent that encased all of me hypnotizing my brain to love him for eternity. It all happened so fast but so slow that he even stole a forehead kiss. It defined the moments when infatuation progressed to love.

True love and romance had been a thing of the movies until I met that boy who erased the words ‘all boys are the same’ from my lips. I don’t recall where I went wrong but somewhere down the line, I began to distance myself from that shining star. With the logic and reasoning that I had been leading him on but still had no intention of being in a relationship with him. I was sabotaging myself as well as being unfair to him. My foolish teenage mind devised that the best way was to pull myself out from his life quietly thus letting him down slowly. Little, did I know that he could notice it and he had started to get worried.

As the protagonistic antagonist I was, I thought being in another relationship will keep him away from my dangerous flames and we’d end that way. To him, I’d be the girl he loved who walked away. And in my point of view, he’d be the guy who was too special to me to date and just break up with like teenagers do. It was all in my evil head as I plotted a scheme but nothing went according to plan. Instead of letting him down slowly, I emotionally disrespected him and I hurt him to the point of no return.

You’d expect that this is where we became strangers but no. It took lengthy paragraphs and never ending voice messages to make amends until we were friends once again. Baby steps is what it took to go back to our manner of carefree conversations and the comfortable aura around us. And still yet, there were unbroken barriers that forbade us from being in a proper boyfriend-girlfriend relationship.

Since we had agreed to communicate, we sat down and tried to put a title to our companionship. After the talk, I realized that to him I had become just like every other friend of his. ‘I love you…like a friend.’ He had clearly said. I felt like I was in an elevator falling hundred floors down at supersonic speed. I realized that I had single handedly ruined my own happiness. ‘But at least if he didn’t love me romantically anymore then we could actually be friends without me leading him on.’ I thought. But what I didn’t know was that as one of the “friends” I was easily replaceable and that’s exactly what happened.

Little by little, we stopped talking and we’d briefly greet each other in the hallways. ‘I didn’t even notice that we were distancing.’ Is the reply I got when I mastered the courage to ask him about it. The boy I once loved played the reverse card on me and it hurt more than anything else I had ever felt. He started hanging out with a certain pretty girl and that was the end of him and I. At that instant, we were the epitome of perfect strangers.

I thought to put a seal on the box when I refused to take his hand in greeting. I knew that he would be too embarrassed and too proud to greet me again or confront me about it. At the same time, I was too hurt and too proud to apologize or strike a conversation with him. For the first time in forever, we could put a title on our relationship and that was ‘strangers’.