If I thought that you would listen

"Listen." The word leaves my mouth, dry, choppy, like a pebble skipping over porcelain tiles, disturbing the silence you and I are so fond of.

"I’m listening." You smile expectantly, but a little bit bored, like it’s nothing new, like you’ve heard the word a million times and nothing important is bound to follow it. You, with your rosy cheeks and million dollar acting skills, are probably wondering if today is the day that I finally say something, and your tennis shoes will finally get to fulfill their reason for existing.

"I think..." I start to speak, but pause in the last minute, taking a few deep breaths.

Your feet angle slightly to the left, towards the door behind me, I presume, and should my words veer away from safe topics like ‘the weather’ or ‘food’ I know how fast those fancy Nikes would rocket out of my sight.

I’ve only been in front of you for seven minutes and I can already tell that you don’t want me to talk.

Whatever it is that I have to say, it’s all the same to you. If I don’t let it out, we can still pretend there is something worth saving in whatever it is we call our involvement these days. (Friendship, relationship, siblinghood, parenthood, I’ve honestly lost sight of how many labels I’ve tried to give it, while I try to understand why exactly we are still here together and not miles apart.)

It’s not that you don’t care, you just don’t want a crime scene in your backyard, the kind that slips through your lips like the murder weapon of an easy nine to five cases of CSI. You don’t want your ears to be here when the dam bursts out. With no witnesses to see your desperate attempt to escape what only feels like a high-profile personal attack, there would be no defense in court. You don’t want to be left holding the gun in what you tell yourself should be classified as ‘assisted suicide’ and not a mutual living dissection.

Your eyes are darting to my forehead now, not exactly my eyes. You probably think that even holding my gaze is too much honest communication on your part, but I’ve lied to you with my truthful eyes a million times, and you have never noticed (or perhaps you do, and just refuse to call me out on it).

And the thing is, I’d tell you many things if I thought you'd listen.

I’d tell you about my work and my family and my daily runs to the grocery store while listening to the soundtrack of "The Sound of Music" on repeat. And I’d tell you about daydreaming on the bus each morning, wondering if you were having a good day. There would be endless conversations about Marvel movies and nostalgia about being born in the last five years of the nineties, because only a true millennial understands what it’s like to grow up in the early two thousand (back when the world didn’t think that Britney’s public meltdown was just the tantrum of a pop star asking for attention).

The silence between us stretches as I search for the appropriate words to tell you what I’m thinking, but your hands are already reaching for your pockets in an unspoken signal to me to hurry up, because my time with you is running out. It’s a gesture so well practiced that I almost let it go, because that hand movement has happened a million times and we both know I’m used to it.

But if I thought that you would listen to what I really want to say, I’d tell you about the way I give the name of a different fictional character when the Starbucks barista asks for my name, because there is nothing funnier than hearing someone shout "Caroline Forbes" in the middle of a quiet coffee shop. I’d speak about every funny detail you can find in the bible and explain David and Goliath with the voice of a sitcom narrator. Because while Christianity is just a concept that men have twisted for their own purposes, that has never stopped me from believing in God.

It would be a long conversation, because I’d also tell you about every psychology and dating book I read before I turned sixteen. How proud I am of having a teenage Twilight phase and that being an elder sibling marked me for life. I would ask if you have ever felt like a curiosity on display for the world to see and judge. Ask if your body has ever been made to feel like it’s not your own, because mine has. My dress code, words, and actions are curated according to what society deems appropriate to allow me to survive, as I work my hardest to achieve my dreams. I’d tell you about the mental checklist of what is acceptable and what isn’t in the circles I frequent, and you would know that loneliness is a curse I inflicted on myself once I got hurt enough.

And because, in my imaginary fantasy, you are listening, I’d tell you about the millions of things I wish I could do but end up too tired to do because my work is exhausting. Maybe you would laugh at my overly dramatic rendition of the last conversation I had with the Australian CEO, because boy did that one make me feel like I needed to go back to school. Or the way I tear my hair out trying to read the mind of my boss, because if my work weren't my life, it would be funny.

I’d admit to you that I don’t want to get married, I just want the companionship of someone who won’t leave the moment I disappoint their expectations of me, or use their love as a currency (because the exchange rate of my emotions has never been on par with the market value). I’d talk about how I also tend to fall in love with people who show me the slightest bit of kindness, but I’m terrified of the shattering sound my heart makes when it’s dropped from a ten-foot building.

I want kisses and cuddles and someone who is kind and won’t leave when I say the word "Listen." But at the same time, one cannot help but think about the price of such a thing and wonder what the other person would ask in return. Because I would give my entire being for love and safety, But how many people have taught me that this is not enough?

I wonder what you would say if I told you about that. Would you also fear me too?

If you were the type who listened, I would tell you what it’s like to be born in a certain place during nineteen ninety-five, to see the birth and rise of a dictatorship in a childhood where every boy and girl was taught to understand the far reaches of politics before they reached the age of seven. I rarely talk about it. Because for children, xenophobia feels as personal as pointing to a map and claiming an entire group of people in X spot are bad.

As if putting a country’s story in a book to announce to the world what it looks like when a nation self-destructs is as easy as McGraw Hill makes it out to be. The way a few paragraphs can summarize how it all happened in the amount of time it took me to grow from child to woman

There is a gaping hole in my chest that I had to carve out with my own knife to survive and live a better life. But if you allowed me to talk about it, I’d tell you that it still bleeds around the edges when something random accidentally pokes the wound, and that cutting off things that are painful to heal is still an ongoing process that often leaves me motionless in my bed, crying inside. But I still do it because it’s as necessary as surgery in an ICU.

There are days I walk aimlessly around town, waiting and wondering if growing up also means that these twenty-six years’ worth of life experiences will haunt me as much as they bring me joy. Or if the pain and trauma will fade if I try hard enough to move forward. I would ask you if this is maturity, and maybe, your answer would be enough to close a few papercut size injuries.

And perhaps if you listened to all of that, you would know that I am more than just a string of empty sentences put together in a row of perfectly sanitized small talk.

Because if I thought that you would listen, I’d tell you how it feels to grow and smile through the hardship that is life. About finding myself while I was looking for religion and not really knowing why it took me so long to understand that people will always be as human as I am (this means that they will also be as fallible as I am).

And if I weren’t afraid of what you would do if I talked about you, I’d tell you that it’s okay to be as scared of the future as I am.

I think it’s cute how you try to hide all those things I still see, even when you’re doing your best to ignore what you call my ‘emotional outbursts’ because even if I do hate your selective deafness a little bit, I’ve also known you long enough to understand that it is the only coping mechanism you know to use against what surely sounds like bad news.

You might not think that I listen, but I do. I just don’t listen to your words, because your mouth has a way of becoming both your best weapon against me and your biggest weakness. I would apologize for disregarding so much of what you say and relegating it to the realm of fiction (where it belongs) if I thought that you’d believe me, but apologies also fall inside the parentheses of things you refuse to hear when they slip through my lips, so we can just call it a draw. After all, neither of us has ever been good at forgiving and letting go. And I’ve been listening to your actions since long before I became selectively deaf to your words.

If I thought that you’d believe me, I’d tell you that I know how scared you are of being vulnerable with me, that your eyes twitch a bit when you lie, and that the habit of running away from conversations has probably been there since long before I came into the picture. And if we sat down and you let me talk about you, we would be here all day.

I’d tell you that your mistakes have never made you a bad person, so it’s okay to talk about what you have done wrong without considering the conversation an attack on your identity. Perhaps then, acknowledging that you’ve hurt me, wouldn’t be as hard as you make it seem. And I’d tell you that your past mistakes don’t define your future, and that your bad habit of interrupting me when I speak has never really annoyed me.

And most of all the words that I’ve been dying to say since I met you, is that YOU ARE ENOUGH. Or, at the very least, all of you have been enough for me during this time. It's why I never asked you to change (even if a part of me hoped that you would change the parts of you that have occasionally made my heart bleed).

Because truthfully, I don’t think that you’re a bad person. You’re beautiful and flawed and so impossibly special that it’s a wonder we haven’t figured this all out together somehow. You are so worthy of love. And I hope somebody tells you that one day, because you deserve to hear it, and I hope that when they do, you actually listen.

"You were saying something?" You ask, tapping your foot slightly on the porcelain tiles of the living room. It’s only been ten minutes, but it feels like a lifetime.

If I thought you would listen, I would tell you many things, yes, but not today.

So I condense my thoughts into a simple phrase and go directly to the point. "I think we should take some time to be apart" is what comes out of my mouth. "It would be for the best, don’t you think?"

You have stopped fidgeting, you are finally listening. There is a slightly panicked look in your eyes that says that you want more words, that you’d welcome them even, but my mind is finally silent today. I have little left to say.

The ball is in your court, and I’m okay with whatever comes next.