My close and not-so-close friends always told me the same exact thing every time we’d randomly find each other in the cafeteria of our campus or elsewhere in this disturbing place you call a school. They start off with a smack on the shoulder, or maybe a tap on the table to gather my attention, and then smirk, following it up with a chuckle before dropping me the looping bomb that I’ve heard for the nth time this year. “Uy, nakita ko bago ng ex mo kanina ah.”
Well, what the fuck?
After hearing the same conversation occur over-and-over again, I’ve been desensitized to the point where even after someone informs me of the same thing, I simply sit still and respond with the ridiculous and clearly fake tone of a seemingly interested gossiper, asking them with a feigned smile if they really did see him with his girlfriend. Did I care? Not one bit. Did they want me to care? Well, if the awkward silence after I don’t respond to their sad attempt to gauge a reaction out of me doesn’t speak volumes, then I don’t have any idea what does.
My relationship with him never ended on proper terms, not even the closure I gave was enough for him to understand what had happened between the two of us for me to push away so easily from what we had. I gave him my most reasonable responses, my truths that I had kept inside my heart for the longest of time, but even after all of that, I knew deep down that it wasn’t enough to fully explain the void that stands between us.
One misconception everyone had, however, in our relationship, was that despite the both of us openly showing to people we had something going on between the two of us, we were never truly… Well, together. We didn’t have any label, we weren’t official either. During then, I was still in the process of recovering from my own mental domain of insecurity, responsibility, and under the influence of my own excruciating memories, like a child sitting in the corner of a room, curled up in a ball, afraid of even the slightest of touch from… anyone in general.
So yes, he was in fact, my ex.
— situationship.
And yes, we were never together. Therefore,
He does not have a new girlfriend.
Why then, should I care?
I have long come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t love someone who was ready for me, yet I wasn’t completely ready for. Despite my constant complaints of having no romantic partner, I never truly opened myself into having one, immediately retreating when someone expresses even a single ounce of attraction towards me. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t dislike when people are romantically attracted to an average Jane such as myself, I even thank them after I find out that they feel so.
Only that I’ve learned my mental condition limits me from committing. There is the indescribable fear of harming the one you love after you’ve discovered you’re not exactly as harmless as people describe you to be to one another — that your mind is plagued by the environment that forced you to be too strong at a young age, that forced you to retaliate with hands that are supposedly soft and warm.
They were cold to touch.
Compared to the one who kissed them so openly, brazenly, like they weren’t covered in the blood of those who were harmed under the guise of self-preservation. Compared to he who smiled brighter than any form of light the sun would even show, to he who was worth enduring sleepless nights for just to hear his voice, to he who would notice the smallest things about you, to he who would hold you so tight, you’d forget every pain that ever tried to swallow you back into that pit you’ve laid for yourself. Compared to the one who reminded me that even if I hadn’t wished to send that goodbye letter to him on the night of prom, I was still capable of doing so.
And so, I crossed my arms on my chest. I allowed people to come into my life, yet I never allowed them to cross the same boundary I had let him, for he was the first and the very last person who has ever crossed that boundary I dared myself to never let anyone find. And so I placed a veil over it — performative as it may seem, but it was the easiest and the most evident form of warning that what hides behind must not be interfered with, and must not be budged no matter what. Only one has ever crossed this boundary, and he stands as the last who did so.
There is no reason for me to care.
I may have been a part of his life, but I was not someone who ended our story with a label over our heads. We parted ways as people who had potential, yet never reached the ending people thought we’d come to live with. I was never his girlfriend, just his romantic interest. He was never my boyfriend, simply a romance opportunity, nothing more than that. Which is why every time the same conversation reached my ears, I would frown but simply join in, hoping to end it by saying I no longer cared, by expressing that I didn’t even know he was into specific sorts of things even though I knew he was and would find them interesting.
My days passed buried in hell of assignments and a pile of documents to look over and focus on, simply so that I could spend my days not noticing him around. Heck, I didn’t even hear his name get called during our graduation day, something I only realized after I returned home and forgot to give him back his stuff that laid on my couch, waiting to be returned to their owner. I’ve learned from my friends that he appeared a lot behind and in front of me, only that they would never tell me unless he was out of our field of vision, and that there were times when he would stare at me.
Whether he hoped I’d even spare him a glance or otherwise, I no longer knew. Eventually, I came to the point in my life where I stopped searching for his name, for his face among the crowd, and in general… I stopped thinking about him. And as if the world decided to give me the closure I never thought I needed, I saw him live his life with his girlfriend, happier and much brighter than the sun I hesitantly reached out for.
In that life he chose to walk for, I took the train, and took the comfortable ride.
Despite the ache in my heart, I truly have come to terms with the fact that I couldn’t simply love anyone just because I wished for a moment that feels like love, that in the same way I chose him, I also needed to choose myself over others. To choose to learn how to live a better life before I dare to attempt to live one with someone. After all, how could I love someone when I can’t even love myself yet? It was a ridiculous attempt, but regrettably… It was the most enjoyable and the happiest moment of my life I chose to cherish, even if I come to bitterly regret the ending between the two of us.
Truthfully, I do care.
But I’m not the girlfriend.
So I stopped caring.
