I just thought about it just now, funny, we could've been together half a year by now. A friend asked me, "do you still like her?" And my answer to that was "it's past the point of liking". After all, I suppose liking alone doesn't encompass caring about someone's happiness more than your own, wanting the best for them even if it's nothing to do with you, but that's exactly how I feel. Hence I wasn't lying when I said I'm more concerned with being friends, I really do just want to be in a position whereby I'm able to witness your growth as a person. Funny. I've fallen in love with you over and over again. It'll be hard to say I'm over you because it might just very well be in a cycle like how we are very well used to. With you, I find myself changing, growing. Since you, I've found myself grown.
Backtrack one year and I find myself a selfish, happy go lucky, rebellious boy who honestly thought a relationship might be based off one's massive dependence on the other. After the break up with my ex girlfriend it seemed like I would never find another that I would love half as much. And then I met you. And of course it was nothing like love at first sight, you were the kinda nerdy bespectacled girl with straight As and full attendance and I was the alcoholic who barely turned up for any morning classes at all. But I talked to you, I got to know you, and I found myself getting drawn towards you day after day.
The first time I fell for you didn't end well. I struck too fast, you were caught off guard, and you reeled back faster than I could catch you. We didn't speak for a few months then, each wary of the other. I ended up liking another girl, someone I would go home with every day, and I thought to myself, how convenient would it be to love someone who lives just a few stops down from you. We would take the bus past the town and occasionally drop by for dinner or a night movie or just a walk around the posh neon label shops. I remember how they'd say you should always take a girl to watch a horror film because she's mistaken the adrenaline rushes as love, and I guess it worked. We'd huddle on the bus when it was cold and the little droplets of condensation would race each other down the glass, and she'd fall asleep with her cheek on my shoulder and her arm around mine. But that was as far as it would go. I loved her more than she did me, and it just wouldn't work out. In her words, "you loved the wrong girl", and though at the time I never believed it, i suppose I must've known all along because the moment I confessed was the same moment I knew it was wrong. A few times when our fingers entangled I caught myself thinking about you, and I remember being so confused about it because I thought you were long gone. I was wrong, wrong. Always wrong.
It was then that we reached the peak of our friendship, you had a boy chasing you, and we were making plans on how to boycott a dinner without being too obvious. I should've seen it then, how you accidentally rested your head on my shoulder once and I jumped in surprise, how your hand lingered for a moment after you hit me, oh a rough one you were. I remember you stabbed me with a bottle for refusing to leave your seat. We'd argue, we'd always argue, and I've never quite liked arguing as much as I did with you. I remember that one lesson, where you had to go for a scholarship talk after and had to be in formal attire, and you wore this black dress. That black dress. Colour me cliche but I couldn't take my eyes of you if I tried. Friends said it was a tight dress but it wasn't just the dress and incredible just doesn't cut it.
You were elegant, classy, and sexy in thick rim glasses and a tight dress.
I was a puddle on the floor.
I loved you in glasses, I've always loved you in glasses. These thick rim, a-little-bit-too-big-on-you glasses are my favourite, not that I've seen you wear many others, but these suit you. And I know you've always preferred to take photos without them on, and sometimes you forget about them until they slip off the tip of your nose, but I guess that's alright with me. And though by the time we got to clubbing for your birthday I was still holding back, I already knew you'd caught me by the cuff and got me reeling back.
The clubbing wasn't a very good experience. I was unaware and I wish I could renew the experience with you. I wish I had stayed awake longer that night when we were laying next to each other on Pam's bed. And I wish I knew then that you felt the same way toward me that I did towards you. You already knew then. You went ahead to ask your mother but she said no. And just like my ex girlfriend, you couldn't go on loving me for too long.
"If I'd wanted a fling with you, I would've stayed. But I wanted a forever, and that's why I'm leaving."
And that's exactly what happened with you as well. When you were in japan and I was in Italy, it was already over. We were in the afterglow of making love. That was the first time you scolded me after I didn't reply you for three days straight because I didn't have access to wifi, but you scolded me because you missed me. You and I were busy picking out dresses and shirts for each other when in fact we were just dressing up to leave. You and I on our own little trip, wishing we could be with other to make an adventure for two. You and I were maniacs in love, smiling at our phones in your sunrise, and my sunset, halfway across the world. But the afterglow will soon fade into monotonous routine, and as it did, our friendship struggled to exist.
Today, I stand a different person. Watch you fret work after work has inspired me to be a responsible person, listening to how you struggled with your parents' divorce, leaving you to take the mom' role in the family, that taught me to take responsibility for my actions and my life. I've stopped drinking, I now work a double job, I'm engaging in competitions, and I'm taking responsibility for my education and my future. That's how you changed me. And I'm thankful for that, thankful for you, even if we only ever will be "just friends".
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