I'm begging to be talked to, begging to have attention paid to me, but those at whom I look invariably continue on with their daily lives, with their own friends, no need to look beyond their circle of the moment and see what might be waiting outside.
And I’m that girl that men fear, I'm the girl who looks at an attractive man and my imagination takes off. First he'll speak to me. He'll find me intriguing, someone he wants to talk with again, and he'll call me in a few days. Before long we're hanging out all the time. Then he starts staying the night at my house, and then we go on personal histories and problems, paranoias and financial situations.
Then we either suffer a thunder-and-lightning breakup or we get married.
And then I realize I haven't even spoken a word to this guy, the boy with nice eyes 30 feet away from me in a strange coffeehouse where I've only been to drink chai twice. Suddenly I am defeated, I have no chance, and he walks out the door with his friends.
Will it always be this way? Will I always be afflicted with the passions of my youth, seemingly unabated and surely undiminished from when I was 16 and in love? I was spoiled, once, and only once, by someone who felt as strongly for me as I felt for him, and ever since then it has been a weird trickle of men who don't know themselves, don’t trust themselves, or delude themselves with visions of their lives that just can't exist.
They say a kiss is just a kiss ... but what if that is sacred to some people? What if a kiss is still to some people an old-fashioned way to say that they like you enough to have this most intimate contact with you, but that kisses are handed out only as rarely as gold bullion?
Then I guess I will be fated to sit here, looking at that guy with nice eyes and a prematurely failed relationship and wonder how the hell it will all happen, when I can expect to find someone to whom I am irresistibly attracted and by whom I am never revolted, yet will also feel the same about me? Someone who does not inhibit my thoughts or speech, and who is not inhibited by me - that is the man I seek. Someone who will stimulate all aspects of me, but inflame me with anger fierce enough to lash out and not meekly whimper away into the shadows.
And what the nature of jealousy? Is jealousy proclaiming to be "over" someone and then needing to leave the office for the day when you overhear a co-worker invite him for a friendly jog after work? Or is that being irate that the a relationship in any form, even a friendship, cannot work because there is something there neither of you can get over? And that this girl -- who cannot know the things you know about him -- is free to jog with him when you are not even able to talk with him lest things be misconstrued?
All these rhetorical questions never get me anywhere, and this is simply unfit to be read. It means nothing outside the membrane of my mind and my life, and it means that I am being obstinate about having the last word. You can only decide to initiate conversations so often, because then you would be giving too much and you would have lost the age-old battle, but is it better to concede when it means the air would be clear?
I feel as if I've never been so stubborn about anything in my whole life, and if I don't start taking a stand some time, then perhaps I never will. Too bad for him that he has to be the whipping boy, the first one who will be ignored because that is my only option. Too bad he is too beautiful for his own good, and that he puts me in a foul mood when I see him because I loathe that we cannot be friends. Too bad that things have transpired so that you will see more of him, now, when you need to see him least.
You say to everyone that you're over him, but some stupid thread continues to persist within your heart. Admit that it is pure physical attraction-no wait, you know you would be lying to say that was all. It is his lifestyle, the way he lives life, the way he does things, and you hate to say you might be in love with him because you hate him at the same time because he can't admit truths to himself.
And you hate that he is fearful rather than flattered because some of his interests have piqued your curiosity and become things you like to do, too. Isn't that how you discover some things, through friends? You hate that he can't understand your genuine interest, and can't discern your platonic intent. You'd like to tell him that you're treating him no different from any other good friend, a friend you value and a friend you love, but if you have to tell him that then it's not worth saying.
And you hate that this is one of those people who is like no one else you've ever met, but most of all you just hate him for being such a coward. For not being able to face up to himself.
But you can't do it for him, you can't be his mind or his intellect or his conscience, and this is why you keep your silence, because any woman who throws a man's faults in his face will only feel his resentment for saying out loud what he already knew deep inside but couldn't admit aloud. He'll only be worth having once he can admit his faults to himself of his own volition, and in the meantime because you can admit those things to yourself where he can't, you're far better off without him, better to find someone more grown into his skin, beautiful as it may be, sickeningly magnetic, so terrible you have to leave the room and avoid his eyes when you do.
And you won't ask, you won't mention, it will just become your own black secret, a mark on your heart that you still feel something for him. But no one else can know. And he will go down in your personal history as the one who got away, the one who still makes your heart flutter from a brief but long-ago encounter, and the one who still makes your mind reel from the possibility of what it might have been like with him.
But no one can know.