i’ve had an obscene and completely uncharacteristic week so far. i am too exhausted to explain anything in detail, but i’d like to share it with you anyways. i’ve been awake since thursday, but i don’t know if i’m ready to talk about the things that happened today, so i’ll recount everything up until wednesday for now.
i spent saturday, monday, and tuesday night working (the 3-11 p.m. shift). i forgot how awful that shift is. i always end up spending the entire morning anxiously waiting for it to start and can never accomplish anything, and then i’m so exhausted afterwards that i’m barely able to walk home in one piece. and you’d think because i work in the kitchen of a diner i’d get to eat lots of free food, but the most i ate during those three days was peanut butter with stolen celery sticks and crackers.
on saturday, i was so upset with myself that i left without asking any of the servers for my tip-out and sobbed as softly as one possibly can while weaving through huge crowds of 20-something-year-old club-goers. i’d put on the glow pt 2 and only got through the first 3 minutes of i want wind to blow when i heard an unfamiliar voice call my name. it was a friend i’d made through online school but had never formally met in person before, leading a group of vaguely-known people i’d also never formally met in person before. and i had to face them all with a tear-stained, guacamole-stained face. so much for first impressions.
on monday, i got off an hour early and decided to commit to my recent decision to become a delinquent and buy darts, but i chickened out at the first convenience store i went to and ended up buying a bottle of root beer instead. i don’t even really like root beer. i detoured from my apartment to go to a second convenience store and get the cigarettes there. i left and spent 5 minutes rummaging around my backpack for a lighter, and was so fed up with not being able to find it that i took an even further detour to a third convenience store just for that. i smoked in a school playground and cried.
on tuesday, i got an unexpected text from a friend i’d just recently made (and had also blown off twice in the 5 days i’d known them). i reminded myself i was a horrible person for not committing to our previous plans and decided to spontaneously visit their new apartment. it was nice, but my social battery was so drained from being overly-friendly with the onslaught of customers i’d had to deal with all day that i felt like i was coming across as completely uninterested in being there. reiterated the fact that i don’t deserve to have friends.
wednesday was a strangely human day. i went on a 60-ish km bike ride and some young kids tried to steal my bike. i crashed a volleyball tournament at the beach and then proceeded to crash a peewee soccer game on my way home. two prepubescent lacrosse boys were belting you belong with me by taylor swift and got told off by an old guy for playing "inappropriate" music. i saw a fox in the parking lot of a long and mcquade. an old lady smiled at me on the bike path.
wednesday was also your 20th birthday. 6 months ago, i made a promise to you (and myself) that i was going to bike to your house that day. i spent 2 hours the night before (1 a.m. till 3 a.m.) trying to talk myself out of it, and then i got up at noon and went anyways. i had two different presents and two different cards planned out for you but i brought neither of them, just a granola bar and a camera and a notebook and pen. i got about halfway when i stopped at a waterfall; google maps considered it a scenic point, so i thought it might be a cool place to check out. it was right off the highway and subpar at best and there was some guy stoned out of his absolute mind trying to scale the same rock over and over again. i waited for him to leave and took some pictures and wondered if you’d ever visited before, and if you’d been as underwhelmed as i was. i kept biking. found a $5 bill on the ground. got about a kilometre into the second half when i finally became lucid enough to realize how stupid i was being, so i turned to visit an island beach instead, and parked at a picnic bench and lay in the sun for an hour. i pulled out my notebook and wrote you a 5-page birthday card. i taped it together with electrical tape and buried it under a rock by the river on my way home. i sat and watched the sunset after that, and texted you happy birthday. you responded. i was happy.
the letter went something like this:
“i hope you never find this. not that you ever will; i didn't even make it all the way. i got about halfway there when i realized how utterly stupid i am for trying, and i stopped at petrie to lie in the sun for a bit and eat a sandwich, but the sandwich was made with week-old bread and meat and didn't taste very good, so i just ended up sitting on a bench and writing this instead.
the fact that this exists in the first place is a testament to how little i've grown. i know i stupidly decided the previous one had to be read by human eyes, but i won't make that mistake again. don't read this. it's not meant to be anything more than a feeble gesture to create a boundary between two eras of my life. that's a microphones in 2020 lyric. i can't give you the book anymore like i said i would, but i think you should still listen to it someday. it got me through those months.
i don't exactly know why i'm here. several months ago, i told myself i was going to bike to your house on your 20th birthday. i told myself i really would, for so so long. and then i accidentally set the world on fire, and everything turned to shit. circumstances changed. no more grand gestures. so maybe i’m here because i committed to it. to fulfill a wish i made to my past self, for some futile attempt at closure that won't really give me closure. maybe it's because continuing to live out some moronic one-sided delusional teenage fantasy makes me feel alive. maybe it's because i just wanted to go for a nice peaceful bike ride, on a day with perfect sunny weather and no wind or school or work or anything else to do.
i think we both know that none of those reasons are the main one. i also don't think i need to explain what is. i'm clingy, i'm obsessive. you already know i love you. platonically, soulfully, whatever. i guess love to me is a 100 kilometre bike ride on some wednesday in july just to bury a birthday letter in a park outside your house and never tell you about it. or i guess in some sand on a beach on an island instead, or under a rock by the river, or wherever this ends up being left and forgotten about. yeah. that tracks.
i got you a present a while ago (january), but i think giving it to you now would defeat the whole purpose of "friend breakup". can i call it that? too soon? sorry. also, how the fuck could i ever think "giving it to you now" would be an option? sure, idiot. just bike to his house, ring the doorbell and go, "hey, i know i'm not really welcome here and kinda destroyed you and this thing we called friendship, but here's a present that isn't a physical or literary bomb! take it because i biked 50k to deliver it personally." yeah. fucking stupid. what's even more stupid is that i actually considered it.
anyways. bullshit aside: happy birthday! you are 20...what tf. no more teen years. thank god. i've always secretly thought teendom was overrated. but 20 is like...the official entrance into adulthood...which is cool...yeah. 20 is a great year. i hope you have an awesome one. you deserve it. and i really mean that, especially after everything i put you through.
i still have so much to say. except, that's what i said when we called in june, and then i proceeded to not say anything meaningful at all. i know why. it's because i do still have so many things to say to you, but i don't know what they are. apologies, regrets...with every passing second the thoughts in my head blur together further. i still feel so much, months later. i hate it. i hate this suffocation. i wish so badly that it would stop. i wish we could have been regular normal friends, because i really do need you in my life. i shouldn't, but i do. you’re the most important friend i’ve ever had.
maybe you're gone forever now. i don't know how to accept that. you'll always be important to me, and these smothering words are the consequence of that. i admire you, and i respect you, and i guess i’ve learned that my way of showing people i care is intense and destructive and unfiltered and fucked, and i'm sorry, i'm so sorry, i'm more sorry than you'll ever know. but it comes from a place of love. it always does. it's the only thing i know how to do, and i probably won't stop until they finally lock me up and chain me down and drug me past the point of no return and my brain turns to a pile of thoughtless mush knocking around in my skull. so i'm sorry for loving you so hard. but it is all i have.
that's unimportant. what matters is that i'm honoured to know you, and i'm glad we had so many good moments. i know you said i tarnished them for good, but i reject that. being your friend was beautiful. i loved you as my friend first, and i always always will. i'll be cheering front and center when you collect that nobel prize one day.
alright. signing off now. this is me wishing you all the best this year, and for all the years to come.
happy 20th, adult man. stay gold.”
i don’t know how much of that i would ever say to you. i don’t think i’ll let myself say anything to you ever again. i might never accept that we’re better off apart, but i know i have to. i can’t hurt you anymore. i’m learning that words don’t always make things better. i’m learning about the line between digestible honesty and truth. that i can never be truly open about the darkness that controls me. have i put this loneliness here myself in the name of protection and control or am i repeatedly scaring away the people i love with my evil? vulnerability is too difficult. alienation seems to be the only choice i have anymore.
anywho, that’s the story of the past couple days. summer is strange and i feel out of place.