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Love Story: Unforgettable.

By: reminscent

Having spammed my.ucla students who had "business economics" listed in their profiles in search for answers about UCLA's Econ department seeing that it was the end of my first year and I'd better decide on what I'd want to do with my life, I was waiting for a flood of emails to enter my inbox, kind strangers who would help me answer the questions I was burning to ask. Several days went by and I resorted to thinking that my brilliant idea was not so brilliant after all. His first words to me were "Didn't expect anyone to answer you through aim, did you?"

What a kind, proactive individual, I thought. Why not answer. So my departmental questions were met with his optimistic answers and so begin our exchange of aims that unexpectedly didn't end that one night. Seeing that our world didn't collide save the desire for the same major, we went on to talk about anything and everything. While everyone went to sleep, we would stay up asking each other questions about life, love, happiness. I found his approach to life and his hunger for knowledge captivating. Wholesome, happy, and simply driven, he could engage me like no other friend could. Of course there are plenty of companions who I could share 4 hour long + conversations with about life and love, but then after that day was over, it'd end, we'd be tired of talking to each other and we'd both need a break. We'd go on to our separate lives, but the idea of consistently updating one another became rather jaded, we'd live and let live, updating once every two or three months. What I couldn't figure out about it, was what would compel two individuals so strongly as to continue on conversations till the wee hours of the morning one night and repeat the process all over again the next night, every other night for years on end without exhausting our mental checklists of "things to say". We could be naturally talkative, but godamn there was something about him that held me.

We went from talking on aim, to phone, but I didn't want to meet him for years because I wanted to hold on to "this", someone whom I can talk to and be listened, someone who actually gets me, who can read me, who's on my level in terms of communication and what we strive for in this world. I wanted to hold on to that for as long as possible, even though he was just an online friend, he felt more real than so many people whom I've actually met before. I didn't want to change something so good and genuine, and most of all constant, that's in my life. For over two years we'd bare our souls to each other. He'd flatter me with revealing insistences of being the person who knows him most out of his companions. It's something so cherishable, so intensely rare that I fought to preserve it for as long as I could.

But after saying no to a real life meeting for the nth time, I thought maybe it wouldn't hurt to meet this good friend for the first time. So we agreed to meet by the Bruin Bear one fateful September night. Right after I agreed to enter into a relationship with someone whom I've known and talked to for a year, actually. I believe that is what made me finally decide to meet him. I guess in a way I wanted to be 100% sure my intentions were of pure, untainted friendship when I first meet him in real life. I really cherished his friendship enough to wait for this type of insurance, haha. And having already genuine affections for a significant other guaranteed me of this fact. It was a wonderful first encounter. We talked as much face to face as we do online and through phone, which came as no surprise. He was animated, monotonic, funny, as engaging as always and it felt nice to gain this friendship. I saw the happiness he exudes and I felt comfortable to be in his presence. The nice guy who've been there for me these past years of my life, without one single fight, without one single dramatic episode, it was damn amazing to have known him for this long and his smile reassured me that this was someone I'd want to be friends with and grow old with for as long as I can help it. I took the liberty to rub his recently bald head for fun, and he enjoyed it. hahaha.

Beyond the smiles, what I didn't understand and what I couldn't detect because he hides it so well, was all his pain. Sitting here typing this, I realize how blind I've been to someone with so much buried hurt. I should've picked up on the signs, but how could I when all I know was what he tells me through online aims. How could I have picked up on the tone when he talks about all the deception he had to endure from his first love, the relationship he has with his parents, and how he's learned to cope with the factors in his life that've taken a swipe at him. I saw how surrounded he is by love but at the same time how alone he is with his sadness. How he can have incredibly brutal fights one day with someone he loves and the next day smile and act as if nothing happened the night before. How he can push away his pain because he wants to be happy that much more, he wants things to be okay so much that he's willing to overlook the elephant in the room that would inevitably rear it's head later on. He would rather walk away or ignore what's painful rather than confront it, he runs away, like me. At first I couldn't accept how someone so loving and happy could harbor so much underlying discontent and judgments, but I realize he has been recently wronged and it's only natural to backlash. It's only unfortunate that he didn't spare a good friend from his destructive path.

Just as my fear played out, our friendship is no more after we met vis a vis. Our second encounter became intensely, abruptly intimate, shocking both of us to the point where we had to pull ourselves off each other if we wanted to have anything "normal" or close to any kind of long lasting friendship, which is what we both want, desperately so. But our meetings of friendship was to be tainted by the fact that we've made love and we've felt each other's kiss. We've grasped each other's skin and there was this want, this desire that passed between us, violently pushing us over the lines of friendship, and taunting us. The fact that we've sampled something so innately right but so discouraged due to certain boundaries we fight hard to respect, we kept relapsing into an unhealthy pattern of blurring the lines between what's platonic and something more so frequently that as expected, someone got hurt. And that someone was me. Out of all the times we've met up to "hang out", we surrendered to the carnal desires within us three times out of four. It was the most unusual, yet heart-wrenching experience I've ever had with anyone in my life and it made me lose the trust I had in myself, in him, that our friendship would last forever, that this special something was definite. It shook my foundations of what felt right or wrong, what should be, it made for several sleepless nights wondering if in this life, is it even worth it to fight so hard to keep something that kept getting sabotaged by the very people fighting to uphold it?

And I knew my answer. After the last time, the last kiss, I knew it, and it was so painful that it provoked a few tears from my eyes. And maybe it made me look like an emotional wreck, just crying at every corner he turns, but there was something more to it than just that. Our last kiss made me cry because I knew I couldn't keep on doing this to myself. At the points in our lives, we're incredibly reluctant to commit simply because we've been recently seared by the past special people we've stumbled upon. It'd be crazy to say we're both ready for anything, yet the truth is, I think after talking and knowing him for so long, our natural connection, I think a part of me fell in love with him. And the selfish part of me didn't want my past to keep crippling me from being happy. I am over what happened and I was ready to move on. But he still had his pain, and only recently did I recognize how much pain it is. I didn't understand, and I'm sorry.

But I can't let myself go on with a friendship with someone who's not even ready for my friendship. He has to figure some things out on his own, he has to finally forgive the people who've wronged him. He needs his closure. But he's not going to hurt me while he's searching for it.

Regardless of everything we've been through, I've managed to move on, however hard it was. I managed to patch up the hole that was left empty for him to fulfill within my heart. After realizing that there are many things he should come to terms with himself, to make him genuinely happy, so that I no longer feel the bittersweet thickness of enjoyment that's often tainted by painful statements of truths from him, he will not make me happy, and to desire him is to act the fool I warned myself against being. And so it is. It's that much easier to let go.

You can simplify this into a story where girl meets boy, boy meets girl, and girl leaves boy. But it's not simply that, for the things in my life, the events that have happened to me with the people in my life and the books I've read led me to see the world this way. Everything's colored with my perspective, this romanticized view of life and love, and that when I walk away I do take something from it all. I gain a better insight on who he is, and how next time around maybe things will be different, maybe I'd have learned some lessons to help me be a better person. Maybe I'd be less fearful of jumping over certain mores that restrains me from the happiness I deserve.

As for him, I see him now as I've always seen him. Just adding a bit more pain doesn't change him much. He views the world in the same light as I do, he delves into what he loves, he articulates what he loves, and although he is pessimistic and he worries often, that doesn't stop him from knowing what's right and good. He has the amazing ability to keep me laughing, with his spanish insertions and his nack for story telling. He loves the idea of plots and he finds that enjoyment through comic strips, rpg's, and games of all sorts. Shunning the mainstream, he shows you his taste for classic movies and music. He beats himself up for not being able to do certain things, but he underestimates himself. He has incredible endurance to work hard, and simultaneously he can party hard. He'd make things funnier and livelier just by being a part of it because rather than cutting ideas short with derogatory comments, he'd expand what you have to say with his own engaging opinions. He makes you feel cared for when you're with him, there won't be a lack of his signature hugs nor encore deserving serenades. Although sometimes he makes mistakes and shows that there are many antics less than admirable he commits to, he's also human, and that's forgivable.

I wish things were different, that none of it turned out this way. But I have a mantra I've carried with me since my first heartbreak in those good high school hay days, which is "you look back and learn". There's no feeling of ill will or regrets when I look at our friendship that has come to pass. We've treated each other with respect for 95% of those three years and we've made each other happy for being a part of each other's lives during that time span of our crazy interaction. You let people go because you sometimes have to and sometimes things just don't turn out the way you like them to, but that is life and its lessons for ya. He's taught me quite a bit with our late night talks. I see in him a very beautiful human being. My dear special friend.

He will remain unforgettable to me.