If I Could Rewrite Us

I know for a fact that I didn’t really want you. But I wanted you to want me. I wanted you to chase me and be desperate for me… more and more and more… as you showed me the taste of your showering attention. It made me feel good, desired and validated given that you weren’t just nice to any girl. I needed it because deep down I didn’t like myself very much.

I tied to you and your affection my confidence and my self-worth. Consequently, when the table was turned and you left me hanging, I completely lost my cool. I became the one who chased you, turned desperate for you and allowed you to toy with me before I even grasped it. I made mistakes after mistakes that cost me not just time but a lot more than I would like to admit.

I have been thinking a lot about what happened, about you and me, about why we did what we did and why I could not completely get over you, or just simply treat you like any other casual people that crossed my path. Is it because I have never once faced my feelings for you? Is it because I have never had my closure? Is it because it has dragged out for so long that I’m convinced you are significant to me? Is it because that summer day you hurt me so much that I want to redeem myself and defeat you?

Defeat you on what? I truly don’t know. So I asked myself: if I put aside the fact that we are practically impossible, that we will probably never see each other again in real life, what would I want to be between you and me? If I could rewrite us, what would I wish to happen? Then, perhaps I would have some clarity for myself.

Let me think about this. If I could rewrite us… If life happened the way it should…

I will be honest with you and with myself that even though most of the days I would wake up and feel nonchalant about you, or even have no thought of you at all, there is this part of me, at moments of weakness, that still wants you. I sincerely don’t know why you had such a big impact on me to this point of incomprehensibility and ridiculousness but It’s true that even one month ago, I still lied when I said I was over you, over this and that we could be casual friends

Maybe it wasn’t lying. I was just not being real to myself since I didn’t know exactly how I felt or how to treat you either. Apparently, just like the first time I talked to my ex again after our breakup, I have yet to resolve you despite all the proclamations of being healed.

A confusing love hate feeling was sickeningly bottled up in me, holding me back, dragging me down, warping me and all my judgements of you.

It’s absolutely understandable that no one could possibly fathom this but it’s a truth that what happened between you and me had exposed all my insecurities, pointing out all what was wrong with me at the time, or even now. Surely as time passes by, I’m no longer that affected but there is still you somewhere over London, over Chinatown, in the songs I had listened to when you tied my heart, my brain in a knot. Still you in all the Tequila shots I took, in my drunkenness past midnight.

That loser part of me seems to be fixated on the idea of you, your attention, on the sweet, unexpected affectionate gestures you made, on every adorably absurd thing you said, and wonder about what I could do to take them back, to be enough for you, and about the possibility of what could be. Part of me wants you to know and acknowledge that I’m good, I’m smart, I have a good heart, I’m lovable like all the girls you adore too… while the other part demands me to stop all this because it’s the only thing that would make any sense right now.

It was only a brief encounter but you found your way into my heart, then stuck in my head for much longer than I had ever anticipated. You, your look, your actions, your online presence, your style, fit in with the fantasy I had about a boy that I might eventually want to be with.

You fed me ideas and my desire filled in the rest.

So, I don’t think this is your fault. One thing has simply led to another and here we are, 10 months later and I’m writing about you for the first time after our last encounter, probably the last time forever, last June. You are a young, bored boy, restless and stupid, just like everyone else. We brought out something in the other that both of us dreaded. Yet, we both agree that we don’t really know each other and there is nothing particularly personal between us.

It was all me being clouded from the simple reality of us which I could have just casually brushed off otherwise if only my brain wouldn’t have been muddled by all the messy mind game, manipulations we pulled on each other. I always had a choice to walk away but I chose to do what I did. I own up to it. And thus, I don’t have a reason to hate you now, or want to be friends with you, or care what you think of me either. This is not about you. I just happen to be a person who takes time to move on and forget, perhaps a little bit more than the usual.

All I’m meaning to do is to forgive you for how you carelessly, mean-spiritedly treated me and let you go from my mind. Even if the irrational part of me, the soft spot for you in me, will stay with me for months and months more, even forever, I’ll accept it and let it be — quiet, untouched, asleep. Then I’d be fine.

Ask me again, If I could rewrite us. Then I say, I would not rewrite us. I will keep telling the story of me making mistakes and eventually being real to myself, of me being strong and not afraid to move on, of me being human, being young, being a reckless loser, wanting something I can’t have, realizing I don’t need it, accepting the past, learning to respect myself and believing in something that’s just right for me out there. After all, that’s what life is about, isn’t it?