This Time It's Real

And this, I think, is my ultimate fatal flaw. Missing people who don’t miss me back. Clinging on to strands of string that shouldn’t mean half as much as they do. It takes so little for me to love someone, yet so long for me to move on.

When you care about someone, you want to be inconvenienced—you wouldn’t mind being inconvenienced by them every day for the rest of your life. That’s what love is. That’s all love really is.

I guess my point is that I do believe in love. Really. I'm just not convinced that kind of love could ever happen to me.

Maybe I’ll always be scared. Maybe the fear of getting hurt, of being left alone, will never truly go away. But even if it’s my default setting, I can fight it. So many beautiful things lie on the other side of fear. Like love. Like this.

There’s something strangely intimate about calling someone in the dark. It’s like listening to your favorite song in the middle of a crowded subway; the world narrows down to just you and this voice in your ear, while everyone else around you goes about their lives, completely oblivious. It feels sacred. Like a secret.

But aren’t small things exactly what friendships are made up of? Frayed string bracelets and late-night texts and compilations of your favorite songs? When you take those things away, what do you have left?

Because there aren’t thousands of books and poems and movies out there to describe exactly what I’m feeling, or lyrically beautiful songs for me to cry to and sing along with in the car. There’s no guidebook on how to survive this kind of fallout, no prescribed remedy to soothe this particular kind of pain. Romantic breakups are romanticized constantly, talked about everywhere by everyone, but platonic breakups are swept to the side, suffered in secret, as if they’re somehow less important.

And I don't know how to make people stay; I never have.

But certain joys, I'm discovering, are worth the potential pain.

Sometimes I'm convinced I'll spend the rest of my life this way. Alone. Sometimes I think loneliness is my default setting. - Eliza Lin

I hope you remember to miss me when all this is over

Whatever you say, my love.

Hope is such a terrible thing. It’s like a bad habit you can’t shake off, a stray dog that keeps showing up outside your door for scraps, even when you have nothing left to give. Every time you think you’re rid of it at last, it manages to sneak its way back in. Take over.

You're so weird sometimes," he says, and it somehow sounds more affectionate than I love you.

But insincerity is easy. Bullshitting your way through things is easy. It doesn't require any emotional attachment; there aren't any stakes involved. It can't hurt you, because you never believed in any of it anyway. But telling the truth—saying exactly what you mean, how you feel, to the people you care about most... That's one of the hardest things in the world. Because you have to trust them. Trust that they won't hurt you, even when they have the power to.

Most sincere things feel at least a little embarrassing. It's part of our defense mechanisms. Our heart's way of protecting us from potential hurt. - Zoe

He’d flirt with a teaspoon if the situation called for

This Strategic, Mutually Beneficial and Romantically Oriented Alliance to Help Further Our Respective Careers—” “S.M.B.R.O.A.H.F.O.R.C. for short,” I offer. “Yeah, uh, I don’t think that’s shorter,” Caz tells me.

If awkwardness could be a fatal flaw, it would most definitely be mine.

Maybe you can talk about how... I don't know, how his laughter sounds. If it's rougher in the mornings, or lower on the phone, or how he always tips his head back when he finds something funny. How—how you can only see his dimples when he smiles at something real. How you're jealous of everyone who loves him, who knew him before you did.

This is the closest I have ever gotten to voicing the truth: that I'm afraid. That for a long time now, between maybe the third and fourth move, the fourth or fifth friend I lost along the way, I've suspected that there's something fundamentally unlovable about me. Something that makes it easy for people to forget me the second I leave, to drift out of touch no matter how hard I try to keep them in my life. I've said before that my default setting is loneliness, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe it's really fear.

isn’t that what homes are made of? A collection of the things that shape you?

You hold everything in here, Ai-Ai," she says sternly, pointing to her own heart. "For better or worse. But not everyone is going to guess at what you're thinking like I do. No one is going to know how you feel if you don't tell them. And until you do-- you can never really know what's going to happen.

Romantic breakups are romanticized constantly, talked about everywhere by everyone, but platonic breakups are swept to the side, suffered in secret, as if they’re somehow less important.

I'm strong and independent and I don't need anyone,' but the truth is: We do need people. People who'll laugh with us and cry with us and make the bad days bearable and the good days better; people who'll remember what we forget and `listen even when they don't completely understand; people who'll need us back. It had nothing to do with strength at all, and everything to do with being human.

Planning things out in detail means there are boundaries, and boundaries mean I'll at least have control over something.

If you ever feel sick again, or hurt, or injured, or weak, you have to tell me. Don’t just keep it to yourself and act tough—” He starts to protest, but I continue over him, knowing I’m probably crossing some invisible line but not caring. “Because no matter what happens... we’re friends now, right? I want to be the person you know you can turn to. The place where you feel safe. I want you to feel like you can just be—human, in front of me. Like you don’t have to always show your best side. Okay?” I add when he opens his mouth to argue again. “Promise me.

They-Could-Step-on-Me-and-I’d-Thank-Them

N-nothing. Just …” I panic and blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. “Just—global warming.” I’m met with a series of blank stares. Great, I think with rising despair as the silence stretches on. This is exactly why you don’t hang out with Caz’s friends. Now they’re going to wonder why he’s dating someone with the social skills of a potted plant or a potential kink for a severe climate crisis— Then Daiki nods solemnly. “It’s a pressing issue, for sure.

I want this to be real.