I smiled feebly, not daring to raise my eyes to look at what was in front of me, vainly trying to stop the applause, the ooh’s and the aah’s, from reaching my ears. I cheered like any other, laughed, joked, and whooped, contributed to the wealth of happiness that was going on that night, but inside I felt like I was dying. My heart was breaking, shattered into a million pieces, and if only could a million cliches do it justice! The blackened pain, the slow dripping agony, the dread, the twisting and churning and burning in the pit of my stomach as if it was trying to each itself out. God, why am I still here? Why am I still alive, a fuck it all anyway; I’m such a coward.
He walked by, I raised my hand. He shook it, as any old friend would. Our eyes met, and for an instance all that energy, all that secrecy, all that I had ever only dared to whisper to myself and indulged only in fantasies, all that sought to clamber out of my dry, clammy throat. All I could muster up in that pivotal moment was a measly “Congratulations.” He looked at me, and thanked me. What else was I hoping for.
I talked, I laughed, I danced until my legs almost gave out. As the party was nearing to an end, I rushed to see my friend. She was beautiful, radiant, gorgeous without the magic of Adobe Fotoshop, a thing of beauty in her own right. What other cliche can be brought to the butcher’s board, here? I wished her congratulations and hugged her. The man of her dreams proposed to her. Ah, what a perfect couple. See, there are couples that are incredibly awkward together, in real life and around other people, that is. They smile, they don’t really talk, they kind of add to the debilitating atmosphere of a funeral, without the fun. Then there are ok couples. Ones that are together for so long and around each so often you just get used to seeing them together, but nothing incredibly and endearingly special. Then you get this perfect combination the gods just happen to bless the mundaneness of… regular people, I guess. They were fun, adventurous, you know, totally added life to the party and what not. That kind of couple. No matter how close I felt to her, no matter how much I loved her, no matter how much history I have shared with her, I forgot what she looked like. Only a vague, and annoyingly elusive, memory lends itself to me. She had a smile that… caught my breath, eyes that shined. I don’t know. Obviously I can’t describe people, only depressing events. And luckily, I don’t know what my best friend looks like, only fucking beautiful and radiant, and only that I had never envied her as much as in that moment, and that I had never hated myself so much as in that moment. She was going to be married to the man I loved.
The day before the wedding I saw him again, standing outside facing the ocean. Hey, why not, right? I looked at him, and almost wished that I had said something. But I didn’t. Fear? Loyalty? Guilt? He turned around and looked at me, half expected me to say something, only I didn’t know what to say.
“Well?” he asked, “What is it?”
“Congratulations,” I smiled, “On getting married, that is.”
“Don’t you have anything else to say?”
“No,” I lied. Oh god, the words, how they desperately cling to a dying hope to be released! “No. Just congratulations.”
By now we knew full well how the routine goes.
“This is the last time I will ever say this, so listen up. I would have done anything for you. I would have waited for you, killed for you, jumped off a bridge if you wanted me to do it. I loved you, and I still love you. You just never, ever, ever know what you want. You push me away and you keep asking me to come back. You hold all the cards in this fucked up relationship. You know what I want, and you have always known. I want you. That’s it. I want you to want me, to love me as much I as want and love you. But you keep sending me these fucked up signals and in the end, we just keep repeating the same god damn routine because you never know what it is you really want. So this is it, Teresa. I want you. I need you. I love you. What do you want?”
He looked at me, half-tired from this tortured, repeated speech he’s recited so many times before, half-hopeful that I can finally give him the answer he wants.
“Congratulations, really. Be happy.”
I turned away and ran.
I walked to the gardens. I didn’t want to see them at the altar. As I fell to the ground, blindly ripping out clumps of grass and flowers that didn’t deserve such an ungrateful fate, they said their vows, and they kissed. I sobbed uncontrollably, teary-eyed, snot-nosed, and blabbered uncontrollably and everything.
Then I woke up. Of course, I woke up. I woke up feeling like shit. What the fuck, brain?
