I Swear We're All Mental (Listening to: Hang Me Up to Dry, Cold War Kids)

Who I am is never going to be good enough for you. I think I get that now. I don’t know how you see me, and really it doesn't even matter. Because even if you thought I was beautiful, even if you thought I was perfect, it wouldn’t be enough. You and I will never happen. I just don’t fit in with the person you are trying so hard to be. I don’t know. Maybe that is you. Maybe you are a crude flirt whose laugh is just a little too loud. You know it sounds forced. To me at least. Maybe to everyone. It’s just a little too long. I’m being mean. But I can see right through you, you know. I don’t know, maybe we all can. I just feel like I know you, like I knew you, I mean. Like you are so much more than this stupid boy with so much wasted potential. A stupid sixteen year old boy. I’m not cool enough for him. I’d like to think I am, or that it is irrelevant and that if you care about me, he will forget his friends and the two of you can become one person. But it does matter. It’s all that matters. I know that. We all know that. I guess the duplicity never occurred to me before. But it was always there, even last year when I thought everything was perfect. You were perfect to me last year. In that one class. The rest of the day, it was like that 45 minutes, that hour and a half once a week, like it didn’t even exist. Only when you were alone could you smile at me, could you acknowledge me at all. I heard you changed. It’s pathetic. You are no different than then. You learned nothing. You are the same stupid fucking boy who bums smokes off strangers and gets caught for the stupidest little shit. I heard you went to rehab. Was that another waste of time? I can’t believe this. I hate you some of the time, I swear. I really, really do. Fuck. Let me tell you something. I was a little disappointed when I heard that you had given all that up, that you were smart and responsible. I wanted to be the one to change you. I wanted you to change for me. This is so messed up. I’m so messed up. God, you don’t even talk to me now. I feel like an idiot. We’re all idiots, aren’t we. Just stupid teenagers. Mentally fucking retarded, I swear.

The Expelled Boy Came Back (Listening to: Sukie in the Graveyard, Belle & Sebastian)

You saw me first, and came over to give me a hug and say hello. I haven’t seen you in months and that distance seems strung up between us like Christmas lights counting the days. My face bursts into a bright, blooming smile when I see you. I can’t quite catch my breath when you’re looking at me, and my heart is almost audible when we’re in the same room. I count the times you touch me. And now I’m sitting here without you, trying to figure out how to put what you do to me into words. It is impossible. It is inexpressible. I remember the things you used to say to me last year, how you seemed to hint at things I was too shy to acknowledge. And I’m still like that; I still bat my eyelashes because it’s hard for me to look right at you, right into your eyes. Somehow I can’t make that contact, and I can’t do more than smile and hug. Talk. Talking to you is hard for me too. I lose track of words when my heart is beating that fast. There are strange and terrible distances between us, a gap that cannot always be bridged, that tangle of twinkling lights. I see you watching me sometimes and it makes me flush, to know you see me too. To understand that you watch me, that you see me. Last year I told all my friends every little nuance of the way you spoke to me, every movement you made in my direction. I understand now that this is only ours, and maybe the milestones are for them, but the journey needs to be all our own. I don’t want to make a fool of myself. I don’t know how to say this. I did make a fool of myself last year, it was humiliating and heartbreaking to have it all taken away, all those words and little nothings I watched so carefully, all the time and all the glances in the halls, your smell. There was nothing I could do. I don’t want to throw myself out into that void, to tell all my friends about the way you looked at me today, to risk everything and bank on you being there when I know how quickly and completely it can all disappear. How one day you can just stop showing up. And it’s as simple as this: I’m falling for you. Please catch me.

That was two weeks ago. We barely speak. He doesn't touch me anymore. I missed seeing him around last year when he was kicked out. So now there's this recognition that we don't know each other anymore. That we maybe weren't made for each other. He asked me for my notes today. My heart skipped a beat.

I know you so much better than they do. I saw you open up, I saw all those walls come crumbling down. You're putting up that huge front again and I can see it, I can see you building it. You need to prove yourself to all of them again now I guess, and I understand that. Who we are is so much less important than who we show to the world in high school. And you don't want anyone to remember you for what you did wrong. For your very simple, very real mistakes. You want them to remember that loudness, that crudeness, that charisma.

It breaks my heart.

Because it was your vulnerability that made me love you last year. And that's clearly being buried more and more deeply as the days go by. There won't be any more hearts with bordering vowels on my notebooks drawn by you. To tell you the truth, I almost prefer it. I love organization, and I couldn't erase those doodles even though they drove me crazy. You won't hug me or joke with me or tell me how I smell amazing. Not this year. You won't cradle me in your arms, you won't act in sexually charged scenes with me. You won't open up. Your friends don't like me, I'm not cool enough for them. I don't do drugs. I don't party. We don't belong together. Seduce the foreign exchange student, I know that's the guy you want to be.

But please, I needed you. I know you, not like them. I've seen you, not the way they've seen you. I am different. You need to remember that.