her. -- an original short story

afterword

I guess this is another thing like imprint, where it's pretty loose, except the ending is pretty set in stone. They're super close, they finally love each other, but that's not enough to stop what seems like the inevitable from coming.

This isn't inspired by anything other than what I consider to be my one failed love, who still resides as a friend and a heavy influence in my life to this day. We didn't technically date, and he wasn't an ex-boyfriend, but that's what makes him into an ex-almost, an ex-maybe. Not that I'm going to end up like the girl in this, and I cope with my feelings in a healthier way, but I should mention that not everything has a happy ending.

I think that's why I ended this as I did. As people, we tend to find solace and sanctuary in the hopes that everything will end happily, that everything will end with everyone getting a chance. I think we find a sort of, desire for a happy ending because we're afraid we won't get our own, or we can't handle the truth, and the truth is, not everything ends in everyone's favor.

Throughout the parts, I tried to include little moments where you can see that she's not doing well. That even though the narrator is dense and thinking only of himself through this story he's telling, there were a few signs that he saw that you can see through this veil she's put up in front of her, and through the veil that the narrator has put for her.

My ex-almost, which is what we'll call him, has a tendency to do what the narrator does. He'll talk, and he'll talk, and he'll talk because he knows that someone is listening. That someone is me, because I do what she did, I listen. I find a weird sort of comfort listening to people, and that's because I don't always like talking myself. When I tell my ex-almost that he's a good person, and he shouldn't forget that, his arrogant remarks can be infuriating. He graduated a year before me, and I told him, honestly, that I would miss him. He didn't come back with the usual, "yeah, i'll miss you too" but he always responded with, "I'll miss me too."

It never occurred to me just how lonely you can feel after someone responds like that when you're trying to be emotional, trying to talk from your heart.

Now I'm not trying to completely involve you in my failure of a love life, but because this is an afterword about someone realizing their feelings in return for someone, I feel that this afterword is important. If you don't want to read it, that's fine, I have no issues with you skipping this. If you do continue, thank you, your care means a lot to me.

I don't know exactly why I fell head over heels for him. He was shallow, arrogant, and only ever looked out for me because we were close friends, or at least I'd like to think we were close friends. I think my favorite thing to tell people is that we met because he started dating my closest friend, who was practically my sister at the time. They were so close to one year? two years? the time is muddy for me, but it was awhile. They seemed so in love, so much like the type of couple that would make it and get married, have a family, be happy. So when he started dating my "sister", it only seemed appropriate to get close, to meet him and let him know who I was. So we became friends, and after they broke up, we only got closer.

Yet he was so stuck on her that when I confessed the first time, it was a fool's mission for me to try. Of course I was turned down, who wouldn't be? So I gave it some time, and the next time we had that period of closeness, I fell head over heels again. This time, it was so much worse. We had matured a little bit more, we were on our way to actually working and having lives, and both of us found that we wanted to be a part of each other's lives. I got butterflies, my words mixed up, my anxiety heightened, and yet he spun my heart in ways that I don't think I had ever felt before. So, I grew up the courage and I confessed. Again.

He told me that he needed time to figure out his feelings, and as hopeful and as eager as I was, I gave it to him. One week. Two weeks. Three weeks passed by and I was still hoping, still waiting. Only he told me that if something took him this long, it wasn't worth it.

I pray, to everything that is holy or godly, that nobody should ever be told that their feelings were not worth it, that the time they gave for someone they cared about was not worth it. It is the most gut wrenching feeling and I got sick from it, genuinely sick that I ended up out of school for a day and I cried myself to sleep for as long as I could remember.

It wasn't even the rejection, it was that I felt worse about myself than the first time I'd tried, then all the times he'd come to me to tell me about dreams he had of other girls, knowing full well how I felt. 

So I let it fade away and I rebounded. I ruined someone's life because I couldn't get mine under control.

So, you're probably wondering why I have written out this whole thing about my feelings and my personal experience. If it wasn't for someone telling me that wearing "rose-colored glasses" was doing more harm than good, then I would've continued subjecting myself to the emotional torture that was my ex-almost. If he had come back and had wanted to be in a relationship, would I have been with him? Absolutely, because I knew that out of all the guys I'd fallen for, he treated every girl he loved like a queen, like a goddess, and he did that. Loved them.

But everyone and anyone, please, I urge you all to make sure you're not looking at certain people through "rose-colored glasses". You don't know how they're thinking about you, and if they're the narrator of this story who won't realize anything until too late or they won't notice anything while everything still focuses on them, then they are not healthy. They are not the ones you want to be with, so find someone who will listen to you if you're used to listening to everyone, smile for you and make you smile, who will dream about you and make you dream about them, and who will kiss you as if you are their entire world.

So, let's finish this with some dedications;

To you, T.D.P., my ex-almost. I never want to lose you, but I don't know how much longer I can take everything.

To you, my reader, my perfect stars. You all shine so bright, and I would hope nothing more. Please take care of yourselves, and please love yourselves. 

Thank you for reading her.