Love Is Synthetic

I Trusted, He Lied, I got hurt, and it all started with a note

I have never felt so furious, so betrayed like I did when I let a boy trick me into telling him my feelings. He had been my friend for awhile, hardly more than a month. Seventh grade, we were worst enemies. Eighth grade, though, I tried to give him as much space as possible. Then, as if someone was trying to make my life hell, I was seated straight across from him in my seventh block class. I was a little worried, but then, after we started to pass notes for awhile, he told me he was trying to change himself. That he wanted to be a nicer guy. When I asked if that was because I told him he was really mean, he said some of it was because of that. This is how he got me to become his friend. I talked to him every day, telling him that he shouldn’t try to change, that some people just didn’t get along, and every day, I fell even deeper in "love" with him.

Then, one day in the computer lab, he gave me back yet another note I had passed him. I had told him I was going to leave him alone, like he had wanted from the first day he met me. That’s when he decided to have a laugh and break my heart. He told me that he really liked me and that’s why he was trying to change, and he didn’t want me to leave him alone. He even went so far that he gave me his number. I unknowingly made the biggest mistake of my eighth grade year: I trusted him. I told him that I liked him and gave him my number, expecting that, for once I wouldn’t get hurt. Guess what? WRONG!!!!

When I talked to him the next day, he said "I never said how I liked you," and walked away, smirking. I stood at my locker, biting my lip and fighting tears back. I refused to give him the satisfaction of knowing he had made me cry. I slammed my locker shut and headed to my first class of the day, which he happened to be in, too. I sat across the room, waiting for him to tell his friends, to brag about how the unbreakable girl had finally been hurt. But he didn’t. He went on all week as if nothing had happened at all. He would sit there, just staring at me during class, and when he saw that I had noticed, he would shake his head and get back to work. Finally, I passed him a note that was completely unforgivable. I compared him to a jerk that I know he can’t stand, and if he ever got the chance he would gladly beat-up. I was so hurt and broken, that I didn’t care if he hated me or not. When I got my heart back together, though, then it was a different story. Mostly, I just wanted to know that I hadn’t hurt him badly. He was still ignoring me, though, so I couldn’t ask him. I was tired of playing games that should have never started.

I passed him a final note saying "I’m sorry and I didn’t mean a word of it! I’m gone for good this time. Promise."

Okay, so I’m not good with goodbyes. I wanted to forgive him, and trust him, and let him take me away from all the painful drama. Drama that was never wanted, never asked for, never even deserved, for that matter. I wanted the boy I had talked to about my secrets, the one who listened, and didn’t judge me. That’s all I had wanted before, but it had all gone wrong with my feelings for him. He had been my friend once, why couldn’t we just go back to that?

Then I realized that if he pretended that he liked me, who said that being my friend wasn’t all pretend, too? Who said we were ever real friends? I couldn’t believe I had let myself go so far as to let a boy in, and then actually believe him when he said he liked me. Hurt and embarrassed, I couldn’t look at him. No, that would only make things worse. I lost myself in a world of misery and pain and pure torment of the heart. I went quiet, hardly saying a word, I lost interest in all my deepest passions, including my writing, but most of all, I lost motivation to write.

Finally I called him; using the number he gave me on the note that he used to shatter my heart. He answered! I couldn’t talk, so I sat there listening to him ask who was there. Then, I hung up. I was breathing heavily, and my head was spinning, my shortness of breath was the cause, I suppose. I was terrified of him finding out who it was and just hanging up before I could apologize.

I called again, and this time when he answered, I told him to guess who it was. He guessed 3 times before he realized who it was. He didn’t hang up, or question me why I was calling, or even ask me what in the world had given me the right to call him. Instead, he asked me how I was, and I felt myself take in a breath of relief. I hadn’t taken a single breath since he had answered, because my throat had gotten all swelled up at the very sound of his voice. It was perfect, exactly like it should be, because now we no longer had those feelings that we had let separate us before. Now we could be friends, like we should have been from the very beginning.