An Unforgettable Reminder

The haunting past paves a daunting future

This morning I found myself explaining the same old, yet twisted tale of my buried love for a man. A mutual friend of my housemate’s stayed the night and in the morning we talked over some porridge breakfast. She told me my housemate may be getting a boyfriend soon to which I delightedly congratulated the idea as well our friend’s matchmaking skills. In just one lapse in reasoning, before I could stop myself, I mistakenly asked her if she could set me up as well. She remarked “I don’t know…I thought you liked someone”.

The person she referred to was probably what I told my housemate about my second unrequited love, of course, they were not informed of the sex of this individual, or was it more like I intentionally kept referring to him as a “her”. It isn’t uncommon anymore for me to casually chatter up a conversation with my friends about who I like, it’s a mutually beneficial one, I tell them what I want to say, they hear what they want to hear. It’s weird for an older teen to continually digress away from the subject of love interests- “oh well, no one in mind currently” “not right now, no love interest for me at the moment”. I feel like I’m biting my own words again of “not misleading anyone anymore”, but this is what it takes, at least before I mention a word of my innate preferences.

Jokingly I asked “Can you find me someone?”
Miss J: “I don’t know…I thought you liked someone”.

“Well I got over her"
She questions “How did you get over her?”

I could barely answer, so the next most fitting response was “I forced myself to”
She inquired, “Did she have a boyfriend” He had a girlfriend

“Yes, she did last semester, I don’t know about now, we don’t talk much”…I regret continuing “I don’t even think we’re friends.”

Immediately she rebuked “What? Why did you like her?” him…
Kris: “…”

Kris: “Cause I just did” A most unsatisfying answer to her and myself

Miss J: “You’re weird”
I returned with a lame comeback “You’re weird too, wasn’t it the same with the guy you liked”

Miss J: “Nooo.”
Kris: “Oh.”

Ms. J begged the question again “How do you like someone you don’t even know?”

The same question that made my heart skip the first time asked, but I still had no sufficient answer for her. Nothing I said would be appropriate to describe the relationship of a gay guy watching a straight guy from the borders of each other’s lives. Because simply, it was just that. The basis for our liking does not have to be the normal interactions of a girl and a guy, and usually it isn’t. With a straight man, our hope is every talk we have, every hangout, and every friendly touch he makes is his way of reciprocating to our hidden agenda. It might be case-specific, but all gay-straight crushes involve a distinct line which must not be crossed, and it’s safe for me to recall that this final limit was never within sight. I played my part inconspicuously, unless he observed my every gesture, there were barely any traces of my sentiments toward him. Every move I played put a defined distance between us, resulting in an irreparable gap that I can now admit dejected a bleak situation to a hopeless one.

There was something special in the words of my friend and the inconclusive answer that she beckoned for though it was all shrouded amongst the white lies, the girls, the guys, and the borderline love. Could I even pick out what I really felt before, because every time I see him, I’m overwhelmed by a concoction of emotions so potently brewed over a year and a half. I wish I could throw up what I’ve already ingested, so the residues of this strained crush could finally be put behind me. No longer do I want to suffer the aftereffects, but I do so each time I have to hide what I desire. Such as telling every interested ear that I thought I was truly in love with someone, but not who he was. The delusion has long since been dismissed, for what I felt was not love, no matter how powerful my desire was; after all, it was just one-sided. Although my better judgment tells me to learn from this, I cannot help not remember feeling shaken from it as well. Deep down I want this to be the one and only exposition that is better left sealed in the past.


Lyrics- Silent

Anger and Angst, but Against what?

Awesome jack-o-melon from this year's celebration~!!

Happy 4th of July! Or belated depending on when I get to post this. Coincidentally, the date will be relative to when I'll prevail getting to use the internet at my house, the one my sister buys and hogs. Somehow she is able to stay on the computer from 10 am to 10 pm with a few intermittent breaks from here to there, as my eyes have witnessed. So if I expect myself to be able to get online, I must a) Sneak in 15 minutes of internet use while she's eating b) Beg her to get off her buttocks and let me use it once in awhile or c) Go to the library nearby. Lately I've been opting for option (c.) since I need it for at least an hour and I also cower from confrontations with her. However, today, she put up a new condition, changing what was tolerable to unbearable. She ordained that the use of her internet required that I must read at least one chapter of the bible. What in the name of-is she doing?! Discriminating against people void of the same religious zealous that she claimed to have? What an outrage! I thought there were laws against this! All the repressed anger of letting her slide with using the internet for 8-12 hours a day, actually, all the anger from me always condoning her commandeering behavior simmered to a boil. Thankfully, these thoughts cooled as quickly as they heated.

Despite the lack of an verbal eruption, I did tell her what I thought. If she wanted to push something on me, even religion, there are better ways of doing it than bribery, even close to blackmail from my perspective. My religious views got pretty slighted after something happened in college, hugely contributed by her, but skip that for now. In other words, in her opinion, I fell from grace, which I felt I was never perched on in the first place. I'll admit that I was affronted and anger was wholly my motivation here to rebel. But what was I actually angry at? My sister being an unreasonable cow, at having to compromise yet another belief, or just the plain fact I couldn't even use the internet freely at my house? It was a mish mash of all these things, but at the center of it was my resentment towards myself, wanting to express, perhaps for a change, that I do not want to lie about who I am anymore. Truthfully, I wouldn't have minded lieing about not using the internet or could have easily pretended that I followed her directive since about a minute after boasting her decree, she had to go out for an errand. She wouldn't have known, but...I, Kris...would. That alone is enough to stop the criminal mind, and instead to rethink a better way out, imaginably an earnest attempt to break off the part of me that was a fraud. I chose the other way out not because of my moral education nor the 10 commandments, but from my own acceptance of who I am. I'm not the little boy that used to tread down the guided path set out for me by my family neither am I blindsighted by religion anymore. And I'm surely not the boy who used to believe gays were perverts and sinners. I am one now. I certainly won't flaunt it, but neither am I going to fake it any longer, not to myself and not to my family. If I read the bible, it wouldn't be me, it wouldn't be the naïve supplicant that has gone through 11 years of Christianty only to come out a mediocre product. So I end up at the crossroads of a) Cheating my new beliefs b) Lieing to my sister c) Just using the internet regardless of it all, but the answer simply became none of the above, with me lying on the ground typing out this anecdote with the internet modem right infront of me, pitch black. Stronger than my selfish desire to use it, is my selfish hope to never mislead anyone about who I am any further.