a brief introduction to our tragic fate

Yesterday we were sitting upon the cool night concrete musing about our current lives. She sifted restlessly in the soft moonlight, those gorgeous eyes alit with the intrusive nature of the sidewalk lamps. We'd been brooding together about her boy -- gosh, the troubles that seamlessly entangle themselves with the happy ending we all read about. But one thing I can never understand, is why do you belong to each other? Nobody has the right to claim possession of another freewilled being, in the name of love or not. Why is whatever he owns yours, and everything you've ever been -- his? If I never meet my own, I'll never know.

Before she left she turned cheekily to me and asked when you (the ever elusive you) would finally appear and save me from my ever elusive behaviour, the one that keeps getting me into trouble with a certain cute someone but never enough to be an accident that lands me with the person I could actually love. It reminded me only of one thing -- that day you lifted your hand to me in that crowded room, and all I could think of then was how alone we were in our own world, and how strangely everything between us lapsed into serenity. I lifted my hand to yours (I still don't know why) and for the last time in our lives till now, touched you, eyes bravely (but I don't know why) looking into your sleepy, lazy boy ones. There was no emotion in them at first, mine were shifting from the noise. But as I accidentally stole my last few moments, the last I'd ever have with you, it came to me that your deep glance was sweet with regret, the eyes that appear to conceal a great deal of nothing -- I saw it all as you blinked away the tears that might have risen above the consciousness that you'd just turned eighteen and fallen down your cheeks, taut from laughing, for me and what we used to have before this very minute. If life could really flash pass in your head just as you cross over from one step of life into the next, I imagine I would have seen myself holding my white telephone (the one that always falls off my bed), heard your voice in my ears telling me how strong you think I am, felt empowered by that one sentence. But the only thing I feel as I pull away from you, awkward and now a stranger, is the reality that I can live as strong as I always have without you, that I never needed anything from you. In my anguish previously when you were very much a part of me, I thought I'd found something that completed me. You founded every waking moment of my day and delivered me through each last breath of awakeness at night. You filled my favourite love songs, even those that sucked. Every time I felt my knees giving way to life's unhappiness, I convinced myself I loved you, and that made my day again. I gave everybody's chance to make me happy to you.

I don't know where to start telling everyone else how much I'd taken from them to give to you, those days. I grew selfish for you and even more selfish for myself. I was going to steal you away as you stole me away unknowingly. You meant the world to me, and I believed I did the same to you. But you never really took any of those chances I pushed to you to show me I counted, just a bit. Because I never did. Because when I see you now and think of what only the two of us will know for the rest of our lives, I'm like -- it's crazy, the way we used to be.