“Do you…like her?” I asked carefully. “As in,likelike her?”
Jiwon sighed, running her fingers through the grass beside her. “I think so, but I get the sense that that makes me different somehow. I don’t know if I’m ready for everyone to see me as an outsider.”
“Woah,” I said aloud. “But you’ll never be an outsider with me, Jiwonie, I hope you know that.”
There was a small pause, like she was weighing something, and then she looked at me with that familiar mix of determination and fear. “But she’s from this super religious family. They’d probably freak out if they knew. And even if she did like me back, which she probably doesn’t…it wouldn’t change anything. They’d never accept someone like me.”
“Wait, so you don’t even know if she likes you back?” I questioned, seeing a reflection of myself in her eyes.
“Yeah…which is why I’ve kind of just kept quiet about it. I’m okay with being interested in her quietly if it means not inconveniencing her. I don’t mean to confuse her or be the one that causes conflict between her and her family. I want to preserve our friendship.”
So you see, Jiwonie and I were more similar than I’d thought.
I squeezed her hand, my heart aching at the thought of her carrying this alone. “Jiwon…you’re amazing just as you are. And if she knew you the way I do, she’d see it too.”
“I just feel a bit stupid,” she chuckled in an awfully sad voice.
“Why?”
“For getting all worked up over make-believe. For putting my heart on the line over amaybe,” she expressed.
“Can I be honest with you about something?”
“Well, I kind of just came out to you, I’m pretty sure you could tell me you have herpes and I’d sit with you in the doctor’s office.” She laughed and so did I.
“Okay fair, but I don’t think being gay and herpes are of the same severity,” I reminded her, and she laughed even more.
“Well yeah.”
“I have liked someone for a long time,” I said out loud, for the first time. This summer secret I’d only ever whispered to Godand my pillow in the dead of night had flown past my lips. “A very long time, even though I know he can never like me back.”
“Oh my God!” She gasped standing up and damn near running laps around the lawn. “Yesoh liking a living, breathing human being? Are we in the matrix?”
“Shhh, you’re so dramatic someone might hear. Sit down!” I urged, and she calmed herself and did just that. “Be sane for a second!”
“Okay, okay, fine!” she panicked. “Go on, I must hear all about your impossible love, tell me what’s he like? Do I know him?”
“He, well…he’s kind. He’s beautiful inside and out, and selfless in every aspect of the word, and that’s everything to me,” I explained, “but it can never happen.”
“Why not?”
“Well, that’s part of why I can’t tell you, Jiwonie. It’s all a part of this web of impossibility between us.” I sighed, leaning back on the scratchy grass looking at the crisp blue sky. “Telling you would unravel the web.”
“I see, well, I won’t push you to tell me but I will say this. Any guy on the face of planet earth, who was able to catch your eye and hold your affection for this long, well, he has to be quite the exceptional human being,” she marvelled, then glanced at me sadly. “Soh, what are we going to do about our impossible loves?”
“We nurture them like a secret, but we must vow to let them grow up and away someday if they so please.”
“I wished we lived in a world where it was as easy as loving someone and having them love you back.”
You have been tricked. And allow me to be the first to tell you how, you and many others have been greatly misled. Because this is a story of hard truths after all, nothing else, only hard truths. We have been led to believe that when you love somebody greatly, and if that love is true enough, they will know,that they will sense that your heart is true and that inevitably they will love you back. That is alie, and that is not how things work majority of the time. The truth is, while yes, sometimes your feelings are reciprocated, most of the time that is not the case. People fall in love at different times, rarely is it ever perfectly synchronised. They have attempted to shield you, and everyone else from the fact that majority of the time people fall in lovealone.
We are led to believe that these stories do not matter, that these are tragedies, more foul than any bloodshed or atrocity. Because forshame, right? For shame on anyone who dares love a person who is unable to return their affections, for shame that they ever even tried. I often wonder where all of these lost stories go, do they simply disappear like stockings in a dryer or keys in the backseat, maybe they simply fade away like ice in summer without a trace. These stories are buried, hidden in plain sight. And yet I will still pose the question, is a love story still a love story even when it is unconventional?
Not this time, this time our stories will be told. I figure that we are owed that much at the very least. To share this, through every ugly truth, past every white lie, every tragedy.
We will demonstrate the art of unrequited.
She laughed softly, but there was a sadness in it. “You’re sweet to believe in me, but I don’t think Hannah’s the kind of person who’s going to give up anything for me. She just…takes whatever she wants. She’s like that. And I know she could have anyone she wants, so I highly doubt that when push comes to shove she’d pick the difficult choice. What about you, Soh, do you think that your impossible love would choose you, even if it’s difficult?”
