The Bench
Hi! So actually, I had written down some prologue but they got deleted due to my clumsiness and my impulsive writing through my phone. I couldn’t sleep and I’d rather not stress myself into trying to resurrect my well-drafted part. So for now, keep in mind that I was busy and tried to be optimistic with constrains pinning me here and there like a lab rat whose heart was about to be taken out in a minute.
Things were packed, so I had them arranged and planned from dawn until night. The morning began with my alarm ringing every 10 minutes since 3.30 a.m. yet I woke up at 8. The chronic sleep deprivation had gotten the best of my cycle. I had a meeting with someone, but first thing is my sister’s costumes. I delivered it myself considering I have a friend’s pair of shoes and somehow I haven’t grown the trust to send them off by instant shipping services. Then I rushed to a place I had agreed to meet at.
The roads were showered in heavy rain and so was I, soaking wet like my towel after a swim. I had thought of cancelling, but my failure to fulfill a promise I had made earlier in life to Sydney followed by her kind-yet-direct reminder is still etched in me and has been a constant one everytime I have such thoughts. So, I kept going with my plan.
I was wet until many miles down. Thankfully, Mr. Sun had decided to reveal himself and dried me up, well.. most of me. Remember I said “soaking wet”, right? Anyways!! Once I got to me destination, the driver dropped me off by the gate and I proceeded my journey by foot. Sounds dramatic but in reality, it really isn’t that far, I swear. I was supposed to walk into a cafe and wait nicely, but guess what? Oh yeah, I was soaking wet! So I waited outside on a bench set with its own table — very nice for me and my loaded sacks (on a serious note, why does it sound wrong? :o).
I settled down to catch my breath. I sat with myself and told me that I was still on track regardless all those hassles and adjustments, like bargaining to slightly postpone the meeting time because the traffic was CRAZY (what do you expect from an overglorified and overpopulated city with poor urban planning, ugly roads, and a useless government who doesn’t give a damn about their citizens at all?). I had quite a good time while waiting for the kind girl I was about to meet by people watching! I saw an Islamic-looking family (the dad had grown beard, the mom was wearing khimar, and the kid was named Umar) had lunch, observed their outfit, and concluded that they have an absolutely amazing fashion taste. I heard someone asking directions to the security and him helping them out with clear instructions. It’s nice to have people who are competent in their jobs, isn’t it? Oh yeah, a kid also bumped into me in the hallway! Cute. I was enjoying my lone-time until a figure appeared.
I wasn’t wearing glasses so I had no idea who that was from a distance. However, spending years trying to look for the same figure in the crowds somewhat conditioned my nerves to notice him anywhere; as if all five senses worked together like Power Rangers in a robot trying to coordinate limbs to fight the Godzilla. He greeted me first. Something that hadn’t been done in years. Maybe if not for that encounter, I might’ve had forgotten his voice. He still has the same haircut, but with new kicks I assumed his brother had gotten for him. His slim figure once again was drown in his scrubs. Perhaps a comfy fit is what he prefers with such high mobility and being a fashion disaster never had a chance to become a concern. In fact, it has never been his concern at all I fear. Despite all, I knew one thing that’s very clear: this was not what I was expecting.
Things in my world are usually expected to turn out as planned. Like how I used to tell myself that as long as we study in the same building complex, I’d always see him. I’d try to gather puzzle pieces just to know what he’d do or where he’d be on certain days when it felt like it’s okay for me wanting to look pretty and collected. Sometimes, he became the reason I brushed my teeth and kicks, at the same time answering why I suddenly decided that I’d wake up earlier than usual just to pamper myself so my “inner glow” would show. Then when we went on our separate ways, I thought he was nowhere to be found knowing that the distance between us is a future far. We even had a talk each of us had thought we didn’t need (I think we still do think so? I mean.. the so-called ‘things’ had ended months prior, there wasn’t even a thing to save but the dismembered delusions). I was supposed to be in my lane and him in his. We weren’t supposed to cross paths again, were we? Why did we? I don’t even know anymore.
I don’t care, Universe.
It didn’t take much to resurface him in my head. Years of rooting must’ve left something in my system I don’t even know how to undo. Just one song, one certain haircut, one shortcut to the mainroad; one everything. Even now I’m writing this all because of one song and one fan edit. Well, maybe not one edit.. but still! It lit the burnt-out candles in his temple sending flashbacks flashing back and forth non stop. The yearning, the absence, the casualties, the gentleness I mistook as SOS codes from his desperate somewhat-hopeless-romantic self, the gaps and red strings I used to connect a realization: I wasn’t his to pursue.
We might be speaking the same languages. We might write. Sike, we even have the same zodiac sign! But none of those mattered because somehow, we couldn’t communicate. I’ve learnt from my parents’ rumbling marriage and my the other successful ones that communication and comprehension are the lock and key. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want to marry young. I just believe that dating is to marry, like a few days trial before you could decide whether you’d commit and subscribe or not. From a selfish point of view, he had been keeping things to himself, I barely had any chance to know him! But ofcourse, I had looked in the mirror to grab the thoughts of me being impatient and not trustworthy enough. I didn’t have it in me to not question things and let him come to me voluntarily. I didn’t know how to read signs because I had been trying to read my parents’ emotions, I became tired and rebelled by refusing to believe in implicits. And maybe, he didn’t have the courage to just open up.
I now feel like a random man in any public area:
When a woman sees me, I feel safe because I knew I’m not going to do her any harm, but she might not feel the same towards me.
That among low self-esteem and years of judgement from everybody in my life resulted in my self-perception which in combination with grief and the well-known desires I’ve had since I was 8 made me seek help from a professional. Thanks, Mba Icum!
Get Tara’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
The irony is how I’d sit myself down to name his favorite things in the whole world other than his adorable nephew whose birthday is just a day away from mine, Alexandra Daddario, MMA, and the streets in Bandung where the memories he had in secondary schools will forever exist, I don’t know what else to write about him. I hadn’t stuck around long enough for him to share what did he want to become when he was 9, what food would bring him the most comfort when he missed home, which friendship drama left him baffled after years, his foot size, his preferred fabric to wear in certain weathers, his fears, his love language, it goes on. I had only memorized his wardrobe yet I felt like I was entitled to him entirely just because he walked with me and paid attention to the ground I was about to set foot on.
But somehow with that spoiled-brat behavior, I could still find myself thinking that I also emotionally checked out for my own goods. Crazy, right? I mean, what can a pinch of neglect do? Not much, right? All the unreciprocated things, the so-called and self-claimed love, the hunger of being studied and understood, the curiosity as to how each of us became our current selves; all that were thrown into an empty fort occupied by spiders with catapults collecting dust. No replies, no attacks back, nothing. Questions then began to linger:
Was my ambush not disruptive enough?
Were my gears not intimidating enough?
Was myself as an opponent not worthy enough?
It’s another night than the one I began writing this and I just realized that I stopped consuming myself out just to fill his hunger — that is, if he really was hungry. Though as time went by, there was a point where I realized that it’s not that he’s not hungry. I just wasn’t his cup of tea. Tried long enough to make myself one, but nothing I could do to change how things were meant to be and done. And from then on, I stopped right before I lost so much of myself. Luckily, a part of me was glad. She was proud of the rational thinking I had developed. The other one though, well we have lots of time to talk it through, but she has to know one thing for sure: we’re not going back. We’re not going to settle for someone offering what if’s and blowing wishful thinking into thin air just to disappear seconds after.
My boyfriend now has a Prime subscription he got from the phone credit. We’ve been binge watching The Summer I Turned Pretty. We’ve been witnessing Belly and Conrad pacing back and forth trying to convince themselves that something wouldn’t reignite. But Isabel, we all know what happened in Paris. And don’t worry, I won’t judge because I’m somewhat wearing your shoes. The ones with white ribbon and are all about not being able to fully get rid of a certain someone. And I won’t judge you for that either because I know how it feels.
I know that somewhere in me, there’ll be a man’s cave with all the pteroglyphs of Jogja with the dawn breaking through, Setiabudi St., De Bungkus, and the 101 tattle tales we once shared. I don’t know where it is exactly, but I know it’s there. So until further notice, I’ve decided to leave it untouched. Let it collect dust and cobwebs. If it’s what the nature asked for, then let it be preserved in amber.
p.s. Although a friend told me how he loved me so dearly in a way I didn’t understand, nothing’s changed. The issue was that neither of us understood. And so I’ll quote the song that first got me spiraling into a mellow vortex:
If loving me means letting go and wishing me the best, then I guess
I wish, I wish, I wish you loved me less.
Leave it as is. Leave him as he is.
fin.
