“You won’t believe what happened last night.”

That’s how she usually started our phone call. What used to be a nightly routine turned into something that happened on the middle of the day, and aside from how she is now staying in a country infinitely closer to mine, I thought that’d be the extent of difference in our situation. Guess I was wrong. Guess I was too… naive, if you could believe that. Me. Wendy Son the sarcasm machine. Naive.

Hilarious.

“What did you do now?” I’d respond. Usually with a laugh. Always with a smile, as I threw myself on my bed, or lean back on the reclinable chair at work, praying to god or any higher force that I believed in for a loan of strength and the ability to act out happiness in a believable manner.

“I danced with a girl,” Irene giggled and for a second I thought the sound itself would be enough to bind my broken heart. It didn’t, of course. It was just yesterday that I managed to mend them from the aftermath of our previous phone call, where Irene so casually told me that she’d made out with a stranger on another clubbing outing with her new group of friend. My poor heart, whose pieces were pasted together with glue made out of bitter acceptance and love, only to be broken again. Way too much love. I guess it wasn’t enough, still. Because the small pieces I so carefully gathered from the bottom of my stomach found themselves back at the deepest nook of my bumhole the moment Irene unconsciously reminded me of how pathetically lonely I was. “She was cute, reeeeally cute. But I didn’t get her name.”

The sigh that followed her sentence sounded sad. But my consolation, magically, didn’t sound like so. Even when I heard her adding to her story, one little description whose weight was undermined by how light her laughter flew through my ears. Just like the Spring looming so close in the horizon, she laughed and said, “I kindda cried last night.”

“Again?”

“How could you do this? It’s only been two weeks and I already feel so lonely.”

The pause that lapsed between us was long enough for her to ask an unsure ‘hello?’ I wanted to wait for a little more, just a little while longer until she’ll have no other choice but to call my name with that lovely voice of hers. With a tinge of concern and fear that I’ve hung up on her without saying a proper goodbye. But I couldn’t. Only a stupid person could do such things as make her wait. Because though I am stupid, I was not that stupid.

“I love being alone.”

“You sure do,” there was a slight croak in her voice and I automatically chided her for forgetting to drink water after a long night of clubbing.

“I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you.”

‘Me too,’ was what I had in my mind. But I wasn’t one to spout such baseless things as such. So I said, “thank me with a dinner when I’m there.”

Don’t forget me, that’s what my words meant, don’t have too much fun with your new friends that you’ll forget me.

_ _ _

Irene came back to me exactly one week later. Her voice came back to me, but relief was the last thing I felt when I heard it.

She sent me a text, which I missed for nearly two hours, and seeing the timestamp of her message was a strong enough panic-fuel that it caused me to unceremoniously run away from a meeting before locking myself in a utility closet as I frantically tried to press the right button that would lead me back to her voice.

It came, at first normal. (“God, the new place where I’m staying at is sooo disgusting.”) Then in a feigned excitement (“but the kids here are quite nice, like, the weird kind of nice, you know?”), and I know what it’ll lead me to. Just like a receding water line on an otherwise beautifully uneventful day at the beach, I knew something big was waiting to hit me and tumble me head over heels to a dark, hopeless oblivion. (“I’m constantly hungry, for some reason… I don’t want to waste my money on food.”) I could tell that she fought it till the very last second. Because telling a friend that you cried, and literally crying in front of them, is such a different experience.

“I miss my parents.”

I think I cried too. I think I nearly cried too, if not for my inner conscience grabbing me by my neck and yelling at me to be strong because if she knew I cry because she did, she will never want to go and open up to me anymore. And with me out of the equation, who else can she open up to? Nobody. And I don’t want anyone to ever feel like they have nobody who is able to listen to them. Because I knew, first hand, how painful it feels.

How painful it is to feel that nobody is there to listen to your tears.

“Did you call them already?” Pure magic was the only reason why at that moment my voice could sound, in the very least, stable. Because if you saw how I was walking in circles inside that cramped closet, hand buried deep inside my hair as I pulled them on their roots, calm would be the last adjective you’d use to describe myself. I was just trying to use the physical pain as an anchor to keep me away from the emotional pain that was ready to pounce and tear me apart the moment I lose my focus.

“I don’t want them to worry.”

“You know, I...,-” I paused for a little bit, the continuation of my sentence already formed in my head, around my lips, before my fingernails scraped against a soft spot on my scalp and reminding me that long distance confessions are for fools. For stupid, selfish fools and although I am stupid, I am not selfish. At least not anymore.

“I want you to have a fun time exploring a new country. Take your time, you won’t ran out of money, I promise, so eat, ok? And go to a coin laundry if you think the in-house washing machine is filthy. Also, if you don’t want to cry in front of your parents, just chat them up, does that sound good?” I could feel, even if I wasn’t able to see her, that she was nodding her head along to my advices. By the end of it, I heard a long exhale coming out from the speaker of my phone and it felt like a heavy weight was finally lifted from my chest. “Look, Irene, you’re going to be okay.”

“Thank you for listening to my rant.”

I let myself fall on top of a half opened box of merchandise and pressed my heated forehead on the cool frosted glass that separated me from the rest of the world, “no worries. I know you’ll do the same to me.”

Though right before she hung up, again, with that forced lightness in her laughter, she left me with a knowledge that was so heavy, strong, and so out of left field it managed to bind me on my uncomfortable throne for the next few minutes or so. Just staring straight ahead on my blurry sight, whether it was due to the frosted glass or my teary eyes, I couldn’t care less.

“Before I called you, I was thinking of, you know, kindda wanting to kill myself?”

She laughed.

And told me she wanted to go to sleep early that night.

The next morning she didn’t text me until somewhere around midday and I thought she was really gone.

What would I tell her parents if she really did die?

I can only blame myself for my sufferings.

At the start, I told myself, "you only have two choices," I said, "either to speak up, or to keep your mouth shut."

I chose to keep my mouth shut. Because based on all of my stupid and impulsive past experiences, I knew that shutting up is the least selfish, least destructive course of action I could take in dealing with the inner turmoil of my emotions. Only one person will suffer if I shut myself up. Me. I won't risk offending her, disgusting her, making her so uncomfortable with my egotistical outburst that I risk Irene running away after hearing a hasty, probably drunken confession blubbered to her through a phone call with poor connection. I won’t ever risk losing her, which is for one reason and another, is a far more dreadful prospect than the idea of her rejecting my romantic love for her.

So, here's the consequence of my choice. Me, suffering. Alone. Easy for me to understand it, hard for me to accept the bleak truth of my existence. Love never reciprocated and pain never shared.

I know that I'll break my vow of silence once I met her, once I can have her in my presence and force her into a room with a lockable door to prevent her from running away after she heard my confession. I mean, she’s so very welcomed to run away from me if she wants to, but I hope she won’t do it before I’ve managed to make her understand the why, how, and when of my side of the story.

I don't even need her yes. I don't need her to be mine (shocking, I know). I just need to share with her this... funny feeling inside. Because if I keep this to myself for any longer, I would probably die of a heart complication at the age of 35 from how often they get squeezed dry in physically painful bouts of heartbreaks. I don’t need a yes. A yes is so small in the grand scheme of things. All that I need, is closure.

Closure can lead me through storms, wars, famine, and pestilence, basically anything and everything, really.

But as of now, you'll only see me waiting here, watching from the side as Irene let herself go in a reckless journey to alleviate a little bit of her crippling loneliness.

As if I'm also not suffering from the same thing.

_

Rome wasn't built in a day. But it could be destroyed in one.

And all that destruction, they were entirely my fault.

Knowing that most of her housemates are artsy people (what’s with her doing a live-in at a painting cafe), I asked Irene if she could hook me up with an acquaintance of hers. “I want to bring my writings to life,” I said, “there must be an illustrator that wants to help out this poor writer?”

“I think there is one…. Remember, the guy I told you? The one who walks around the house only in his underwear?”

Of course I remembered. She called him cute after she told me the story and it caused me to be overwhelmed with such a strong urge to choke a motherer.

“The cute one?” That was my first mistake. Reminding Irene that she thought he is cute. And the little, embarrassed laughter she let out acted as the first nail on my coffin, whose lid God’s finally finished decorating with a cursive lettering that said, ‘Dumb #35493.’

"I'll tell him you're interested to work with him." She said and I thought that was that.

That was that my .

In the next few hours, a few things happened that seemed to be a domino effect stemming from my initial request.

1. The underwear person-human-dude-man called me dumb for only offering him a 20$ payment. He got a first strike for that, that's for sure.

2. Irene tailed him to a house party because she wanted to convince him of the idea, and ended up scratching his face (amazing job, darling) with one wrong throw of a pencil. Said accident caused her to feel a deep sense of alcohol fueled guilt, which caused her to want to tail him around even further.

3. They kissed. He kissed her. He laid his hands on her and made out with her after she found the time to apologise to him personally. And to think that I sometimes still support the idea that ‘not all men are disgusting.’

Okay, maybe I skipped a few moments but the point is: Irene kissed a guy, who called me dumb.

Hey Mr. Police Officer, will you put me to jail if I kick this man's balls off his groin?

Though, the weird thing is that, I can't simply categorise my emotion after she recounted her make-out experience (started with her trademarked, "you won't believe what happened last night.") as white hot anger.

I was angry, yes. But soon after there was a little sense of... calm. She's been telling me that she wants someone who can take care of her. Buy her food. Take her out to fancy dinners and a sightseeing tour around town. And well, this dumb guy could be that for her, couldn't he? He could take care of her in my stead, regretfully.

The realisation instantly dulled my anger, my pain. Turning it from something so sharp and prickly to something that flowed through my being like the muddy stream of a strong-currented river.

So, stupidly, I told her, "talk with him if you really do think you like him, and he likes you back."

"I think he likes me back."

I really do hope that Irene couldn't hear the tears hidden behind my smile, "then take him to a cafe and talk to him."

I went through so many emotions in the span of our 2 hours phone call. From longing, to obsession, to raging possessiveness to a genuine excitement, to jealousy, to realisation before finally, acceptance.

Accepting the fact that I am okay even if it isn't me that she loves. That I'm okay, as long as she's able to open herself up enough to love someone. Anyone.

Anyone is fine as long as she can love someone, who also lover her back, and can take care of her when I myself can't.

‘How about you?’ You might wonder, ‘don’t you deserve love too?”

Oh yes, people, Wendy Son deserves love too. And she deserves to let people accept her love. It’s just that, I always thought that Irene would be the person for me, who is able to give me a love that won’t repulse me, and to receive my love without being intimidated by the sheer magnitude of it. I’ll just have to do a very tricky expectation regulation and see that, it might not be the case anymore.

It sounds disgustingly white knighty and unnecessarily angsty, I know. But it's true. It's just... true.

Pain, for me is an everyday meal. Heartbreak pain, loneliness pain, failure pain, helpless pain, any pain, for me is just like the sharp ringing sound inside my ear. But Irene? I'm afraid for her. She's never even experienced through a true heartbreak. She's never even loses her ity, for god sake, and now she wants to start being promiscuous?

How can I let her? She'll trip and fall and break and I won't be able to get to her in time to help mend her soul.

But then I realise that this must be what my mother felt when I left my own home all those years ago. A fragile, shy and socially helpless child being stranded by herself on a stranger's country. My mom still let me go, didn't she? Maybe she also felt a certain type of jealousy when she saw me updating my instagram feed religiously but always forgetting to contact her to give her a more personal sharing of how my day's went.

She let me go. She knew she has to, if she wants me to grow.

And so I could, too, let Irene go.

I must.

(I have an inkling that this might be karma for all the bad deeds I did as an ungrateful child. Imagine how often my mom cried when she thought, ‘oh, why is she happier when she’s not with us? What did we do wrong?’

Why is she happier when she’s not with me? What did I do wrong?)

She will always have me, and love takes so many different form that it won't ever stop if the romantic route is barred for me to enter.

If people can bend centuries old river to fit their needs, then who said that I can't mold my love to fit whatever situation is appropriate between me and Irene? Platonic love, sisterly love, motherly love. Any love is love, and I love her.

She can break my heart however many times, be it knowingly or unknowingly, and I'll still love her.

Stupid? Stupid. Of course I know I'm stupid. I've said so numerous times before, haven't I?

A/N: You can basically retitle this story as "Dear Diary" because it's nonsense and it's just basically, well, my diary LMAOOOO. So I'm sorry for the messy format, it's more automatic writing that anything, really.
I'll probably keep this updated for each time Irene broke Wendy's heart because don't worry folks, this story is not done yet! Oh dear, it's so far from being done. 

Share with me your story of heartbreak, because like the gospel of High School Musical said, "We're all in this together."