We thought we were Romeo and Juliet.
We thought we could stand against the world as long as we had each other.
He was five years younger, but I gave him a chance because he seemed sincere. He was Aladdin, I was Jasmine; he was William Thacker, I was Anna Scott; he was Joseph Donnelly, I was Shannon Christie; he was Jack Dawson, I was Rose Bukater.
We were friends at first, finding out that despite our differences, we liked a lot of the same things. We both liked to sketch, we both loved music, the same songs, the same TV shows... we agreed on a lot of things. But I only gave him a second glance when his mom got taken to the hospital.
His mom had been diagnosed with a myoma. Only then did she find out that at her age she was pregnant again. It was a delicate pregnancy, and she was advised to stay home and take it easy, but one evening she collapsed.
I could still see his face when he got the news, a hundred kilometers away. He went to where I was chatting with his cousin in our boarding house, and asked to borrow her phone as he didn't have any load and there weren't any loading stations open. But she was out of load too. I had load (I always had) but my phone's battery was dead, and if he used my phone and his battery, he didn't have his dad's number because it was on his phone. He looked so downcast that I shared my load with his phone, so that he could send an SMS home to ask after his mom. After that, he went home every night for two weeks to be able to sit with his mom at the hospital while his dad went home to check on his younger sister. Every morning, he made the hundred-kilometer journey back to his little rice store in the city, so that he could still earn their daily bread. I thought he was such a good son and brother, because it was so obvious that he cared so much about his family. And we got even closer because he now knew my cellphone number and texted me everyday, from morning till noon till evening. My morning wake-up call was my cellphone signaling that there was a good morning message from him, and my evening lullaby was my message tone with his good night message. I could not believe that there ever was a time that he hadn't been in my life, that there had not always been this person who was in every waking moment of my life like that.
We were both young and extremely foolhardy. Like two children playing a game of hide-and-seek, we thought we were brilliant in outwitting my cousin, who was supposed to keep an eye on me while I was so far from home, and who was violently opposed to our relationship, for the same reasons abovementioned. We snuck around behind my cousin's back, and made numerous excuses to be able to sneak out and be together, especially when he took me home to meet his mom.
There were moments of friction, of course. If he didn't have load, sometimes I wanted to talk to him so badly that I would send him some. He always scolded me for it, saying that he should be the one giving me load instead of the other way around, and that I should be saving my money instead of throwing it around like that. Being raised a kind of spoiled kid who often got what she wanted, I thought he was really great for saying that.
When his baby sister was born, she had Down's Syndrome. She stopped breathing for a few minutes, but the doctors managed to revive her. The whole family was devastated, especially when it was found out that she had a blocked artery and a hole in her heart, and would likely never have a normal life, if she survived her first month at all.
At first, he wouldn't tell me when he got back from the hospital. He just went off on his own. It was only much later that I got the whole story from him, and by the end of it we were both crying. He said that if he could exchange his life for his sister's, he would. His mom was praying that if they weren't meant to have this baby, then to just take her away immediately and mercifully, before she suffered much, and because each day that she spent with them would only make the loss that much more painful if they still lost her.
But she hung on... and hung on. I got to hold her, and give her her bottle, and rock her to sleep. We all took turns hanging over her crib watching her sleep. They were bewildered because she never cried, never made a sound, so they couldn't see if she was wet or hungry. But he said to her, "Little one, I hope that before I go back to the city, I will hear your voice." And she cried, as if she understood. Only to find out that she would turn blue when she cried, because she wasn't getting enough oxygen from her heart, and from then on, she was not allowed to cry anymore.
I grew to love them all. But I was also uneasy, because the results of my professional licensure exams would soon be released, and if I passed, it would only widen that already huge gap between us... a professional license holder, and a shopkeeper who had not finished maritime school due to an motorcycle accident that broke his clavicle and made it impossible for him to pass his fitness exams.
He said that if he lost me, drinking for a year would not be enough to kill the pain. The last time that I saw him, I held on to him, afraid to let go. He pushed me away gently and kissed my forehead and told me to take care. And then he left.
He refused to take my calls, to reply to my text messages, to see me. I kept in touch with his parents and sister, and his cousin became my best friend. She told me that immediately during that time he found himself another girlfriend. And I sank into a depression that lasted over a year, and a blinding rage after that. I hated him so much that I wished he were dead, because maybe if he were dead, I would be able to forget him. I hated him all the more because he had been so insistent, so sure that he loved me, only to make a complete about-face and show total indifference.
Are all guys such jerks, or is it just my fault for being bright yet so stupid?!
