Chapter Sixteen: Maggie

The act of wanting is so destructive because of how limitless it is, to allow yourself to crave one or two things so leisurely despite the awareness that you'll end up settling for what you need.

How we can already hold possession of something but secretly yearn for something else but is way out of our reach due to various reasons.

Whether it be wrong timing, being in the wrong place, or simply not being compatible with the physicality of that which you want, sometimes it just feels great to imagine in theory.

But that doesn't stop the desperation, the more you try to suppress it, the more you're just gonna want something that's not good for you, or what you're not ready for.

I can't decide between either of those reasons which suit me and Evan the most.

It's almost unbearable to say that what I had shared with Evan was not good for me therefore the universe conspired to take it away, we had our occasional bumps in the road, it wasn't fucking perfect all the time, but I learned so much being with him.

To start from a point that seemed almost unfixable to that of a connection we kept harvesting new lessons from each time we spent a second with each other.

It didn't start out smoothly, that's for sure, and I'm fairly certain we could've done way better, but it was the good half of it that I'll always hold dear to my heart and what stops me from completely saying that what we had was unredeemable.

It's possible that we weren't completely good for each other, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a point where it didn't feel like it.

I've always felt undeserving of him, and maybe he felt the same way with me too, but we had each other and there came a time where that alone was enough.

As for not being ready to get into a committed relationship, it's easier to use that as an excuse considering it seems more plausible. At least to me, it is.

We were young, we didn't know what the hell we were doing let alone what was good for us. Even now, I'm still trying to figure out what it is that I want and even if I do decide I want something, I have to question what its desirability means to me.

We wanted to believe we were ready to devote ourselves to plans we weren't even sure we would be able to sustain in the long run, but we liked to believe we could try.

So it's easier to say that we rushed into it too quickly and compelled the universe to put a stop to our story because if it wasn't going to be us, it had to be something beyond us who had to tear us apart, something more powerful than two reckless hearts who wanted nothing more but to love and be loved.

Violent delights have violent ends, after all.

Now it's just a matter of reminding myself of those reasons, whatever it may be at this point, like picking from a whirlwind of balls from a bingo machine, just as long as I have something to hold onto that brings me back down to reality, then so be it.

Discipline is a must.

It was hard having to attend classes after what happened yesterday, agonizing even, having to reprimand myself to stay self-composed despite feeling like I'm falling apart from the inside, almost like a crumbling sandcastle with only bits and pieces of pebble-sized rationality left to keep me grounded on shore.

But if I were the malleable land, he's the unrelenting tidal wave about to consume me.

Seeing glimpses of him from afar was enough to reduce the littlest bit of restraint I have left into ashes, and it's crazy to think how I've allowed this man to have this much power over me, that the sight of him alone manages to make me go weak at the knees.

I should've expected it though, the day I decided I was officially and irrevocably in love with him, that by surrendering who I was and what it was that I had to offer, meant that I had to come to terms with the fact if he ever left, he was going to take away that part of me with him.

But it's funny that even though I was the one who left, I can't deny that the hold he has on me all those years ago still hasn't faltered, and it's the lingering sensation of what it used to feel like being seen and loved by him that makes me want to meet his eyes by instinct, trying to search for any semblance of recognition that he too knows, he has this much power over me. That he still carries a part of me with him that is invisible to everyone else but is clear as daylight to me.

Funnily enough, however, he had rarely met my eye throughout the first half of the day, as he behaves in a way that's very different from how I feel inside - ambivalent and casual.

It makes me wonder if it was all a ruse and that he's also trying to stay as composed as I am on the outside but scarcely on the inside, but I don't know what's running through his head to assume that, so I can only take what is currently being shown to me at face value, and from what I'm seeing, he seems to appear quite... content.

There's not a single trace of pretense in the carefree smile he gives to the people he talks to, no hint of rigidity in the way he walks around campus, limbs almost swinging by how... easygoing he looks.

I hate it.

Not because I hate seeing him happy, God forbid I reach a point of bitterness that I refute the idea of seeing someone I deem to care about happy and liberated.

But it does hurt, watching him act the way that he does whilst I'm over here basking in endless envy because of how his happiness seems to be the root cause of my misery because it shouldn't have to come to this. 

Where I'm so blinded by how my life spiraled that I just want to take him down with me.

But I chastised myself once I realized what I was stirring in the pot of my animosity using my broomstick, knowing how unnecessary it is to be against someone's livelihood like this just because I can't bear the sight of him obviously moving on.

He's allowed to move on, and so am I, and maybe it's the knowledge that I'm still dwelling on the past is why I can't seem to move on for the life of me, and why I want the same thing to happen to him, but it's greedy. Too fucking greedy and ugly and repulsive.

That I claim to care about someone yet think about every possible vile scenario to subject them into just so I can at least have the reassurance that after all this time...

We still have something that we share together, even if it's not love.

* * *

You'd think that being in a setting where I'm restricted from initiating eye contact would somehow strengthen my capability to remain stoic in the face of temptation.

If anything, knowing that he's indeed in the same class as me and is sitting less than a few rows away from me only fuels my pending need to turn my head and look at him.

Even if it's just a glimpse, a slight scratch to the itch spreading at the back of my mind that's only getting harder to ignore knowing that if I succumb to what I want, I'd only end up regretting that I didn't do what was needed.

To be better than the lovesick poet in me who wishes to replenish her thirst to be known and seen again by that of the person she's reminisced for so long, but damn me if I have to keep reminding myself that this is reality and not some Jane Austen film.

That even though I've been seized by his longing stares and affectionate touches that always appeased me in times of distress, I have to accept the fact that it's better to keep it that way, because it's not like anytime soon, we'll be able to go back to what we once were.

I do wish we could go back, but not during the time where I found nourishment at the very sight of him, but instead a time where he supplied my ever-growing hatred towards him instead, also known as the very beginning. It's funny I had so ardently despised him, and yet the only thing that's lost in me now is the resentment, but not the passion.

It could be easier to accomplish what I'm doing now if only the rivalry had been maintained, and we hadn't tried to develop anything more out of it, because even though ironically time did reverse, everything seemed to have remained the same but somehow still begs to be entirely different.

As I try to avoid like him the plague but not for reasons that his existence seems to be the bane of my own, but because I know once I attempt to appease the fucking hermit inside of me by having his presence near, it's going to be hard to not to grow addicted from thereon.

Because that's what his entire being is to me.

Intoxicating.

But I resist like how I always do, even though a fraction of me relents and thrashes, not out of spite for him, but out of spite for myself. 

How if I just fought a little harder for what we had, I wouldn't find it such a losing battle to want to ask him how he's doing, to ask him how his life has been, and how his family's been doing. To ask him how Tiffany and Mason are, how Jasper's getting along, and what colleges has he attended, to ask about both Jess and Ashley, or if he ever kept in touch with my mom, something that I rarely get to do these days.

Having to ask him about his well-being feels so forbidden when it shouldn't be. I shouldn't have to be afraid to want to sustain the things and the people that I love.

But love's so taboo for me now, it's almost become unconscious to me that I rarely choose it as my default. All I know now is regret, regret, regret.

Time was quick to fly by today, or maybe it's because I wasted the duration of class fighting visceral urges instead of regarding my external surroundings, and it wasn't until Mr. Nelson declared that classes were when I was able to break out of my reverie.

But even so, I didn't get up from my seat even as the rest of the room scattered out of the exit, opting to wait until he left the room so I knew that all coast was clear... but I'd be lying if my intention was solely fixated on being cautious.

Deep down, I needed to look. If not voluntarily, I need to do it by chance without having to hold myself accountable, and so I settled with circumstantial tactics to be my leverage, as it wasn't that long when everybody else walked out of the lecture hall and I was monitoring every head one by one was when I was able to catch him and his familiar tousled brown hair.

A sudden thrill rushed through my spine at the view alone, not having failed to regard the sharp outlines of his jaw and cheekbones as I swallowed thickly at the refreshing appearance of him, so captivating even after all these years.

If it didn't feel so wrong and impersonal to have to look at you this way, I would've continued. I would've kept on doing it just to make up for the days when I thought I would never be able to see you again, and how the thought alone infuriated me to the bone.

It wasn't until he finally left the class was when I mustered enough courage to stand up from my seat and walk outside, slowing my pace just to make sure I don't catch up with him, but once I stepped out of the lecture hall and had managed to catch the tiniest sight of him still while his back was turned to me, I couldn't help it as I stayed glued to my spot for a moment, just drinking him in and allowing myself to mourn from a distance.

To lament over the living and all the words that could've been said but weren't told in actuality, considering this is the only thing I can do, to stand still and watch as his figure descends further and further away...

Like the light that you so badly want to feel gleaming against your skin after having resided in the darkness of your cavern for far too long.