The Kaleidoscope that was You

The last time I saw him he was in bright yellow socks, gray vans, and a tie-dyed shirt. Now that I think about it, it was the perfect outfit to describe the resplendence that was us. The white representing the pureness of what I felt for him. The pink and red were the cruel things we did to one another. The green showed the small little lines of hope that faded in and out just like we did. And finally, there was a blue undertone that showed the damning fate that we both knew had to happen. The blue was my favorite, maybe because it made his “stop me in my tracks” eyes pop or maybe because it was the only honest color of what we were. Orange was his favorite color, bright neon orange. He probably doesn’t even think twice when he sees mine, something he had memorized at one point.

We memorized everything about one another. We knew what the other liked and what the other didn’t and exactly how to talk about it. I would let him go on and on about skateboarding, while he would pretend that he knew what book I was currently reading. One topic we always seemed to go back to is the “what ifs.” Hypotheticals were our favorite, probably because we knew we were one. As movies have told us, love is simply a word. It is a word that we use to describe how our body feels when a thousand different lightning bolts go off. When we look into someone’s eyes and know that no one else will never look at us same. But I think real love is being able to acknowledge that the word means nothing. That giving it the power to control what we feel is dangerous and that really the person that we feel this abstract thing for means so much more to us. That four letters would never be enough to tell them how we feel. And to say “I love you” is insulting because it has been said in a hundred different movies, thousands of novels, and by however many people that mindlessly utter the phrase. Real love is feeling it without ever having to say it. And we never did.

I remember the first time I saw him. He was sitting in a gray shirt and was always quiet. My coworker pointed him out and asked me if I thought he was cute. My first instinct was to laugh and ask if we are talking about the first person. “He has a mysterious nice boy vibe,” she would say. And I always would shake my head with disbelief in the fact that she found him attractive. He was very average looking before I knew him. His hair was brown, he was skinny, and he always wore dark clothes. He had a big forehead, a long jaw line, and wore stupid vans. I was stationed by him for the day and reluctantly sat down on his left side. I pulled out my book to read for time to pass quickly over the next four hours. He had no interest in talking to me either. The project we were on was mindless and the words on the page began to blur, so I started listening to him. I should have known then that what he would end up meaning to me.

I really think that is how it happens. You start out slow questioning and hesitating on every impulse to think that this person is special. We go through life always telling ourselves to limit our feelings and when they always end being the best part. Boys always found me funny, but never beautiful and somehow when he looked into my eyes, I felt what it was like to be both. He was shy but in the best way possible, enough to rarely speak but not enough to miss the conversation. I made him laugh and that was it. I was sucked in without even realizing it. We started to talk about nothing. Movies, shows, books, skateboarding, and school. Slowly our conversation gravitated into a deeper territory. Hours had apparently passed, and it was time to go home. I clocked out and said, “I will see you tomorrow.” I did not even think twice about him, until I showed up for the next day and we were stationed next each other once again. And each day after that we got there early to make sure we would always be sat to one another.

Before I became who I am today, all I really wanted was someone to listen to me. To really listen. Not the type that listens only so they know what to say next but someone who listened like it was the last sound they would ever hear. And he was that. He would watch me work myself up and allow me to calm myself down, all while sitting patiently watching it happen like I was some spectacle at a zoo. His eyebrows would raise up and down, his eyes would widen and squint, and then he would ask “are you done?” Not in rude way, but in a way that pushed me to ask the question back to myself. The longer I got to know him, his appearance began to change. His hair became not just brown but brown with flakes of gold that sparkled throughout it. He was skinny but the type of skinny that was perfect for his height. His clothes were still dark, but it suited his personality. His forehead and jawline became my favorite traits because he told me how insecure he was about them. I felt guilty for every thinking they were unattractive in the first place. The vans became a signature accent of how I viewed him, I even bought a pair for myself because he explained to me the comfort. I learned to look at him without judgment and instead saw him for exactly the way he was. Or at least the way he wanted me to see him. There turned out to be quite of bit of difference between the two in the end.

It is quite funny how different people began to look when you really get to know them. They say that we are the hardest critics on ourselves. That we look into a mirror and see everything that is wrong. We see the flaws, insecurities, imaginary zits, cellulite, and the bad teeth with a microscope. But I don’t really know if that is true. Most of us go around and at least pretend that we don’t focus on all our flaws, so instead we shift them onto other people. We would like to think that when others look, they see us with fresh eyes. That everything we hate about ourselves is not infringing on how we see other people. Everything we hate about ourselves is inflicted on others and it seems like the only way to change it, is to be familiarized to it. The problem is that we, or maybe just me, spend so much of our time trying to fix the flaws of others that we don’t really remember our own. And with him, I wanted so badly to fix whatever flaws I thought he had.

Thinking back to the last time I saw him; I knew I would never speak to him again. We did not say goodbye because it was what we needed but not what we wanted. We laughed for hours on end and had been through quite a bit together. He told me his deepest regrets and fears and I told him what I would name my kids. It really did start out as just friendship, I wish I could have kept it that way. He probably would be in my life right now. I would call him and tell him I have sat for two hours fiddling with this string, unaware of what I should do it with it. He would remind me that I never mess things up and to go ahead and grab my scissors because we both know that I would end up cutting it anyways. It was that very fact that I ended up snipping him out of my life. And now when I see the color orange or a stupid pair of vans, I can’t help but think what would have happened if I couldn’t have found a pair of scissors.