I just had a major realisation.
It came from fanfiction actually, but the quality kind, the kind that keeps me up at 6am reading and crying and feeling too much. It just... portrays relationships and friendships and the way people understand and interact with each other in this way that just hit home with me. I can't work out how to explain it without losing the profound nature of what I'm trying to say (isn't that always the way?) but it was Glee fanfic, so it's people my age, and it's a mixture of all this self doubt and inward analysis and feelings, and the focus the people around you.
I think I need to explain the story to really illustrate it but it's Santana's perspective, with some Quinn, and it's a group vacation, with all of Glee Club basically.
Like schoolies kinda, it's the big mess of people who are friends and are friends with different people and are interested in different people and are angry at different people and there are secrets and things that are private and conversations you have with your best friend the morning after and the way you are so alone, and that you have to make these friendships and relationships yourself, no one can help you in the end. Yeah, you can listen to your friend talk quietly about their own dramas but the really important things are what you are doing yourself. The quiet words you are exchanging- the smile someone gives you when you are left alone in a room, the glance in the rearview mirror when you're in the car- a harsh word that no one else even noticed was thrown your way because it sounded so innocuous but it makes you feel numb and go to your room and sit against the door so no one can see you, and you lie and say you just want to read, but you're actually sitting there hoping that one person will be the one that'll knock and ask you how you're doing and you get bitterly disappointed when they don't. And when your eyes burn and you half want to cry and you force the tears out because then at least you know you felt something.
And yeah, sure, you can tell someone but they won't get it, not half of what you felt will they know about. It's about the maybe-more moments, when it isn't about what you look like or whatever mask you're wearing or what insecurities you have, when you are actually with someone you trust and all that stuff doesn't matter for awhile.
And this way that Santana and Brittany interacted in this fic, it just... the way they felt for each other was there but they didn't talk, not for ages and it was the way that it was one thing, the way they acted in a group but then when they were alone, they still didn't talk but it changed. In those moments everything was real and raw but... during, that's when everything was good and fine and amazing, when the words didn't matter and when it was just them, just themselves.
And I understood that.
You know the quote 'Who you really are is what you do when nobodies watching?" That's me butchering that but I guess this goes with my theme of well, every man is an island, but maybe... it's not so much about what you do when nobodies watching, but what you do in private.
What you do when you aren't doing it because someone is watching or judging. What you do because you want to and because it feels right and you don't have to tell people about it to give it meaning. Things that make your soul happy without need for reassurance or recognition.
Maybe I'm thinking about you-know-who right now but I'm also thinking of friends, things you do and conversations you have. Late nights where you lie in bed and just talk, about everything. Night is safer than the day when it comes to things like that. At night you can talk without being vulnerable. At night it's so much easier to lay bare your soul.
Anyway, I've forgotten exactly what it was I was going to say because -and proving my point- it's morning now and I just can't have profound revelations when I can see what I'm doing.
But I'll try anyway.
This has taken to long and I don't remember how I got to this conclusion but I always thought... I guess that what I felt for you-know-who was the max I could feel for someone. It was really fucking intense but now I think... maybe it wasn't. Another relationship like the one I had with you-know-who isn't something I aspire to these days.
In some ways it is- like in the fic and like I tried to describe above, there is something really addictive about how you think and focus when you like or love someone like that. You are so aware of them, of those tiny things even when you're in the middle of a big chaotic group. And the things you do when you're alone, the conversations you have, the looks you get, the hugs that last ages, the understanding you have that doesn't need confirmation or talking about- yeah that stuff is worth living for.
But when morning comes I want that to stay and that's when you-know-who fell short and always would.
Just because we didn't need to talk sometimes didn't mean we shouldn't have. There is nothing more I hate then being with someone knowing there is shit that needs to be said but all you get is apathy and the 'is there anything else?' expression like they don't give a damn.
I can do better than that, can't I?
I thought because what I felt for him was the most I'd ever felt that it was automatically the best I could do. That I'm incapable of feeling more than that. But I don't think that's true anymore. When you really seriously want to be with someone, you have to be sure that you feel like you love them better than anyone else could. With you-know-who, I never doubted that his gf loved him, probably as much as I did. And she still does most likely.
In Year 9, one of my friends said to me 'I never get jealous if I think that whoever they're with is better for them than me.' And I've always sort of agreed, at least to a point. Maybe that's how I justified myself with him. I really did think we'd be really good together and would work.
I don't know if what I felt for you-know-who was immature or not. Like, it could have been more than puppy love but still not be as serious as it could be. Like, I haven't talked to him online for 3 weeks. I've seen him once in all that time. The most contact I've had with him lately is him accepting my fb friend request last night after my best friend reblocked him to piss me off. And he didn't say anything.
He and I are not exactly that amazing.
Maybe we wouldn't have worked. Maybe it was dumb and we were immature.
Can't change it now. But maybe I am finally started to feel regret.
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