From my previous instance I should've known that I was a bad person, maybe not all the time but when I liked someone, I was terrible.
Christmas came and went, uneventful which was new for me, but time passed nonetheless. I steeled myself to keep away from Jay during that time even though we still messaged each other during those days. I decided in my heart that I would get someone else to play with because he nor Minna deserved what we would become. Clearly that intention was only on my end because Jay had made it clear he was interested.
Unsure of how to navigate the whole issue, I just got someone else to throw my affection at. There wasn't any shortage of guys to choose from, after all I was never an ugly duckling. Though that may seem conceited, the truth is that is took me quite some time to come to that realization and now that I've finally done so, bragging a little bit isn't that bad.
At the time of these events, I was always confused why other people were still interested even when I was clearly pining for someone else like that. What could have motivated someone to continuously go for someone else who wouldn't reciprocate that behavior? Was it the hope that they would change? Did they not know when to give up? Or were they just unable to stomach a rejection?
Regardless of what their reasons were there were a whole three new people that were willing to play this game with me. Whether they knew I wasn't being serious was never a part of my thought process or something I even remotely cared about. I just wanted to be numb, and no matter what I did I just kept feeling more, so I needed a distraction or three.
There was no reason those poor souls should have been toyed with but at that time I was so selfishly trying to fix myself that I neglected the feelings of those around.
A lesson well learnt from my mother.
Thanks to her I had learnt just the right amount of affection needed to string someone along when they were in a fragile state. It was enough for you to believe that you were cared for, but simultaneously not enough to feel loved. This is exactly what I did.
For those three, for the two months of distracting they offered, it was nice. I always knew they would never last long, after all I only approached Nick because someone I knew was stringing him along and I wanted to get back at her. Caleb was sweet but I could never take him seriously and he needed some hygiene maintenance. Jamie was great and quite cute, but he was way to self-absorbed to get through a conversation without making it about himself.
How ever irrational this was, I still thought of Jay the entire time. I felt like I had tried to remove someone from my life, but they were engraved into my essence, no eraser could move what had been laid there. So, for two months I enjoyed fooling myself one after the other, sometimes simultaneously. Until I finally caved in.
An inauspicious night like any other, I sat on my shared bed while the other party slept and I messaged Jay like routine. Just like that, in the quiet, gentle night, filled with only the sounds of the peace, he told me he wanted to be with me. Not just that he liked me but was ready to possibly sacrifice friends to be with me.
I was happy to the point of tears and still managed to tell him no.
It had seemed liked a stupid idea saying no after all the bonding we had done, all the messages, all the side hugs held for a little too long, not to mention the eye contact. Nevertheless, I still told him no because I still had unfinished business to settle before I could be with him.
Now I didn't just flat out reject him, that is, contrary to my original belief that he was just another toy, the heart palpitations started feeling real. Something started to feel different and for a while it was unsettling…. then it was pleasant. So instead, I told him 'No, not yet.' A promise that someday we will but right now is clearly not the right time.
He was considerate to me in letting me clear up my grievances before we tried pursuing anything together. The first being the three people I was still stringing around. Nick's issue was easily resolved given that we never really liked each other enough to date, but when he had realized the girl he actually fancied was playing him for a fool, he was quick to cooperate with me. That was the first thing to be decided, and the largest surprise of the whole ordeal was I became friends with the girl who was playing him, and she even became a part of my lifeline later on.
Next, I moved on to Jamie as it would be a little trickier to explain to a narcissist why I didn't want to be with him. Thankfully we had known each other for a while back and were familiar enough with each other's personalities to understand why we did what. Though the discussion was still a little difficult to get through, as he kept going on and on and on about how great we were together. A part of his story did have some truth to it, I was the singer, and he was the musician. We paired well together and often got compliments on what a nice couple we were, but me and Jay had something that me and Jamie didn't. We had passion.
The last of the three to be dealt with was Caleb, the one everyone was most familiar with. He was quite popular from being a cadet and having quite the enigmatic personality, though he could be brash at times. I liked the way he was always the center of attention at first, until I very quickly learnt that I was an introvert and being at the center was not my forte. I naturally ended up in the spotlight one too many times while being with him. He had always tried to convince me it was a good thing and people would get to see the firecracker side of me he liked so much instead of the quiet bookworm I had been labelled as.
Sometimes I do look back and feel a bit bad for Caleb and the way I ended things with him in a crowd full of people. I know he didn't deserve it, but I had tried to lay him down gently on multiple occasions and he wasn't taking it, so I became extreme. I crafted a whole gig and even got some spectators, my friend who everyone thought was my cousin helping me with elaborate scheme. We scheduled a day and spread the word behind his back, found the most artistic words to make sure it stuck and even created a program of events that we passed around.
The day finally came around and during our lunch, my cousin and I executed our master plan. We called everyone under one of the famously large trees in the courtyard, and thus the ceremony kicked off. He was in the crowd a bit confused but enjoying our humor until I called him up, confusion being further etched into his face. Then I recited, everything we had practiced, perfectly poised words, perfectly poisonous words and just to rub salt in the wound I walked off hand in hand with another guy, random paid actor.
My cousin had closed off the 'ceremony' and later told me he walked off crying when he realized what had happened. I felt horrible and I should, after all I had humiliated someone who genuinely cared about me in pursuit of passion. I had burned bridges because I was impatient in getting him to leave. A part of me may have realized that I was never good enough for Caleb, why I thought I was good enough for Jay was beyond me.
It was malevolent and crafty, but in that moment, I had no connection with Caleb, there no feelings, no strings attached between us. So regardless of how cruel and unkind I was being to him, that may have been the most merciful thing I could have done for him, I let him go. After infidelity was worse, and had I not let him go that's exactly what would have happened.
In that moment though I recognized something, I would do anything in pursuit of passion, but I had failed to realize just how true that was in that moment. I had convinced myself that the moral atrocities I had been committing were all necessary evils to make sure me and Jay were endgame. The only problem was that no house built on lies would last and lie I did.
Besides how else was I supposed to convince Jay I was a decent person?