Sore throat

February Kyle
Jul 20, 2017 · 3 min read

It’s complicated. I don’t know what to call her when I talk about her. Should I just say her name? And then, if people ask, ‘Who is she?’, I can say she is somebody I knew, a friend or a potential girlfriend, but we never went that far. No, that isn’t enough. These definitions are empty and don’t convey how important she became to me, nor how it hurt me to watch her fade away. If only she had said something else and allowed me to answer. If only her last words allowed us to carry on from misunderstandings and expectations. Instead, her last words accused me of making her sick, even physically sick. She needed to get away from me.

I spent my first nights answering her letter to all of my friends, over and over. Everything I wanted to write back or say to her face I told anyone else who would hear it. “I need time away from you, to heal.” I got a really bad case of a sore throat right after that. My mother said it was because I wasn’t saying what I had to say. I swallowed it all painfully anyway.

Sometimes I think that maybe she failed to see how much she hurt me because she was hurt too. Not only by our relationship; there was also her other heartache. She had high hopes for me. In the end, what I enjoyed the most about her was also what made me hurt. If you know her then you will agree that she is really loud. Not in a stereotyped scandalous way, she was very expressive, she had a way with words and she could back up an argument. But then, all that eloquence became silencing; no more debates, only speeches. To this day I haven’t had an opportunity to reply. I could have called her, sent a message, but what kept me from doing that, what keeps from doing it to this day, are your words. “I need time alone from you, to heal.”

We were both in love with people who didn’t want us. Men who didn’t want us enough to claim us, who kept us a secret in one way or another. And that hurt, it hurt more than we cared to admit. We had our friends to look after, we were the pinnacle of each of groups, how could we show such weakness? We believed we couldn’t show, not even to one another. Was that one of the reasons? Was it easier to blame it on ourselves? We were so open minded and open to conversation. Until the openness became an abyss and we stood at each side of the edge and none of us jumped. She walked away, I walked the other way.

I felt betrayed by her lack of understanding. It wasn’t about priorities, it was about urgency and not everything that is urgent is important. She told me again and again that she was older than me and more experienced and therefore knew better. It felt as if all the protection and caring she wanted to give me were very inconvenienced by my own life. If it doesn’t sound fair it’s because it isn’t.

I came to the same conclusion as she did, though. It doesn’t matter what I had to respond. It doesn’t matter what she did and didn’t understand. It was never me, it was never her.

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February Kyle

Written by

Conteúdo sensível e possíveis gatilhos. || Sensitive content and possible triggers.

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