Growing Out of My Embarrassing Heteronormativity
I will never forget — my only hope is you forgive.
Sometimes I still wonder if it happened in truth. To this day, I am still questioning what it was — those days, you laid your head on my lap with your feet tucked in my trench coat, as I hunched over the math problems on my desk, pen clutched in my right hand, as my left stroked your shoulder. If I had known that what you felt for me was different from what I did for you, I might not have allowed this scene to replay day after day, in the same classroom for the entire winter season.
So do you like anime, you asked.
Anime, I repeated after you, I don’t spend much time on entertainment, you know. But Ghilbi Studio productions are decent.
I’ll pretend that you like it then, so you really should watch Naruto with me, you said.
After the exams during Christmas maybe, I replied, my eyes not leaving the equations laid in front of me for a moment.
You respected that, much more than I ever respected you, perhaps. You no longer bothered me about it until the exams were over, the school term ended, and Christmas holidays begun. After the last examination, you stuttered while suggesting that I visit you, so that we could huddle up and watch Naruto together. But I was sorry to have to reject you once again. After all, I never really thought of finding something that I would potentially be a fan of — I did not like the idea that I might fall in love with something that would pose a distraction from studying.
Both my parents were professionals, and the pressure for me to live a successful life was heavy. I was only fourteen, but I have been told multiple times why I should study medicine, why I should not do anything else, and that nothing else would be as fulfilling and suitable for me as medicine.
As much as I disliked the entire sentiment, I could not argue against that. I could only hide beneath the covers, be frustrated over it for an hour or so, and then fall back into my role and strive to be the best daughter my parents could ask for. The daughter that my parents are still not satisfied with, and perhaps fairly so.
Look at Michelle, they would say, why can’t you rank first in physics if she can do that? There’s Lucy too, if she could be the first in Biology, why not you? You’re already studying in a unisex school for girls, I can’t see how competitive science subjects could be. If you are not the top in your cohort, you’re not far from flunking your public examinations, they would say.
There were only a few people I was comfortable sharing these events with, and you were one of them. You understood me like we knew each other for years, as if we were long-lost siblings, even. I reiterated to you multiple times how much I needed a listener like you. One that could just listen to me without judgement. One that I could trust not to fabricate rumours from it, making more reasons for others to believe that my life was more easier than theirs, and tell me that I was lucky enough, making me ashamed for being dissatisfied, or even having the briefest sliver of negative emotions. I have had enough people telling me that I was a damsel in distress, and that I had to be more grateful for what I have.
I have always been grateful. I know I am luckier than so many people out there, and many would pay to swap positions with me. However, how people disregard all the effort I put in sometimes get to me. I hate that people think I am some kind of child prodigy, and know the entire curriculum ever since dropping out of my mother’s womb.
I would love to have parents who are doctors, they say, I would be able to study less and score higher. While I am ever thankful for their providing me with a desirable and stable living environment, I still have to learn the course content for myself, since it was never as if my mother could send me knowledge down the umbilical cord from before I was born. I wish not to brush off my good fortune as worthless, but I would like to get credit where it is due. The sheer amount of people assuming that I simply do well by being born to good parents are sometimes overwhelming.
Your parents being professionals is the only reason you get to live in the city and spend two hours less on transit, not to mention the lunch money, they say. I knew that. But from conversations with my close friends, I learned that I have more or less the similar amount of pocket money than everyone else, for my parents fondly believed that frugality was a virtue and ought to be instilled in my mind from a young age. I simply have more to spend on necessities because I don’t spend them on fandom purchases, concerts, or parties. It’s all for food and stationary.
You should be happy that your parents know your syllabus, they say, they will be answer all your academic questions. I knew that. But if you go ask them questions, all you would get is a figurative slap on your face for not being attentive in class, or an imaginary stab for being too dumb to figure it out yourselves. Survival of the fittest, my father would say, and in terms of academic ability you are as weak as an old man with terminal cancer being treated with TLC (tender loving care).
Sometimes how people envision I live bothers me.
Of all my friends, your life was the most different from mine. You did not live in any private estate, nor do you live in the city. You told me that your father worked as a cashier in the supermarket, that your mother was a full-time housemother, and that the three of you dwelled humbly in a public rental estate at the countryside. Yet you act more elegantly and gracefully than any of my friends who had better backgrounds. You respect everyone and their achievements, acknowledging the effort they have put in, instead of linking them up with ‘talent’, ‘being born to good families’, or ‘good fortune’. You rarely used what people cannot change against them. Once again, this proves how one’s background has limited impact on their potential strength.
I shared so many of my insecurities with you that saying you carried my heart would not be a stretch. Perhaps it was because I had only known you for a short three months, and I cared less of whether my darker side would change how you view me and, by extension, the dynamics of our friendship. I must apologize for viewing you much less highly than many of my other friends who I have known before you.
I didn’t know that me talking so much about my views, experiences and troubles would lead you on. One day after school resumed again, you grasped my hand as we tread to the bus station through the harsh winter wind.
Wow, you are frigid, I exclaimed, taking our conjoint hands into the pocket of my trench coat. And neither of us let go.
One day in March, as we were seated on the upper deck of the bus into the early spring dusk, you asked if I could be your girlfriend.
What? Of course no, why would you say that, I said, withdrawing my hand from yours. That was followed by an awkward half hour of silence as the bus weaved through the congested rush hour traffic.
It was only two years after did I understand how to react when people came out to me — don’t ask why, don’t ask how they know, don’t overreact. In retrospect, I did everything I should not have. But my simple-minded self at age fourteen didn’t know better, and had always thought of you as straight. I only realized how wrong and disrespectful I have been to uniformly assume people heterosexual long after that.
And the price I have paid is high.
To this day, I live with regret that I have been callous, even rough, to those who loved me as such. I live with regret that I have been inconsiderate, for you have shared much of my burden yet I appeared flabbergasted when you shared yours. If life gave me a second chance, I would have acted very much differently.
Since then, we both lost a listening ear. It was not like we ever fell out. We simply never talked as we used to do anymore, as if a giant glacier solidified between the two of us, and even if I see you clearly through the transparent solid, I choose not to go straight towards you, for that ice rendered that impossible. I cuoldn’t let the unbearable embarrassment to slip past, and you, understandably, held your ego high.
Occasionally, we still see each other at the bus stop waiting for the same bus, but we kept our distance. We were still in the same cohort, but being shuffled into different home classes in the following academic years, it was easy to avoid each other.
Yet even though we never talked, I was secretly rooting for you in all your endeavors, just like we have always been. Before every mathematics test, I still found the block of chocolate in my locker, and I made sure you got a can of coke before each of your basketball matches.
Time flew, and our graduation ceremony and celebrations came and went, but it wasn’t until two years after that we crossed paths once more, when you started dating a close friend of mine.
I’m happy that you finally found the love you wanted, but even more so knowing that you have finally gotten over me.
Having unintentionally broken one’s heart before, that’s all I could hope. That you will finally get over me and find the love that we are all looking for. That the little side story between us would exist but as a side story, and would never come into conflict with your life story unfolding this very moment.
