In the summer we drive around, listening to Remember Sports, and searching for a reasonably priced second-hand keyboard so you can pick up a new hobby. Here, the summers stretch on for far too long: the bare blue sky hanging over our heads with quiet contempt.
Lonely and depressed, I fall in love with the idea of being included. I tell my therapist that I hate the bright lights and intense heat of summers, but, realistically, what I hate is the quietness. We are at the age where you start making decisions about who you want to be and where you what you want to do in life, and though I am sure of what I want, I am not so sure about what I want to be.
You are a social person and I’m the opposite. I am eternally convinced that everyone who is nice to me is secretly against me; a byproduct of my parents’ constant cruel remarks to everyone they see, high school bullying, and low self-esteem. In therapy, my therapist suggests that I am someone who is hesitant to form close relationships, but when they do, enters into them too fast: unleashing all of myself, pouring myself into that person and forming a codependent bond quickly.
I suppose he is right. Though, to me what matters most is friendship. “What bums me out the most about a breakup,” I tell you. “Is losing the friendship.”
“Yeah, it’s tough.” You say.
“When I first started dating people, I had this really clear image of what the aftermath would look like. It would be dramatic. How could it not be? But, after that initial drama there would be a sort of rekindling born of the appreciation of a shared history. And then, that would help a new friendship blossom: one where you could put aside your initial hurt and feel respect and pride for the new person you’ve each become.”
“Yeah, that’s nice.” You say.
“I guess I always imagined it like how you see it in TV shows: messy relationships where people, for the audience’s sake, announce how they’re feeling. Tight narratives. Nothing ambiguous.”
“Did I miss the turn? Did you see Duval street anywhere?”
“And now,” I continued. “Having been in and out of a bunch of relationships, I realize that a big part of the ending is nebulous. You never really get a resolution and you can’t really force people to tell you how they’re feeling either.”
“Fuck. I’ll have to turn around.”
“Most of the time you just go on living these independent and diverging lives–never running into each other again.”
“Okay, here’s the place.”
“Which,” I take a deep breath. “I guess is okay, maybe there’s some joy in that. Maybe there’s something nice about knowing you only had a short amount of time with someone. Maybe that’s what makes it special.
“Hey,” you say, turning the car off and turning to look at me. “I don’t think this is working out.” “Ah,” I say. “Okay, makes sense.”