Befriend, & you'll see (:

February

Let me tell you an impossible ~~and really really cheesy~~ love story.

In October of 2010, after having broken up with my girlfriend at the time, I revived a tumblr account of mine called newtheoryoldlove. In the needlessly long sadness that followed, I was a little presumptuous, rather naive, and extremely disillusioned; but I wrote, anyway. I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, about several things and some things, and many great nothings, I wrote.

That, at the time, was half my life. The other half was worrying about college. In fact, on the 29th of October 2010, I was at Tufts University for a fly-out program in order to better understand the school before deciding on an application to it.

To be honest, I wasn’t really dying to go to Tufts, and it wasn’t really imperative that I visited for so long. But I went. My counselor urged me to apply for the program, and I did, and when I was accepted I traveled over there. To this day, I cannot thank her enough.

So, on the 29th of October in 2010, I was about to leave Tufts University at the end of that weekend visit. After gathering my bags together, I realized that I still had time before my shuttle would depart for the airport. So, I talked to a few strangers—two girls I hadn’t yet met.

I honestly don’t remember who the second girl was. The first, however, is now an acquaintance of mine named Allyson Reece Umali—a wonderful woman who I enjoyed making casual conversation with as we waited for our buses. While I was waiting to fly back to Chicago, Allyson was preparing for a ride back to New Jersey. At the end of the afternoon, we took a few pictures together (I documented my travels well) and in my heedlessly extroverted manner, I exchanged numbers with my new friends.

Most of the people I met on those travels, I didn’t keep in close contact with. Allyson and I somehow had the chance to at least follow each other’s tumblr accounts; I’m sure we had a mutual appreciation for each other’s posts. I didn’t think much of it at the time, as per usual when it comes to the things that end up changing our lives the most.

Somewhere, along the way, I reblogged a post from Allyson, or she from me, and that interaction was noticed. Somewhere along the way, back at Allyson’s high school in New Jersey, a friend of Allyson’s scrolled through her tumblr dashboard. Somewhere along the way, that friend fatefully came across my blog, via Allyson’s. Somewhere along the way, she found me.

March 22nd, 2011; Dishabillic: “Your writing is just wonderful; thank you for sharing.”

There is a girl on tumblr who writes and reads and thinks and speaks and has, in her social convictions and her sense of empathy, what I once described, to her, as a ferocious conscientiousness. She has hundreds and hundreds of followers, she has personality and wit and charm, she is gentle and kind, and she is at home in this element. I am just an amateur with a zest for simple things and desire for understanding. She is famous, I am no one. But still, somehow, she found me.

There is a girl named Jasmeet who one day happened to say hello, and in my extroversion and my manners, I said hi, back.

You. You were everything I ever wanted, and you were way too good to be true, and you lived half-way across the country, and I knew there was no way I could ever know you. I knew it. At the time, I was hopelessly mistrustful and you were heartbreakingly empty. I was unstable and you were enigmatic. We were going to schools four hundred miles away. We were going to meet amazing people. We were going to lead separate lives in separate directions, the way that almost all lives end up being lead when (by chance) they coincide for a just few moments, on the internet, thanks to an acquaintance (who was also met by chance) on an synchronic afternoon, far, far from home.

You told me how happy you were to have found a friend in me, even though it was doubtful that we would ever run into each other in real life. Somehow, I had a different feeling… so, pages and pages and pages of e-mails later, I expressed it.

May 17th, 2011; Newtheoryoldlove: “…And lastly, while it’s true that we might never meet, I’m not entirely convinced. After flying all over the country and getting to see people more than once, and having some sort of an odd, deep-seated “knowing” in regards to a few people, that I will, absolutely, meet them again at some point; well, it’s a rather small world, let’s just say that.”

But even as I entertained that possibility to you, I wallowed in doubt the most.

So why, then, was I up at three-o’-clock in the morning, walking across the quad on many sweet summer nights in Maine, eyes up at the trees and every star I could see? Why, then, were you up, talking to me on your phone when you could have been in a dingy frat basement, with red cups and bleary-eyed strangers? You wrote a poem about me, you wrote about this. You said you didn’t need to know why.

You were so incredibly far away, and I dreaded that distance, those four-hundred-miles, four hundred deep into your well, the things that you’d have to pull out and show me if you wanted me to believe that I wouldn’t wake up one morning wondering where you’d gone and why you hadn’t come back. Trust issues. Strangers. Problems. I saw no point in making things harder on myself.

So I refrained, gave you a dull ache, an “if.” Maybe I could find something worth it; maybe something good could work. I kept myself busy and hopeful, and in the weeks and the people who followed with them, I found myself restless, but safe. I got used to my environment. I was rewarded and disappointed. I made friends.

But I couldn’t keep from bringing you up to my best friend, couldn’t keep from going back to you, couldn’t stop thinking about you. I couldn’t stop sifting through the long messages that I had saved for you in dozens of New Text Documents on my cluttered desktop; afraid of losing them in the midst of our discourse on tumblr, or, later, safely stowed for elaboration in our e-mails.

I remember the first time I heard your voice on the phone. It wasn’t what I expected, not in the slightest. Your voice was delectably textured, with a perfect dark-gossamer rasp, and a uniquely reserved hum, earthy and sweet like honey. I remember being dumbstruck. Just like the first time I saw a picture of you, I was blown away. You were beautiful in a way that surpassed everything I was taught to believe. There was no glitter or pomp or conformity in your style and your words, only a noble effort to be real, a timeless gorgeousness. This was not about passing judgments on appearances and assumptions. This was about causality and order. This was about how I came to love you.

I was fascinated by you before I knew that you were a girl, before I knew that you were drop-dead-gorgeous, and before I knew your full name. I was fascinated by you because something inside you was preparing itself to blossom with such traumatic force that the ground would shake and give way when you gave to throwing yourself into the sky, and I wanted to be there, to witness it, to witness you. How could anyone else compare to you? They never stood a chance—your actions and your stories amplified your beauty, intensified my attachment, reduced the distance. The things that you shared with me, the truths you told me, I felt like I was being handed not the key to your heart but the vulnerable organ itself, ventricle by ventricle, sometimes torn or split in parts, and the one thing I could not do was to withdraw my open hand. The weight of your memories tortured me, but they also brought us to life, they created a neural network, a bridge. The very fact that you chose me, that you felt comfortable with me, that I could coax you and challenge you to be yourself—it was infinitely rewarding.

Over time I found myself breaking into silly grins while walking by myself on the way to class, just at the thought of you: of your smile when we skyped, of your idiosyncrasies, of your perfections and imperfections. No one has ever been able to do that to me, before. I was in love with you, and I never stood a chance. There was a meager hope for being in control, for situational power to use in self-defense. But I was kidding myself. I could only cross my fingers that when you loved me, you loved me enough to bring me back to myself, to bring me back to you. I could only hope for the best—in the end, I’d be yours anyway, whether you’d fight to have me or not. But you did fight. You made your way in. You persisted.

The truth, Jasmeet, is that when it came to reasons for this to be… well, it’s apparent, isn’t it? I cannot call myself a writer when my peers are publishing and my classmates are stylistically divine. Neither can I call myself a thinker when there are greater men out there who know more philosophy, ancient and modern, logic and semantics, than I could ever even begin to discuss. I cannot claim to be an artist when I know so little of design and I am so limited with my lens; nor can I claim to be a social activist when I am often the last to know about (or comment on) political and class/race/gender issues. I am not handsome in this pool of handsome men who would love you, I am not wise in the line of stellar men who could teach you. I am not so good at any one thing, and if natural selection alone drove our motivations, noticing me would be a mistake. I would love to amaze you one day, but I have no jaw-dropping talents. There are others out there who could enrich your life more by the minute than I could over a few weeks.

Jasmeet, all I can do is to promise to love you for your soul. I was fascinated by you before I knew that you existed. Your writing, your activism, your pains and your passions; I had looked to you long before you were visible and far past the things that you publicly shared, and I will have eyes for you long after you’re not, long after you don’t. Even if they took away the shape of your lashes or the dimples in your cheeks, the curve of your arms and the bends of your ankles; even if they took away the sound of your voice and the texture of your skin, and the way your hair smells in the morning, even then, I would still love you. My affections rest not on your corporeal facade but rather on your innate identity, not on your attention towards me but rather your actions and your struggles. For you I will always attempt to write and to listen and to make art and science in an endless effort to chase life, for this chase is the very thing that draws me to you, that motivates us, that I can dedicate myself to, in victory or defeat. All I can do is serve, and if I choose one person to serve most, that person is you.

February 17th, 2012: I pace like a mad man in the bus station, hidden partially from Arrivals by the corner of the front desk. You exist. You do not. You exist for me even if you do not truly exist. You do not exist at all. You are probably a seventy-year-old-man who is a registered sex offender. You are probably twenty years older than you said you were. You are probably the exact harmless, beautiful woman whom I skyped with for hours and hours on end. You probably wouldn’t end up coming. You probably would. You exist. You do not. I am scared.

Finally, you are the last person to walk in. I see your face for a fraction of a second before my heart jumps into my throat and I pivot away instantly, walking in the opposite direction towards the back of the crowd, before you can spot me. My friend Ricardo, holding a sign with your name, catches your attention and convinces you to close your eyes and to trust him as he guides you towards me. Impatient, I take you from his hands and walk you over by myself to the back of the station, having you stand in front of me. Ricardo smiles at me and positions the camera towards us to capture the moment. So it begins.

”Do you trust me?” I ask, and there you are, with your eyes still clenched shut, still suspended in the mutual absurdity: that you just traveled on a bus for an entire day to get to Maine from New Jersey, that you are standing in a bus station holding a stranger’s hand for the very first time, someone whom you have never even met, someone who you are not sure exists, someone who might not be worth it. “Do you trust me?” I ask, and my heart is pounding so hard, because I would have loved you no matter what you ended up being like or looking like, as long as you had that unmistakable ferocious conscientiousness, that incomparable compassion, and here you are, with my everything, all of my pride and my possessions and my hopes and dreams and secrets, and you could betray it in a second, you could laugh in my face and tell me it was all an elaborate lie, a joke of a conspiracy. “Do you trust me?” I ask, and you recognize my voice, from hearing it so many times, when I talked to you on an off-limits balcony of a building in a snow-storm, when you told me over video-chat things about death that your own family and friends could never guess you’d seen, when we cracked literary jokes and spoke in metaphysics in the middle of slow, timeless afternoons. “Do you trust me?” I ask you; you, whom I have never met before, but whom I know so well.

“Yes,” you reply. So I kiss you.

I will never forget the look in your eyes when you finally opened them as we broke our first kiss; when you looked at me, in person, for the very first time.

Jasmeet, I will forever be whatever you need from me, and forever thankful for everything that has ever happened to me to make that impossibly serendipitous moment possible—the moment that I met you.

This post has 1,139 notes.