Scooters, Scars, Love, and the Brain
From 4th-6th grade, my cousin, brother, and I got obsessed with scooters. I couldn't ride a bike (still don't know if I can), but for whatever reason, the scooter was easy enough for me. I used to take my razor scooter (that was definitely way too small for me at the time of this story) everywhere, back and forth from my mom's house to my dad's and then my grandparents' on weekends. However, there was one weekend that made me decide that it was time to find a different hobby.
At the very start of 6th grade, my family had a cookout at my grandparents' place. I brought my scooter, and at some point, I was the only one outside, riding up and down the hill that made up the short, dead-end street. There was this 'trick' my cousin and I had some up with when we became too tall for our scooters, where you'd ride around with one of your legs swung over the handlebars. I was doing this downhill when I hit a pebble that jammed my front wheel, because of course it did. This sent me flying, leading to me landing on my knees and scraping a cringeworthy distance across the asphalt. I won't go into detail, but the aftermath, while not hospital-worthy, was really gross. It also became a little infected (if you're concerned that I wasn't getting proper care as a kid, it should make you feel better to know my mom's a nurse). And I had to go to school with my knees all nasty and exposed because there were no Band-Aids big enough for the area, and the open air was helping anyway. It makes my knees hurt when I think about those weeks, like they're reliving their short yet infamous careers as emergency brake pads.
I thought that nearly ten years later, the scars would be gone, but when I remembered this story last night and checked, they sure as hell are still there! While the skin there is fully healed and my knees have never caused me trouble since, the texture of the skin there is funky and a little discolored, as big scars tend to be.
For whatever reason, I've connected this to recent events in my life. In November, I found out that someone I had been in love with for nearly a year, one of my best friends, was leading me on the whole time. I really don't feel like going through the whole ordeal in detail, but all my friends who knew me through that arc of my life agree that the things he said and did were borderline evil of him, considering that he hid a partner from me during those last few months I was friends with him as well. I've come to conclude that for whatever reason, he found creating romantic tension between us hilarious. And I've also come to conclude, for many reasons, that he definitely knew how I felt and also used that for his entertainment. This is the most betrayed I have felt by someone, considering I was closer to him than I had been with anyone.
Saying that I didn't take it well is an understatement. I was inconsolable the entire day I found out he had a partner. He dropped it to me over text out of the blue after cancelling plans with me "for reasons" a couple of days before (this is when he revealed it was to see them). I simply said I was happy for him, closed my phone, finally pulled over (I found this out at a traffic light!), and sobbed in my car in the campus parking lot until one of the friends I had texted came to be with me. I spent the entire day hopping between friends, breaking into tears just about every hour. That day, I probably smoked 20 cigarettes, drank a quarter of a disgusting jug of Roberto white rum, and got consoled by so many people in my life: hugged by jazz musicians and military guys; getting dinner with friends that told me about gossip so insane that my situation seem like a beautiful lifelong marriage; my cousin sitting on the phone with me joking about giving the perpetrator of this life event a knuckle sandwich. Luckily, this was on a Sunday, so I had the whole day to begin to process everything.
I chose to quietly stop talking to him, deciding that a friendship wasn't worth fighting for. He tried texting me a few times after that last full conversation, but I either didn't reply at all or waited a day to respond with just a few words. I know this is selfish of me, because there's always the chance that he really wasn't manipulating me on purpose, but the dude is 24. I'm 21. We're not kids anymore, and I've seen more self-awareness from my 17-year-old football-bro brother. I don't think it's my job or even worth my time and well-being to teach him that using people for your entertainment hurts them.
Sometimes I think I'm doing okay. I've never found myself angry at his partner or jealous of them, even on the day of. (Do they even know I, an [what I was led to believe] important person to him, exist?). I never blew up at him and very slowly removed him from all the social media we had each other on. But despite all this, there are still waves and waves of aftershocks. The last time he texted me (mind you, after an all-nighter for a miserable final project), simply, "Dude, What is the problem," [no punctuation by the way], it was the final straw of my week that sent me to experience valculitis for the first time in my life (not fun). It's been a month since that text alone, but I still find myself having an occasional episode of grieving the friendship and whatever else I believed I had with this person.
The last time I experienced that grief was two nights ago, and I fell asleep after a drink to calm my (apparently very sensitive) nerves, wondering, Will this ever go away? And yesterday I got my answer when I looked at the scars on my knees.
No, it won't ever fully go away. Just like my knees, love might never look the same to me again. I'll never see this person the way I did ever again, even if we become friends again one day. (Our local music interests overlap too much for me to never see him again.) But it'll heal over, and the stinging pain I feel now will one day devolve into a dull ache that accompanies some unfortunate memories. One day, I'll be able to recount memories I shared with him and only feel a tiny pain in the back of my mind instead of feeling sick at the thought of him. And there's a chance that eventually someone else will come around, and I'll fall in love again, though with more caution than last time.
My Music Collection
Today's record is Innervisions by Stevie Wonder, which I discovered through an ensemble I was in for college last year. The ensemble's focus was Stevie Wonder, and while digging through his discography for setlist pics, I found this album.
Thanks for reading! Hope you're all having a great week. -G
I, too, had a situation like that, many years ago now, from which I never thought I might "move on" or dare to love again. It still pains me and I doubt it will ever go away entirely (we grew up together, so many childhood memories are tightly intertwined), but I did dare to trust and love again, and suddenly six and a half years have passed together with my partner––perhaps the best relationship (in the general sense, friendship included) I have ever known. All this to say, scars is a good analogy, but take care not to let the skin grow too thick. If nothing else, pain and art are useful companions.
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