Ocean full of Secrets

Part I_15

10th of March 2014

Do you know what it's like to love and hate someone at the same time? To love someone unconditionally and still wish for them to finally fail at something completely?

Saki won the national championships in her age group in freestyle swimming this weekend. She also got an A on our Maths test last week, even though she rarely had time to study in between all her trainings and helping out at her mum's restaurant and Maths is supposed to be one of her worst subjects. Though "worst" in her case means she sometimes happened to write a C. I could swear she's getting better and better at everything she does and she does a lot. Be it school or drawing, swimming or any other sport, crafting or making friends. She excels at everything she does. And I know it's mean and I know I'm a terrible friend but sometimes I just wish for nothing more than for her to fail at something, or at least for me to be just once as perfect and as happy as she is. She doesn't understand what it's like, to wake up every morning wishing you hadn't. I'd love to have that ability again. The ability of not understanding. I wish to be as unburdened and happy, as worriless and free as she is.

But then again, maybe she's not. Maybe she's just putting on an act while really she's just as miserable as I am. That would make me an even more horrible and cruel person than I already am. Maybe she's hurting on the inside just like I am, but unlike me she's covering it up by smiling, laughing and joking around, by acting as if life was one long joyride, always proposing the most spontaneous and crazy activities, just so she can for one day, or just one minute, forget about all the pain she's feeling.

I really am an awful human being. And all this time I have been trying to silence my guilty conscience by telling myself that she's not entirely perfect either. That she can, in fact, be rather selfish and intolerant of other people's opinions. Every time she had another insanely crazy and spontaneous idea that screwed with my plans of spending the day in a peaceful solitude of reading and drawing, she made me feel as if I was the weird and crazy one for wanting to spend time on my own. She made me feel inferior and as if my opinion was worth less than hers. To me it felt as if her opinions were right and what I thought or felt or wished for had to be changed. She never said it directly, but I could read it in her eyes and in the tone in which she said, "Oh, come on!" And when she asked what other plans I had for the day I couldn't tell her because I knew that what I had in mind wouldn't pass as a plan in hers. So I said nothing. And therefore it's not even her fault at all that she never tolerated my wishes. I mean how could she? In retrospect, I don't think I ever told her. Still, it felt that way to me and I would be bitter and angry for the rest of the day and there was no way for her to know why. How could she know how her behaviour made me feel if I never showed her my pain? She didn't feel the way I did any more than vice versa, only she said her opinions out loud and I did not. The more I think about it the less she is to blame for anything, really. Yes, maybe she wasn't acting perfectly tolerant in this scenario either, but if she wasn't, I don't think she realized it.

What do you think is worse, acting in a way that might hurt other people and not even realising it, or realising it, but not doing anything against it? I think it's the latter, obviously. In my opinion everybody is a bad person from time to time and in some ways, some are just not aware of it. I am. Every single day. Every time I say or do something that have been understood as hurtful by the opposite person, my hate towards the world and myself grows a little bit and I lie awake at night, going through every possible way in which my actions might have hurt them and how I could've acted differently. And then I think about how they're probably just as awful people as I am. But of course that doesn't make my behaviour and the fact that I don't change it despite being aware of the pain I might be causing any less awful. On the contrary, looking for excuses actually makes it worse. It's just that every one hurts everyone and some do it on purpose while others don't realise it. Those who do might feel bad about it later and as a punishment hurt themselves. And nobody knows for sure what the other person is feeling and there is so much pain, everywhere, and it' s getting more and more with every passing day and there is almost nothing a single person can do about that. Except for trying to minimise the damage they're causing themselves. And I am. I really am.

I've always shad a feeling that nick was more like me in this respect. More introverted and anti-social, more shy and in need of alone time. However, the more I think about it the more I think that Saki had become the glue that was keeping us together. I don't think we would still do a lot together, just the two of us, if Saki wasn't always coming up with all these plans and activities. Don't get me wrong here, it's not as if we weren't getting along anymore, I think we're just too needy of alone time to still need each other's company. Take this spring break for example. Saki was at a trainings camp and the two of us didn't meet up a single time. Maybe that was partly due to the current awkwardness between us that by the way still hasn't completely subsided, but I'm sure that's not all there is. What happened? Why and how did we become this way? We used to talk about everything together. We used to hang around his room or the tree house simply reading, drawing and being awkward together. We used to be introverts together. I don't know what went wrong and when, but I wish we could find a wormhole that would transport us back in time to when we were children and just stay there forever. But I guess that's not an option.

I can still see us clearly on the day that we met Saki. It was a cool and crisp day in September, the kind of day on which the air smelled like apple trees and pumpkin pie, like new beginnings and rain. But then again, every day smells like rain in Edinburgh. It was two weeks after primary school had begun and Nick and I, already having been introverts back then, hadn't talked to anybody there besides each other. Until Saki came, that is.

She was the first Asian person I had ever personally come into contact with and so I was immediately drawn to her. She was interesting, foreign and mysterious. She also shared our love for drawing and painting, for playing make-believe and being out in the nature. Plus she had only just started to learn English, so we didn't have to talk a lot. We communicated without words and we understood each other perfectly. Sometimes though I feel as if she was now trying to make up for the words she missed out on saying back then by talking twice as fast as would seem possible. However, she found other ways to get her ideas across to the other kids. It didn't take long and she even got Nick and me to come out of our shell, to participate in games with them. Mostly games she came up with herself. Saki managed to combine creativity and activity into the most incredible game that was fun for literally everyone and became common lunch break routine for two years straight.

I think I was already a bit jealous at her back then. At her ability to ignite all of us with her enthusiasm and to get the most different people to have fun together, at her ability to make friends. And I suppose that jealousy has been only increasing since then. It didn't vanish even when she started opening up about her past in Japan. About how her dad died, drowned in a lake, and how that triggered her mum to finally leave the country she had been starting to hate years ago and that would now forever remind her of her husband. Somehow Saki managed to make everything sound less bad than it really was. Maybe it was her accent or her limited vocabulary. Maybe it was the way she always told a joke right afterwards to lighten the mood again and to indicate that she didn't want our pity. She only told us to show how much she was starting to trust us. How could I ever think she was a bad person? She is amazing and inspiring and I'm sitting here, ignoring her calls and her texts and why? Because I'm ashamed. Because I'll never be as good as her. Her life wasn't easy either but she pulled through. Unlike me. I don't deserve her friendship. Nor does she deserve a friend like me.

I'm so sorry ...

Yours,

Cassie