IT'S LUNCHTIME. I am pulling out my peanut butter and jelly sandwich from my bag while I trot along the corridor. It was mostly empty save for the several students who walked in pairs and groups rushing towards the cafeteria or outside the campus. I'm not the most "unfriended" person in the whole school but I'm also not the social butterfly. I like my quiet. I like solitude, so you wouldn't really expect me to find my way closer to another soul at my own volition. But I like it here. I liked sitting crossed-leg on the floor while devouring the lunch my mom hastily made before she left for work. She never fails to wake up the earliest to prepare everything we need for our daily schedules, since she also never fails to arrived later than everybody in the house after work. But I accept failures. It makes you grow as a person. They're a part of you whether you want them or not. I do not really feel good about rejections in general that's why I embrace every bit of failure from the moment I came into light of life until I see the light went off from his room across mine.
FOR INSTANCE... I accepted the fact that he failed to remember that I was the kid who offered him my own ice cream when he was so clumsy as a child that even though he had been holding his with both hands, he still managed to get tripped up by his own feet that he fell and dropped everything and wailed over it for like half an hour.
I accepted the fact that his mind failed to retain the memory of me as the girl from preschool who lent him my pencil and didn't got it back due to the fact that instead of using it to draw the family tree our teacher was making us do at the time, he used it to stab an annoying fellow in the leg. I don't want to be accused of being an accomplice because I was the owner of the assault weapon so I didn't hold a grudge about that, really... I just hoped he used it in a friendlier way to justify its Barney design.
I accepted the fact that he failed to keep the record that we had been classmates during early grade school but I wouldn't blame him. You really would not like to remember the moment in your life that all you did was fought with kids who say your father left you because you're adopted. I thought then that the statement never fails to make him angry because it's about family and it's supposed to be a sentimental thing but right now I was convinced that it was because the statement doesn't make any sense at all whatsoever.
I accepted the fact that he failed to suppressed his laughter as an onlooker when most of the boys in my class at seventh grade guffawed and cackled when the prank they were trying to pull at one of the girls finally met its success. They tried so many times to put ketchup on some chosen seats in the cafeteria so the girl who would be sitting on either would get a red stain on her skirt, right at her rear. It was me who unwittingly made them all so happy that I went home that day mortified and cried out loud that I would never, ever attend school anymore because I really had my period that time—I thought it was my own actual blood that smelled like condiment! (Partly the reason why I don't enter cafeterias anymore.)
I accepted the fact that he failed to realize that I cried for three consecutive nights when I found out that the letter I so willingly accepted from him when he threw tiny rocks at my window like a real-life modern Romeo was actually from his friend Leon and he's just trying to be a wingman. I cried two more nights after that because my name was spelled so wrongly you would think they're just trying to prank me—again—and I didn't even understand half of what's written because my eyes kept brimming with tears and Leon might as well written with his feet.
I accepted the fact that he failed to fail in his duty to be a loyal friend to Leon. I admire that quality... if not used against me. He could have been at least a loyal neighbor to me—or a loyal stranger—so that they would both leave me alone. Or maybe if Leon would leave me alone with him. But he never fails to leave Leon's side, while Leon never failed to grace me with his presence. Why wouldn't he? He's my boyfriend.
