Torches and Revelations

I. Torches

I. TORCHES

My best friend keeps asking me if I’m “carrying a torch” for him.

As if she’s a poet; as if an undisclosed schoolgirl crush can possibly match the beauty and passion of a soft, burnt-orange flame; as if she assumes that I can untangle the knotted mop of fantasies and what-ifs and sentiments of self-doubt that have taken residence in my head. As if I could possibly think straight enough to know what the hell I’m carrying for him—if it’s anything at all. 

So I laugh, ridicule her for such a ridiculous metaphor, mumble an apathetic, borderline, completely inconclusive and thoroughly useless excuse for an answer and change the subject into something that doesn’t make my stomach twist. You’d think she was asking me if I wanted to marry him.

But no, it’s nothing but this “torch” business—nothing but a harmless, friendly inquisition about whether or not I have a crush on my sort of selected but mostly suggested (by the pseudo-poet best friend, obviously) prom date. I’m not interested in him. I don’t think I’m interested in him. More than anything, I’ve convinced myself that it really doesn’t matter whether I’m interested in his hair or his smile or his sense of humor or his shoes—nothing ever happens with my infatuations, after all. 

So before I know it, I’ve accidentally approved the construction of a wall between myself and anything remotely resembling love. I’ve told myself that the idea of somebody actually reciprocating affection (not that I’ll admit it exists for said prom date) for me is impossible. Ridiculous. Bizarre. Funny even, in a sort of sadistic, self-depreciating way. Therefore, even if an illuminated torch or a candle or a matchstick is serving as a symbol of my crush, I’ve accepted the fact that every decent male in a five-mile radius is carrying a bucket of water to toss at me when I get too close. Sort of like cooties, except not so cute anymore. If that’s the case, why bother letting anyone see the flame? Why carry it at all?

It’s not a question of how I feel about him. Not really. It’s a question of whether or not I’ve allowed myself to deliberate the idea in the first place—and I haven’t. I won’t. Not even when my friend asks me how I feel about him for the eighty-second time, or when she inquires what exactly my reaction would be if he tried to kiss me (My answer: I mean… I guess I wouldn’t stop him? I think? Translation: Oh, if only he would.). 

If I told her the truth, she’d tell me I was being stupid. If I told my parents anything remotely factual, they’d bash my head in with a pillow and reprimand me for seventeen hours about how I deserved any boy I set my sights on—although if that were true, I’d have Matthew Bellamy serenading me between kisses and David Tennant holding me on the couch downstairs. 

So I say nothing, and keep giving indecisive answers to my friend’s interrogating, and try to convince myself that I’m going to prom with him as a friend—the pretense I’m almost positive he holds in his mind. 

But what would happen if I did admit to carrying that goddamn torch? Would my friend launch into motion, follow through with her juvenile plan to incite romance through truth or dare? (Because that always works in real life.) Would he, dare I say it, feel the same way? That is, assuming I can articulate how I feel, because the words capable of describing my thoughts about him are proving illusive at the moment. Would he actually kiss me? 

Probably not.

And even though I don’t want it to, that fucking “probably” is going to control what I do and what I don’t do.

Even though high school is almost over, even though in two months I’ll never see him again, even though he is a genuinely nice person who would at least let me down gently, using some excuse that was somehow awkward, depressing, and adorable all at once. Even though I’ve got a better chance at this working out than I’ve had for anything in too long, I’ll still say no. I’ll drop the torch before anyone can see if it’s lit. I’ll say, whether it’s true or not, that I don’t see him in a romantic capacity, that the idea of us “hooking up” is just weird. 

And it is weird—albeit for a different reason. It’s weird because I can’t seem to accept the idea that I’ll ever end up with anyone. Yet at the same time, I refuse to condemn myself to a fate of solitude. It’s exhausting, this battle between hope and poor self esteem. It’s embarrassing, too.

And I wonder if it’ll ever end.