Somewhere Else

Chapter 9: Not Enough (ii)

He casts his gaze downward. "I'm tired, Emilie."

This isn't the first time he's said this to me. I'm slowly realising he doesn't mean physical fatigue.

I take a deep breath, because it's starting to feel to me like the room has become a giant vacuum. I'm starting to feel light-headed. "What are you saying?"

When he doesn't reply, I take a step towards him, my hand reaching out for him but falling just short. I let it drift back to my side. "Talk to me. Please. I'm tired of this silence between us."

"I'm saying..." When he looks back up, my heart stutters – because I see that his eyes are a little red around the rim now. "I know you've been struggling. But have you ever thought of what it's like for me?"

My lips part in confusion.

"I've been trying my best to be here for you since you moved here. I know it's hard to adapt. And I've tried to be understanding. I've tried to do my best for you. But maybe it's not about what you want anymore," he says, his watery stare flaying me. "Maybe it's about what I want. Maybe I'm sick of feeling like I have to hide who I am, hide everything Finnish about myself from you, so that you won't get reminded of how different we are. Maybe I want to be with a girl who can accept me and my culture, who doesn't hate everything that makes me me."

I feel like he has slugged me right in the chest. He couldn't have shocked me more if he had. The air has gone out of my lungs at the conviction behind his words. This is something he has thought about. Maybe this is revenge for what I said to him that day in the kitchen.

"I don't..." But I can't get the rest of the sentence out.

"You hate that I'm Finnish," he says. "We're so different that being here with me makes you feel even more like you don't belong."

He has hit the nail right on the head with that last one, but he doesn't understand. It's not him or his culture that made me lash out the way I have been. It's me.

I hate that I'm not Finnish, that I didn't grow up by his side, didn't grow up surrounded by all the things familiar to him. I hate that I didn't grow up speaking his language. I hate that no matter how hard I try, no matter how much I want to, I will never be able to fully understand him in the way that other Finnish girls – girls like Lumi – will understand him, because I am not Finnish.

"I don't hate..."

He shakes his head, rejecting my statement even before I'm finished saying it.

"Maybe I was just kidding myself all this time." He is looking down onto the ground, almost talking to himself. "You have so many issues with your identity. I thought I could fix them. I thought I could show you that you belong somewhere. With me." He inhales deeply; slowly. "But maybe you don't."

He's talking so much all of a sudden, words that I haven't heard from him for the past two weeks. Now, they are coming out of his mouth so fast, I can barely keep up.

"You never told me you felt this way," is the only thing I manage to push out. I'm standing dumbly, my own tears pooling at the corners of my eyes. I make no effort to wipe them off. "You're such a hypocrite."

He doesn't expect this in the middle of his tirade. "A hypocrite?"

"You kept telling me to tell you how I felt," I say, "But you never told me how you felt. I wanted to talk, but you wouldn't." I draw in a shuddering breath. "We haven't talked in weeks. But that's not on me. It's on you."

He's silent.

"Is this what you've been thinking about this whole time?" I ask. It sounds a lot like premeditation. He hasn't given me a chance to argue my side – he's just been turning over his own thoughts in his mind.