Kara
“I’m tired, Han,” I confessed.
She was the only one I could divulge everything to and not worry whether she judged me or not. Distance might keep us apart, but our bi-weekly chats renewed my spirits.
Just not tonight.
Tonight, I was feeling downright depressed. Even the long walks with Pugs and Otis, George’s long time pals who’d needed exercise since their owner was in the hospital because he had another dizzy spell, lightened my mood for two hours and then after that, I was back to being annoyed at Scott. He’d canceled for the third time this month.
“About school?” Her voice was blanketed with empathy. I couldn’t see her face because we were on a phone call instead of Facetime.
I inhaled a long breath and my lungs swooshed out, letting the gigantic weight I’d been carrying inside. “Scott.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute and I felt that her silence spoke for itself.
She liked Scott. He and Hanna got along. We’d all hung out together in high school before Scott moved to San Diego for college. But she’d always held reservations about him, that he always put something else before me.
To Hanna, what Scott and I had looked like a one-sided relationship.
The balance beam leaning low on my side because I always tried to put him first.
“I’ll always love him, Han, but I’m ready to let go,” I proclaimed, still not hearing a word come from her end. Hanna had always been a great listener and I valued her opinions above everyone else’s.
When Scott and I decided to rekindle our romance, I expected it to be different this time around. I knew that football would always come first, and I never once complained about being a close second. However, the last few times we’d talked, I heard the exasperation in his voice. As if I were a chore. That talking to me became a duty. We hadn’t even been intimate for a while and the few times I tried, he felt different…bland.
“I came here because of what happened back there, but also because I really wanted to give me and him a chance, but I can’t continue doing this. I can’t keep trying for him. There’s a difference between being in love and being stupid and right now, if you asked me, I can honestly tell you that I don’t know which one I am.” My long-winded statement only touched the surface of what I’d been feeling since I moved here.
“Does Scott know?” Hanna finally said, her silence unnerved me, but I knew that she was letting me think through it.
“Not yet.” I was lying on my bed and hugged my small blue pillow tighter, ensuring that every time I moved I didn’t cover the speaker so Hanna wouldn’t hear dead silence.
“What do you think?” She wasn’t going to influence my decision, but I wanted to hear what she really thought of me breaking things off with Scott.
After seconds-long of being quiet, she asked. “Why now?”
There it was.
After three years of dating on and off, it was always Scott who asked for a break and I always gave him the space.
Now it was me and I knew that this time, it was over.
“I just feel like it’s the right time…” I replied, watching the fan rotate on the ceiling. It was now the middle of fall, but San Diego’s weather was confused, it still felt like a hot summer day. I was glad I didn’t bring boots and winter clothing with me or they’d be useless.
“Really, girlfriend?” One thing about Hanna was that she called bullshit in its face. “After all these years, after all this time of being tossed around and being second-rate to his football legacy, you’re telling me that you’ve finally decided to stand up for yourself and break it off with him?”
Astuteness was one of her greatest qualities.
“I just don’t feel right about being with him anymore. Like I said, I will always be here for him. He’ll always be my first love, but I’m ready to let go of my future with him because I don’t see a future with him anymore.” My voice cracked because admitting it aloud meant crashing into defeat. My childhood was filled with memories of him. He held my hand when Mom embarrassed me in front of her friends by saying that I wasn’t the daughter she’d wished for. He’d stood up for me when the girls at school became mean to me the minute he tagged me as his girlfriend on social media. I had no qualms of standing up for myself, but it was nice to have him stand by me.
“Oh honey…” Hanna soothed, as much as she didn’t agree with Scott’s treatment of me in recent years, she also knew how much he meant to me. “I wish I could be there to hug your right now.”
“Why does it hurt, Hanna?” The tears I hadn’t been wanting to shed fell on my pillow anyways. I’d thought about this for the past two weeks and today had not been easier than yesterday.
“Because admitting when you’re not in love with your long-time boyfriend is painful. No matter which way you slice it.” Hanna has had a few boyfriends in the past but unlike me, they only lasted six to seven months and she was ready to let go. “There’s a lot of love there and a ton of memories, but I think you’re doing yourself and Scott a huge favor by being honest about it.”
I hung on to her words as I sniffed between tears. Scott Strauss was every woman’s dream. Aside from his physical beauty, he had a good heart and has always been a reliable shoulder for me to cry onto when life became too much.
But it wasn’t enough.
Going through what I went through this past summer, I’d learned how to choose who stayed in my life and who I needed to let go.
Part of why I chose SDU was because of Scott.
But he was no longer the reason why I wanted to stay.
“I’m attracted to another guy.” It was meant to be a whisper but I knew Hanna heard it clearly. “I feel wrong about being with Scott and wanting to be with Bishop at the same time.”
I’d mentioned Bishop once or twice to Hanna, along the context of being my classmate and my brother’s friend.
“You’re telling me you’re giving up Scott to be with Bishop?” Her voice was neutral; it was difficult to delineate if she thought that what I was about to do was wrong or right.
“I don’t know.” My emotions were a wreck and confusion abounded my thoughts. In all the years I’d been with Scott, I’d never felt the pull that Bishop had on me.
I didn’t even know the guy that well, but in the few times I’d been in his presence, I felt like the opposite end of a magnet. Polarized. Charged.
Completely helpless of the attraction between us.
“Oh honey, it’s okay.” Her voice dawned with understanding, void of condemnation. “It’s alright to be human like the rest of us.”
I couldn’t utter another word because before I was sniffling, and now I was outright sobbing. I was upset that I was using Scott’s absence and inability to fully commit to me as an excuse to get out of our relationship, especially when this was a time when he needed me most.
“You’re allowed to be attracted to another person. You’re allowed to give yourself a chance to love somebody else other than the boy you grew up with. You’re allowed to let him go because you don’t want to be selfish and string Scott along, when you know that you want someone else. It’s okay, Kiki.” Her words cloaked my broken heart in a compassionate balm, giving me the courage to move forward with my decision.
It would not be right for me to string Scott along when I want to be with someone else.
It would be wrong for me to continue being with Scott when all I’d been imagining these last few weeks were the arrogant smirk pasted on a face that housed those soulful dark brown eyes.
“Scott’s not going to be happy about it.” My voice was dull; my mind was already imagining the awkward conversation I was going to have with my boyfriend once he came back from his away games. Maybe I was trying to justify my actions but looking back, whenever Scott suggested a break from me, I always felt like he wanted out, but he also wanted me waiting in the wings; that I was the girl he was going to return to after he’d figured everything out in his life.
This time, I was going to be one to cut the ties of our relationship and I knew that once I did, it would hurt but I wouldn’t be coming back to him.
“Tough,” Hanna remarked, I could picture her brows furrowing and her lips pouting. “Kiki, have you ever thought about how fair it was for him to leave you hanging all the time while he tended to his business, football, and family?”
Her shirts were always soaked when Scott asked for space and the days that followed weren’t any better because I never knew when he was going to call back and decide that we were on again.
“No.”
“You know why?” She inquired though I had a feeling she already knew the answer.
“Maybe.” I sank my head lower under my pillow, feeling the wetness on the pillow case. I’d cried tears for Scott.
“I’ll tell you why–“ she said resolutely, “Because you always gave your all to him. And this time, you can’t anymore.”
In a hushed voice, I croaked out, “Why?”
I’d solved hundreds of physics questions.
I’d won Science tournaments and gained the reputation of Princess Einstein in school.
I’d stood up against my mother and sometimes my father to fight for what I believed in.
But I never claimed to be wise in the language of the heart.
“Because this time, you’ve met someone whom you actually want to give up your sense of security for.”
“What if I mess everything up?” The doubts lingered in my mind, I hated not knowing the outcome. What if Scott said no? What if I cost myself the friendship I’ve had for so long? What if my brother hated me for coming between his two friends?
“Then you mess everything up,” Hanna said matter-of-factly. “You deal with the consequences and you move on.”
“It’s not that easy,” I countered, knowing that everything I said was futile. No matter what, I couldn’t continue this façade of a girlfriend-boyfriend with Scott.
“Nothing’s easy. Not school. Not love. Not life. You, of all people, should know that.” She rifled back, I heard clanging in the background, she must be grabbing food from the kitchen. “What is that term that you liked to say in seventh grade? That you said was what happened before everything can be brought back to order?”
I couldn’t help but smile at the memory she evoked. Back in seventh grade, when my mother went on long rants about my friendship with Hanna, I’d always go back to Science to explain things and I came up with why my mother created so much havoc within me.
“Entropy,” I declared, breathing in a little easier for the first time since I came up with the decision to break things off with Scott. “In order for a system to gain thermodynamic equilibrium, it has to go through a state of maximum disorder or entropy.”
“And what does entropy symbolize for you?” she questioned. A rhetoric.
“It’s life,” I said. “Life is messy and crazy but it’s like that so that it could reach a state of peace.”
She didn’t say a word after that.
She didn’t have to.
In her roundabout way of thinking, Hanna made me see what I was doing.
It was going to be messy.
Chaotic.
Painful even.
But it was the right thing to do.