to the boy at the lockers, one above and to the right, not meant as an apology

I was in love with him once. I think.

He was in love with me, though, and I knew it. He wrote me poems and copied out lyrics from songs he thought felt like me, or us, or him. He gave me rainbow earrings and a lesbian flag to match his trans one. He applauded when I got a lead in the spring show and I comforted him when, later in the year, he auditioned for something and received a role with two lines and no name. I thought it might be a fun experience for him anyways - the shows I've been in with only a few lines and a name that never gets told were good fun and kick-started my love of the stage. love, i hate to say it, but sometimes you need a few little roles to get a few big ones. 

He ended up quitting the show. That, perhaps, was the beginning.

I remember thinking, what is he going to do if he gets the same kind of part in the school show? because we'd met doing the fall play and school theater was kind of our thing. I didn't want him to quit just because he didn't like his role, but at the same time I kind of wanted to see what would happen if he did.

After a summer of highs and lows, of festivals (I excitedly invited him to one; he arrived late and left early, leaving me with my family but still alone) and melting ice cream, of lakes and forests and sleep away camps (I had the best time of my life but all he could talk about was how much better his time at his camp was because he went for three weeks and I only went for one), of sunny days and rainy ones too. I went months without seeing him and I didn't want to admit that I was almost relieved. But I was.

By this point, we had been together for over six months and a lot of the time, just the thought of seeing him made me seethingly mad. Occasionally I would have conversations with him about my anger; he would apologize for anything he'd done and promise to always love me; I would feel this rush of why did I do that why was I mad at him I love him he's perfect he loves me and I would apologize and apologize and a few days later I'd be mad again. It got solved for him. Never for me.

I didn't realize until the beginning of the next school year that the reason for all this was that he thought everything revolved around him. Of course, the breaking point was that it didn't.

This year, I wasn't in any of his classes. It honestly didn't matter that much to me - we still sat next to each other in chorus and lunch and his locker was right near mine. Plus, I was still struggling with this constant annoyance towards him. One of my other good friends and I ended up in basically the same schedule, and we would pass notes and they would offer advice, the most shocking to me being break up. But I didn't want to break up - at least not at first.

And then he started to be mean.

Not to me. Never to me. To my friends. Especially to the one mentioned above, the shortest, the silliest, and the one with the worst mental health. He knew this, of course, but it didn't stop him from calling them names, from telling them they wouldn't win anything, they wouldn't ever be a success, they were stupid, they were everything he thought about himself but worse. He was bullying them while others bullied him, their voices coming out twisted and harsh from his mouth as he pressed all of his problems onto someone else. I heard about it every day and I felt like I couldn't do anything.

He called my other friend shallow. Spoiled. He said she was a little brat who didn't know anything about surviving in the real world. He told me not to be friends with her anymore. He would make fun of people's sexualities, their identities, always telling us he was teasing, always making us feel bad for presenting ourselves the way we did. For someone who changed his name twice and wore flag pins on his jackets, he was never very supportive. 

He told me he had an eating disorder very soon after I met him, and I always made sure to have mac 'n' cheese, one of his only safe foods, at my house when he came over. In return, he would take our food at lunch without asking, his lunchbox open and full to the brim with his own. Except he never wanted any of the things we'd bring in that were meant to be taken. My friend made Korean songpyeon* by hand. sorry, I have an eating disorder, he said. He wasn't at all sorry.

He had a fight with his friend in August. They didn't speak anymore, they had their separate groups, and it was okay. In September he sent her a message: two paragraphs detailing exactly why he hated her, making her cry and forcing a lot of us to spend a few days in the guidance counselor's office comforting her while he continually told us not to go.

He made me feel uncomfortable in public, with the raucous laughter, the dancing, the standing in the middle of doorways, aisles, the talking over me about something different as I spoke to the cashier, the i'm sorry, i'm not good with social situations and the proceeding to loudly embarrass me as if there were not other people in the room, the mall, the school, the world.

I didn't want to say that I couldn't believe it because I could, and I felt like an accomplice to it. I was dating him. He told me he loved me and then turned around and told my friends they weren't good enough. 

I couldn't take it anymore. I broke up with him.

He did not take it well. He hasn't spoken to me since and has been slowly cutting off all of his friends, using words like hateful and pressure when they've done nothing to him except continue being friends with me. When he does have to talk to one of us, it comes out in sharp, harsh sentences like waves against rocks. I don't care. I am unburdened from him. My friend group has tightened our threads to one another. Everything feels lighter now, stepping through the world without him attached to me. I think I've moved on. It feels good; I genuinely hope he has too.

I apologized when we broke up. I wished him well. It clearly didn't mean anything to him then and it doesn't now, exactly one month later. I see him in the hallways now and I cannot help but feel empathetic towards this boy at the lockers, one above and to the right of mine, who has cut all of his friends away from him with a blunt knife. I tried to talk to him the other day and got a blue metal door slammed in my face. I won't try it again; this was not meant as an apology.

*songpyeon are semi-sweet Korean rice cakes. they are delicious :D but i am definitely not Korean, so don't ask me if you want to know more about them lol