☆Glory☆

Dear Daffodil,

1: I have rejected a person. They are a bubbly person with a very kind personality. I'm not sure why in the world they like me, but they did confess to me a couple months ago. My reasons for rejecting them? It obviously wasn't that they were not "enough." It's just that didn't feel any romantic attraction towards them. Maybe I would have, if I didn't have the girl I had a crush on for years. I could kind of tell that she did like me, but I was always hoping she wouldn't confess- selfish, I know- just because I didn't want the friendship we had to get ruined.

It did get ruined after she confessed. I didn't know how to act normally around her, and although she told me it was fine, I was too sorry about everything. And also because she knows about my crush on the girl. I did try to make myself like her, but I guess it just wasn't it.

But reasons for rejecting can vary from person to person. Maybe they are afraid of being in a relationship. Maybe they're afraid of ruining the friendship, and don't want you to confess because of that. Just keep in mind that it's not your fault.

2: Personally, I wouldn't be able to stay friends with a person that rejected me. Seeing them with another person, or flirting with another person is alright when they don't know my feelings. But if I do confess and I stay with them, I'll be too harsh on myself, always comparing me to the person my crush is interested in. Because them knowing your feelings, rejecting them, and moving on is another matter entirely.

However, I think you might be different. How long have you known this boy? Are you guys close friends? Are you willing to risk hurting just to stand by his side? There's nothing wrong with that, but it does need some serious thinking.

I also like exchanging emails with you. I can never imagine having these kinds of conversations with another person in real life. Nobody would actually take me seriously. So thank you. I think I have made a really good friend (well this got cheesy fast, didn't it?).

-Helianthus

☆

Deathbringer, I want to tell you something.

I've had my feelings for you since middle school. Crazy, I know. I wonder if you knew all this time, and was just kind enough to not acknowledge it.

You might ask what made me like you. Before middle school, you were a drama queen with really, really, really x1000 bad puns and jokes. You also excelled at life that age. You were so different from me- you ran around, shouted, teased girls, did things that I could never do because of my disease. And I envied you for it- sometimes I even wished that I could trade my body with yours. Yeah, I was that evil.

Although we were good friends before middle school, we always had a line between us. Because we were so different - you with your dimples and laughs. And me, with my disease and silence.

The truth is, it hadn't been long since my mom left. I didn't know much, except that she didn't want me. And I was so miserable that I almost forgot how to smile. Grandmother was too prideful to try to contact her, but even at that age I heard her crying at night. I thought everything was my fault, that I had wrecked the entire family with my existence. And maybe that's not far from the truth.

Middle school. A lot of adults say it's an age when you don't know much, and maybe that's true. But as I grew older, I saw more things, learned more things. I saw how girls whispered about you and how I didn't have any friends when you chose to not be a partner with me in group projects. How teachers looked at me with pity because nobody tried to come to me. And when they did, they also pitied me. Nobody wanted to be around the girl with rainbow choppy hair when they could be with their other friends.

You have no idea- how much it meant to me that you brushed all of your friends to be a partner with me. It was like getting chosen, somebody telling me that I was special enough. And every time you came up to me and asked, you seemed like a savior in my eyes.

I don't know if you remember, but you dived into the ocean without a second thought when you thought I was drowning. It was in sixth or seventh grade, and we were going to a trip at the ocean. Everybody was swimming, and so were you. That was the day I almost drowned.

It was a day, nothing special, that nobody really tended to remember. It was a pretty sunny day at the beach, and everyone was excited. But it was a day that they would all forget in a few years.

But it was the day I realized I liked you. A lot.

I didn't go into the ocean because it might be dangerous for the leukemia. So, naturally, I insisted that you join your friends in the ocean. You stubbornly refused, but you finally gave up and went swimming. I sat in the tent for a while, alone, watching everyone play. I remember the date- July twenty-first- because it was the day that my mom's new movie was premiering. Everyone at school was talking about it, excited.

It was also the day I planned to kill myself.

I might not have known much according to people, but I did know that my birth was supposed to be a secret. I couldn't tell anyone who my mother was because she was simply ashamed of me. Grandmother cried to sleep once in every few days because she missed her daughter, who barely contacted us. You know all the details. I also saw that kids were playing in the ocean, laughing and spraying each other- you were one of them- and they seemed so happy.

I actually thought it all out- I didn't want anything to be messy, so I planned on hanging, quietly in my room while everyone was asleep. I knew I had to do it outside, so they wouldn't have trouble burying me in the yard. I didn't want any backlash on my mother. It was pretty stupid,and maybe I knew it wouldn't work all that easily, but I was determined to do it.

And then I thought to myself, alone in the blue tent: why not do it now?

They could just frame it as an accident- leukemia patient got too deep in the ocean and was found dead after an hour or something like that. I could sneak out of the tent, go inside the water while the teacher was occupied or something, and walk into the deep waters, quickly, before anybody spotted me.

I actually did it. I got a tube from the teacher, told her I wanted to just wet my feet. She nodded, giving me one of those pitiful smiles that only a teacher can give, and when she went into the tent, I walked slowly to towards the water. I kind of went near the direction you were playing. Maybe deep inside, I wanted you to stop me. And you did.

I kind of swam until I couldn't feel the floor. The water was so cold. I thought it would grab me at any second, clutching me, dragging me under those beautiful, fierce ripples.

And then I let go of the tube. I let my arm slide, and it only took a second for me to let go of the oxygen, of the clear blue sky, of the laughter and smiles and splashes.

And then there was silence.

After a few moments of sinking, I realized I simply couldn't breathe. Which sounds stupid, but it was a slow, agonizing experience. First, I just kind of went down peacefully, my hand barely holding the tube. And then, I let go of the oxygen, slowly, feeling the water ripple from my nose. I didn't dare open my eyes, and when I finally ran out of oxygen, I kind of twisted back and forth, realizing that my lungs were burning.

Then I realized that I didn't really want to die, not like this.

So I started waving my arms and legs hysterically. Before long, I had gulped the water. Breathed it in, feeling the horrible pain and feeling that something was bursting into fireworks and I was screaming and nobody could hear me because there was only silence.

Silence.

Then you came.

You probably know how the story goes. Of course, the lifeguard probably got to me first, but you were there when I started coughing out water. That begin the teasing whenever we went near water, and I never had the courage to tell you what I was really planning that day.

The thing was, you noticed that I was swimming towards the deep water, and you were shouting for me when I let go. There was somebody shouting for me reaching for me beneath the wall of silence, and it was you.

Well, guess who likes to tell cheesy stories? Meee!

I'm not asking you for pity. But I want you to know that what you did- just simply noticing that I was gone- meant so much to me. Maybe a bit more than you would ever know.

When I woke up, you were there.

You have no idea what you looked like that day, when I looked at you in the corner of my eye while coughing out a water fountain. You were there, breaking the horrible silence, the peace, the quietness that I struggled to keep because I wanted to hide everything- you were messing it around, shattering it, playing with it. You had reached out and heard my screams although I was screaming underwater.

And I liked it.

I know you rejected me. You rejected my feelings, told me that you wanted to stay friends. One of my friends say that it will only hurt me to stay with you as a friend. To look at you talking to other girls, knowing you have rejected me.

But I think I'll risk that. Because I want to be there for you like you have always been there for me. Because I want to reach out, too, and mess up your underwater silence. Telling you to grab my hand, that I heard the screams that you worked so hard to keep hidden. Because I wanted to hear them. Because I wanted to look good in your eyes, just like you looked good in mine.

That raises a question. Do you ever wonder what you look like in other people's eyes? I do, sometimes. I wonder what I look like in my mother's eyes, my Grandmother's, and my friends'.

To be truthful, I wonder a lot. Mostly about what I look like in your dark eyes.

I just hope that someday I'll be able to get a hint.

Okay?

I just can't bring myself to click send.

☆