From April 10th
I sit alone at a round table as everyone else takes their liberties to enjoy the prom.
It is late, and all of us are at a theme park right in the outskirts in Orlando for an event that is — at least to my observed consensus — underwhelming at best. But it is no surprise for anyone, and everyone seems to still find a way to enjoy it. There is music and positivity radiating through the atmosphere, giving a sense of temporary bliss from everything else beyond the walls of a fabricated reality that serves as a storm shelter. Yet it is still raining here, and yet I still sit alone.
I am adorned by a blue sports coat, a white button-up that shields another white shirt underneath, supported by a belt-less black pant that fits snugly and sits just above the black shoes. Just about what every other person dressed in if they were a man and just about what was recommended by the superiors that organized this prom. However, in the two hours I was already in this place, I noticed that I was the only person without a tie. Whatever the type, all the men and boys had them on. Some in their right place, some crooked, some out of tune with the rest of the song that is dressed onto their bodies, but they all at least had a tie. I did not.
And yet, everyone who saw me treated me no differently. It is as if I had a tie in the first place, but should it not be painfully obvious with my contrasting colors that it doesn’t appear? What makes them envision a tie there to complete an image of me? The eyes do not deceive when it comes to what is directly visible without illusion, but it seems to me that there has to be a hallucination going through the minds of these people to put me in a category of being just like everyone else here.
I am secluded, relatively speaking. In the four years I’ve been in my high school, I have known dozens of people and made friendships with several. And yet I never see them beyond the schoolhouse gate unless there is a night like this. I am at home, forgetting of the existence of the people I call friends and the people who call me a friend, in my own selfish room on my own. There is a portal I have to other friendships in that room via my computer but those are completely different from the sort of relationships I ought to have. Not to discount those particular relationships, but I believe that there’s a unique intricate value in being with friends in the flesh rather than through the screen. For you see them who they are, how they sound, what they really think, and why they are truly there with you. I do not have that. I have willingly shut myself out from the fruits of life that is the personal relationship. I know it is one of the worst decisions that one can make, but I laid my bed and it is hard to undo it. Perhaps my “real friends” can understand this, for they have a better concept of sympathy to the man…
They see me the same as everyone else. They know not who I really am — yes, they do not — for I have chosen to deprive them of the truth.
Am I really friends with these people, or am I making a façade? What good is it for me to act like I know these people and I’m on good standing with these people when I am not? What have I given to them? Absolutely nothing. Not even an absolute minimum or relative maximum of anything has truly been gifted to them by me. Yet they still gift things to me like any other friend they have and treat me like any other friend I have. I am not deserving but I receive and gladly take. I rarely give anything in exchange for the love they dispense but they still choose to give it to me. It is a forgery of a friendship, the worst kind of relationship. When things are artificially made to seem like there’s a real bond but in the end there isn’t. There is a significant chance — short of a drastic change in motivation for me to in the last minute pursue a solid bond — to never speak to these people again once we’ve parted ways fully at May’s end.
I feel regret as they go on dancing. There is no doubt that at least of of them has pondered what it would really be like to sit with me for a few hours and to truly get to know me, and they’ve likely expected to face a locked door if they wanted to come to me about it. Perhaps they don’t think I’m open for their arms and their words. I would like to think I am, but there is no evidence I have curated to support it. Only my mind will conceive of the thought that there is an openness within me. When I mull over it like this night, I consider myself an awful wretch, but in reality there is an absence of thought on these matters most of the time. I’ve become numb to it, emotionally flat like a piece of paper with no indications of even a slight tear or bump or fold. How can one be a wretch if they have no true understanding of emotions that any creature may possess?
I look down to what I chose to wear again, and there is still no tie. The final piece to a foundation removed from its core and yet I still stand here with the appearance of a finished masterpiece to the outsiders that I know. I get up from my lonely table and decide to leave for the night and to drive home, into the dark, into the dim lights that dot the roads to the room that I must return to again and to reside in a deceitful loneliness. They will not see me go. They will probably forget I was even there, perhaps even asking on Monday if I even came. It doesn’t matter if they saw me that night like everyone else even though I am not, for they know in their hearts and not their mind that I am separated for some reason.
Maybe if I had the tie, they would remember me.
Maybe if I had the tie, they would know that reason and finally receive the me that they deserve to know.
— Jackson
4/11/2021
1:31 A.M.
Orlando, FL