It was another middle school night playing Call of Duty. The “zombies” game mode it was, and so it was with a newly acquainted friend. I can’t tell you how many times we did play. In fact, I only got an Xbox360 earlier that year: whether to my benefit or detriment is yours to decide.
For those familiar with the game so they’ll know of a popular exploit when the “space map” came out – it was called “Ascension” and you could clip through the wall, making you immortal. That we did in earnest and had dry-heave laughs about it for a bit, but again, it’s all blurry: truth be told I’m not sure if I even sat with half of the friends I knew at lunch time. I’m not even sure who I sat with at lunch at all.
Anyway, one night we weren’t even playing zombies I don’t think. It was regular multiplayer, who knows. Somehow we discussed about our futures – a surprising topic considering it’s middle school – and slowly it dawned on this friend that we weren’t going to the same highschool.
This unperturbed me, and maybe indicative of something, but nevertheless I think he started talking about ways we could attend the same highschool. It never registered to me that this person cared enough to want to experience highschool together, and even in that moment I couldn’t comprehend why they were concerned about this. It just didn’t make sense to me, why it sucked that we would have to part ways in a few years time. We drifted slowly after that.
A year or two into college I remember texting a friend over winter break whether they’d want to meet. They replied something like, “wow, a text from the royal [name]” and then I never heard from them again. Apparently they wanted to keep touch. It really caught me off guard. I don’t understand.
When I was working at a fast-food chain the guy upset about not attending the same highschool waltzed in. They were extraordinarily timid and even stuck around a bit so maybe we could reconnect. I don’t remember if we exchanged phone numbers, and if we did, nothing happened after that.
Everytime I was invited to go out, or sleep over – maybe even a trip to Japan – inevitably I found a way out. And the games I no longer found interesting, and the messages all blurred the same. Even to this day I struggle to form sentences; it’s easier to delete everything. These entries are fine because they’re directed to no one. Hidden away.
I guess what I’m getting at is, more often than not, one had the ability to form stronger bonds. And I realize that it never registered. Never registered.
One time I attended a resort with someone. I was the only one invited in the band at the time, whatever the band was. We had skim-boards and the memory blends into another invitation to another resort and it was a sleepover of some sort, I guess. I no longer talk to those that invited me to these places.
We used to walk to the store all the time. We’d order some subs with large cups for root beer. Sitting on the curb, or the A/C entrance, and then off to visit another friend in his neighborhood. Fast forward several years and I biked around there. It’s all empty now, like the wind sucked out all the essence of it. I still saw the same cars parked in the driveway though.
One night I shared a walk with a girl and I had an ipod nano where we each had an earbud of mine. I’m not sure of the occasion, maybe a birthday party. It was a Tycho album that I really enjoyed, and we walked around the center circle of that same neighborhood as the sub friend. There may as well have been fireflies all about – instead it was gnats circling around some cooler street-lamp lighting. Toward the center of the circle so we were ensconced in stars. I later got her number, and then texted for a bit, and then we never talked again.
In highschool I’d change friend groups, and even during lunch I’d rather walk all around the campus instead of staying still. Someone had a long talk about being closer together in the back of the school where the baseball mound was, but I sort of muttered through it and avoided them after. There were people who’d call out my name while I’d walk around, but I never bothered to sit with them. I can’t even remember half of the faces anymore.
My text messages are all filled with strings of numbers. I deleted all my contacts awhile back. There are a good few who did reach out again, and a good few I never replied to. Even to this day, a few weeks ago, another opportunity to wash away.
There’s all these moments, and all of these peoples in distant memories, and it dawns on me that the central link is whoever owned the eyes in those memories. More often than not, you don’t have to be alone if you don’t want to.
Maybe there’s an alternative world where I really could make a village out of all the souls churned out in the schools around there. But I was the one who moved away. Inevitably so did everyone else.
So it seems: I chose the sea.