The Swing

(I watched Glee last night and it reminded me of the reason why I’m even carrying on as whatever I am right now. I didn’t write for a long time because I realized that I didn’t have anything to write about. I wasn’t in love and I have never been in love. I always knew how to start stories, but I never really knew what would happen in the middle and especially at the end of every story. So I struggled with starting something and not finishing it.

When they say you have to write from experience, what about those who have no experience in what they want to write? I want to write love stories, but I’ve never been in love. Then suddenly, the idea finally got to me. My best friend has been telling me to write something about her for the past few months now. I always say," I do write about you. It’s just that you don’t know about it." Well, now, I really am going to use her life as an inspiration.

This story is seemingly like the story she wants me to write about her. Well, at least it’s what I see in her life. So, to my best friend Jinny, this is you, in my eyes.)

She had been standing next to the swing for about ten minutes. Her feet hurt and the stilettos were digging into the sand. Her hair was a bit disheveled. She was thankful that she got it straightened to perfection a week before or it would have looked much worse. Her pink and white blouse was almost creased because she kept crossing her elbows. It was a good thing she thought of wearing comfy jeans today. She checked the time again. Fifteen minutes. He still wasn’t there.

She stared at the swing next to her. It stared back, as if asking her to rest in its arms. She couldn’t give in right now. If she sat down, she’d remember everything. And she didn’t want to be the vulnerable one when he got here.

She was getting annoyed. Sure, it was her idea to meet today. He could have at least tried to call and tell her he couldn’t make it. She figured if they talked in this place, where he told her he loved her 15 years ago, he would realize that he needed to see her.

A lot had changed since they met. She was only 14 then. A sophomore at a prestigious school only gifted people could go to. She was an active member of their church youth group and had since been occupied with all sorts of activities. She wasn’t a geek, or an artist, or a happy cheerleader type. She was seen as average at first. Yet people saw her beauty when they least expected it.

She had long black hair, beautiful eyes and an amiable personality. She was the one who always approached the new kid and introduced everyone. He was smitten before he knew it. He was the guy in church. His father was a missionary and they were constantly moving to different places.

His oldest sister had been married early and her family lived nearby. He had a respected father, a sweet mother and siblings that adored him. It seemed like a perfect love story at the beginning. They met at church and she was in love in with his younger brother.

She and I would visit them in their house, right next to church and talk endlessly to Art (the younger brother). Tim was just a sidetracked friend then. She found out later that Art actually liked this younger girl that everyone was in love with. She was angry at first, but Tim was always there to comfort her.

Before long, she stopped visiting their house because of Art, and started going out with Tim. Being a Christian girl of course, she couldn’t just go out with a guy without a chaperone. So that’s where I came in. Tim had a best friend then who went with him, and I went with Jinny. It was almost like a double date except I told the guy later that I would never actually date him.

It went like that for sometime until they met at the exact same swing set she was standing next to right now. I would never really know what they talked about that night. Yet she sounded so happy when she called me at home that I knew it must have been something amazing. She was in love for the first time. Her first real love.

I told her that time to hold on to this one. It was her first love, and in our eyes it was perfect. He didn’t have much money, but would always manage to give her something special. She would call him in the middle of the night and play a song in his guitar. She was always a giver. She gave him as many gifts as she could. She would plan her gifts with me and ask what she could give for their monasteries. It was the happiest I’d seen her in a while.

It lasted that way for three months. It would soon start of course. The fights, the problems and family issues were just floating away. Besides church they had different lives. Her family was a wealthy, political family. Her uncle was funding her education for college and he wanted her to take up Industrial Engineering. She was a rebel at heart, but she kept trying to do what was right because she couldn’t bear to see her family unhappy.

She was already in a school for gifted students and they wanted her to be the best. She would constantly complain about not being able to reach her parents expectations of her. She was always a worrier and wore her heart on her sleeve. She would tell him her problems and she hoped he would make her feel better.

He couldn’t always do that of course. He had his own family to worry about. His father talked to him the night before to stop seeing Jinny. He told him that they were getting too close and that she was becoming a bad influence on him. He wanted to rebel and tell his father that it wasn’t true. Yet he knew the difficulties in his family as well.

They were afraid for him. His eldest sister got pregnant early and it seemed like they were going to have the same problems with his older sister. They were expecting him to be the tough one, who would do no wrong. And having this serious relationship with Jinny was just too much for them.

So they had to break up. She cried over it for days. She would try to talk to him to find another way, but his parents wouldn’t allow it. Her parents were angry at Tim’s family because they prided themselves for having a respected reputation. They felt like their eldest daughter was being treated like some girl with low morals.

Soon enough, even our friends got on a fight. We didn’t understand each other anymore. Jinny and I had separate lives from them and I was angry for other reasons back then. She wanted to get away from the buzz in our crowd. I wanted to get away from them ‘coz I was angry of not being able to live my dream.

So we separated ourselves from the crowd. It was a whole year of having our own lives separate from our friends in church. We would still see each other. We just didn’t want to hang around as often as we used to.

In my heart, I knew Jinny was angry at Tim. She was having difficulties at home and her family was falling apart. Her mom got sick and she knew she might die soon enough. She was distraught at home and she had just broken up with Tim so she extricated herself from anything.

She started to study a lot and was now getting higher grades. She didn’t really understand about her mom’s condition and maybe she really just didn’t want to bear so much heartache. She was angry because she wanted Tim to be there for her when she needed him the most. He told her he still loved her, but that they couldn’t be together right now. She just didn’t understand the logic in that.

So she did what her parents had always wanted. She got into the university and in the course they wanted her to study. She was still angry inside so this was her way of getting away from her problems. The whole family moved out of town after graduation.

Her mom needed to have her medications every month and her dad could always come home for the weekend. They moved into the city. And she talked me into applying to a university that was a few blocks from their condo. In a way, I spent that year trying to be happy with just her. I was living away from my family and friends for the first time in my life. And I was as lost as she was back then. Maybe we still are.

We would have endless talks about life and the what-would-have-been. He was still holding a large piece of her heart. It was our second year in college when she met Abe. He was nothing like Tim. He didn’t have the boy-next-door look and a winsome personality. He wasn’t even a Christian, which her parents couldn’t understand at first.

They were together for a few months, but maybe it was obvious to everyone that they weren’t supposed to be together. They broke up after. She would then start relationships with guys. Always telling me stories about flirting and meeting guys in school and in the Internet. I never actually related to her, but I understood that she just wanted someone to talk to. It was her fourth year when they met again.

He was traveling and managed to meet her in a restaurant. They talked and everything just felt better again. They had both changed. She was a flirty, university girl who had her heart broken a few times. He told her he never fell in love with anyone else, and it was still her all this time. Yet he changed because of his family. He became the breadwinner when everything fell apart.

His parents separated, his dad leaving for another country leaving them with no money. His mom was always dependent on his dad for everything so now she was dependent on Tim. His brother was a slacker who couldn’t help because he never finished high school. And his older sister had done more than what everyone expected when she began living with a guy who was already married.

Yet they both knew they were still in love and that they had to be together. So it went just like that. They were together for about 7 months. He lived in another city and she was left there, always thinking that he might fall in love with someone else. Her heart had been broken so many times that it left her scarred and broken. Even he couldn’t make it all better.

Her parents made a decision that she couldn’t understand. They wanted her to go to Medical School. Her mom’s condition had worsened and they wanted her to be a Kidney specialist so she could take care of her mom. She was angry and she ran away from home. I was the only one who knew that she went to Tim’s house and stayed there for a week.

She was frustrated that she didn’t know what to do with her life, but she still felt sad for doing what she did to her family. She went back home and tried to be happy with their decision for her. It went downhill from there.

She started to doubt and get angry easily. They fought over something on the phone and he never called back. She called him dozens of times over the week, but he never contacted her again. It was the second saddest moment in her life. And both of them were because of him.

So here she was, 7 years later, waiting for him to show up. She wasn’t the girl he met here a few years ago. She bore the confidence that the years of Medical school taught her. She managed to open a clinic in the city and one here, back in her hometown. She was successful and perhaps even happy.

It was then that he arrived. The years had made his face become rugged. His hair was longer than before, but he still wore the same casual outfits he wore in high school. He approached her and she could see the creases on his eyebrows as he squinted his eyes to see her clearly.

"Hi Tim," she said first. She figured that he might not recognize her after all this years. "Jin, it is you. You look great." He finally said when he reached her. She offered him a hand and he shook it with some force. "You sure changed," she commented. "Well, I hope it’s for the better," he said with a smile. "Yeah, sure, of course! You look great too." She said, finally realizing that he must have misinterpreted what she said.

"Let’s take a seat, shall we?" he asked, finding a place in the swing. It seemed funny to her to see his huge frame in a children’s swing, but she pushed the thought back to her hand and joined him in the swing. "Wow! Just like old times, huh?" he said, looking around the children’s park. Yes, it did look somewhat the same.

The old building next to them was gone, replaced by a sturdier, building used a nursery school. The swing set and the tree house were newly painted, but everything was similar to how everything was back then. "Yes, everything looks the same." She said, a smile finally forming on her lips. "So, how’ve you been all this years?" he asked, looking at her face.

"Well, you already know about Med school. I graduated last year. My friends and I opened a small clinic in the city and we’re about to open one here. What about you?" she asked. "I’ve done a few jobs here and there, working on new computer programs. I’m actually an teaching right now, but doing odd jobs outside of school too." He said. Silence enveloped both of them right then. Each one trying to find the words to say.

"It’s really great to see you again, Jinny…" he finally said. "Well, it’s been a long time Tim…" she said, with sadness in her voice. "You must be wondering why I called you up after all this time…" she said, not daring to look in his eyes. "Of course not. It’s not like we weren’t friends before." He said, assuring her.

She stood up, not knowing what to do next. She had to say it. She didn’t come all this way to stop now. "Jinny, you don’t have to say anything. There hasn’t been anyone else. Well, I’ve had a few girlfriends but you know you’ve always been the only girl in my heart." He said. Just then, all the anger and resentment she felt towards him all these years wanted to spring out.

"How can you say that with a straight face? You love me? If you loved me, you would have been the one to call me and tell that to me 7 years ago! I waited for you then Tim. I called you dozens of times and you never called back. You knew how I felt back then. I was so lost and you didn’t care! You just let me go and feel like my life was a total joke. You made me feel like I wanted to die… Did you know that? Did you know how I was after you stopped talking to me?" she said, with tears in her eyes.

Her vision of him started to become blurry. She closed her eyes and covered her tears with her palms. "I’m sorry. I’m so, so, sorry…" he said. She looked at him then. "It doesn’t matter anymore Tim. No explanations, no apologies or even you, could change anything." She said. "Then, why? Why did you want to talk to me?" he asked.

"I’m getting married in a week." She said, looking at him directly. His face was distorted with a frown. He was confused and he didn’t know how she wanted him to react to what she just said. "I don’t expect you to say anything really. It’s just, I needed to clear everything before I go down the aisle. You see, all this time, I didn’t know if it was my fault all this years. I didn’t understand how you could just leave me like what you did back then. For the longest period of time, I thought that I wasn’t good enough for any guy and that they would break my heart like you did for so many times. And now I know…" she said, walking away.

"So, you called me up just to tell me all this?" he yelled at her. She turned around then. "Well, yes, maybe I did. I just wanted to make sure I was really marrying the right guy. And now I’m sure I am…" she said with a smile. She walked away then. He stared at her retreating figure. She seems happy, he thought.

"Wait!" he shouted and ran after her. She turned around and waited for him to reach her. "I’m sorry that I was a coward. I didn’t know how to handle being in love with anyone. I didn’t know how to handle everything. I love you, in some ways I still love you. And it was never your fault. Maybe we were just never meant to be together. . But I’m happy for you. I’m happy that you’ve finally found the happiness that you deserve. And I hope that someday you’ll learn to forgive me. And I hope that someday I’ll learn to love someone else." He said.

"Thanks Tim. Maybe that’s really what I needed to hear. Hope you have a great life." She said and she walked away, knowing that she had found her answers.

(This story is dedicated to my best friend. Hope you find the great ending in your story.)