Marisa, why?

Let me tell you a story about a girl.

A long time ago while I was walking down the halls to my school I caught glimpse of a beautiful figure in the distance. This figure was a girl named Marisa. I didn’t know it at the time but this girl would end up dramatically impacting my life, for better and for worse. In that moment however, she was nothing more than a unicorn. A beautifully unattainable being. One you only get to find once in a lifetime.

From that day forward I would walk down that same hallway every day just for a chance of seeing her again. Sometimes I would get lucky, sometimes I wouldn’t. Sometimes I would even catch her glance and she would smile back at me. I longed for that smile. It would make my day. Something to look forward to. It was a silly notion, but I was young and had never experienced infatuation like that before. This went on for a year.

After a while I couldn’t find her anymore. Classes started changing, time started moving, and I was still stuck on that stupid smile, suspended in time, eagerly waiting for a chance to see it again. Just like a unicorn, she seemed to be  gone as soon as she was there. Months and months would go by without seeing her. I began to wonder if she even existed. Maybe she had not gone to that school anymore. I didn’t know, but I had to just accept it and move on. Or so I thought.

As luck would have it, that was not the end of the story. One day I would see her again. Her, along with a surprising amount of people I happen to know were loitering in the hallway. I remember seeing her and being stunned. There she was talking to so many people I already knew as If she were always apart of the same friend group. She had looked at me then and smiled. It was just as warm and magical as I had remembered it to be. This time I would get to introduce myself and meet this person as more than just a series of glances and meaningful smiles. Needless to say, it was awkward, but she didn’t seem to care.

It didn’t take long for us to start talking regularly. I had to get to know this girl, and I wouldn’t let my social anxiety get in the way of it. So I did and It was great. She was smart, pretty, energetic, single, and a complete pistol of a woman. Everything seemed to be going right for me. At least I had thought.

At the time I had no idea what a rebound was in terms of dating or the fact I was becoming one. I didn’t care though. This girl had managed to make me feel like no other person had made me feel before then in such a short period of time. She had cared about me. Was interested in my crappy poetry, my bad taste in music, even about my grades of all things. I remember having a hard time in chemistry and this girl would go out of her way every single morning to tutor me before school. She wanted me to succeed. She believed in me, and that would make things so much harder.

We only knew each other for a couple of months, or at least from what I remember. I just know it felt longer. The way she kissed me, touched me, talked to me, it was all so overwhelming. It was all so new, and just as fast as it seemed to start — it stopped. I don’t know exactly where I had gone wrong, but one day she was there and the next she was gone.

I tried to get in contact with her. I tried to spot her in the halls, but there was no sign of her. She had completely ghosted me, and when I finally figured out what happened she had already found herself a boyfriend and pretending as if nothing had ever happened between us. I was devastated. The one person that I felt believed in me wanted nothing to do with me anymore.

I was depressed for days, weeks, months, years; unable to get over this girl that I had only known for a short period of time, and it had completely ruined my thoughts towards woman and relationships for me for a long time. I had sworn to myself I would never let myself feel that broken ever again.

This piece of art was my attempt to turn my feelings and thoughts into physical form but I didn’t seem to know how, so I wrote. I wrote her name over and over again because it was all I could think about. She had consumed my every thought. It would torment me endlessly. So I kept writing. Marisa. Marisa. Marisa. As many times as it would take before I felt better. I never did. I actually got worse and I never got to finish the piece.

Jump ahead years later to present day and I would stumble upon an unfinished work of art stuffed inside an old sketch book and it reminded me of how I felt some odd years ago and I felt that It needed to be finished. I owed it to my younger self to finish the thing he could never do.

This piece is about the pain I was feeling, but it is also about acceptance. It took me a long time to realize how unhealthy the whole thing was for me, and how I wasn’t a victim of somebody’s actions more than I was about my own self-worth. I was possessive and entitled towards a girl who owed me nothing. I was so selfish about the whole ordeal that I had never once thought about how she felt. Just because I “loved” her didn’t mean she had to love me back or feel anything at all. She didn’t owe me anything, and even if she did do this not-so-nice thing to me, it was her choice to make. Had we gotten into an actual relationship it probably would have ended horribly anyway. I wasn’t ready. It wasn’t meant to be.

Marisa, why? I didn’t know, and I probably never will know, but it doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago. I’ve moved on and become a better person because of it and I wish nothing but the best for this girl, wherever she might be.

I hope you enjoyed the art and my little story :]