The Physics of Bond Breaking

Too quiet, you thought, as you sat on the edge of your bed and held the phone in your hand, waiting for it to buzz. You stared at the screen until its blinding radiation made everything around you fade into the darkness. Water began to drip from the tip of your just-washed hair onto your bare arms, and turned cold. You didn’t even bother to wipe it. It had been an hour and he hadn’t replied.

Sometimes you just knew it when someone was leaving you. You didn’t need evidence—although most of the time it was glaring at you and you just felt too disgusted and scared to face it so you turned away—and you wouldn’t feel much. No, maybe you did feel something this time. You felt dead. Inside.

Then you’d start questioning: “Is he angry at me?” “Did I say something wrong?” Or you’d start making excuses for this jerk: “He’s taking a shower.” “He fell asleep.” “He’s talking to his parents.”

And you shuddered because you sensed insecurity creeping in, so you started sifting through all the good times you two had spent with each other, and thought, memories can warm this place up.

So your mind drifted away as your eyes lost focus, and now you remembered sitting with this boy on a staircase, the icy, dark green one at the very end of the narrow, dim, deadly silent and extremely long hallway. The light was bright enough, and you were examining the cracks on the frosted glass that masked the light bulb in a semi-sphere. You two just sat there, with a few inches apart, talking and quietly laughing regardless of the dim surroundings.

Then it dawned on you that you couldn’t remember much about those talks; you told yourself you should remember them, because every single time, you two could sit there in the same spot with the same distance from each other for at least an hour. So now you were debating whether it was because your brain’s memory cells were dying too fast or you just didn’t try hard enough to remember. You chose the first answer, because the second one questioned your genuine attitude towards that boy, and you didn’t like the sound of it.

In any case, you were sure you had been content at that time. And indeed it was probably the sweetest thing you had ever done with someone other than your family. And you couldn’t resist a chuckle when you recalled those times when you caught him staring at you at school, because it somehow made you feel like he and you were in a secretive operation that no one else knew about.

You gave up waiting. You turned off the light and your phone. It was funny; no matter whether you closed your eyes or not, all you could see was darkness, so you’d only realize that your eyes were wide open after you came back from your tired, blank thoughts. And you’d close your eyes again, forcing yourself to stop thinking and dream.

What time it it?

There’s no sun but I can see everything… Weird. Where am I?

The purplish-blue grass grows wild around me, about the height of my waist. It looks fluffy and soft, bending down as the wind blows quietly. It’s just like a painting if the grass can stay still.

Then out of a sudden—or maybe gradually, I can’t tell—ghosts appear, painted in Japanese animation style with ridiculously disproportional huge opened mouth—are they laughing?—and extremely tiny pupils taped in the middle of the white of the eyes. And their two-dimensional bodies just float towards me really really fast. I’m sliding backwards but facing them, watching their extended arms inching towards my face. The grass brushes softly against my bare arms and calves.

I’m calm, as if not afraid of dying.

Then the ghosts are gone—

What…?

I’m still standing in the middle of this boundless field of grass.

Someone is standing not too far away from me. I take a few steps, waving my arms to keep the grass out of my path. And there he is.

Why didn’t he turn around?

…Forget it, I recognize him anyway.

All I can see was his upper body. He’s wearing a dark grey t-shirt.

He turns his head to the left a bit; although his glasses are in the way for me to examine his complete profile, why do I even give a damn? My heart just skipped a beat. It’s like, just his presence can take my breath away, and I have no idea which part of him makes me feel that way.

You woke up when he left you in that dream, and you felt like a complete idiot. You felt stupid for caring so much about a capricious liar who left you alone when you needed him the most and came back to you again like nothing had happened, feeding you with a few sweet words. Unpleasant memories rushed in and you tasted the sourness of jealousy when he didn’t reply you but talked to your roommate—whom you admitted to be much more charming than you—and coaxed her to go to bed earlier, and the bitterness of the tortuous five months when you two got into a cold war. The suffocating silence of nuclear bombs exploding inside your head every time you two passed by each other—it’s much louder during that five months, you recalled—began ringing its high-pitched scream again, and you felt dizzy.

You shook off these painful thoughts and turned on your phone. It’s good to have no expectation; there was no new message.

Personal experiences had taught you again and again that love wasn’t real, but you, despite of feeling ashamed of yourself, texted him again.

Fool.

He would never respect you again because you had sacrificed every piece of your dignity, pride, and principle; he never understood the price you had paid, because he never knew how precious these things were to you. You thought, girl, just stop degrading yourself. This isn’t you. Don’t make your mom disappointed. Please.

To break a bond was quick and simple, especially between you and him because there was no risk of hurting him involved. So after his first try of talking to you—the same strategy he used during the cold war: pretending that he still cared so that your feelings towards him would be awakened, even amplified—you recognized this trick and acted aloof to push him away, even though it was literally killing you. And to both your pessimistic expectation and disappointment, he never tried again.

That was when bond breaking became tough, so you figured that a full-angle termination might help.

You cut him off completely, tearing up every single thread that could possibly connect you two; you then felt empty and weightless, desperate to hold on to something solid to regain your senses. You were no longer able to differentiate disappointment, or hatred, or numbness. The familiarity of this feeling reminded you of the cold war when you would write thousands of words in your diary about him and how much you wanted him back, and you, terrified, swore you would never, ever become that same stupid coward again.

The whole process might be the most excruciating time in your life yet, but it seemed that he couldn’t care any less; you followed his every recent twit and activity but detected no sign of regret or sorrow. You consoled yourself, thinking maybe that’s the risk you had to take when you decided to sacrifice.

At night when loneliness ate you up inside, you would’t realize you were crying until the patch of pillow under your cheek became uncomfortably damp. You cursed yourself for being so weak, and adjusted the pillow so that your head rest on a drier area. It was much easier to fall asleep when you were mentally tired, but nonetheless, your mind still spin like a washing machine crammed with colorful shirts, and in the end the colors smeared and dyed everything into an ugly, wrinkled pile of junk.

I’m sitting cross-legged in a library chair. Regular day. Talking to my friends. He walks (or floats, or strides, or runs, or even staggers—who knows) towards me and comes into a halt. His hands are in the pockets of that pair of loose jeans, and he just stares at me with a corner of his mouth curving upward a bit, forming into a smile that only he can make.

Is he even real? We aren’t friends anymore... But the whole library looks so solid… the tables and the lamps and the carpet… except for the fact that I have no idea which friends I’m sitting with; their faces are fuzzy and their voices rise and recede like those dead seaweeds floating in ocean tides.

He is talking to me (the second time in school!!). And under everyone’s curious eyes, we leave the table together, still talking, as if we’ve been friends for years.

I’m playing badminton with him and am losing. I can’t feel my body for some reason and I seem to fail to coordinate the birdie and the racquet. I strain for strength but I feel so… powerless.

Why is my bathroom in such a public space… Wait… is it in a mall? The movie theater is right over there playing Despicable Me. Someone’s calling me to change the plastic bag of the trash can in the bathroom, so I just go inside and bend down, tie a knot to the dirty trash bag, and turn—

Such an awkward moment. He isn’t supposed to see me with a dirty trash bag in a bathroom. Oh God.

“Hey,” he says, and take a step towards me.

Hell I’m too nervous. I fumble through my chaotic word bank. I just said “Hi,” didn’t I?

“I want to see you,” he murmurs in his low voice and chuckles, and I catch a glimpse that pair of sharp teeth like those of the vampires. I don’t see that often; only his friends do. I step back, worried that I’m going lose control again and forgive him for whatever he has done and hasn’t done to me. What the hell is he doing? I’m too paralyzed to react when his voice seeps into my ears, vibrating and echoing inside my head.

“Smile, will you?”

Sometimes, like what he and I have been doing for years in real life, we simply ignore the presence of each other and talk enthusiastically with a good-looking person of the opposite sex, no matter in a crowded, unfamiliar kitchen packed with silverware and wooden horses, or after the final exam when students walk out of the Triangle and along the path around the tennis court, or near a river at midnight with paper boats flowing down the stream where everyone is queuing up for something. Boring.

He’s everywhere.

The end of the world is approaching and Batman’s trying to save lives. I’m jogging along the aisle in my middle school in Singapore when I bump into him. Our eyes meet for the quickest instant and we look away again. Later on, when I’m alone hiding in a corner, my phone buzzes, with his text saying, “Let’s get back together.”

God… don’t end the world now.

Those dreams weren’t uncommon after the bond breaking, and you realized this was never some simple science problem. But you lied to your mom and the only two friends that knew about this that you had gotten over it within a second. And there were times you thought you really had, only before these dreams choked you and wring your wounded heart until it started bleeding again.

But never was there a time when you dreamed of you traveling around the world together, like when you two had daydreamed while sitting on that dark green staircase with the cracked glass cupping the dimly lit light bulb, always a few inches apart.