not gonna lie...

"treat others as you want to be treated."
or so the saying goes.

i say that it didn't hurt, because it shouldn't have. i was purposely avoiding it. i pretend it didn't bother me. i feign to be more disdainful than i really am. i only smirk because i believe that everyone can see plainly that i'm merely pretending. it's an act, all of it. i act as if it's an inside joke only between you and me because we are the only people who know. you and me. you play along, because it's awkward. not just the kind of awkward that comes and goes because you and i come and go. the kind of awkward that you immediately want to obliterate because acknowledging it jeopardizes everything that comprises you and me. there can be no you and me, not even the simplest version of you and me, if that awkwardness seeps through. if it is remotely visible to those around us.

and i laugh, all the while hoping that i can control the spasms in my face long enough to make the obligatory eye contact with you, to force the smile out, when really, all i want to say is that you hurt my feelings. and i can hold that smile, if only for a fleeting instant - fortunately the only instant i need. but if i look at you longer than that, i know that you can see it. you can see my laughter metamorphose into vulnerability - the corners of my mouth twitching uncontrollably, the softening of my eyes from playful mockery to subtle dejection. if it's any longer than that moment. i may be blonde, or perhaps i was drunk, or maybe a few years of this has made me resilient or positive or hopeful, but i'm not indestructible. yet your eyes plead with me to be so, coax me to be so, manipulate me to be so, because, let's be reasonable, it wasn't long enough to hurt that much.

it is not, and has never been, as fine as we pretend it is. i know it, though i pretend i don't. and when you see my face after that short moment, that moment i can never seem to control, i think you know it, too.

i tell the truth here, to my non-existent blog-reader, because i otherwise lack the courage to say anything.

but i know, and now my blog knows, that it hurt. it really, deeply did.