Writing From a Desk in the Dark: Chapter 2

There are still good things in the world. No matter how bad it gets in my head, no matter how scary the news on the telly is, there are still good things in the world. Like last night when I couldn’t sleep and decided to pop into Insomnia Cookies for a treat (yes, that is literally it’s name, and yes, it is an ironic one). They’re only open from 6 p.m. to 1 a.m. and why I thought a double chocolate cookie would help me sleep is a mystery.

The walk over was terrifying. It’s just across the street from the halls, but you have to cross a busy road (four lanes of traffic) and all the stop lights were broken, stuck on blinking red. There’s no lights for two blocks across the street, so right past the purple and pink awning, you can’t see anything except for the faint streetlight glow in the distance. It looks like the abandoned neighborhood street from I Saw the TV Glow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if an axe murderer appeared.

But I went over and chatted with the man at the counter for a bit about how the streetlight was out, and wasn’t it a shame that the city hadn’t fixed it yet, and wasn’t the weather nice earlier. As he was wrapping up my order, he said “I just made another batch of cookies, so I threw in a chocolate chunk as well.” Then he gave me the code for a survey to get another free cookie. And despite eating both cookies in one night and getting another stomach ache, maybe two cookies for the price of one man’s kindness was good.

The day was also good. I competed in a Country Swing Dance competition and workshop. I lost, but the dancing was fun and I didn’t do too terribly. My used-to-be-friend Rose lost, as well. That shouldn’t make me feel good, but it did. She and I are also not friends anymore.

Last post I promised to tell you about my not-quite friend who lives in halls like I do. Aaron and I met in my Autumn term in 2023 at a common land cleanup put on by the uni. We both sat on the first-year Student Council together, but I’d never really noticed him before. However, after two hours of building fences around an archeology site, you start to get to know people better.

Anyway, I suppose we became some kind of best mates after that. We’d go to events together, hang out in the events, get dinner together sometimes. The last week of Spring term, I went home before he did, but I drove back almost 3 hours cause he said he wanted to see me one last time before summer. Last term, we’d go to different cultural events together on behalf of Student Council (we’re both Senators now with the other second and third year students). Even last week, one of the girls I occasionally see around campus asked me who that guy I was always with was and if we were dating (no, we weren’t).

But then last term we started to grow apart a bit. He said several hurtful things, such as asking me to be nice (not kind or even civil, but nice) to a fellow senator who’d been hitting on me and lied to me earlier in the year. Among other things, this fellow senator had used my name to attempt to dissolve our United Multicultural Council behind my back.

And when I mentioned a mutual friend’s homophobic and transphobic Instagram posts made me uncomfortable to hang out with her, he defended the posts and started inviting her to hang out with us without telling me in advance. I thought our class trip to Turkey would fix things. We bought seats next to each other on every flight. But then his brother fell dangerously ill, and since Aaron practically raised his siblings, he couldn’t go.

And I almost asked him out. But I realized that we would be terrible together. He has major conflict avoidance issues. In Student Council, we were doing this exercise around conflict resolution and we had to divide up a crop of imaginary oranges. After 30 seconds of discussing it, Aaron told me we could just go with my idea, he was tired of arguing. And in real life, if I ever try to mention that something he’s said or done bothers me, he changes the subject or walks away. So now everytime I see him, all I can think about is the hurtful things he said.

And the other night, we were walking back to the halls, and he was sick. We’d been at a Student Council event and all evening the senators had been telling him to go home, get rest, while he insisted he’s fine. We’re almost in the halls and he almost falls over coughing (keep in mind he was in the hospital with a fever of 41 Celsius five days prior). He then tells me that it doesn’t matter how sick he is, or how much he’s hurting or how much something is bothering him, he will never let another person know something is wrong.

I’m willing to try to save our friendship, but I can’t if he won’t tell me what’s wrong and runs whenever I bring it up. He hasn’t asked me a question about myself in almost two months. If I try to tell him about my day, he interrupts me and changes the subject. And it hurts, losing the person you feel close to, even when you aren’t good for each other.

In some ways, it felt like we were a couple, not romantically, but with the other things: asking if he’s low on groceries when I’m at the store, him asking if I want anything when he’s ordering food even if I’ve just eaten, calling him for a ride home from the hospital, when I was sick the week before him, making sure we both eat, and get some sleep. I was the only person he told outside of his professors when his brother was in the hospital. He texted every couple days, despite the 9 hr time difference. At cultural events and parties, we were each other’s default plus one.

It just hurts too much right now. Even before the thing with his brother happened, we were growing apart. And he’s perfectly normal with everyone else, except me. And I don’t know if that’s because he’s more comfortable around me or because he can’t bear to be around me, but I can’t play this guessing game anymore when he won’t tell me what’s wrong.

Maybe that’s why I’ve never been in a relationship. I’ve only ever been interested in my friends, and by the time I’m comfortable enough to ask them out, I’ve already realized we wouldn’t work. My friends say to take more risks. I say there’s something to be said for not being in a new relationship every three months and ignoring red flags. I guess only time will tell who's correct.

I met someone else, though. I was going to ask him out, before a very unfortunate class assignment happened. I’ll tell you more next week!