Merry Christmas

With my luck, I never saw Kyleen again for the rest of that fall quarter. I kept telling myself that the next time I saw her, I would try to commandeer Jackie’s contact information, but the chance never came. I kept waiting for the opportunity, but in the end, I simply forgot.

The quarter passed and the same could be said about myself in my five classes. It was a surprise to me that I did so well that quarter especially with my busy involvement as a cabinet member and hectic schedule with back-to-back classes everyday. I even caught the flu at the end of the quarter, just in time for final exams. It was so bad that I could not drive myself home after one day of testing; my sister had to pick me up that afternoon, then I was dropped off the next day for my next exam. The sickness persisted until after finals week, which also prevented me from going to the winter retreat for cabinet members—I was one of only two people who did not attend.

With the fall quarter over, I had three weeks to do absolutely nothing. I caught up on sleep that I had lost during the past eleven weeks and also got over my flu. Christmas was nearing and I had no plans as usual.

On the 23rd of December that year (2003), I awoke from bed and went straight to my computer as I had gotten used to doing. It must have been before noon because there was still light on my side of the house. I checked my email and found the usual: junk mail, spam, and more junk mail. I deleted them all from my inbox except for one, which looked oddly mysterious. It did not fit the common characteristics of junk email—it did not have a weird subject line trying to sell me medication over the net nor did it have a purely unknown sender.

After having filtered out the unsolicited email from my inbox, I clicked on the mysterious email that found its way to my email account. At that split second before my right index finger landed on the left clicker of my mouse, I immediately had a suspicion from which person the email had originated. Once the thought completely formed within my brain, the page opened, confirming my intuition.

My first glance was at one phrase that had been typed in boldface font: “I AM SORRY.” I quickly glanced up at the sender’s address again, and then it hit me; it was Jackie’s old AOL screen name that I had already erased from memory.

As soon as I began reading, the emotions came rushing back in; except this time, the emotions were not characterized by joy and elation but by anger and betrayal. The email highlighted how she was sorry about how she had purposely tried to distance herself from me, not yet explaining why. It confirmed some of my old suspicions that she was indeed avoiding me—cutting telephone conversations short, minimizing contact, etc.

She also explained to me that it must have been some type of sign because that fall, she saw me twice within the span on one week. The local Pilipino student organization at her school in San Bernardino had had their first meeting on a Wednesday early that fall quarter. I attended as a representative from my school’s organization. She had apparently been there, but I just missed her during the meet-and-greet icebreaker. A week later, my organization had their first general meeting. I was so busy with what I had to do that I missed her within the crowd—she had attended with Kyleen, along with either Charmane or Lysette or both. She informed me that ever since then, she had been meaning to contact me.

What really affected me the most, however, was how she practically confessed to having purposely distance herself from me no matter how hard I tried to get close to her. It made me feel stupid that I even tried, especially for so long. I realized then that she lied to me. I did not know what was true and what was false anymore. Did she really feel anything towards me in the first place or was she just toying with me from the start? From what she wrote, it made me think that the latter was true, although I did not want to believe it.

I had yet to hear the full story from her, but I was already infuriated. I guess I felt as if my efforts from the past few years were moot. I realized that maybe I should never have wasted any time on her.

I wrote her a response, but out of courtesy, I waited until after Christmas to deliver it to her inbox. My reply to her email was quite harsh, thinking back on it. It was full of rage compared to how I used to approach her. Before, I used to be gentle when speaking/writing to her because I liked her and did not want anything to ruin that. That Christmas, everything changed: my true feelings came out at that moment and it became translated onto the computer screen.

Although she wished my family and me a merry Christmas and a happy New Year, I thanked her for adding to the unusual darkness of my holiday season. Christmas that year was probably one of the worst holidays I had ever experienced, in part because of her letter but also with contributions from other factors. I explained to her that during the time when I had no contact with her, I slowly began to see her on a higher plane of existence again. When I last called her during the remaining days of my senior year of high school, I felt as if she had already dug herself into a deep hole by avoiding me. Through the year afterward, I slowly started filling that hole again with the good memories that I remembered we had shared. The bad memories faded and only the wonderful moments remained. But, with her email that Christmas, the hole quickly sank again. Rather than pointing out our good times together, she highlighted the not-so-good thoughts I had of her.

I know that I may be thinking in circles now, but that was how my mind flowed at that moment. I wondered why she chose that time to say “sorry” to me. I wonder if she purposely did so around the end of December because she thought it would be a nice Christmas present. If so, it turned out to be the opposite.

After having sent her my harsh reply, I did feel a type of regret, but I brushed it off. My motto was never to regret anything because my past is what made me who I was, and I was satisfied with it. I wanted her to realize how I had been feeling inside all that time. I did not mean to make her feel extremely bad about having done what she did, I just wanted to point out to her that it would have been nice if she had just been honest with me from the beginning instead of leading me on to think that she still wanted to be close with me.

I just did not understand why she had done it yet. If only she had told me from the start how she really felt, then we could have skipped all of the pretending. It was not until a few weeks and months later when we finally reached a conclusion.