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Things are not the best right now.
Nya has just broken up with me and still hasn't given me a reason, Kai thinks it's my fault for it all, and everybody else just moves on like nothing ever fucking happened in the first place.
Not to mention the fact that my locker is right next to hers, and each morning while she exchanges her things, I hear fucking "Bejeweled" coming from her headphones that suck at isolating sound.
Every.
Single.
Morning.
And it doesn't even stop while I'm at school. Since her Chirp is public, I can see all the activities she's doing whenever she posts something. I'm also still following her — she hasn't blocked me — so I quite literally get a ping each and every time.
Which means I can see the posts about "living my best life without someone dragging me down." It's exhausting.
I feel happy for her, but there's just this pit that forms in my stomach every time I see her on some new, enjoyable adventure out in the city.
Meanwhile, I'm just sitting in my room, drowning myself in my inventions until my parents drag me out of it for school or whatever.
Food has become less appetizing. Everything reminds me of her. How can it not?
The painful part is, I still have to continue being Ninjago City's prized Lightning Ninja, working with Nya like nothing happened between us.
Sometimes I want to strangle Wu whenever he assigns us as patrol partners. I can feel the annoyance radiating off of Nya each time it happens like heat off of the sun.
I don't want to live this existence anymore, being completely honest. But each time I consider it, I think about my friends — the ones I'd be leaving behind; and the ones who'd actually be sad if I did just... disappear one day.
Sometimes I'll just sit, looking at my hands, wondering if I could shock myself one rainy night and people would just think I was simply struck by lightning. "Bad place, bad time," they'd say.
Just like how it always is with my life.
Maybe if I had just sucked it up and asked Nya out earlier, then she wouldn't have gotten bored of my presence. She wouldn't have gotten bored of me. I tried to meet up to her expectations, I really did, but it just wasn't enough in the end, I guess. She wanted a partner she could show off to the world and I...
I'm just not that kind of person someone can be proud of. And I didn't try hard enough to be who she wanted me to be.
I show up with a bouquet of plain blue flowers on prom night?
They aren't "exciting enough for the camera lens."
I offer to drive her to school on rainy days?
Apparently "men need to stop breaking their backs for perfectly capable women."
I knock on her door at 5 in the morning with an extra bottle of Advil, my weighted blanket, and a box of Constellation Chocolates?
It was caring, but she "didn't ask for the swaddling."
Everything and anything I did for her to be the picture-perfect boyfriend just wasn't enough.
I wasn't enough.
{q}--+-+-+--{p}
When someone asks me why I broke up with Jay, I give them the truth.
He just wasn't what I was looking for.
Sure, at first, all of the sweet and romantic gestures were cute, but then they started to become too frequent, and frankly?
They lost their sweetness. I perceived it to be more of an obsession, if anything. And one day, I just had enough, and broke up with Jay after a particularly obsessive school day for him. I understand that a really bad fever had just passed through my system, but that doesn't call for him constantly asking if I was feeling alright.
And so, at the end of the school day, I stated that he was sweet and all, but it was just too much for me to deal with. He said that if that's what I wanted, then he was fine with it.
At the time, I believed it. I mean, for the past six months, Jay had basically only been doing activities associated with things that I'm interested in to win my favor.
But now, looking back?
I realize that him saying that was just a way to make it hurt less. To make my rejection of him doing his best hurt less.\
If only I'd done something other than reject him every chance I got, either directly or indirectly.
Maybe I'd still be able to talk to him.
Maybe he'd still walk the halls of Ninjago High with our wacko friend group.
Maybe his parents wouldn't have to drain their accounts to help him survive.
He might never come out of those tiled halls tinted in sickly white lights.
That's what my brain whispers to me each time I think about it all. How, if I'd just comforted him earlier by setting my boundaries instead of letting him push them, we'd still be friends, maybe more.
But that's all in the past now.
Because it's never going to happen.
Because even if he does come out of that hospital, he'd either avoid me like the plague because I'd only make him feel worse, or I'd avoid him like the plague; I'm afraid I'll make his condition worse.
I'm just scared.
I don't know what to do.
I'm just the Water Ninja of Ninjago. I'm not special. I'm certainly not above anyone else, and I was an asshole for thinking that way.
It's too late now to admit past mistakes.
They've already had their effect.
And it's all my fault.