Camilo
- Part One -
The following morning, we didn’t really talk about the incident. Lizzie was quiet for most of the day. And then for most of the week. I felt awful about the way I had reacted to her announcement, and completely inconsiderate of her feelings. I blamed myself for her distant attitude. And yet, I wasn’t able to do much to help her feel better. Or maybe, I just didn’t try hard enough.
Lizzie started moving out right after Christmas. We didn’t talk as often during that time, and I didn’t really take advantage of that to hang out with my friends, or to game by myself, or do anything good, really. I kind of just… moped. It was weird. Before she left, I mean, of course she was someone dear to me, and I liked her a lot, but I never really felt absolutely head over heels for Elizabeth. But now that she was leaving, and I knew she would be out of reach, I wouldn’t be able to touch her or feel her hands, her lips… I felt strangely regretful. In a way that I wanted to crawl underneath my covers and never come out again.
At the beginning of January, right before the end of our break, we started talking again on a regular basis. She spoke to me about what her new school was supposed to be like, how her dad went there, and how it was pretty competitive and stuff. She was excited, since she had always wanted to go to a better school, because she considered herself smart.
“Not to brag or whatever, though. Um, but I don’t know, it’s like I just catch on quicker than most? I think. And I really like the idea of more advanced work,” she told me in a voice call.
It was true that she got really good grades, so I did agree that it could be good for her to go to a better school.
“The only thing I’m worried about, in going to school here, is that I need to really work on my French to be able to do well. I’m kind of scared that it’s going to be really noticeable that I’m not at the same level as everyone else, so I’m practicing a lot by talking to my dad.”
Less than a week after the break had ended, though, she found that things weren’t as great as she had expected there, and not only because of her French. She told me that they were at a completely different level in many subjects, and that she was really having trouble catching up to her peers. Consequently, she was online a lot less, spending her time studying instead.
This time around, I wanted to spend my time alone studying as well, but that didn’t really work out for me. I could never focus on homework. I just gamed on my own most of the time and went to bed when I felt tired.
One night, though, while looking for porn on a Discord server dedicated to that, I accidentally clicked on a channel with femboy stuff. It felt… weird to look at, at first, but… I didn’t really get how, but it actually wasn’t so bad. The next few nights, I kept at it, and even explored some actual gay porn. It felt very different, and it was hard to find something that really was to my liking in the beginning, but I enjoyed myself with that as well.
After that, though, I sort of felt guilty. Was it kind of like cheating on Elizabeth? Like, yeah, it was porn, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t seen any since the start of our relationship, but it was the first time I was starting to feel interest in a completely different gender. I didn’t know what to do with these feelings.
And as I thought more and more about it, I started to notice some guys at school that were a bit to my liking. I knew that I still was into girls, and certainly liked Lizzie, but that was the problem, in a way. I felt… Almost disgusted with myself that I was starting to like guys, at one point. Because, why was this happening to me all of a sudden when I had a girlfriend? I was worried sick about how she’d react if I told her, and even questioned if I should tell her at all. Hell, I wondered if I was even really genuinely attracted to guys, or if I was just dreaming all of this up because Lizzie left and it was all just a dumb phase.
Either way, I told myself that I should just tell Elizabeth, out of fairness to her. I was really nervous about it, but… I told myself that she would understand. She’d always been so good to me, and I was convinced that she would still love me either way.
I messaged her, asking if she would be able to voice chat at some point. She answered later that night, saying she was free in that moment. Already in bed, I called her.
“Hi,” she began.
“Hey. How has studying been?”
“Um, good, yeah. I’m getting there.”
“That’s good to hear.”
“Did you wanna talk about anything?”
“Yeah, actually, uh...” I bit my lip. “I wanted to confess something really quickly. ‘Cause it’s probably like, the right thing to do. I think.”
She took a second to reply. “What is it?” she asked, her tone slightly worried.
“Well, I don’t know if it’s like a big deal, but… I guess it could be. Uh, basically, I think I’m bisexual.”
“‘Bisexual’? What do you mean?”
“Like, I’m not just into girls. I like guys too.”
“Really? So are you with a guy or something too?”
I hesitated. “What? No. I just think I might have that attraction. Like, especially… physically. I don’t know about romantically. But I’m just starting to like, realise, I guess.”
“So what are you saying, then?”
“What do you mean, Lizzie? I’m just… letting you know. I don’t know.”
“Are you breaking up with me, or what?”
“What? Lizzie, I never said that. I like you. I wanna be with you. I’m just telling you this, because I love you and I don’t wanna hide it from you.”
“You don’t wanna hide that I’m not good enough for you? That you’re more interested in dick?”
I blinked. “What are you talking about? I never said that.”
“Camilo, if you like guys, there’s no way you could like girls.”
I could barely believe what I was hearing. “What do you mean?”
“You can’t like both, it just doesn’t work like that.”
“Lizzie, you’re really not making any sense. Do you have any idea how much— How bad I felt about this? I felt horrible about myself. I didn’t understand it at all. And, and now I finally am starting to like, come to terms with it, and I just wanted to not be an asshole by keeping it a secret from you of all people, and you— You give me this?”
“Yeah, well, I’m really sorry that I wasn’t thinking my boyfriend would be coming out to me tonight, after I’ve been feeling absolutely miserable for the past week at school.”
“Really?”
“Well yeah, what the hell do you expect? I… I hate myself, I’m stupid as hell. I’m not good enough to be here.”
“Lizzie…”
“You know,” she added, her voice breaking, “I cut myself yesterday.”
“You what?”
“I cut my wrists, because I wanted to just die.” She finally broke into tears as I stayed frozen in disbelief.
“Lizzie, why… Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I didn’t want—” She suppressed a sob. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“No, I want you to tell me. Don’t… Don’t bottle up this kind of thing. Please. I… I don’t want you to hurt yourself. I don’t want you to feel like this. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, I’m just being a bother, I wanna die...”
“Don’t die, Lizzie, I care about you, I love you. I need you.”
“That’s not true. You don’t mean it,” she cried, softly.
“Lizzie, I do, I love you.”
“Liar,” she sobbed. And then nothing. The call ended.
My heart pounded. What was she going to do? I was terrified that she had left just to go hurt herself more. Or even worse…
I called her again. Waited, the Discord calling tone ringing in my earphones. Nothing. She wasn’t picking up.
I spammed her with messages begging to know if she was okay, just a sentence, just a word, just to let me know she was safe. At least alive.
I forced myself to stay awake for the following hour, hoping, praying, for something, anything. I started crying for the first time in years, imagining all kinds of devastating scenarios. I don’t know when, but I somehow fell asleep.
I only got a few hours of rest before my alarm woke me up. Lizzie was the first thing on my mind. I quickly checked my phone.
I breathed a sigh of relief.
She didn’t reply after that, for a good while. I did see her often online for the first week after we stopped talking, but after a while, I no longer saw the green circle next to her profile picture. And after another while, I stopped checking.
In the evening of the same day Lizzie and I stopped talking, I received a message from Dylan.
And that’s how I finally reconnected with Dylan. As for Asher, he wasn’t online that often and never joined in when he was. He always claimed he was busy whenever we spammed him in our group chat to get him to join us.
Either way, my overall mood started to improve for the first time in a long while.
Elizabeth messaged me about three weeks later.
She and I tried to reconnect after that. And I really felt like we did. We went back to calling every evening, while she studied and I gamed, often with Dylan—after I told him what happened between my girlfriend and Asher, we mutually stopped talking to him. At one point, Lizzie and I even started practicing French and Spanish together on Duolingo and SpanishDict. Spending time with her became fun again. We even started arranging to meet up during March break, so that she could come over and spend time with me.
And then, on a Friday after school, after an entire month of things seemingly going perfectly fine:
She didn’t reply and went offline. I nearly started panicking again, but… I tried to reassure myself with her last message. For good measure, I typed out another one.
She did eventually answer, the next morning, saying she was okay. I couldn’t bring myself to reply.
I spent the rest of the weekend hiding away. I couldn’t bring myself to cry. I couldn’t try to have fun. I couldn’t do anything.
I don’t even recall what I did during the week that followed. But the week after that, I told Dylan what had happened. I told him everything, from end to beginning; how Elizabeth had gone back to Asher, how good things had been right before that, how she was suicidal, how worried I had been, how she had reacted to my coming out, how she told me she was leaving, and the way that I had felt that she was… suffocating me, before. And how I then came to realise, she had been suffocating me all along. Whether it had been her intention or not. And now that she had broken up with me, I finally felt liberated.