(no subject)
For starters I should tell you about my high school. Well, not my high school so much as my time in high school. Freshman year was rotten, new people, new teachers, new school, and predictably, no one liked me. It's predictable because I wasn't well liked in middle school either, and because it generally takes time to like someone, but you can dislike them instantly. I got by because I didn't know any better, I got by because after failing to get a role in the school play I signed up for the set crew, and the set crew that year was amazing. For the fall play we built a house set with a working balcony and stairs that not only were able to support a student's weight, but also able to withstand some violent shaking as that student climbed all over it, including jumping off the side. It was good. Primarily what was good about set crew was that it was small, there were typically four of us. Myself, the only freshman, a non-faculty adviser named Chris, a senior named Sara(h), and Dori, who was also one of my brothers friends. They may have been the only people that year that didn't make fun of me. Well, not spitefully at least, and they certainly never threatened to kick my ass, get my ass kicked, or throw me in the bay.
That year I was recovering from being rejected by a girl I hadn't even meant to ask out. It had hurt me very badly, if you're the type of person who believes in emotions or psych-stuff then you can probably believe that. I'm not. I feel like I just lied to myself. I hadn't even meant to ask her out, in fact, when I had asked her out it had come in the form of me telling her that I was no longer interested in her. She had said something, late at night, while I was walking with her and a truly exceptional girl named Sara (no h in parenthesis this time, I'm pretty sure she spells it w/o one) and she had said something that was really repugnant. I responded by saying "and I used to think you were so hot." Things spiraled out of control from there. It was bad of me. Almost 4 years later I apologized for asking her out, and for being rotten, it didn't improve anything, it didn't make any thing any better.
The following summer I went on a camping trip, 10 days hiking and canoeing without a shower. It was filthy. There were 12 of us. For the first year afterward I kept in touch with a number of them, a high number, possibly all. Currently I still contact 1 of them. Her name is Heather, and she was a really, really big deal in my life. I thought, for years, for, like, 3 years, that I was in love with her. I used to write to her all the time. If people say now that I'm a good writer, that I've got a clear voice and I can get my ideas out, it's solely due to the fact that she let me write to her all the time. Never letters though. I learned to type because she let me send her e-mails so often. I got on AIM simply to have a way to communicate with her, I learned to drive so that I could go visit her. I thought I was in love, I thought that if I did well in school, she would like me, I stopped caring about what the people in my life thought of me because it was only her opinion that was important. To this date she's maybe e-mailed me a dozen times and sent 1 card via post. Clearly I'm delusional. If you believe in that psych stuff.
That doesn't make her a bad person. Her position is completely reasonable, sensible and mature. Some dude you barely know, you met and spoke with a little, not much, won't leave you alone; you barely know him, aren't much interested in getting to know him and are involved in your own life that's happening around you. All of that is proper. What's improper is my fixation. I thought it was love, if you watch too much tv and too many movies and read too many romances, you may think it's love too. It's not. I've heard it described many ways over the years, the consensus seems to be that it's creepy, and wrong. I'm creepy, and bad. Being wrong is bad.
People disagree with that last statement. They say that everyone makes mistakes and that we need to learn from them and that learning's a good thing. But if you score a 500 on your SAT because you got everything wrong except for your name, colleges aren't going to give you a second look, even if you learned the things you didn't know afterward. And if getting to college is your goal (and why are you taking the SAT if it isn't?) then that's a bad result, a bad result stemming from being wrong. Being wrong is bad.
As I was saying, I wrote all the time, I wrote e-mails, I got an e-mail address to keep in touch with her. I wrote instant messages, I wrote notes. I wrote, wrote and wrote and never stopped pestering her. That's bad too. I keep getting sidetracked. What I'm trying to say is that I got to the point where I wrote weekly, because it generally took a week for me to accumulate enough things to have anything worth writing. She rarely wrote back, but when she did she always assured me that she liked hearing from me, because she's polite. She had other things going on though, and really it's unreasonable to expect someone to write when they have a life with their family, with their friends, school, a job, interests surrounding them and you're just some kid, far away, that they need to be polite too.
I almost forgot, but I used to call her too. This is back before everyone had cell phones. Back before I had a cell phone. I think I got her in trouble with her dad for not calling me back once. I even told her I loved her once. On AIM. AOL Instant Messenger - AIM. Her response was that she had friends over; I was mortified and logged off asap. I still feel bad about embarrassing her in front of her friends. She deserved better.
I shouldn't've written all of this, and I shouldn't've written it here, but I think you need to know, I think it'll help you let go of the animosity you were harboring. I think it'll help you understand why it meant so little when you used to respond with a paragraph to say that you liked it when I wrote. I've been through that sort of relationship once before. The kind where I sit and write frequently (and when I write I tend to get a bit wordy) and she responds by being polite and saying she likes it, but really doesn't think much of it at all. I promised myself I'd never do that again; that I'd walk away if I ever found myself falling into that trap of caring for someone more than she cares about me. More than she's willing to show that she cares about me. I can't judge someones feelings from across distances of an inch, let alone miles, all I get to know is what they show me. And if what they show me is that they're only willing to give me 5 minutes a month to jot down a couple of sentences and press send, then the content of those sentences doesn't really mean a whole lot.
That's the reasoning why I was going to stop writing and let our "friendship" expire, it's because it felt to me like you already had. We'd gone from you inviting me over weekly to watch friends to so much less. We'd gone from hanging out at breakfast, with me afraid to eat because of how much your opinion mattered to barely communicating. And then you said you were gonna move to Washington, and I thought that'd fix everything. There was so much more wrong with me than you not writing though. Our fragile friendship, left in critical condition by the long distance nature of it, never really had a fighting chance. That's on me.
That year I was recovering from being rejected by a girl I hadn't even meant to ask out. It had hurt me very badly, if you're the type of person who believes in emotions or psych-stuff then you can probably believe that. I'm not. I feel like I just lied to myself. I hadn't even meant to ask her out, in fact, when I had asked her out it had come in the form of me telling her that I was no longer interested in her. She had said something, late at night, while I was walking with her and a truly exceptional girl named Sara (no h in parenthesis this time, I'm pretty sure she spells it w/o one) and she had said something that was really repugnant. I responded by saying "and I used to think you were so hot." Things spiraled out of control from there. It was bad of me. Almost 4 years later I apologized for asking her out, and for being rotten, it didn't improve anything, it didn't make any thing any better.
The following summer I went on a camping trip, 10 days hiking and canoeing without a shower. It was filthy. There were 12 of us. For the first year afterward I kept in touch with a number of them, a high number, possibly all. Currently I still contact 1 of them. Her name is Heather, and she was a really, really big deal in my life. I thought, for years, for, like, 3 years, that I was in love with her. I used to write to her all the time. If people say now that I'm a good writer, that I've got a clear voice and I can get my ideas out, it's solely due to the fact that she let me write to her all the time. Never letters though. I learned to type because she let me send her e-mails so often. I got on AIM simply to have a way to communicate with her, I learned to drive so that I could go visit her. I thought I was in love, I thought that if I did well in school, she would like me, I stopped caring about what the people in my life thought of me because it was only her opinion that was important. To this date she's maybe e-mailed me a dozen times and sent 1 card via post. Clearly I'm delusional. If you believe in that psych stuff.
That doesn't make her a bad person. Her position is completely reasonable, sensible and mature. Some dude you barely know, you met and spoke with a little, not much, won't leave you alone; you barely know him, aren't much interested in getting to know him and are involved in your own life that's happening around you. All of that is proper. What's improper is my fixation. I thought it was love, if you watch too much tv and too many movies and read too many romances, you may think it's love too. It's not. I've heard it described many ways over the years, the consensus seems to be that it's creepy, and wrong. I'm creepy, and bad. Being wrong is bad.
People disagree with that last statement. They say that everyone makes mistakes and that we need to learn from them and that learning's a good thing. But if you score a 500 on your SAT because you got everything wrong except for your name, colleges aren't going to give you a second look, even if you learned the things you didn't know afterward. And if getting to college is your goal (and why are you taking the SAT if it isn't?) then that's a bad result, a bad result stemming from being wrong. Being wrong is bad.
As I was saying, I wrote all the time, I wrote e-mails, I got an e-mail address to keep in touch with her. I wrote instant messages, I wrote notes. I wrote, wrote and wrote and never stopped pestering her. That's bad too. I keep getting sidetracked. What I'm trying to say is that I got to the point where I wrote weekly, because it generally took a week for me to accumulate enough things to have anything worth writing. She rarely wrote back, but when she did she always assured me that she liked hearing from me, because she's polite. She had other things going on though, and really it's unreasonable to expect someone to write when they have a life with their family, with their friends, school, a job, interests surrounding them and you're just some kid, far away, that they need to be polite too.
I almost forgot, but I used to call her too. This is back before everyone had cell phones. Back before I had a cell phone. I think I got her in trouble with her dad for not calling me back once. I even told her I loved her once. On AIM. AOL Instant Messenger - AIM. Her response was that she had friends over; I was mortified and logged off asap. I still feel bad about embarrassing her in front of her friends. She deserved better.
I shouldn't've written all of this, and I shouldn't've written it here, but I think you need to know, I think it'll help you let go of the animosity you were harboring. I think it'll help you understand why it meant so little when you used to respond with a paragraph to say that you liked it when I wrote. I've been through that sort of relationship once before. The kind where I sit and write frequently (and when I write I tend to get a bit wordy) and she responds by being polite and saying she likes it, but really doesn't think much of it at all. I promised myself I'd never do that again; that I'd walk away if I ever found myself falling into that trap of caring for someone more than she cares about me. More than she's willing to show that she cares about me. I can't judge someones feelings from across distances of an inch, let alone miles, all I get to know is what they show me. And if what they show me is that they're only willing to give me 5 minutes a month to jot down a couple of sentences and press send, then the content of those sentences doesn't really mean a whole lot.
That's the reasoning why I was going to stop writing and let our "friendship" expire, it's because it felt to me like you already had. We'd gone from you inviting me over weekly to watch friends to so much less. We'd gone from hanging out at breakfast, with me afraid to eat because of how much your opinion mattered to barely communicating. And then you said you were gonna move to Washington, and I thought that'd fix everything. There was so much more wrong with me than you not writing though. Our fragile friendship, left in critical condition by the long distance nature of it, never really had a fighting chance. That's on me.