Breaking the Mirror
Yes, I know I said I wasn't going to use this journal for talking about my personal life anymore. This is only a slight renege of that promise.
I've had a rather interesting couple of days. This past week has been personally frustrating on a number of levels- school, automobiles, things like that- but moreso it's been a hard week in terms of relationships. To put it bluntly, in this past week, I've done something that I've never done before: I cut off a relationship with someone. I ended a friendship. It was difficult, but it had to be done eventually, for both our sakes.
Let me speak clearly here. The person in question was Allison, who most of you probably know primarily because she went to Metro last year. During the winter of that school year, we had... I'm not sure. A something. I thought we were dating at the time, though I've been informed that isn't what happened. I'm not going to go into that too deeply, except to say that it was life-changing for me. I had never had any kind of experience with a woman before, and it was an eye-opener.
Time went on, and we stopped having the whatever-it-was. We went for a long period where we did not really speak to each other. Then, a few months ago, she started talking to me again. And since I did care about her, I talked back. It was never a particularly healthy or stable friendship; I've often characterized it as being the sort of relationship where one week we would be telling each other silly jokes, followed by a week where we had loud, screaming arguments, followed by a week where we didn't talk, followed by a return of silly jokes.
I told her some things that I maybe shouldn't have. I told her about people, two women in specific, who I felt (still feel) very strong feelings towards. At the same time she told me that she still had feelings for me, and basically wanted me to start dating her. At this time, I was already rather comfortably settled into college, and the prospect of having a relationship with somebody in Saint Louis did not seem particularly appealing. (It still doesn't; so far as I know, there's only one woman in that city I would do that for, and I've never worked up the balls to ask her if she would want to see me.) In addition, I did not really trust Allison to be faithful, and I did not think we could really get over our hot-and-cold interactions, so I said no.
More or less, this all worked itself into a gigantic ball of frustration that exploded last week. I was tired of fighting with her, and tired of being asked to go out with her. I didn't love her, or even feel much of a possibility that I could love her, and I didn't like being the object of unrequited love. I tried to stop talking to her. Skipping over a lot of conversation that was personally sort of frightening to me, I think I succeeded.
At the same time, I was feeling pretty intensely lonely, with my own dose of unrequited love. I blame it on a painting in the university's art galley; it reminds me too much of the girl in question. I've considered talking to her about it all week, but like I said, I lack the balls to say anything. (I actually left her a message about it, but it appears she never recieved it or is pointedly ignoring it...)
So basically last week had me in the uncomfortable position of being desired by someone I had no desire for and simeltaneously being in that position towards a different person. It was not comfortable.
I felt a certain amount of empathy with Kane in Citizen Kane when he was described as, basically, wanting nothing more than for everybody to love him. I feel that way. There is nothing more in this world, when I think about it, that matters more to me than the prospect of being loved, or perhaps more specifically of being hated; I can't deal with the idea of being disliked, or worse. I suspect it's why I play paladins in D&D and play White cards in Magic, why I try to be as helpful and wise and tolerant as I can be: it's because I want to be the Good Guy, because the crowd loves a Good Guy.
And yet in this past week, I broke off a friendship, and not the smallest reason for me doing that was because she said, rather openly, that she wanted something more out of me than friendship. She said she wasn't sure, but that she might, in fact, have loved me.
I'm not sure what that says about either of us, really.
-E
I've had a rather interesting couple of days. This past week has been personally frustrating on a number of levels- school, automobiles, things like that- but moreso it's been a hard week in terms of relationships. To put it bluntly, in this past week, I've done something that I've never done before: I cut off a relationship with someone. I ended a friendship. It was difficult, but it had to be done eventually, for both our sakes.
Let me speak clearly here. The person in question was Allison, who most of you probably know primarily because she went to Metro last year. During the winter of that school year, we had... I'm not sure. A something. I thought we were dating at the time, though I've been informed that isn't what happened. I'm not going to go into that too deeply, except to say that it was life-changing for me. I had never had any kind of experience with a woman before, and it was an eye-opener.
Time went on, and we stopped having the whatever-it-was. We went for a long period where we did not really speak to each other. Then, a few months ago, she started talking to me again. And since I did care about her, I talked back. It was never a particularly healthy or stable friendship; I've often characterized it as being the sort of relationship where one week we would be telling each other silly jokes, followed by a week where we had loud, screaming arguments, followed by a week where we didn't talk, followed by a return of silly jokes.
I told her some things that I maybe shouldn't have. I told her about people, two women in specific, who I felt (still feel) very strong feelings towards. At the same time she told me that she still had feelings for me, and basically wanted me to start dating her. At this time, I was already rather comfortably settled into college, and the prospect of having a relationship with somebody in Saint Louis did not seem particularly appealing. (It still doesn't; so far as I know, there's only one woman in that city I would do that for, and I've never worked up the balls to ask her if she would want to see me.) In addition, I did not really trust Allison to be faithful, and I did not think we could really get over our hot-and-cold interactions, so I said no.
More or less, this all worked itself into a gigantic ball of frustration that exploded last week. I was tired of fighting with her, and tired of being asked to go out with her. I didn't love her, or even feel much of a possibility that I could love her, and I didn't like being the object of unrequited love. I tried to stop talking to her. Skipping over a lot of conversation that was personally sort of frightening to me, I think I succeeded.
At the same time, I was feeling pretty intensely lonely, with my own dose of unrequited love. I blame it on a painting in the university's art galley; it reminds me too much of the girl in question. I've considered talking to her about it all week, but like I said, I lack the balls to say anything. (I actually left her a message about it, but it appears she never recieved it or is pointedly ignoring it...)
So basically last week had me in the uncomfortable position of being desired by someone I had no desire for and simeltaneously being in that position towards a different person. It was not comfortable.
I felt a certain amount of empathy with Kane in Citizen Kane when he was described as, basically, wanting nothing more than for everybody to love him. I feel that way. There is nothing more in this world, when I think about it, that matters more to me than the prospect of being loved, or perhaps more specifically of being hated; I can't deal with the idea of being disliked, or worse. I suspect it's why I play paladins in D&D and play White cards in Magic, why I try to be as helpful and wise and tolerant as I can be: it's because I want to be the Good Guy, because the crowd loves a Good Guy.
And yet in this past week, I broke off a friendship, and not the smallest reason for me doing that was because she said, rather openly, that she wanted something more out of me than friendship. She said she wasn't sure, but that she might, in fact, have loved me.
I'm not sure what that says about either of us, really.
-E