People have often smirked at my seemingly concrete idea of exactly what love is. No, I tell them, I have no idea what love is. What I do have, however, is a fairly strong base of exactly what love is not.
Life seems to have started with the first time I saw her, and my feelings for her seem deeply rooted in my memory. Back further, however, is a feeling I can recall with even more clarity: that of not liking myself.
You don't need to know why I was the unpopular kid; that story can be told by a great many, with better stories than I have. Kids who shine are told to shine brighter, and the ones who don't are told it's okay to snub the popular ones. They're encouraged to. They're just different.
My friends at the time and I would envelop ourselves in a world of videogames and 486s and dirty jokes, telling each other that we were better because we weren't the best. We all believed this to the extent that we did not believe this at all.
Everyone knows that the high school limelight matters little after graduation. Everyone also knows hapless animals are cruelly slaughtered to make our food.
Knowledge versus acknowledgement. That's the problem.
Details will be spared here, because they can be built endlessly from the core situation, with the end result being the same. I fell for a girl because she was the first to ever make me feel truly considered, and also put a halt to my habit of self-dislike. Other factors, such as her beauty and sense of humour, were trivial in that they made her perfect.
She dated. I waited. I bided my time even when she was single, for I knew nothing else. How do you approach your first love who you've determined to be your perfect union? You don't. You wait for her to notice you.
You might as well get a chair and a good book.
So, I decide to be good friends with her, which means I'm going to love her even more but try to make it less obvious. But as I sit ever waiting for her to notice, I begin to notice a few things myself: my friendship, let alone my feelings, is reciprocated halfheartedly. I notice a trend of me fitting into her life at her whim.
And I get angry. And bitter. And I wonder what has become of my life, how I became this half-assed version of a secret admirer. And all those feelings of self-dislike come back in a flood that nearly pushes me over the edge, and what holds me back are the best friends who'll never know that they stand right between me and a downward spiral.
So I leave. I stop talking to her. She never calls me, so this is easy. I post something like this, and she feels compelled to apologize online. I do not respond.
Being me, what I do is log on and write something lengthy and bloated on a site I know she reads, but probably doesn't know that I write with much inspiration from her. Seeing all these words punched into a little white box makes me feel like I'm draining all the bitterness out of myself, and that I can finally let it be. It also makes me realize that all I really wanted to say was one thing.
Goodbye, dork.
-Charlie. Or p5. Whatever.
2005-10-02 - still gone
2005-02-03 - We've moved!
2005-01-30 - I'll take a #3 please
2005-01-26 - The Matrix Has You
2005-01-26 - Lowered standards.
