Lindsay’s Scribblings

It really is funny how right I was, without fully comprehending it. I knew there was more, is more, to every story than what is initially expressed.

Time itself is a wonderful medium for unraveling secrets, but so is wisdom. It takes a while for the extended series of hints and unwittingly revealing comments to grow large enough to ascertain true motivation. And though I knew one day I would understand, I didnt suspect it would come like this- a series of blind revelations in the middle of the night. But such is the case with all wisdom; it is sought after vainly, but only received when you have forgotten to look.

Subject of tonight’s wisdom: “Openness.” Defined by Princeton Wordnet as “characterized by an attitude of ready accessibility (especially about one’s actions or purposes); without concealment; not secretive”

Two people can only be open with each other if they believe they will not be scorned for their opinions, and thus are more likely to be open if they share the same set of values. The problem is, until you are open, you never know if these values are as similar as originally thought.

One person can spend a large amount of time naively thinking another person is being “open” but understand later that said other person avoided the truth for fear of being rejected, or because knowledge of conflicting values was intimidating. It is hard to make personal feelings and actions readily accessible when worried others will be disappointed in them.

Therefore, it becomes of the utmost necessity to understand morality and consider it before all other characteristics. Openness is a two way street - the receiver and the giver both must be prepared for the exchange. Know what values people will hold themselves to, but also understand what values you will hold them to.

Openness is desirable but not always possible, and sometimes it takes time and wisdom to understand what factors prevented either party from achieving it.

I know I walked into that question. I did. I take full blame for continuing to pursue the subject even after you (you- the ever ambiguous code-word) showed your aversion to it. However, I must wonder at the logic behind your decision.

You don’t hate me because you believe I’m evil, mean, cruel, talkative, arrogant, flippant, or stubborn.
You don’t hate me because of something I did wrong.
To the contrary, you hate me because I am nice, curious, and positive. Because I don’t accept your self-doubt as true or healthy and I know that you are capable of more.
You hate me because for the first time in quite a while, somebody has gone through the effort of trying to understand you- and it worked. You hate me because in asking questions I seem to unsettle your perspective on the world, right after you finally perfected your self-distancing scheme.
You hate me because you are terrified of the alternative.

It will be better one day (if you allow it to be), I promise. Until then I am worried about making the distance wedged between us worse.

The first day of school. After 11 years, 12 if you include kindergarten, it still comes back to the first day of waiting desperately to be dismissed from paperwork.
The first day of school is above all else a chance to establish the self-image you want to promote with teachers for the rest of the year. A time when the avid learners snap up the front row seats and everyone else huddles to the back. A time when impressions are made or lost and everyone stereotypes everyone else.
The first day of school is about the little lies you want everyone else to believe. “Oh, my life isn’t THAT boring when I’m not studying,” or “I will actually pay this much attention in your class after 13 weeks of sleep deprivation.” These lies are communicated without speaking, and vary from person to person. They are the insecurities we all face when left alone for too long.
The first day of school is when you finally see all of your friends again. Then you realize that for the rest of the year you won’t have time to see them except in class or in an extracurricular because you are simply that busy. Then you realize that this is a much less than pleasant revelation, but because you want to get into the top-rated, private, amazing, fill-in-the-blank-with-your-favorite-unobscene-adjective, college-of-your-choice you will still participate in these activities that suck away your life. Then you realize that you like said activities, and if there were only 28 hours in a day the world would be a better place. There are not 28 hours in a day. Even if there could be, industry would monopolize them.
The first day of school is the inevitable step towards the last day of school. You will daze through all the hecticness in-between and wake up on May 24 at 3 in the afternoon and wonder where your year went.

I’ve spent the last week in Alice, the city of my paternal relatives, which I visit once or twice annually. I conversed with my cousin Katie (before she and Leisel once again converged into single-minded immaturity), discussing my life and activities over the past 6 months (since my visit at Christmas) with accompanying pictures. There were, sadly, far too many “”ummmm”s and “like”s (the digression of every modern American’s vocabulary) and “I just don’t understand why…”s for my liking.
As I showed picture after picture of Debate, Latin and Octathlon, she could not repress her confusion and slight revulsion. “Lindsay,” she asked, “why on earth do you LIKE being a nerd?” I put her off for a moment, then pulled her outside and sat her down in a plastic green lawnchair on Grandma’s porch.
“You may not understand this,” I began, “but every high school is stratified, and every person or group perceives the hierarchy differently. The overwhelming majority of students evaluate their ‘castes’ based on popularity, but for nerds, like myself, there are no ranks. I am not the only nerd at my school, and we simply exist as a whole (though admittedly, we perceive ourselves to be at the top of any pyramid), diffusing outwards to our acquaintances and then to the ‘regulars.’  It sounds awful, but I (like everyone I am close to) know that one day I will be very successful because I have spent time cultivating my ability, while those who once enjoyed status based primarily on appearances or foolish jokes live thankless lives in constant pursuit of an ephemeral, and possibly even intangible, pop-culture happiness.  Maybe one day they will learn to dedicate themselves to their work, but only then or through some miraculous stroke of luck will they succeed.  But it isn’t good enough to wait on luck, its effort that wins the day.  Why do I like being a nerd?  Because nerds try.”

Guilt hammers me when I reflect on what I did. What I did. I kissed him, Ross. I kissed him even though I knew we were leaving in four days to fly home. Cities that are states apart. I kissed him even though I knew this, maybe because I knew this. I broke my own code of conduct to kiss him. I never thought I would kiss someone I didn’t believe was my other half, or that I wasn’t attempting to convince myself might one day be. But I kissed him, even though I knew he was leaving and even though I knew he wasn’t my other half. He was quiet, sweet, nice, and smart, but he didn’t give me stomach pangs when he walked into a room. He was quiet, sweet, nice, and smart, but maybe not so nice if he kissed me with the same knowledge I had. He was quiet, sweet, nice and smart and that should have made me drool, but it didn’t. I kissed him, even though I knew this. I kissed him because my lips had been aching for contact. For four months, my lips had been straining for contact. I had been delirious imagining lips and tongues whenever my eyelids fluttered shut, if only for a second. I shouldn’t have, but I did because I still couldn’t get over craving that last kiss. So even though I knew, the aching overwhelmed me, and I thought maybe if I could just feel lips against mine again I would forget physical desire from then on. I thought I would forget physical desire from then on. I was wrong. It satiated me until I was home again, in a city that was states apart. And then the hunger, the aching, the straining, the daydreaming returned to taunt me. I violated my code of conduct to kiss him, Ross. I didn’t get stomach pains when he walked into a room, but I kissed him. And I still am aching.

I have no absolute proof, but its rare anyone ever does. The most we usually have is conjecture gathered from opinions, speculation, and observation. This is my final note on this subject- I’m naive, but I’m perceptive. I’m innocent, but I’m not blind. And with my eyes I can see the same thing everyone else can. It’s obvious you never got over her, and probably should have waited longer before jumping into things with me (or maybe shouldn’t have gotten into them at all). Equally obviously, she adores you. Just date her again already (this is me being pragmatic and completely serious, happiness= best possible alternative, and I think it would make both of you happy). The only thing I will blame you for is lying (the needle on my trust-o-meter is falling lower and lower, maybe unjustly).
Then again, this is all conjecture, mere hearsay. No proof, simply the intuition of the world in general.
But what else can I make judgments off of? Material evidence consistently conflicts with all testimonies, and actions speak louder than (and in opposition to) words. If I’m wrong I apologize right now, if not then at least we will finally have the coveted openness that was apparently lacking and everything will come to a proper conclusion (one that even eclipses its beginning- something quite acceptable at this point.)

We used to talk. We used to talk all the time. In class, in-between classes, at lunch, when he drove me home. When we weren’t talking in person, we were on the phone, or texting, or IMing. If we weren’t doing one of those, we were waiting for the chance to.
Now, I may get a stray IM, maybe a side-comment. Even those, I know, take a lot of self-pep talking to manage. But before I was the one person I knew heard almost everything that was going on in his life. I was the one person I knew he was talking to at 1 in the morning when we were both dead-tired, the one person he actually kept a continuous conversation going with at all. He was more than just the person I was dating because I don’t ever want to just date someone. He was a good friend, almost as good as those I’d had for much longer because of how much I trusted him, talked with him, and spent time with him.
And suddenly here I am, having to get completely reacquainted with him, as though even the friendship we once had didn’t exist. But the prior friendship was tinged with an innocent lust, and now it needs to be completely clean. So we are starting over and I have to reassess everything I thought I knew about him, everything I thought was constant. I am no longer sure I ever knew him at all, I just thought I did.
And starting over wouldn’t be half as hard, if it didn’t feel like every step I try to take in that direction leads to alienation. Other people can laugh and smile and touch his shoulder while gesturing, with me there has to be a wall. Other people can watch him closely when he talks, if I did (the way I used to) it would make both of us uncomfortable. Other people can sit near him, but I have to keep distance. And even if I didn’t have to as part of an unspoken taboo, I would want to, at least for now- it’s easier that way.
But when every kind thing I say is perceived as flattery in some ill-fated attempt to gain favor, all it does is blemish our relationship farther. I’m tired of not being allowed to care at all when other people can.
The fact of the matter is, I lost more than just someone to go to the movies with, I lost my companion, my friend, and it seems unlikely our friendship will ever be as deep. And I have to pretend not to want it to be.

I keep telling myself I’m apathetic. It’s my constant chant, my mantra. And I know that I’m lying. The only lie I’ve ever had on this front. I ‘m almost to the point where I don’t care. But I spent so much time caring it’s hard to just stop.
I was talking on the phone to Mandy, just talking (about the last week, but also about the months that came before), and she listened patiently. Finally she said, “You REALLLY liked him didn’t you?” While the whole rest of the day I had been almost okay, that struck hard. I DID really like him. I really really really really liked him. No matter how horrible I had been feeling, I still really liked him. And that shouldn’t be a shock because I had said it aloud before, and before I was allowed to say it. In fact, in the past it had been whispered to me even before I had the chance to say it myself. But I had meant it. One of his emails said, “I have never once had any kinds of doubts about how you feel for me.” Because how I felt about him was genuine. When I said I missed him, I meant it. When I said I loved him, I meant it. And so maybe it shouldn’t be taking me this long to return to normal, but if everyone understood exactly how much I let myself like him, how much I let myself care, maybe they would understand.
Because to my knowledge, and it least on my end, there was no arc of decline. I was concerned about the stress maybe, but my feelings stayed the same, my character stayed the same, everything about me stayed the same. And if (according to him, and our friends) who I was was the perfect match for him, and if who I was was who he wanted, and if who I was was someone he professed to love, and I never changed…. then what happened? He told me he wanted to make me a huge part of his life, and then cut me out of it. And I guess when he said he wanted to date me for as long as possible, somehow in my mind that quantified as more than another two months.

I’m apathetic. I’m apathetic. I’m apathetic.
After all, its not like I ever had any reason to believe that he would care about me, right?

I wrote an email to somebody I cared about, somebody I had a right to expect cared about me back. This email said I love you and I miss you, every last detail, and I am concerned because we haven’t had time to be together. And the reply was that I was right, we didn’t have time. And he wouldn’t make time, there never again would be time for us to be together because he simply did not care about me enough to make it. Or maybe that inst fair. He cared, but other things mattered more. And sometimes they do, but it hurts not making the priority list. I was important, but not important enough he told me.

And yes, he said, he had once really wanted to be with me, but somehow he’d had a lightning-fast change of heart. He said he was scared of being open with me. (Because I would have been oh-so-inclined to hurt him, this person that I cared-still care-about) He thought it would hurt me if he told me the truth, whatever the truth really was. Apparently the thought never occurred it might hurt more to have him wait and to never know when this ‘paranoia’ started. I didn’t do anything to make him paranoid. I never would and he should know that. I wasn’t asking for his life, but I was asking for some time now and then, and I was asking for some coveted place in his mind where I was cared for and safe and loved.

I sent him this email to say that I loved him, and was worried about how we were doing. And his response told me that he didn’t want there to BE an us. I’m upset for now, but so what? It’s high school, I will live. I wont hate him forever, I couldn’t. I wont stay upset for too long, at some point I will move on. And at some point, I will either stop caring for him, or care for someone else more. Because that’s the healthy thing to do, and that’s what hes doing, and that would make it easier on everyone. It would make it easier on him if I didn’t repeat those familiar last words- goodnight, sweet dreams, I love you. But there wasn’t a response (and won’t be). I wasn’t expecting one.

Goodnight, thank you for listening, or maybe reading, (probably not since everyone thinks this blog is discontinued, but) sweet dreams, and (platonicly) I love you.