Don’t Ruminate Unless You Like Problems...
If there is anyone like me, then you understand the idea of being girl-crazy from the get go. To me, a girl is something sacred, special, and a solemn part of a teenager's life, let alone life as a whole. Girls become this tantalized façade, and form into a beautiful cherry blossom tree right around the age of twelve; at least for me I was twelve. I was the new kid, and I, of course, didn't have many friends in a new bigger city in a much nicer school. Right down the street from me at the time was a girl. For the sake of protection, lets call her Alice. During a cloudy morning in the beginning of August, 2016, my heart thumped from nerves, then beat faster, slowed, and my eyes made contact with her. I saw her walking to the bus stop, glancing back at her mother waving her off for the third day of sixth grade. My mother was down the street, standing in my driveway, watching us stand near the stop sign, admiring the dripping power lines, and wondering if the rain would be anything like last week. People often insinuate rain as something that comes with dreariness, yet for my case, it's quite the opposite. I love the rain, the thunder, the lightning, the puddles, the smooth quaintness; the space is shrunk down, and the sounds are muffled like shouting in an ocean. When the bus arrived, I immediately wanted to establish terms with this girl; and that I did from the get go, thriving primarily on theoretical prospects. If there's one thing that I can always perform with intense and immediate candor, its the ability to think ahead, overthink, and theoretically think about what the future holds true. I was offered a seat next to her on the bus by her, and accordingly I accepted, wondering if I had a smell on me that wasn't pleasant. In a nutshell, her and I became closer than I had imagined possible for myself; she was one of two friends that I would make that day, to which I still converse with every-so-often when the bulb strikes the light. I received her number, and thus began the prologue into the gracious introduction of a new blossomed friendship that I was planning on being more; that's the sweat with me as a person: you can never plan optimistically, because sooner rather than later life happens too fast to catch up and navigate again. We talked every day, chatting about our days, our previous night's dreams, our ambitions, we shit-talked a lot of people in our grade. It was rare for the first few months that we didn't talk for at least an hour or so a night, making faces, telling jokes and stories, wishing that time would stop moving; isn't that quirky? Now began the end of the introductory chapter, and now we enter into the chapter to which things change as they tend to do in middle school. Sooner rather than later, I had better hope that I realize that confessing one's feelings to another while making it exceedingly obvious is not the play to make. Instead of a "Really?" I get a "yeah, I know," and I never catch on with why that happens. At least in middle school I didn't. She responded with a text that I will some up in a few words: "I'm too close with your sister; it would never work." I will be generous as to say she didn't say never, but now I realize that she should have said that, because she would have meant it, by God. She and I lost touch after that, and rightfully so because I was the clear dumbass for releasing all of that tension back for it to just smack me in the face; she was never in the wrong, and I made sure to tell her that whenever I told her the truth a few months ago. But, I'm getting ahead of myself---lets continue. After Christmas, and into '17, I barely saw her or contacted her for the rest of the year, making quite the effort while trying to initiate the conversation all of the times I tried. She became very close friends with my sister, along with another selection of knit friends, woven together as one little spinster's vinyl record; they were practically inseparable. Every once in a while, when Alice would come over, I would say hi to her, shrug off the bad stuff, and shuffle back into my room to think back about things. Just things. Falsified hope is just as saccharine as life itself; that's all I've known life to play out as. In all tantamount, I was making an effort, and couldn't accept the idea that she had tossed me aside like I was a peppermint wrapper. As time went by, I didn't change much, except for a few pounds I lost and inches that I grew. By the time I was in eighth grade, I was taller, had a deeper voice, and was skinnier; more appealing if you will. I didn't have the best self-confidence---or hardly any at all---but I tried to better myself on those kinds of levels. It was October, 2018. Good God, did she ever grow up beautiful; I saw her face for the first time in which seemed like years. Her eyes were just the way I remembered them: rustic and gray, but with enormous amounts of jovial content that flickered every time she blinked. She came up to me to say hi, as we carelessly chatted about things. Her voice rolled in and out like one of the tubes with the ball that squeaks back and forth, creating a yoiiiing sound. You know what I'm talking about, right? Either way, we began another process where I tried to text her, asking where our friendship went wrong, and (I'll never forget this), she said verbatim that "things can't always go back to the way they were," to which I replied something like, "why not?" I was curious of her standpoint, more or less wanting to start an argument about true friends; it never got that far because she stopped texting and I was talking to myself at the end of it. By the way, I would like to point out that I as a person do not handle change well; and I mean that. I wonder now if the reason that I never forgot her is because I didn't think it possible to love someone else as much as I did her. In most interpretations of my history, I don't think it possible. Now begins the high school chapter: the chapter of all things evil and vile. While seemingly upbeat and free, there were oodles of useless platitudes caked onto the walls of my high school; people changed for the worse; teachers got less lenient. Three years of high school, I hated that girl. That woman was completely and totally...not wrong about anything. I was the reason for my downfall; nothing she ever did was out of spite, I just interpreted it like that to make myself have more reassurance. GOOD GOD, I WAS IN LOVE WITH HER!!! I CAN'T JUST LET HER WALK AWAY, CAN I? After a sullen falling out with my sister, she never spoke to me, nor my sister, nor my family, nor I any of her associates, nor family. It was mutual, and for the best, honest to God. Now we get to the juicy part; the part that, in my personal opinion, made the biggest impact on anything related to high school. This was the moment I literally dreamed of, and now it was going to happen. It's not what you think, bare in mind. August 1, 2022 was my first day of my senior year of high school; only ten months. What better fucking irony than for her to sit next to me on the first day of Psychology class and for us to interact in person for the first time in literal years. IN PERSON I can't stretch enough. In a more mature manner, more or less mature, I worked up the courage to engage in conversation. In a mature way, I made fun of my old self when I was infatuated with her, and she lovingly laughed it off with me, and not towards me. She was agreeable, and I purposely brought up several of her embarrassing memories to level the playing field; we were one hot match near a selection of exuberant fireworks. The only question would be if we were able to light those fireworks, and let them perform their one job. We ate lunch together every day for two months, and talked, talked, talked, and talked about every little thing. Keep in mind, she had been romantically involved with the same person for a little over two years, so I wasn't getting the sixth grade maneuvers where we'd chat until the sun came up, but I was still getting a conversation here and there, carefully asking how her day went, and vice versa her to me. Now came the sad part about what I truly needed to do in order to set things right. You see, Psychology is a quarterly class, meaning that we switch class after Fall Break, indicating that we'd no longer have a class together. I had to make a choice: do I admit my still very present feelings of deep love OR do I let her go...Let her walk away having only an inkling of my resonant feelings? So I wrote her a letter, along with a parting gift that only I could have created and gifted: an item very personal to me, and only a small margin of the people I know know what it is. A copy of my book: the one I wrote and published. In the letter was me carefully evaluating this story shortened and giving the reasons why I was wrong and that I was in love with her. Keep in mind, I did NOT include the part where I said I was still in love with her, making it seem like it passed and there was nothing left; that was far from the truth. We ate lunch in the classroom every day, alone, and I presented the letter. I instructed her that all questions must be held until the end; she obeyed and read, shedding quite the number of tears along the way. She was emotional and beautiful like that. While she read, I shook like a creaky house; I could barely lift a water bottle to my lips for a sip. She put the letter down, and looked me dead in the eyes, asking me why I never told her. I was scared, I told her. Wouldn't you be? The moment that forever changed my outlook, my visions, my dreams, was when she...she admitted that she once had feelings for me, during the beginning of high school... I...I had no words...I didn't respond. All I could do was look at her, wondering if things could've been different. You're kidding, I said. As time presented itself, I talked to her over fall break, and we realized together that we would still be able to eat lunch together because of our class's lunch times. Praise God that, until she graduated early, we ate together and talked until our hearts were content. She did eventually figure out that I was still in love with her, after I mistakenly invited her to an outing at a bookstore, and she misinterpreted my true reason. There was a short interrogation session, and she apologized, but told me that she was wholeheartedly committed, and I respected that. In the end, we didn't end on the best terms, besides that fact that I wrote her another letter for Christmas and gifted her a copy of my favorite book, Cat's Cradle, and one of my favorite movies, Casablanca. For the second time since our knowing each other, she gave me a genuine hug... I hate to say things like that, but it's the only way I know how to create the significance of things if I explain it how I feel things should be expressed. I gave her the hug, and we held it for a second...Not too long, but not too short either. And with that, she was gone and graduated. With a dosage of poison that I so happily took, and threw up only to ingest again, I had completed the mission of my life for the past six years: admit my true feelings. And now that it is out and about, I feel relieved, but also lonely. That glimpse of false reality is now up in the air to be meddled with, and I know that things for me and her will NEVER be the same. But, either way, I still love her dearly, and she is very important to me. I am less important to her now, but none of that matters. All that matters is that I am relieved. Just remember that people are like watches: sooner to stop working than to break.