I don't know how I end up in these weird situations that never come to fruition. These situations somehow manage to occupy my mind entirely, despite knowing from the start that nothing was ever going to transpire from it.
I write, naturally, about my impossible crush on [redacted]. Recalling how this all started is actually kind of depressing, but I suppose I ought to write it down somewhere.
I remember this started sometime in February after my gastroenteritic trip back from the Bay Area, which was one of those times when the thought that I might actually die crossed my mind once or twice. As I drove a little less than 400 miles from the Bay to L.A., not only did I feel like my entrails were trying to crawl out through my rectum, but I miscalculated badly and managed to end up driving through a snowstorm. It's a wonder that I didn't just slide off the road.
Anyway, after a few days of recuperating from that adventure, I made it back to S.D., and back to work. And I would run into [redacted] from time to time.
Actually, now that I think about it, it may have been around the time I found her MySpace account. Anyway, we wrote each other little random comments. We'd run into each other in the hallways. We'd text each other.
So, granted, part of it was the fact that I probably haven't made any lasting friendships while I've been down here. For various reasons, I've stayed out of the social scene, and have not really participated in the fray. I just didn't have it in me, to try and make new friends.
My soul has been fermenting a long time.
[Redacted] was—is—probably one of the best friends I've had down here in S.D. Leave it to me to screw myself up by falling for her.
Now I'm not so pathetic to think that these little things meant anything. I mean, people meet, they become friends. We've actually known each other for a couple of years now, mostly starting from that month we spent together working with each other. She always tells me that she feels better when I'm around. I've always thought it was pretty bizarre. I'm not the type who inspires confidence in people. But I've always taken what she tells me at face value.
And, like, we're friends. So whatever. She would text me asking me if I wanted to come by and hang out with her and her friends. Or call me up if she needed to know something about work.
I suppose major stress played a part in my fraught emotions, too. In March, her grandfather, whom she was very close to, died. This really got to her, and we talked a lot then. It so happened this was around the same time that my dad got admitted to the hospital again. Not as serious as the last time, but it did stress me out pretty significantly. It didn't help that I was working 80 hour days and taking call every five nights. And we talked each other through some tight spots. But what are friends for, right?
I remember that last day, though, when I was completely fried from my month at work, and she asked me if I wanted to watch the sunset with her, and how could I not? I remember thinking then, though, what the hell am I doing?
She really is an awesome person. The usual things: she's smart, she's beautiful. She's incredibly compassionate. She is patient. She is realistic, and yet incorrigibly optimistic. Who wouldn't fall in love with her, really?
So we hung out at the beach, and then we hung out at her apartment, and we probably would've talked for hours on end, but I had to go because I had to do something for work the next day. And I remember leaving there, wondering how I had gotten there, knowing that I must be dreaming, and wishing that it would never end.
That sense of forlornness never really left me, I think.
It goes without saying that I am an extremely damaged person. I'm pretty sure a lot of that damage has been self-inflicted. Not all of it. Certainly I've had quite a bit of help along the way. But a good part of it is probably unnecessary suffering that I manage to cart along where-ever I might go.
Never mind the fact that I'm not particularly attractive. Ultimately, I may be an OK friend, but I would be a terrible boyfriend. That's just the way it is, and I feel completely powerless to change that.
It is what it is.
So I vowed never to fall in love ever again.
You know how well that works.
But we still ran into each other, and texted each other or called each other almost every day. And the whole time I was too bewildered by it. There was no way. So I naturally never asked her out. I naturally never told her what I felt. I mean, that's just the ways things go for me, why even try?
She is clearly out of my league.
Oh, she knows that I think she is beautiful, that is I think she is an amazing person. All of which certainly didn't require me to point it out.
I know, I knew, that eventually, it would wear out. I mean, she just wasn't into me that way. You know what I mean. So it was a matter of time before I was assed out, before she would find someone she did feel that way about.
It's funny, though. I knew precisely when that happened. I don't know how I intuited it, but now that she finally told me about her new boyfriend, it all makes sense in retrospect.
I miss talking to her every day, but thems is the breaks, I've got no one to blame but myself for wishing for things that could never come true.
Oh, of course there's a part of me that keeps thinking that, maybe if I actually tried, maybe. But deep down I know that it wouldn't have mattered. That feeling which, for the longest time I disavowed, was simply not reciprocated. Whatcha gonna do?
So here I am, in some ways worse off than I was back in February. By then, I had pretty much given up all hope. I knew then like I know now that I am going to be alone for the rest of my sad life, which I'm hoping won't be too excruciatingly long. But to have even dreamt of those possibilities, however remote, however impossible. In retrospect, it's kind of torturous. I could've just floated on through the past seven months just completely numb.
I don't know. I guess you can't undo what's been done.
I've never been a believer in the idea that it's better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.
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