Shutting an overdue door
God forgive me, for I have sinned. And I did it with a head full of annoyance as well, which makes it worse because it was pride run rampant. Still, what happend had, in a very real sense, already happened. A bit of storytelling is in order.
A long time ago, sixteen years ago to be spesific, I met a girl named Andrea. We were both seven at the time, and I was a very unpopular little boy, because, well, who knows, but I was. It had a lot to do with a big vocabulary and a big mouth and neither the wisdom nor the timing to wield either one effectively. I had some friends, but I did get picked on a lot verbally, though never physically.
There was one kid who was different. We got along, I thought, like a house on fire (where that expression came from I'll never know). We had similar interests in the wierd, scientific, sneaky and unusual. Protogeeks =) And all through the second grade year we were very tight. We weren't in class again untill fifth grade, and then after that we didn't see much of each other untill more than halfway through highschool. Still, it was a rare friendship I thought.
Our reuniting was very cool for me because even amongst my 'friends', I had few people who were genuinely nice to me. I still had not really learned how to be a social human being. Andrea introduced me to Tim, who is a good friend of mine to this day.
Somewhere along the line, and I never knew exactly when this happened, Andrea decided that my unsocial behavior was something she really, really did not like. Fair enough, though I was working on it. The only thing was that she never actually said anything. I know, I know, how do you say that to someone? Well, the problem was it took a long time for it to happen, and it wasn't all at once.
She would ignore me when we were out with the group, talk arround me, pretend I wasn't there, and basically not include me. These are, I realize, things that a lot of people do when they are arround people they don't want to be arround. But Andrea had lost interest in me in general, somewhere along the way, and was not greatly concerned. I was solidly ensconsed in friendships with almost all of her friends that she had introduced me to, and so I was a central member of "the group" that we had. This meant that I didn't get phased out and disapear. I was on the verge of simply doing so myself, because of how I was being treated by her, when Tim advised me not to. He said he didn't like the way she treated me, and that I shouldn't leave because of it. I told him that I thought I must deserve it, I knew I was no good socially and I didn't blame her for loosing patience with me. One can, after all, only take so much.
He agreed that I had a lot to work on, indeed we had been explicitly been working on turning me into a socially adept person with much success. He also said, however, that Andreas reaction to my personality flaws was up to Andrea, and not beyond her ability to control. Also, I had made much improovement, and her treatment of me had not improved along with it. Finally, the others in the group didn't have any issues with me, and mostly enjoyed having me arround.
After that, I became cognizent of the fact that Andrea was not my friend, and was actively against being arround me. I reacted accordingly, and became a lot less stressed out. When you think that a friend is ignoring you because your a social cripple and she can't take any more of you, that is quite draining. When you become aware that this friend has a responsability for her own feelings, and that she could be treating you nicely anyway, and that she has had continually less and less of a reason to ignore you, you stop taking offense at it, and start realizing that that is just the way she is, and it is no longer personal.
So began a period lasting probably two years, where we hung out with the same people, but there was no pretense that we were 'friends' as such. We had the same friends, but I no longer expected her to be nice to me or attempt to include me, so I was not hurt when these thigns never happened.
I did, however, begin to highly dislike her. She did things to the effect of taking emotionally vulnerable or dammaged people under her wing, and then dropping them when they came to depend on her. Weather it was because she got bored, or because they became clingy, or because they were getting better and no longer had enough problems to be fascinating to her (there was very definitly an element of this), they all suffered the same fate. She lost interest, and ignored them.
It happened to friends, it happened to boyfriends, it happened to people who depended on her. I am guilty of as much of it as she is certianly, but I do believe that I at least felt remorse for my mistakes and tried to make amends for them. Andrea just sailed on, oblivioius to the pain she was inflicting on people emotionally. When asked about it, she would have an elaborate story, full of tragic drama and reasons why she, certianly, was not at fault for any pain anyone else was experiencing. Not once, in all of her relationships that went sour, was anything of her own doing, according to her.
She had other habbits as well. She liked to sleep in, a lot, and as often as she could. It was not at all uncommon for an event to be postponed or cancled because she was only just waking up when we called her to find out why she was already twenty minutes late. Tim wouldn't go without her, because they were best friends, and, it was very much against his general principal to leave anyone out just for being late. I, personally, really didn't like her at this point, so I found all the waiting arround for her to be very exasperating. What usually wound up happening was that we would wait, and wait, call, get no answer, drive to her apartment, wake her up, and be way too late do do whatever it was we'd planned on doing.
After a while even Tim decided that she simply wasn't interested in being anyones serious friend. When things were finally building to a head, that was when she moved to Olympia, Washington. She said she liked the pacific northwest, and it is easy to believe, the ares is stunning. Ostensably she was going for the purpose of putting physical distance between her and her ex-boyfriend Ryan.
Ryan was (and, unfortunately, is) a very dark and somewhat introverted guy. Andrea found him fascinating. Long story short, she dumped him when they were both very much in love with each other. We all found the match up to be kind of scary and unwholsome anyway, but the end of it was awful to see. Ryan totally self destructed and started using booz and soft core drugs. Andrea wallwed in melodrama. She broke up with him "because I knew I couldn't keep him forever" whatever that meant.
Not long after the initial aftershocks subsided Andrea started dating Ryans best friend Bryan. This really twisted the knife in Ryans back. Worst of all was the fact that (I learned this later on) at the outset Andrea had told Bryan that she was still, and always would be, in love with Ryan, and would never feel that way about him. Sadly, Bryan had no problem with that.
That relationship only lasted a couple of months before they 'broke up'. Bryan hung all over Andrea in public all the time, and Andrea did very little to stop him. She confided in Tim that she really, really didn't want him to keep doing that, but that she didn't have the heart to stop him. It got very uncomfortable for us to be arround the two of them in, in public or private.
On one occasion she blew us off to masquerade as a lesbian to go out with her gay friend so he wouldn't look pathetic going into the gay bar all by himself to pick up a gay one night stand.
These were the things that I didn't like. So when she came back from Washington recently, I didn't hear about it untill I found out secondhand from my mom that she had invited my younger brother to a housewarming party of hers. Mom was upset that she had invited only my brother.
It all finally came to an end yesterday night when I was on my lunch break at Barnes and Noble. She came into the store and decided to come over to my table and talk to me. I really didn't want to be arround her and wasn't making an effort to conceal this. I fessed up about that and said, simply, that I didn't like her. She asked why (sounding quite astonished), I was in the middle of explaining this when she answered a cell phone call without warning and tuned me out.
So she called to find out what she was too buisy listning to her phone to hear me explain. I explained it, she refuted everything, and when I brought up the 'ditch us to hook a guy up with a gay one night stand' story, her initial defense was "I don't think I promissed I was going to hang out with you guys".
I aknowledge that as a younger guy, I had no social skills, there was no matching concession from her regarding...anything. The call got somewhat heated and she said, "OK, Fine, this phone call is over..." I cut her off, my response was, "Fine! I didn't want it to happen in the first place!" and I hung up.
Not attractive behavior, not smart, not Christian. But nothing I could have said would have gotten anything out of her. She's the kind of person who, when you admit something, takes it and runs with it as further proof of her own infalability. I lost my cool, and, that may be the end of our association. Not that the association had much to it, she never called, or communicated in anyway, and made no effort to hang out with me. This was just a formalization of reality.
I don't know what to do, or what to say, it was over a long time ago, but I still blew it in the end. But I couldn't think of any other way to finally end it.
::shrug::
I did wrong, but I can't tell how much, and I couldn't see any other way.
Alexey the Sinner
A long time ago, sixteen years ago to be spesific, I met a girl named Andrea. We were both seven at the time, and I was a very unpopular little boy, because, well, who knows, but I was. It had a lot to do with a big vocabulary and a big mouth and neither the wisdom nor the timing to wield either one effectively. I had some friends, but I did get picked on a lot verbally, though never physically.
There was one kid who was different. We got along, I thought, like a house on fire (where that expression came from I'll never know). We had similar interests in the wierd, scientific, sneaky and unusual. Protogeeks =) And all through the second grade year we were very tight. We weren't in class again untill fifth grade, and then after that we didn't see much of each other untill more than halfway through highschool. Still, it was a rare friendship I thought.
Our reuniting was very cool for me because even amongst my 'friends', I had few people who were genuinely nice to me. I still had not really learned how to be a social human being. Andrea introduced me to Tim, who is a good friend of mine to this day.
Somewhere along the line, and I never knew exactly when this happened, Andrea decided that my unsocial behavior was something she really, really did not like. Fair enough, though I was working on it. The only thing was that she never actually said anything. I know, I know, how do you say that to someone? Well, the problem was it took a long time for it to happen, and it wasn't all at once.
She would ignore me when we were out with the group, talk arround me, pretend I wasn't there, and basically not include me. These are, I realize, things that a lot of people do when they are arround people they don't want to be arround. But Andrea had lost interest in me in general, somewhere along the way, and was not greatly concerned. I was solidly ensconsed in friendships with almost all of her friends that she had introduced me to, and so I was a central member of "the group" that we had. This meant that I didn't get phased out and disapear. I was on the verge of simply doing so myself, because of how I was being treated by her, when Tim advised me not to. He said he didn't like the way she treated me, and that I shouldn't leave because of it. I told him that I thought I must deserve it, I knew I was no good socially and I didn't blame her for loosing patience with me. One can, after all, only take so much.
He agreed that I had a lot to work on, indeed we had been explicitly been working on turning me into a socially adept person with much success. He also said, however, that Andreas reaction to my personality flaws was up to Andrea, and not beyond her ability to control. Also, I had made much improovement, and her treatment of me had not improved along with it. Finally, the others in the group didn't have any issues with me, and mostly enjoyed having me arround.
After that, I became cognizent of the fact that Andrea was not my friend, and was actively against being arround me. I reacted accordingly, and became a lot less stressed out. When you think that a friend is ignoring you because your a social cripple and she can't take any more of you, that is quite draining. When you become aware that this friend has a responsability for her own feelings, and that she could be treating you nicely anyway, and that she has had continually less and less of a reason to ignore you, you stop taking offense at it, and start realizing that that is just the way she is, and it is no longer personal.
So began a period lasting probably two years, where we hung out with the same people, but there was no pretense that we were 'friends' as such. We had the same friends, but I no longer expected her to be nice to me or attempt to include me, so I was not hurt when these thigns never happened.
I did, however, begin to highly dislike her. She did things to the effect of taking emotionally vulnerable or dammaged people under her wing, and then dropping them when they came to depend on her. Weather it was because she got bored, or because they became clingy, or because they were getting better and no longer had enough problems to be fascinating to her (there was very definitly an element of this), they all suffered the same fate. She lost interest, and ignored them.
It happened to friends, it happened to boyfriends, it happened to people who depended on her. I am guilty of as much of it as she is certianly, but I do believe that I at least felt remorse for my mistakes and tried to make amends for them. Andrea just sailed on, oblivioius to the pain she was inflicting on people emotionally. When asked about it, she would have an elaborate story, full of tragic drama and reasons why she, certianly, was not at fault for any pain anyone else was experiencing. Not once, in all of her relationships that went sour, was anything of her own doing, according to her.
She had other habbits as well. She liked to sleep in, a lot, and as often as she could. It was not at all uncommon for an event to be postponed or cancled because she was only just waking up when we called her to find out why she was already twenty minutes late. Tim wouldn't go without her, because they were best friends, and, it was very much against his general principal to leave anyone out just for being late. I, personally, really didn't like her at this point, so I found all the waiting arround for her to be very exasperating. What usually wound up happening was that we would wait, and wait, call, get no answer, drive to her apartment, wake her up, and be way too late do do whatever it was we'd planned on doing.
After a while even Tim decided that she simply wasn't interested in being anyones serious friend. When things were finally building to a head, that was when she moved to Olympia, Washington. She said she liked the pacific northwest, and it is easy to believe, the ares is stunning. Ostensably she was going for the purpose of putting physical distance between her and her ex-boyfriend Ryan.
Ryan was (and, unfortunately, is) a very dark and somewhat introverted guy. Andrea found him fascinating. Long story short, she dumped him when they were both very much in love with each other. We all found the match up to be kind of scary and unwholsome anyway, but the end of it was awful to see. Ryan totally self destructed and started using booz and soft core drugs. Andrea wallwed in melodrama. She broke up with him "because I knew I couldn't keep him forever" whatever that meant.
Not long after the initial aftershocks subsided Andrea started dating Ryans best friend Bryan. This really twisted the knife in Ryans back. Worst of all was the fact that (I learned this later on) at the outset Andrea had told Bryan that she was still, and always would be, in love with Ryan, and would never feel that way about him. Sadly, Bryan had no problem with that.
That relationship only lasted a couple of months before they 'broke up'. Bryan hung all over Andrea in public all the time, and Andrea did very little to stop him. She confided in Tim that she really, really didn't want him to keep doing that, but that she didn't have the heart to stop him. It got very uncomfortable for us to be arround the two of them in, in public or private.
On one occasion she blew us off to masquerade as a lesbian to go out with her gay friend so he wouldn't look pathetic going into the gay bar all by himself to pick up a gay one night stand.
These were the things that I didn't like. So when she came back from Washington recently, I didn't hear about it untill I found out secondhand from my mom that she had invited my younger brother to a housewarming party of hers. Mom was upset that she had invited only my brother.
It all finally came to an end yesterday night when I was on my lunch break at Barnes and Noble. She came into the store and decided to come over to my table and talk to me. I really didn't want to be arround her and wasn't making an effort to conceal this. I fessed up about that and said, simply, that I didn't like her. She asked why (sounding quite astonished), I was in the middle of explaining this when she answered a cell phone call without warning and tuned me out.
So she called to find out what she was too buisy listning to her phone to hear me explain. I explained it, she refuted everything, and when I brought up the 'ditch us to hook a guy up with a gay one night stand' story, her initial defense was "I don't think I promissed I was going to hang out with you guys".
I aknowledge that as a younger guy, I had no social skills, there was no matching concession from her regarding...anything. The call got somewhat heated and she said, "OK, Fine, this phone call is over..." I cut her off, my response was, "Fine! I didn't want it to happen in the first place!" and I hung up.
Not attractive behavior, not smart, not Christian. But nothing I could have said would have gotten anything out of her. She's the kind of person who, when you admit something, takes it and runs with it as further proof of her own infalability. I lost my cool, and, that may be the end of our association. Not that the association had much to it, she never called, or communicated in anyway, and made no effort to hang out with me. This was just a formalization of reality.
I don't know what to do, or what to say, it was over a long time ago, but I still blew it in the end. But I couldn't think of any other way to finally end it.
::shrug::
I did wrong, but I can't tell how much, and I couldn't see any other way.
Alexey the Sinner
posted by Alexios at 10:37 PM
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