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It’s
Friday night and I’m alone, for the time being. I’m eating at a Chinese
buffet, just like pretty much every Friday night. Like every Friday night,
my roommate Blake is at work and will be until about 10:30. Normally my
other roommate, John, would have gone home for the weekend, but he’s in town
tonight with his girlfriend. They’re up here tonight because it’s
Valentine’s Day.
It’s
Valentine’s Day and I’m completely and utterly alone.
As
if the situation weren’t humiliating enough, a young couple is seated right
next to me. They’re white trash at its finest: her way too skinny and pale,
him way too fat and wearing a shirt that says “Big dogs only drink on days
that end in ‘y’.” Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have given them more than a passing
thought, but today I’m in a different mood. Today I feel jealous as hell.
These two bottom-scrapers have somehow found each other and are together and
happy, and I’m sitting here alone wondering if I’m ever going to find my
soul mate. Or if one even exists. I want to crawl under the table, ball
up, and wait for this God-forsaken holiday to be over. But of course I
don’t. I just finish my lo mein, smile at the cashier as I pay, and walk
out.
At
this point, I can go home and sit in my empty apartment, call some of my
friends even though I know they’re all out, or put on a sad CD and just
drive. I choose the latter. I put on a disc I made especially for
occasions like these, which are becoming more and more frequent. As Air
Supply’s “All Out of Love” fades in, I pull out of the parking lot and head
off to nowhere. I make sure to keep to back roads where not many cars will
be: I don’t need a parade of headlights piercing through me like the
judgmental eyes of a thousand high school girls.
Why
am I like this? When did I turn from Happy Danny, the good-natured,
happy-go-lucky guy who shrugs off all of his problems, into Miserable
Daniel, the dour self-loathing misanthrope who wants nothing more than to
fester in a pool of his own misery? If I had to pinpoint one night, it
would have to be Super Bowl Sunday.
For
this story to make sense, you need to understand that I recently started
hanging out with a few different people than normal, and one of them is a
girl named Mary. Mary is cool, beautiful, and funny, and pretty much
completely unattainable for me. So, of course, I developed a huge crush on
her within the first hour I met her. I go through this a lot, a lot more
than any other guy I know, anyway. Then again, practically every guy I know
has a girlfriend. Either way, it happened and I quickly went to work
completely avoiding contact with her, out of fear that… well, I don’t know
what I was scared of, really, but I was, just like I have been in every
situation like this I’ve been in dating back to at least the seventh grade.
After a few weeks, I felt it was necessary to let my roommate John know
about my little attraction. I can trust him, I figured. Within two days,
literally everyone in my group of friends knew about it, and I swore I’d
never tell anyone a secret again. I never did find out if anyone told Mary
or not. It doesn’t really matter anyway.
So,
Super Bowl Sunday I’m over at a friend’s house watching the game. All of my
friends are there, as is Mary. My friend’s older brother had set up a pool
on the points at the end of the half, so I threw in two bucks just for the
hell of it. I didn’t really pay much attention to the game, since Mary was
sitting right next to me and I was constantly on the verge of talking to her
or mad at myself because I panicked and didn’t. However, in the last two
minutes, I realized that my friend’s brother and I were about to win about
eleven bucks apiece. It’s a big deal to a college student with no job. The
half ended and we won, and my friend’s brother insisted I take a shot with
him, which I did, quite a few times.
It
helps to keep in mind that I never really drink, and this guy is about
twenty-four and drinks constantly. Needless, by the second half, I was,
ahem, having a good time. It was then that I decided it would be funny to
get John’s attention and put my arm around Mary. I did, and he started
laughing, and Mary saw him, and the fun was over. About thirty minutes
later, John took me aside and said, laughing, “Mary saw you put your arm
around her.”
“So?”
“I
think she knows, man.” To this day, John swears he never said that, but
seeing as how I consider it the moment my life turned to crap, I’m fairly
sure it happened. After a minute or two, I walked outside, and just kept
going. I knew I didn’t really want to be around anyone at that point, so I
locked myself in my car, put Dire Straits’ “Romeo and Juliet” on repeat and,
after writing two rambling and depressing notes to Mary, just sat there,
letting myself drown in a wave of melancholy. Looking back, it probably
looked like I was trying to cause a scene, but I really just wanted to be
alone. I would have driven home, had I been capable to.
After about an hour, John and another friend came out to talk to me. I
realize now that this was probably a really weird situation for them. I’ve
never shown them any sort of emotion, other than happiness, and now all of a
sudden here I am, locked in my car, probably not looking much better than I
felt. After some relenting, I explained the situation, and they basically
told me not to worry about it (what else could they say, really?). After a
while, I put my happy face back on and went back inside and pretended like
nothing was wrong. Then, after about three hours of sitting in the corner
and not talking to anyone, I caught a ride home with someone and fell asleep
in front of the TV watching "Say Anything".
Why
did this happen? Most people would probably say I was just drunk, but I
know deep down inside that this isn’t true. I guess I just couldn’t hold in
my emotions anymore, and I let them spill out at, admittedly, a bad time. I
guess I was just tired of pretending to be happy. I pretend not to care
what people think of me, then I bend over backwards for them to think I’m
never sad. Why? What is it about showing people my emotions that is so
scary? This goes way back to middle school, maybe further. It’s not just
friends, either. I do the same to my parents, or I used to when I still
lived at home, which was a huge emotional drain: if you can’t be miserable
in your own house, where can you be? I even find myself masking my emotions
from total strangers. I pass someone at the store and they say “Hi, how are
ya?” I just smile and say “fine.” Why? I don’t care about them, why can’t
I just say, “I’m pretty shitty, thanks.”
The
following couple of weeks were horrible for me. I made the mistake of
making a couple passing jokes about what had happened just to keep everyone
from thinking I was some kind of basketcase, but this backfired on me and
let everyone think I had no problem with them making constant jokes about
the incident. Then, a few weeks later, the bombshell came, and the
bombshell was this: my friend Justin has a class with Mary and she asked him
after class one day if I was still mad at her. This was just the icing on
the crap cake that is my life. Something had to happen, I knew.
That
Saturday, I was at a friend’s house and Mary came over. I mustered up all
the strength and self-confidence I had (didn’t take long, I don’t have too
much of either) and took Mary outside and we talked about what happened. I
explained myself and apologized for making a scene and making her think I
was mad at her. I apologized, she accepted, and things were cool.
Then, something weird happened. We kept talking. We had this really long,
really great conversation about really important stuff (religion, school,
careers, what others think of us, etc.) and it was great. I very rarely
have any sort of conversations with anyone, let alone a memorable one, but
this was just perfect. Even the pauses seemed to hold importance. This
sounds like poetic BS, but we clicked on a level that was far beyond
anything physical. Then she hugged me, said she had a great time talking to
me, and left. I went home feeling unbelievably happy for the first time in
a long time. For the next few days, I was filled with confidence and joy.
Mary
had mentioned once or twice that she had never gotten a Valentine before, so
the next day I decided that I would get her one for Valentine’s Day. All
week I sat on this idea, thinking it was a great idea. Then, on Wednesday,
I figured the smartest thing to do would be to tell John what I was going to
do. Within the next day everyone knew and I swore for the second time that
I would never tell anyone another secret. All that confidence that our
conversation had given me was crushed in an instant and I turned back into
the old me. If this was going to happen, I needed someone to talk me into
it, and since John was the only one around, he had to do. When he told me
that he didn’t think it was a good idea, I wished I had taken the extra
effort to just go pick up the phone and call someone outside of my
apartment.
John
explained that while it may have been a really great conversation Mary and I
had, it was nothing more than that: a conversation. While it pained me to
admit it, I knew he was right. I knew it all along, really.
Subconsciously, I knew we really didn’t have any sort of connection, I think
that’s why I tried to hold out and not tell anyone about what I wanted to
do. The less people that knew, the less people to talk me out of it, to
make me face the truth. I knew. In the end, I knew it would never work
out.
So,
I gave Mary nothing, and I regretted it, but it’s not that big of a deal
anymore. For most, life is a series of positive events, but lately my life
has become a series of regrets for positive events that could have happened,
should have happened, were I not such an emotional coward. These are the
things that are going through my head as I drive alone tonight, Valentine’s
Day night.
By
now, I’ve already played out my entire relationship with Mary in my head.
At best, we may become decent friends, but that’s not likely. I’ve been
through this before, and things always turn sour, and it’s always my fault.
I begin to harbor some pointless resentment toward whatever girl I’m
obsessing on at that point, and I eventually destroy the chances of any form
of relationship. Maybe I’m getting too deep. I don’t know.
And
that’s the hardest part about all of it. I have no clue how to right these
situations that I create for myself. There is no way, really. Looking
back, this has been going on for pretty much as long as I’ve had, or at
least wanted, relationships with the opposite sex. Who was I really so mad
at on Super Bowl Sunday? John? Not really. Mary? Not in a million
years. That only leaves one person and it’s the person that I know has been
behind this whole pathetic, tragic play that has been my post-pubescent
life.
Me.
In
the end, I’ve probably known all along, just didn’t want to admit it. It
was always a lot easier to pass the buck to someone else and forget about
it. That night, I wasn’t angry at anyone, really, I was disappointed in
myself. Why? Where to begin: I’d let myself start obsessing over yet
another girl who I’d probably never get, I’d put my arm around her and
embarrassed myself and, even worse, embarrassed her as well. I was behind
this whole thing and it sucks. Anyone who’s stubbed their toe or banged
their knee on the bedpost knows there’s nothing worse for a human than
having no one to blame for their pain but themselves.
And
the pain gets worse every time. When you don’t deal with things like this,
they don’t just disappear, no matter how much you try to convince yourself
that they do. They just suppress. My half-time breakdown wasn’t brought
about by Mary alone, but by Alissa, Courtney, Jessica, Rebecca, and every
other girl I’ve ever gone through this with, going all the way back to
middle school.
The
more I think about this, the more sense it makes. It all comes back to
fear. Most people would probably lean more towards laziness, but I know
it’s fear. I don’t have the self-confidence to get over these kinds of
things easily, or try to take relationships to the next level, or do pretty
much anything outside of just barely exist. But it goes further than that.
I do go out of my way to make sure I can stay stuck in this state. I
willfully let relationships turn to crap just so that I can live comfortably
in this rut, never facing up to the fact that I’ve created the rut. But it
can’t be that much harder to destroy it, can it?
Eventually, I’ll get bored with driving in a car filled with crappy 80’s
love songs and my own self-accusations. In a perfect world, I’d take to
heart everything I just revealed to you the readers, and myself, and make
changes in my life, and live happily ever after. But, as anyone who’s lived
past the age of thirteen knows, ‘happily ever after’ is an ideal, not a
goal.
I
always try to end my columns with some sort of funny punch line, or at least
a little positivity, but I can’t do it this time. If I hadn’t been through
this so many times before, maybe I could try and say that things will work
out between me and Mary, but I know they won’t, not to the extent that I
would like them to, anyway. The truth is, nothing will work out, nothing
ever does, at least not for me. And tonight, on this Valentine’s Day night,
this is the sentiment that echoes through my head as I try to drift to
sleep, to escape to a better place in a different life. |
