[Day 2] Old friends

Today was the day I had to give something away. Originally, I intended this to mean a physical thing, but then I realized the broadness of the phrase. Was it possible, then, that I could give something like a secret or a personal story away? I thought so.

Yesterday in my AP Lit class, we were assigned a speech about ourselves. There were several main points we were supposed to hit on in order to get full points. Understand that although I know 95% of the class by name, I’ve actually talked on a personal level to maybe three or four people. So I was as much of a mystery to them as they are mysteries to me.

One of the points we had to cover was the most significant person in our lives. Only partly joking, I chose Liam Aiken. I explained how my bordering on obsessive crush on him helped me get through middle school in one piece. Other than the few random people who read my website around 8th grade (my estimate is five people), my family, and my closest friends, no one knew about the whole “Liam” thing, especially not the part about my daydreaming. I explained that even now sometimes I create a new plot for our love when I’m really stressed, to distract me from social issues, leaving me open to uninterrupted academics. The intensity of my “relationship” with Liam and my unhappiness in school were issues that I never brought up with people I didn’t know. I could feel my face almost burning off as I discussed it, afraid of the aftermath.

Another thing to understand is that although lately I’ve begun crying a lot more often, I have not cried at school since third grade. I work very hard at this feat, and try to avoid talking about it as well, because it makes me seem weaker than I want to appear. But when I described my favorite book, “The Last Days of Summer” by Steve Kluger, I didn’t hesitate to “give away” that I cried every time I read it. I didn’t just say it as a passing comment, I mentioned it more than once. Again, the wall between me and everyone else began to come down.

Finally, I had to talk about the hardest lesson I’ve ever learned. This was the most exposure of myself that I’ve ever had in a classroom full of strangers. Basically, for those of you who know me, my hardest lesson to learn was the one I learned from Dylan.

For those of you who don’t know me, let me explain this briefly. I met Dylan in 7th grade, when I was desperately alone and helpless in this new, strange world of cliques. I grew attached to him immediately, and I thought he felt the same. We were practically inseparable at lunchtime, because of our mutual love for basketball. Throughout our friendship, however, which spanned about five years, he would go through periods where he would not speak to me, or he would ditch me for other, cooler people, usually of his own gender. This hurt a lot, partly because I was so attached to him, and partly because that’s just a crappy thing to do to your friend. But then he would come back to me, begging forgiveness, claiming he had been “reformed”. And I would always let him back in. When he was considering himself my friend, he confided in me his deepest secrets and I confided in him. But that never lasted very long. This pattern occurred several times over the course of our friendship, until almost exactly a year ago. After avoiding my emails somewhat during the summer, we came back to school and shared two classes. I was friendly and asked him how his summer had been, but he seemed distant. He gradually stopped answering my questions, and then the standoffish behavior extended to him not even looking in my direction. I watched carefully from across the table as he went completely out of his way to ignore me. One night, he was on instant messenger and I started asking him questions. “Why? Why?” I pleaded. “What did I do wrong?”

Finally, he responded. “Dorky. Nerdy. Strange. Annoying. I’m done.” And that was the last thing he said to me, save for two passing comments he was forced into making in my direction for a newspaper story I was gathering information for.

Needless to say, even as a junior in high school, I was devastated. I had invested so much time and heart into that boy, just to have it all come crashing down around me. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t understand. I was always there for him, it didn’t make sense for HIM to be the one to end our friendship, if you could even call it that.

Basically, the hardest lesson I had to learn was that people who say they care about you don’t always actually care. Although I didn’t relate the Dylan story to my classmates, as I’m still having trouble coming to terms with it myself, I came as close as I ever have. I got a little emotional as I spoke about that point in the speech, but it was slight and no one noticed.

I gave a lot of myself away today, and I only hope that this time, it will not have negative consequences.

Also, on the off chance that I still have your attention, I have a comment to make about today’s pep assembly. Whose idea was it to throw hard plastic school spirit memorabilia into the throngs of students? Did no one comprehend that 1. it was dangerous enough for teachers to be chucking things at students without any particular aim, and 2. once students realized that the things could the thrown, they would do so violently? My friend almost got beaned in the head by one of those triangular, tri color highlighter deals. There were thick plastic Frisbees flying across the gym at impressive speeds. I felt like I was going through a war zone trying to get out of there. Please, school administration, think these sorts of things through.