Does It Count?
Jan. 30th, 2001 09:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
azuriteI met someone at my after school when I was quote-unquote little. I don't actually put that in quotes, because you could read it as being physically little, which I still am, or little, as in, small, young, immature... which is what I meant. Anywho, he was nice. An outcast like me, for some of the same, and for different reasons. I had other friends, of course, I had crushes, but he was really nice to me. REALLY nice. He bought me presents of quarts, jewelry boxes made out of glass and gold, roses... he spoiled me rotten, and told me he loved me. I didn't know what to think-- I suppose I was young, naive, and inexperienced. Then again, so was he. He was younger than I. Yet he claimed he had "experience". I never believed him about that, though. Up to 5th grade, even after we both left the after school and only saw each other when we arranged it to be so, we were friends.
But that summer, in 1996, my sister died in a tragic accident. I call that the "Year of Hell" because after that one day in summer, my life changed. I never expected to hear that my older sister was dead. Broken legs, maybe even handicapped for a while, but never dead. She was my role model, and I always thought she was more responsible than that. Throughout the whole funeral ordeal, he was the only one there for me. No one thought to call my friends; I didn't have the strength to. I had to be my mother's support, and I slowly grew into thinking that was all I was worth. I wasn't a daughter at all. I blamed myself, of course, almost all siblings involved in tragedies do, but no one ever took the immense pain of it all off my shoulders. I sort of shrunk into a shell, and turned into someone different. Probably someone that would have scared me if I had seen how I'd become.
Middle school started, and I was overjoyed that he was attending the same one as I. I met lots of new people, got involved in lots of problems and work, and slowly drifted away from him. Maybe it was more because of how I had changed, and he sensed it before I did. 7th grade: he ignored me, made new friends, even went to lengths to make me feel horrible my teasing me. But my new friends helped me through. Then, I finally got fed up, asked one of my friends to ask him how he really felt, in private. She returned 15 minutes later, a grim look on her face. Her eyes could have spoekn volumes, but I had hope. Hah. No such thing, not anymore. She related to me that he hated me, thought I was annoying, and stupid, and ugly... the words sounded like something a kindergartener would say, but then...
8th grade came and went, and with it, he did. He moved, and though I had talked to his mother, a friend of my family's, after the ceremony, and seen him as well, nowhere near his horribly influencing friends, I was afraid, and too hurt to do what I wish I HAD done:
Walk up to him without fear, pull him into my arms, and hug him for all he was worth. Tell him softly that I would miss him more than I could say, and no matter how he felt about me, he'd always have a place in my heart, my home, my life. I never saw him again. I don't even know if he still lives where I heard he moved to. I never had an address, and part of me wonders if I still care. I mean, despite the immaturity of our relationship, when I told people about it, they considered him my boyfriend. So, in high school, I had had an ex-boyfriend, one who had broken it of with me rather harshly, and it still hurt. So that was why I didn't understand how I could have fallen in love (supposedly) so easily with someone else, so unlike him, so different from any other guy I seemed to know. Now he's gone too, and I wonder if I really ever loved either of them, or one more. More often, I wonder, did what we had count? To him? For something more than some youthful stupidity? To me, or my future? I don't know. Maybe I never will.
But that summer, in 1996, my sister died in a tragic accident. I call that the "Year of Hell" because after that one day in summer, my life changed. I never expected to hear that my older sister was dead. Broken legs, maybe even handicapped for a while, but never dead. She was my role model, and I always thought she was more responsible than that. Throughout the whole funeral ordeal, he was the only one there for me. No one thought to call my friends; I didn't have the strength to. I had to be my mother's support, and I slowly grew into thinking that was all I was worth. I wasn't a daughter at all. I blamed myself, of course, almost all siblings involved in tragedies do, but no one ever took the immense pain of it all off my shoulders. I sort of shrunk into a shell, and turned into someone different. Probably someone that would have scared me if I had seen how I'd become.
Middle school started, and I was overjoyed that he was attending the same one as I. I met lots of new people, got involved in lots of problems and work, and slowly drifted away from him. Maybe it was more because of how I had changed, and he sensed it before I did. 7th grade: he ignored me, made new friends, even went to lengths to make me feel horrible my teasing me. But my new friends helped me through. Then, I finally got fed up, asked one of my friends to ask him how he really felt, in private. She returned 15 minutes later, a grim look on her face. Her eyes could have spoekn volumes, but I had hope. Hah. No such thing, not anymore. She related to me that he hated me, thought I was annoying, and stupid, and ugly... the words sounded like something a kindergartener would say, but then...
8th grade came and went, and with it, he did. He moved, and though I had talked to his mother, a friend of my family's, after the ceremony, and seen him as well, nowhere near his horribly influencing friends, I was afraid, and too hurt to do what I wish I HAD done:
Walk up to him without fear, pull him into my arms, and hug him for all he was worth. Tell him softly that I would miss him more than I could say, and no matter how he felt about me, he'd always have a place in my heart, my home, my life. I never saw him again. I don't even know if he still lives where I heard he moved to. I never had an address, and part of me wonders if I still care. I mean, despite the immaturity of our relationship, when I told people about it, they considered him my boyfriend. So, in high school, I had had an ex-boyfriend, one who had broken it of with me rather harshly, and it still hurt. So that was why I didn't understand how I could have fallen in love (supposedly) so easily with someone else, so unlike him, so different from any other guy I seemed to know. Now he's gone too, and I wonder if I really ever loved either of them, or one more. More often, I wonder, did what we had count? To him? For something more than some youthful stupidity? To me, or my future? I don't know. Maybe I never will.
