...is not the same as looking back.
(I started writing this at around 1-2am.)
Lately I keep daydreaming about time travel. Earlier tonight I wondered, what would happen if I got stuck back in time and I couldn't get Rae to love me? Then I panicked, woke her up. She got mad and very irritated (well it IS late at night) and I was left alone to be upset. Not fun times.
My best friend, B, texted me about 20 minutes ago.
"I can't remember is X (on dA) is L or C, but she definitely wrote something about you as a deviation in her gallery."
I knew exactly who it was, and I told her.
"Ahhh... Have you see it then?"
Spooked, I went ahead and logged on and looked up the profile on deviantArt. The submission was hard to miss- it was the newest deviation in months.
Now, this girl and I have a bit of an odd history, as far as friendships go. I met her during summer classes in high school. We hung out; I was happy to meet someone about my age that I could talk to for longer than 5 minutes without wanting to strangle myself. We were friends the next year- my junior year, her a sophomore. Again, lunch buddies, fun times. I started dating a sociopath. Got engaged. We broke up. She started dating my ex pretty much around the first... 10 minutes after we broke up, if my ex is to be believed, an hour if this girl was telling the truth. According to people around her, she started getting a little obsessive. It got a bit scary for me. I was diagnosed with paranoia issues early on my freshman year. I got spooked.
I left, moved to Japan for a little over a year. She planned to go with me, and I welcomed the company. I hadn't talked to her in a while and things were fine. She started flaking on me and I was hit with bad depression. I went home. She got mad. We stopped talking for a while. All throughout high school and up until about last summer, I never kept most plans I made. Either I made plans during a manic episode and I dropped right before it was time to go, or I was low and hoped it would cheer me up but I stayed low. My family also tended to make plans last-minute and I was expected to keep them, so I would have to cancel plans with friends. In time I would try to accept invitations with a 'sure, if I'm able to go, I'll let you know ahead of time.' In the end, I never went out if I could help it. The girl and I stopped talking.
So here I am, feeling guilty and lying awake at 1:30am, wondering what I should do. What CAN I do? Is it wrong to just ignore her words, poured out in what could be a last plea for friendship?
What is there to say?
This is what she wrote:
++Author's Name Deleted For Privacy++
I love her. I realize that now. I always have, from the first day I met her. She was different back then, shyer and more confident at the same time. I stared at her as I hid behind my black clothes and silent demeanor. She defied everything I had come to know about the world. She wore gray, which is unremarkable in itself, but she surrounded herself with people, that I would hesitate to define as "goth" but outsiders would not hesitate to use such a stereotype; and she too would have fit into that category. I found it strange then, that she could wear gray, when I, and all others that I knew like us, were confined to black.
I payed her little attention after the first day, she was a leader in the club that I was in, but there were other, more obviously interesting people in the club that stole my interest from her. It is probably for the best, as I am easily obsessed, and I have no doubt that at that time she was not ready for my friendship, and I was not ready for her strange, and undeniably twisted personality.
We did not speak until much later, my first summer in high school. An entire year had passed, and we had not said a single word to each other, but during that summer we became friends. I don't remember her first words to me and I doubt very much that they were earth-shattering. That summer consisted of us sitting on the bench outside of our summer classes, during the lunch break, talking and sharing food. There was a big group, there was always a big group back then, so the two of us didn't become particularly close, or even exchange phone numbers, but the next year we ate lunch together, and I became a leader of our club as well.
My attention was again stolen from her by others. I met a boy that year that she never approved of. He was mostly harmless and I brought him into the group, but she had a very distinct distaste for him from the very beginning, and later, when he started developing feelings for me, she seemed to dislike him even more. In the end she was right, but I don't know if she knows that. I didn't speak to her about him much after she graduated, and she has never asked.
In my junior year we had a class together, and because of that my attention was almost solely on her. We became great friends, and spent much time together, in and out of school. She had a girlfriend that year; a beautiful, funny, happy snake, whom we both loved very much. When the snake cheated on her, and they broke up, I took her place by the snake's side. My sensitivity was my savior and my downfall. The snake didn't like how close we were, but when I was crying in the back of class, she still comforted me, and stood up for me when the snake tried to eat lunch with us. I don't know, can't say, what exactly happened then, but it brought us even closer than we were before.
I spent many nights at her house that year and the next, and she always chose me to sleep with at slumber parties. It was comforting, I was starved for attention and human contact, and she was the first one to give it to me freely, and frequently. It never felt sexual, but it still felt good, and at times I liked to pretend that the others thought we might have something going on, but I don't know if they ever really thought that, and it wasn't the case.
She taught me a love of tea, and cocktail onions, and raw pasta, as we sat on the roof of her house and talked about nothing. She embodies what I think of as an artist, so passionate and lost in her own little world. I love that world she showed me. It makes my own seem dull and pale in comparison, and just as I will never draw as well as her; I will never have a world quite as bright as hers.
My life has meaning for having known her, and while I am not defined by her, my life was irreversibly changed by her. I never would have thought it possible, let alone feasible, to go to Japan to live, even if it is just for a year or so, but she did, and she always talked about how she would in school. It is truly because of her that I will be able to go. I felt betrayed when she came back before I could join her, and then when she could never see me for this or that reason. I wish that we could be close again, like we were before, but I doubt very much that that will happen. I miss her, but I still wish her all the happiness in the world.
Conflicted,
Eden.
