Rick Riordan
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| Just lil' old me |
I have this strange sensation wandering inside myself lately, the feeling that I should be feeling something, but I don't.
I just can't, whatever it is. I can't.
This obviously has to do with a boy who has recently (or maybe not so recently) become interested in me. I do not return these feelings of affection. I will admit, I didn't give it a good college try, but I didn't completely banish the thought from my mind. Then again, when it comes to romantic feelings, I think if you have to give it a good college try, you never have and you never will acquire those feelings. This makes me feel better about my conclusions. I left myself open, and I guess that is all that I can ask from myself. All that I want to ask from myself.
He calls me pretty, beautiful, intelligent, admirable and, once, perfect. These words seem as meaningless and awkward as his other attempts at flirting. It isn't as endearing as one would hope, just cringe worthy moment after cringe worthy moment. I don't want him to fling these meaningless syllables at me just as much as I do not want to repay the favor.
He is under the illusion that he knows me, but obviously he doesn't, because if he did, he would know these shallow questions he insistently asks barely even nick my surface. It's more of a smudge on the glass than anything. He already has these assumptions about me, all from reading too deeply into emotionless and carefully constructed text messages. It reminds me of other boys who have developed feelings for me over the years. They have all put me on this pedestal, their own personalized pedestal, of who they are designing me to be.
Let's call him Matt: He was completely and utterly obsessed with movies. It didn't take me long to realize he was trying to fit me into his own personal script, like I would be the female lead of the indie romantic comedy that should be his life. Every action he took seemed derived from some director's cue in his mind. He fabricated some role for me and tried his best to mold me into his leading lady. It was pathetic. I'm sure even our break-up fell into some pivotal role in his pathological film.
Let's call him Daniel: While we hardly exchanged a full conversation, he become obsessed with the thought of me. He wasn't obsessed with me, just the thought of me. An abstracted version of myself that he created. He wanted the girl who he was convinced he had a connection with, the girl he assumed he had reached a deeper spiritual level with, the girl he dressed in poetry, the girl he actually thought he loved. That girl wasn't me, but she sure had my face.
Let's call him Robert: He was destructive and he imagined I was destructive as well. He didn't want someone to help him surface, he wanted someone he could sink deeper with. He was another who used an abstracted, created version of myself. One where I was just as jaded, mystical, and tormented as he, but also completely infatuated by him. This one was complicated, short, and dangerous, but he still didn't know me. And he still didn't like who I truly was.
Let's call her Bailey: After a brief meeting, a flirtation with one of my closest friends, she contacted me. I was suspicious of her immediately, but I replied to her texts, mostly of of confusion and curiosity. This was a mistake. She latched on to me, refusing to let go, no matter how coldly I answered, or how little I actually replied. She never even had a full conversation with me before I decided I needed to rid myself of her like a parasite. She was needy, codependent, hysterical, and everything I disliked in a person. But she had already created this persona for me. I was "mysterious" and "beautiful" and "deep" to her. Things she chose to describe me as, not words I would select for myself.
These are just a few of the people who have happened upon my life and manipulate it for what they want it to be.
My dad mentioned something to me just yesterday. He asked why it is that almost everyone who likes me takes a weird obsession to me?
That...that is a very good question. Not everyone has almost needed a restraining order, but the grand majority have hovered on the line of unhealthy obsession, some more than others. It makes me wonder why I bring out such a polarizing effect on people. I feel as though I'm basically ignored or they have a shrine of me in the back of their closet, complete with locks of hair.
Anyway, I feel as though this new guy is traveling the same sort of, well beaten, trail. What makes me worry is the distance between us (not to mention the sheer mass of texts and snapchats). Distance makes the imagination run wild. It is easy to forget what someone's bad habits are, irritations, the annoying things they say, the opinions they have that you don't agree with, and so on and so on, when you aren't there, with them in the flesh. Distance calls for perfection, it let's you focus on the desirable and blur out the undesirable.
I feel like I, again, am becoming more of a caricature of myself rather than me. Just me.
What's so wrong with just me?
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