5) Resentment

Part Five
(This is chapter five of my personal accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )



So there I was, another school year approaching, and my hopes had completely rejected me.

Junior Year

I can't say that I was feeling up to the task of returning to school. I was terribly concerned about what Kelley was thinking about me, of course, and worried that I might very well have ruined everything. I was afraid that I had bungled my only chance at ever finding happiness. Then I was convincing myself that maybe I just wasn't good enough a person to deserve any girl, that I was bound to be alone forever.

Fortunately, that August I had cross country practice to distract me from thinking those things TOO much. Also, by physically taxing myself with the running every day, a time warp effect was again produced which made everything else I did go by faster.

The first days of school were a flurry of inconveniences. In between going to my scheduled classes and looking out every time in between for a glimpse of Kelley, I found a flaw in my schedule. I had wanted to take Japanese in addition to my third year Spanish, as I was interested in taking a more foreign language and thought my interest in Japanese animation would supplement the learning. However, 11th grade Health was required for all juniors (it had one essential thing that the first health class had not: CPR). Because of this, my schedule was lacking the Japanese. So I made a point of going to the advisor that day and trying to fix it... the only solution was for me to take Health class as a zero-hour (it was only a one semester class while japanese was a full year). After fixing this problem and picking an art class as an elective for a newly-opened slot, the next day I realized that I was also missing another essential class: IB Biology. So once again I had to run to my advisor, which was very hectic in itself because he made himself very hard to find. I tried to go to him between every class, but had no luck. Finally, I caught him wandering around after school, and had to shuffle each and every one of my classes around. Lucky for me, everything I wanted fit: Japanese AND Biology and all of my required classes (I just didn't get an extra art class anymore).

I was particularly lucky with my zero hour, because on my way home on the second hectic day, I spoke with an acquaintance on the bus. He, Brett, was taking Steve's dreaded senior IB History class as a zero hour, and he, his sister, and their friend all carpooled. I managed to get in on the carpool, and since he lived only a few blocks away from me it was very convenient indeed -mostly for me.

After all of the schedule switching, I finally settled down into my own classes confident that they would no longer change.

The Schedule:

I was required to wake up an hour earlier than usual to run out to my carpool and catch the ride to my zero hour Health class. I spent most of my time in that class half asleep, the back of my head resting against the back wall. Once again, the curriculum was most unchallenging and consisted of reading textbooks and turning in basic comprehension questions. Among the health class students, I found that most of them were IB juniors like myself, and they shared a great sleepiness and a general unenthused dubious feeling about this required 'subject'. In the class were:
-Nick, the easy-going and friendly yet dangerous guy (at first I couldn't tell whether he was being my friend or making fun of me, and I STILL don't know sometimes)
-Jesse, the stoner valedictorian, joking at one moment and vindictive the next, who got away with molesting too many girls
-Julie, the smart and gorgeous girl, everybody's friend, and with whom I wished dearly to succeed in making conversation (she always gave me chances)
-Various familiar social guys and girls who laughed and joked and never quite included me

My first hour class came to be First Year Japanese. It was somewhat embarrassing, because everyone else taking the class was a freshman: I was the only junior. Nevertheless, from the very beginning I excelled in the subject matter, which I found to be very easy. As everyone in that room was in their first year of high school, I was slightly less uncomfortable and, though I'm reluctant to admit it, I found it comforting to have the cute girls in the class look up to me.

After Japanese I ran up the stairs to attend IB English. As an odd break, the usual strict eleventh grade teacher was on leave for a year, and we had a substitute: Ms. Nelson. It was easy to see early on that Ms. Nelson was too easy to control. The class had her in their hands nearly immediately, and some of the more outspoken students were able to manipulate assignments and due dates to their convenience. All it required was that standard outcry of shock and outrage at the mention of anything remotely involving.

For my next hour, it was back downstairs to Mr. Oldham's American History class. Fortunately for me, there was not anyone I particularly knew in that hour. The reason I say this was fortunate is because of a very early assignment in the class that was a brief way of showing how much everyone really knew about history. Well, in my little essay (that was to be presented in front of the class) I started off about the world wars, and in a perfect show of my complete naivete, I discharged a rather simple argument that since the most recent wars were 'democracy VS communism' that there would inevitably be one great big war with one winner. I shudder now thinking about it, to be so very removed from the reality of recent history and even a basic understanding of current events... Nevertheless, that's what I presented very enthusiastically in front of those strangers. Hopefully they've forgotten by now.

My fourth class was IB Biology. It would be the class that culminated in my first IB test, which would be blasting off sometime in May. It was very casually taught by Ms. Raab, whose rapport with the students made her feel more like a sorority sister than an instructor. In this class I sat in the very back right corner near the window with an empty desk in front of me -I only shared one side with a human being.


After that, it was lunch time. For the first few days of school, I sat in the junior and senior lunch room. While it was most definitely an improvement from the circus that was the 'main' lunch room, I just wasn't very comfortable there. Then again, maybe it was because I felt Kelley's presence from the other side of the room, emitting penetrating vibrations of 'Don't even look at me'. The thought became too depressing, and the crowds of people all talking at once would amplify and bounce off of the walls and make me want to leave. So I did leave.

As a junior, I now had the privilege of going outside for lunch. While most people used it to get out to their cars and pick up fast food and others simply grouped near the student parking lot and smoked together, I barely got twenty feet from the school. Near the back entrance was a nice tree for me. It wasn't perfect, but it suited my purposes, my habits that I had started over the summer. So I would throw my furry folder down next to the tree and nap, either against the tree or right under it. When people returned, the bustle gave plenty of warning, so I would not miss my next class.

The class I had after lunch was Math Methods (but we called it Calc because that sounded more impressive). It was a somewhat small class, consisting of mostly juniors. We sat in friendly double-sided table formations.

My last class of the day was Spanish. Desafortunamente, I had the same teacher I had put up with for the last two years, and I was getting fed up. In previous years, I had had the class for second hour and was sleepy enough to miss out on most of it. However, having it for sixth hour was special torture because I was so very exhausted. And it didn't help that the teacher was always hopped up on caffeine with a fake smile and was 'in your face'. She called me 'Chuck', which is just about the only nickname that I can't stand (possibly because my telemarketing bosses had called me that). All of these factors dug into me, making that last release bell of the day a treat.

And then, after seven classes, I had more cross country practice to look forward to. And to my dismay, I was not improving my speed or endurance. If anything as the season went on I seemed to be getting worse.

Sick and Bitter

My days never ended, they just continued. I was as busy as can be. The busy-ness actually helped me, in retrospect, because when I wasn't occupied I would have depressing thoughts:

I was lonely. I was scared that I'd never have another good friend. I was terrified that I was an unlikable person. I was ugly. My hair was too girly. I was too much of a geek. I was a lost cause of epic proportions.

When I would tell myself to think happy thoughts, I would think only of last year, and my lost friendship with Kelley. And then, I would be angry because of the cryptic hints she had left me, and the mysterious way she now avoided me. I couldn't make sense of it. I couldn't even figure out what I had done wrong. What did I do wrong? I gave up the thought of reconciling with her, but I hung on to the hope that I could at least talk to her once, so that she could tell me just WHY she now seemed to hate me so much. This did not happen, so I was left wondering about it, filling in the blank with all of my bad qualities.

About a month of seven classes and cross country finally took its toll on me. I found that I was getting sick with a big cold, or something. The kicker, the final straw to my suspicion came during the dreaded day of 'track' practice, in which coach Hohn would make us keep running half-miles over and over until we had an acceptable time. It was hard enough keeping ones bodily contents under control, but the influx of junk that a bad cold brings made the running very difficult. One of the trips around that squishy track finally put me to the limit, and I stumbled lightheaded to a corner and upchucked. Before I was even finished, I heard voices approaching, and then the unmistakable jingle of a dog-collar. I immediately tried to make myself presentable and get a good distance from my pile of creation -but it was too late. The dog was already there, and he was licking it up. Behind him was the girls' soccer team, calling after him to stop. I shrunk back and tried to disappear, but the damage was done: I'm sure that the girl's soccer team would remember me as the guy whose puke the dog ate on the way to practice that day.
Oh well. The important result was that I had to take a week or so off of practice on account of my sickness.

The reprieve from that physical exercise was much needed. Between my waking up early, my homework, and my emotional damage, I think I was near to cracking up.

One day around then, Mrs. Nelson the English teacher gave us some assignment or other (I forget exactly what it was). I went to work on it, writing a small piece titled 'How to be Cool'. It was a silly little sarcastic prose about being popular and the paradox of counterculture, and I pumped it full of all of my bitterness towards everyone around me who seemed to have so many friends. I wanted to invalidate them, I wanted to bring them down to my level, I wanted... well, I guess I wanted them to be with me. Some excerpts:
"Don't say anything stupid... Laugh at that joke, even though you don't quite get it -whether there is something to get or not... Don't wear that silly-looking hat... Always outnumber those you ridicule... Eat at Old Country Buffet... Don't try too hard, or rather, don't try hard enough... Be indifferent to everyone and everything at all times, like everyone else... Don't care about anyone because they don't care about you... Except for being cool, don't even care about yourself. Ever."

Out of character, I actually volunteered to read it when Mrs. Nelson asked. I got through most of it alright, but then when I got to the line "Don't care about anyone..." my voice cracked up a bit and I felt my face turn red and my eyes start to get a little shimmery. When I had finished, I looked around the room and tried to achieve some composure. The room was silent, and there were people looking at me, and the room was mostly girls. I couldn't figure out if everybody hated me, or maybe if they kind of felt the same but thought I was weird to be so emotional, or something else. Nobody said anything until Mrs. Nelson asked for another volunteer.
Once again, I had thoroughly embarrassed myself -it was actually becoming quite common in a few of my classes. This was thanks in most part to the curricula: there were more 'casual' presentations in my classes, and I wasn't able to produce an animated video for each one. So, I was finally appearing in front of my classmates and actually talking, to my dismay.

Mrs. Nelson suggested that I turn my little rant in to the Literary Magazine. This kind of shocked me, because I had known of the LitMag, but I hadn't really thought I had any good writing to submit. My history with LitMag started freshman year, when one of my sister's friends was senior editor. I had turned in my doodles of potatoes and had actually made the back cover. Sophomore year when EV was the senior editor, I repeated it and had more potatoes in the magazine. Suddenly, the thought of a bigger presence in LitMag calcified in my brain.

Shortly after, I typed my little manifesto up and ran to the LitMag meeting before I had to go to cross country practice. I met Edwin at the door, and I handed him my submission. Like many of my classmates, I kind of had a bone to pick with Edwin. He had transferred into the school Sophomore year, and immediately established himself as a kind of jovial stuck-up smartass who enjoyed having conversations, usually with teachers (they weren't allowed to ignore him), consisting mostly of himself blabbing on and on between people's sighs. What drew my particular ire was a stunt he pulled involving the previous year's LitMag. My friend EV had been the senior editor -it was her baby. However, right before the magazine went to the printers, Edwin inserted a new front page in which he wrote a thank-you letter to Mrs. Stammers, the adviser. Under the letter, he signed it Edwin Johnson, Senior editor. In the credits section, he had changed ALL of the editors to SENIOR editors, and changed EV to 'editor-in-chief'. An absurd stunt, and ever since I had been most unhappy with him. Nevertheless, I had no time to save THIS year's LitMag until I was done with cross country.

After returning from my sick leave, I found myself to be entirely out of shape. I was awful, and it was getting cold out, and the season was very near the end. It was probably the worst running experience yet, those last few weeks. The last three races were all held in the same location, and I very soon developed a distaste for Lake Nokomis.

There was a girl on our cross country team, Alley, a freshman. She was blonde and had a runner's build and had oft-hidden braces and she reminded me terribly of Kelley, at least in appearance. I didn't talk to her much, but it seemed that she smiled at me whenever there was a chance. This continued to perturb me to no end. I made a few friendly remarks, which seemed to be reciprocated. Was she a nice girl? Or was simply the shared experience affording a camaraderie? I hoped and hoped and secretly assumed that she was a nice little girl with a crush on me, because that would have been exactly what I needed. Soon enough, I caught her talking with another member of the team, and her attitude seemed completely different than the one she kept showing me. Well, that was enough to bring all of my thoughts completely to a halt. I wasn't going to LET her screw me around like the last one, I thought to myself. But geez, her uncanny resemblance to Kelley was astounding, and I found that maybe I was sneaking a few more looks at her than I would have dared otherwise. She was like some smiling simulacrum, and she was beckoning me in with smiles I knew were not as true as they looked. Are they ever? I kept waiting for her to figure out that I was a dork so that she would stop torturing me with her smiles, but it never happened. I was sure Alley knew I was a geek, and talked with other people like she was exactly the type that would ignore me, mentioning hot guys and such -yet she CONTINUED with the smiles and the friendly words.

Finally, cross country ended. Alley still smiled at me during the rare times we passed in the hall. And Kelley, on the other hand, still made a huge thing of completely ignoring me the rare times we passed. The two were like opposite sides of some ugly feminine coin. One side seemed to hate me for no good reason, and the other side seemed to like me for no reason. And I hated and loved it, because it seemed to hate and love me.

My bitterness overcame all thoughts of women, and people in general.

The Renaissance

As the first quarter of classes came to an end, I was faced with my first open-ended presentation in history class. This meant that I could finally make an easy animated feature about my topic, which in this case was Roger Williams (the 'inventor' of Rhode Island). I cut some corners and used 'paper cutout' animation, so this turned out to be the easiest animation I've ever done. I still injected some odd violent humor in it half way through (to make it somewhat entertaining), and I had Roger Williams get in a fight and beat people with the Roger Williams Punch. Even though it was the least impressive animation to date, it was still enjoyed and Mr. Oldham asked if he could show it to other classes. Once again I kind of felt like a novelty, but it was hard not to take pleasure in the fact that people appreciated it.

In English class, I was caught scrawling some King Missile lyrics on a desk, and Mrs. Nelson made me read it aloud. I didn't get the chance to explain that it wasn't original, and she delighted in my 'creativity'. She then encouraged the writing on desks as some sort of creative movement. I was once again singled out as some kind of creative genius. Here I was just regurgitating things and making subquality videos and I was getting rewarded for it. I should note that in addition to my bitterness towards all other people, I was also feeling intensely hateful towards myself. I kept thinking of myself as a copycat, that I was an imposter, that I was nothing special. I was no more interesting on the inside than I was on my ugly outside.

Maybe this thought of being so unoriginal was furthered by my re-acquaintance with Vu. I shared English and Math Methods with him, and we soon became buddies again after a year of not seeing each other. I found that Vu's creativity had accelerated. Not only was he very funny and thought-provoking in conversation, but he was also generating content —he was creating quality comics, both for personal pleasure and for publishing in the school newspaper. Also, he seemed to do all of his school assignments in the most original ways, injecting whimsical narratives and absurd jokes at every opportunity. I must admit, I was jealous. Compared to my static and repetitive creations, here was a never-ending spring of original thought.

Thanks to the end of cross country season, I was now faced with a wide range of free time after school. It was a serious step up -practice took up three hours a day, factoring transportation and warm-ups. So here I was, kind of bored actually with all of leisure time.

My first aim was to go to LitMag meetings, which were held once a week. I wasn't sure what to expect, but here's what I saw when I got there: There was Mrs. Stammers, the magazine advisor (And my sophomore English teacher), and she would try to get business done. Next to her there was Edwin, who was trying to engage her in a conversation about some outdated sixteenth century word that he had researched. In the corner was Vu, who was periodically bringing up some surprising observation or other. And then, the rest of the group all sat silently: all of them girls. I'm sure that I didn't say too much that meeting, and merely participated in some of the 'magnetic poetry' exercises suggested. I do remember one thing, however. Mrs. Stammers was looking for suggestions for the LitMag's title, and Edwin immediately suggested what he thought was a most brilliant idea: 'hopper'. He went on to explain the significance of the word as it pertains to... well, all I remember is something about a hat, but it doesn't matter. It was a horrible name for a high school publication, reasons be damned (and this is saying something for a school whose newsletter was "The Orator"). Mrs. Stammers was making an ugly face and looking around the room for support, and I think I must have said something against the 'hopper' idea -thank goodness. My overall impression of the meeting was that it could be a fun thing.

When I went to the first QuizBowl meeting, the same could be said. We had even less members this year: just me, Brian, Edwin, and John Hagenbrock (our geography expert). It was just barely enough to fill a team. Practice was plain fun as usual, except that Edwin continued to grow on my nerves with his faux-intellectualized extemporaneous drivel.

In another failure of my shy caricature, I gave in to Mrs. Nelson's suggestion that I join the Speech team. This was probably because both my sister and EV had done it previously and had been egging me on about it. "But I don't have any speeches," I said. Apparently you didn't have to have original work. "But I can hardly talk in front of anybody," I said. Everyone is split up and you only talk in front of like four people. "But what exactly should I do?" I asked. You could do Doughty. This would be M. Doughty, of Soul Coughing fame (errr, nonfame maybe). My sister had bought one of his books of weird poetry, and I found a couple of interesting poems. So it was settled, I guess I would try it out. Fortunately, the first meet wasn't for a while.

I dragged Vu into joining the speech team with me, because he had an excellent short story. And as I dragged him, so did he drag me. I later accompanied him to check out the Chess Team.

Rounding out my selection of geeky extracurriculars, I joined the Math Team again. Math Team had always been fun, and now it carried the specific benefit of points in class due to the teacher being the coach. Fortunately, Math Team really didn't require any 'practices', as my after school schedule was filling out.

It felt really good to be involved in so many different activities. It kept me as busy as cross country had, only without the soreness and the monotony. I was fortunate to be occupied, because winter was rolling in and with it that tendency for less than happy thoughts which -in light of my emotions so far that year- would no doubt take a dangerous hold of me.

The Lazy Bastard

It was getting colder and darker. I seemed to be waking up earlier every day. Just as I would wake up earlier, I would unconsciously adapt to sleeping as much as possible up until the time I had to be running out of the door (and down the street to my ride). It was rather difficult, because I had to keep changing the time on my alarm clock to trick my morning self into waking up earlier. It worked, at least for a while.

Because of the freezing Minnesota winter months, I could no longer sleep outside under my tree. I braved the cold as long as I could, but I finally found that I had to go back to the lunch room. There, I would sit and doodle and write things between days I needed sleep.

I was writing in many of my classes now, and I found that I had come up with an idea for a story! After working it a little bit, I had my draft and I brought it to the next LitMag meeting. Edwin was not at the meeting, which I found to be quite curious as he had not been at QuizBowl either. I found out later that he had vanished -packed and up and went to another school! Mrs. Stammers had me read my one-page story out loud, which was very easy to do in such a comfortable environment.

My story hinged on a narrative trick: the old 'one character is actually also the other character'. The story was called 'The Lazy Bastard', a person the narrator referred to as a nuisance. In the end, however, it turns out the lazy bastard is in fact the narrator at times when he is lazy. It was a goofy little piece of prose, and I was proud of it. Everyone at the meeting seemed to like it too. At the questioning of Mrs. Stammers, I admitted that I was in fact the lazy bastard. The reason that I got so much out of writing it was because I was able to so insult an aspect of myself. I had a lot of self-loathing floating around in my system, and it helped to channel it. This discovery fascinated me in a way I could hardly believe.

Winter

It was that time of year when winter break was within spitting distance.

Health class was rolling. Occasionally, we now had days off which were much appreciated. We were still working from books, but it wasn't so bad after the routine was done. I recall that Nick found his favorite word around then: smegma. He liked it particularly because it was defined as a 'cheesy substance'. It was worth a laugh or two. I made a silly little video for an assignment about alcoholism. Again I used the non-intensive process of paper cutouts, and I made a video starring Salma Hayek, John Goodman, and Leonardo 'Decrapio', and I got to have John say "I'll tell you when I've had enough' and throw beer bottles. The video ended with Leonardo (the baby) for some reason saying "This is the best Christmas ever" after his dad goes to AA. For once I felt that the effort I put into the video matched the effort I wanted to give the class.

In Japanese I continued to be the top student. Some of these poor freshmen I couldn't figure out. This kid in front of me named Her, he had the most difficult time. He couldn't seem to understand either the alphabet OR the pronunciation, and I was stuck trying to help him all the time. It wasn't horrible, but I found it particularly interesting that he could possibly have so much trouble. I was at some point approached by the teacher with a proposal: a high school in the same district was having a couple students take a trip to Japan the next summer, and she thought I could go with them. I took her forms and filled them out and applied for scholarships with severe enthusiasm. This was something that I really thought would be fun, so I dug right into it.

In history class I was getting more comfortable, mostly due to the relaxed atmosphere the teacher made it. Daily he read out celebrity birthdays and quizzed us about what happened 'this day in history'. Though I made no personal friends in the class, I was comfortable with my classmates as a group.

In English class it was somewhat different. I formed a group with Vu and David, and was able to converse with them during times of due school gossip and class complaints. While I was comfortable with them, the class as a whole was filled with the types of females I was now deathly afraid of -Julie was there, and smart girls, and loud girls, and quietly judging girls. The material we read in English sounded pretty typical and uninteresting at first, but turned out to be very intriguing. We read a few Oprah's book club books about broken homes, and we read classics like Catcher in the Rye (Which was great!) and The Great Gatsby (Which, while painstakingly written, suffered for being a bad story to begin with. Come on! Any story that relies on an unexpected and gruesome car crash to move its characters through the plot is severely flawed). The books we read made me interested in writing itself -they were books I would never have picked to read on my own, but I had a grand time reading them and particularly ANALYZING them. There were amazing things, I realized, hidden in the way that authors chose to write -splendid details and insights. I found that no matter what the material, I could make it interesting merely by looking at the HOW of it.

In Biology, I had worked out some proper lab partners without resorting to the intimidating girls or the mean joking guys. I was usually in a group with David, who was a very familiar face by now, and You Moua, a smart, quiet, pretty Hmong girl. I was comfortable to work and get done and then maybe say a few entertaining things, without being EXPECTED to say anything for the sake of social interaction. At this point in my life, I just wasn't down for too much of that.

Math class was a similar feeling. I sat by Vu and a girl named Renee from Barbados. I was able to work on my math, and able to help my neighbors and make little jokes with them at my leisure. Across the room was Nick, whom my unsocial self was threatened by because he always made such a scene of interacting with people. Sometimes he would yell questions at me from across the room, "Hey Cholly, what's goin' on with ____?"
My style was just to be comfortable, though I guess I appreciated being validated.

Finally, Spanish class was still as bad as always. My interest in the class was severely waning, and I found myself writing quietly to myself in English when I could. For assignents I would often talk in Spanish about speaking Japanese. And people in the class seemed to like me sometimes. There was David who would joke about the material but was no-nonsense when it came to grades, and there was Julie who smiled and always seemed to INVOLVE me even if I lacked participation with whatever it was she was involving me, and there was Nate who -despite his inadvertent distractedness- was always sincere in trying to console his friends.


Thoughts

Okay, I was softening up to people. It was a very slow process, adjusting from my year of seeing only Kelley as my friend, but I think that I was finally able to accept other people as buddies. I became a bit more open to Nate, and I was big friends with Vu, and to most people I tried to extend the 'friendly' flag.
But I wasn't ready to accept any females. They were still danger, as far as I was concerned. The pain of Kelley was still fresh in my veins. I was scared of girls because I felt they were all more mature than me. And how could I even think about being with someone who was so obviously beyond me in so many ways? I wanted an equal, not some abusive girl who would play games with my mind, and not some stupid freshman who didn't know any better. If only...

I would daydream about somehow getting a girl, and that girl would see the good qualities in me and bring them out. With that done, I would be able to enter the world and find women... But there was a problem with this thinking: it was cyclical. I needed a girl to fix me so that I could get a girl? It seemed that every time I thought of girls, I would break into this horribly depressing cycle, for I could not think of any good solution. I couldn't 'logicalize' my way in, somewhere I could start.
A nice quiet girl? That would be great, courting a virginal shy princess and growing with her together. It would be beyond great, in fact: I wanted nothing better than a nice quiet girl! But I looked around and found that the nice quiet princesses -well, they just seemed to be hidden, or already 'transformed' by more lucky guys. They were extinct, all taken.

Okay, failing at nice quiet girl... who else would accept me? How about just any girl? NO. No, no matter how bad it gets, I can't just settle for someone without at least some level of quality. It would defeat the entire point of the thing, or at least the point I had defined in my mind. Just any girl... I wasn't that sad -that desperate. Was I?

Okay, I was sad. The day of the last Quizbowl practice before break, I was waiting out in the hall for Mr. Hohn to return. Down the hall, Kelley was approaching with her friend Joe. Immediately, thoughts came to mind. Kill Joe. No, kill them both. When she got close enough for me to see her face, I stared at her and tried to make contact with a raised eyebrow. She ignored me. Would you just acknowledge me already!? I changed my friendly face into one of sadness, but she continued to approach with her eyes locked on her friend (even though they weren't saying much). I paced a little, still giving her the sad stare. She had to walk right past me. And she didn't even flinch. Yes, that was sad. All of my Kelley memories flooded back that day, and unfortunately accompanied me home for winter break. That was also the last time I ever laid eyes on her.

One thing: I could not completely blame her. While she had done some bad things, completely ignoring me, I could not blame her for my troubles and my loneliness without equally blaming myself. I could not hate her and her only, I could not focus and make her the sole source of my troubles, no.

Thoughts made me hate people. Thoughts made me hate girls. Thoughts made me hate myself. I hated the darkness, I hated the cold, I hated the winter. I hated that I didn't have anyone to cuddle next to. I hated the very absence of close friends. And then I hated myself for not making the effort to find close friends. Then I must have hated myself back for not giving myself more credit. Hate was me.

I envied the people that didn't have to worry about the things I did. I hated everyone in their happy relationships. I had to come up with reasons that I was in some way better off. I had better grades? -maybe, but that doesn't cut it. I had more freetime? -naw, I didn't do anything with it anyways. I got more time to myself? -fat chance, I hardly liked myself anyway.

Maybe their relationships only seemed to be good, and they were actually not? Well, that's getting somewhere, I suppose. I could work with that thought.

What a pitiful state.

(This was chapter number five of my personal accounts, "-Liking-: Refractions and Infractions" )
(Next chapter: "6) Entrapment" )