Zeros and Ones

I think I’m starting to become one of those people who have adverse physical reactions to caffeine withdrawal. This is not a good thing. I’ve been getting headaches on the days I don’t start with coffee.

This on and off lethargy is tough to combat. I know the things I need to do to feel better, physically and mentally, but I’m too lifeless to do them. My roommates and friends get frustrated with me when I go through these phases. If everyone’s going to the bar and I say I want to go to bed, that sentiment is met with a mixture of pleading for me to come and badgering. I guess in some way it’s flattering that I’m wanted, but on the other hand I’m kind of like, why? Why do you even want me to come? I’m boring and have nothing to say. I won’t be any fun. Please just leave me be.

I have a habit of incessantly checking my email. I’ve realized that this is because I am constantly hoping to receive some sort of mind-blowing email from someone familiar or even from someone unexpected. An email filled with interesting thoughts, extreme sadness, elation, a good story or a confession, a proclamation, an outpouring of thoughtfulness and humanity. I can’t say that I get a lot of these so I don’t know why I keep waiting. I can’t say that I send a lot of them either. I do send a few though. I would send more if more people cared to listen/read.

Watching so much Olympic coverage has got me thinking that I would really like to be great at something. I wouldn’t mind being defined by an undeniably special level of skill. Musical talent. That would be good. Incidently, I also wouldn’t mind being smarter, skinnier, nicer, better looking, more patient, less selfish, harder, better, faster, stronger, etc, but that’s neither here nor there.

I think I go through these low times when I find myself unable to successfully navigate human relationships of any variety. I’m in this zone where I just feel like I don’t understand people at all. It makes me withdraw and isolate myself from everyone. I feel overwhelmed and lost and so I cut back my participation level. It is worse on this page and in my mind than I allow myself to let on. I try to maintain a level of functionality so as to not convince those around me that I am a total freak/weirdo.

It’s a very lonely feeling that the two people I’ve been closest to over the last six months are now the furthest from me. The boy can’t handle being close to me right now and the girl, well I guess she just doesn’t want to be. I miss them. I’m not too worried about things with the boy. I’m just trying to wait it out until a time when he will be less inclined to misread my intentions. We still talk though, here and there, and I let him know that I care about him in my way even if it’s not the way he wants. The girl, though. She is testing me in every way. I don’t know what to do with her anymore and so I sit idly by and do nothing. I wrote her this, but I won’t send it:

I want you to know that you’ve really wounded me and continue to do so. I’ve been trying to act pleasant and cordial to keep things from getting insanely awkward and I’ll continue to do that. But you should know, you’ve hurt me more significantly than anyone has in a really long time. I didn’t know it was possible for me to give so much to someone only to have them completely cut me off and pretend like our relationship never existed. How cruel. I put so much effort into this friendship. I’m sure you’ll argue that the motivation for that wasn’t pure and that’s perhaps true, but only in the last few months. There were years before that, after all. I was such an advocate for you, probably more so than you even realize. I believed in you and totally had your back--always. And even after everything I still wanted to be your friend. And you just went ahead and beat all of this out of me. Change was necessary but a complete and cold-hearted severing wasn’t. Now I’m just left completely disillusioned and confused as to how someone I cared about, trusted, and let so deeply into my world would do this to me. Maybe I’m just the most arrogant person on earth, but I can’t understand how after everything I could mean this little to you.

This isn’t some kind of desperate plea. In fact, you don’t even need to respond. I just want to make sure you know the magnitude of the hurt you’ve caused me. Because it’s not insignificant and because it didn’t need to be this way.

Day after day I sit down our office hallway from her and wonder what she could possibly be thinking, or if she is even thinking at all about anything that has happened. I worked so hard at a friendship with her and then at even more. It took me years, literally, to establish enough trust for her to me in. All the work was okay though, I was willing to do it. I knew I was helping her. I was slowly but surely dragging her out of her self-imposed hibernation, helping her overcome so much anxiety, make new friends and expand her social world, be more confidant and sure of herself. I was more patient and understanding than I’ve ever been. She taught me that. She was, after all, helping me in certain ways, too. I believed in her and saw the best in her in ways that I honestly don’t think anyone else in her life did or was capable of doing. I helped her get a promotion at work, I bent over backwards to help her with her application to grad school, even writing a stellar letter of recommendation for her. I was her biggest supporter. I really believe that. I’m not sorry I did those things. I think everyone needs and hopes for someone to push them and believe in them like that. I gave her everything I could, at least I can say that.

Where has that gotten me? Nowhere. I don’t even know if she realizes or appreciates these things. I don’t even know if she values me at all at this point and that’s what I can’t come to terms with. She wrote me out of her life--literally overnight--because someone else asked her to. Even now, after she has treated me so expendably and callously, I still care. I don’t know how much of this is related to her inability to invest in anyone or anything, how much is fear and detachment, or how much is just straight up indifference to me. How much of this is attributable to her borderline personality disorder and how much is just truth? Does it matter? Should it? Am I supposed to continue to fight for this friendship that I care so much about when it involves someone who did nothing to fight for me? Who so willingly and cowardly rolled over and agreed to this mean and drastic communication embargo at my expense? I don’t know anymore. Maybe I have no more fight left in me and maybe it’s not even worth it. Maybe I should just let her go off into her isolated world and leave her be. The facts seem to point me in that direction.

I’m struggling to process all of this. I don’t know how to exist and successfully interact in a world where these kinds of things (apparently) occur all the time. I don’t even know what trust means anymore in a world where no one is trustworthy. The more I learn the more certain I become that it is impossible to ever really know anyone. I don’t let a lot of people get that close to me and maybe that’s because when I do, I just get burned.

The other day this JD Salinger quote from The Catcher in the Rye popped into my head. Holden Caulfield says: don't ever tell anybody anything, if you do, you start missing everybody. Interestingly, this is the quote I chose for yearbook my senior year of high school. I have no idea why I chose it at the time. I'm pretty sure I didn't really even understand what he meant but thought it sounded cool and intriguing and was appropriately literary. I think I understand what he meant now.