A Lack Of Closure
Entry posted by Emanick
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Since this is my last week on Sals (I effectively leave for college at 8am Sunday), I want to bring some closure to a few things. One of them is the DM+ Mafia game, the storyline of which I plan to post in the Story Mat (staff permission permitting, of course. (Personal closure won't be happening, hopefully, as I'll be pretty liberal with leaving contact details. When your hoped-for future career depends upon publicity, Internet anonymity seems a little less important.) Others, a little more universal, I plan to address in my leaving topic, which should be up at some point fairly soon. That leaves, of course, the real-life threads that this blog deals with. I hope to have time to talk about Gordon College soon. Right now, though, I'm going to talk about Gaia a little bit. (Some of you may remember that she's the girl who I made blogs entries about for, like, nearly two years. My apologies.)
Since I doubt many people remember the intricacies of my personal life from years past- briefly, Gaia is a girl who used to go to my youth group and who is now going into her sophomore year at Gordon. I had a massive crush on her for about eight months; two months in I was convinced that, contrary to my previous resolution, it WAS worth it to ever bother getting into a relationship rather than remaining single forever. Then she told me, eight months in, that she didn't like me in that sense. I was devastated, and took months to get over the fact. I was almost reluctant to go to Gordon because she was going there.
There are really a lot of remarkable things about her and about myself, and also about our "relationship." (I hesitate to call it such, but there isn't a better word.) To explain this properly, I think I have to talk about myself for a bit.
Although girls seem to be drawn to me in many ways - I think I look pretty good, I'm funny and outgoing and I'm also pretty trustworthy and nice, for what it's worth, I only seem to attract girls that I have no interest in, and I can't handle flirting. It just seems strange. Maybe it's my autistic tendencies speaking, but I really don't like meaningless small talk that has only one purpose, a purpose entirely contrary to what's actually being said. I mean, I've found myself flirting with girls that I like - or something like it, anyway - and it seems to work fairly well, but I don't have any urge to move directly beyond flirting into a relationship. I do, however, want a deep, meaningful and loving relationship with somebody very badly - and I'm capable of that, I'm pretty sure. The problem is that I think in order for one of my relationships to succeed, it has to start from something meaningful and work its way out - not start from something shallow and overtly sexual and work its way in. I have the same urges other guys have in terms of "endgame," obviously, and the same need for a partner to share life with. I just don't have the desire for the stupid stuff in between - the flirting and the playing games and other bull. I want to skip all of that without just going straight in for sex or whatever. This is hard. From what I understand, feeling this way about relationships used to be more common, but cultural values changed, for better or worse, and now I'm stuck with being the way I am, which is annoying but hopefully worth it. (The people who know me best think that there's virtually no chance of me ever getting divorced.)
Anyway, this is where Gaia comes in. I figured out in retrospect that the reason why I stayed so fascinated by her, even when I realized that "wow, she's good-looking, but there are other fish in the sea, d'oh," is because I felt as if I had a connection with her that was deeper than I've had with almost anybody else. I don't mean that I knew her better than almost anybody else, I'm not that naive. But there aren't many honest people who are willing to open up and talk about things that are difficult to talk about - like life, the universe, God - and she's one of those people. Her thoughts are strikingly similar to mine, but in root, not in development. We swapped philosophical poetry and essays for a few months last spring - while I still obviously liked her way too much - and while we weren't too comfortable around each other in person (she's never been in a relationship either, I think, and honestly is pretty similar to me in some ways, social-wise), we really talked up a storm on Facebook. It was annoying, though, because usually when I did wind up spending much time with her in real life, I ended up just making her feel uncomfortable. I couldn't tell if it was entirely my fault or not. I worried about it for a long time, even though she liked over a third of my numerous FB statuses for several months.
We're almost back to normal now, socially, after her being off at college for a year. Last week she asked me if I could drive her up to SoulFest, a Christian music festival in New Hampshire, which is about 2.5 hours from where we live. (She contacted me on Facebook while I was on a page containing nothing but my status, on my Safari browser, and because my status began with "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH," the title of the browser flashed from "Gaia messaged you" to "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH" every couple of seconds. :) I thought it was pretty funny.) Obviously I'm taking her, since I'm planning to go anyway, so it should be a fun ride up.
After she got off Facebook, I had a long think about where I stood with feelings. I realized that I would definitely take her out if I knew she was interested... but at the same time, I realized that I would take any girl I liked out if I knew she was interested. I feel inexperienced enough that just the experience would in itself be worth it, at this point. I feel badly behind the curve. I also realized that I would be less eager to take Gaia out than another girl whom I felt equally attracted to, because I care more about her friendship. That was important. I know where I am now. I know that I'll always have a soft spot for Gaia, but I wouldn't call it a crush anymore.
That said, I really long for that deep connection with another human being, that intimacy of mind which could patch all of the ragged holes that my character has. I care more about that than the physical nature of relationships. Is that unusual? I don't really know. I would guess not, but the conversations I have with my friends seem to indicate otherwise. Most of them seem way more interested in sex than anything else. I don't know whether I'm mature beyond my years or a hopelessly naive adolescent. Very possibly both.
I wish I'd met somebody besides Gaia whom I felt such a strong connection to. Even though I don't have a crush on her anymore, I think about her in that crush "slot" all the time, just because I have nobody else to think about. There are seven billion people in the world; finding somebody else I like shouldn't be so friggin' hard.
Ah well. I guess that's partly what college is for. So much for closure.
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