#40 - talk about the end of something in your life
my high school yearbook is packed away in a box somewhere. every now and then, i find it again. i laugh, i flip through it a minute and set it aside.
to be fair, that's what i usually do with painful memories ... laugh, flip through them a minute and set them aside ...
i've returned to that time again. and again and i become sad in a way i can't quite grasp.
i loved colorado. being close to the park. the odd stairs in our house. and i loved my room - with the big window, the old rocking chair and the unusually tall bed. i loved high school - most of it. i loved the speech tournaments and band practice and baseball games and ap english and boys who practiced cx debate and cherry creek and and even chuck fleener's relentless pursuit.
(looking back, i bet i could have been popular if i'd tried. but, i didn't. probably because i couldn't see myself very well. even now, i couldn't tell you what i was like ... if i was strong or funny or interesting. my mother used to tell me all the time how selfish i was. i remember that. but, i think she was wrong. i didn't think much about myself at all. maybe i haven't changed that much, after all.)
the photos in that book are amazing ... with the frozen grins, the bangs that defy gravity. even after the book is closed, i can see the hallways, feel the cool metal of my locker against my back, smell the scent of love's baby soft and aqua net in the air. beav. steve. gayle. scott. lara. kevin. erik. kelli. aimee. dawn. mutt. jeff. and m-.
she and i became friends because she told me we would. i was shy and she was on the fringe and we each needed a hand to hold and she decided mine would be hers.
it was a friday, early in the 9th grade, and she had come to school in her pom pom uniform with a large bandage on the back of her thigh because she'd sat on her curling iron and was mortified, as any fourteen year old girl would be, at the thought of people staring at the bandage all day. i came up with an idea to help her hide the wound (even now, i'm always coming up with ideas to hide the wounds) and she declared we would be best friends forever. or until she 'didn't like me anymore.' and not having any other offers, i accepted.
and for a long time, it was good. we were silly, happy girls.
one of our favorite things was to write letters to each other. she'd pass me the evening's topics as we left for the day and at night, we'd write and trade letters in the morning. i loved to make her laugh. i didn't even mind when my words would come out of her mouth at lunch the next day or a tournament the next weekend. she'd come off as clever and stunning and i would laugh at our "inside joke."
it hadn't occurred to me, yet, that i had a gift for storytelling - even as it had already become apparent to m-. it hadn't occurred to me, yet, that her behavior was not okay. it was not flattering or friendly, even. we were young - we made our own rules.
it stands to follow that m- did not like my boyfriends. she was jealous and angry and frequently miserable to be around. she thought one was gay and the other was, well, "the devil." she hated him with a furor that shocks me still.
the day he and i broke up, she was giddy - still full of venom, but genuinely, unabashedly happy. she passed the time devising ways to 'get back' at him. i thought it was her way of trying to cheer me up. (her incredibly fucked up way, but still...)
no matter how much she wanted me to, i wasn't ready to let him go. mutual friends tried to get us back together, thought it might be a good idea to call and see how he was doing, ask him to our prom, but m- made it known that it would be the end of our friendship and i knew that i couldn't survive that loss, too.
some time later, i remember marcie being called to the principal's office. she never said why. all i know, even to this day, is that she wrote a letter about 'the devil' and sent it to someone. i don't know what it said. i know that she was suspended for a few days and lost her slot as editor of the paper for our senior year. (i don't know what i was thinking when i agreed to take her place.) and i know that a few weeks later, my high school ring arrived in the mail with note from the boy about the short supply of common decency.
suddenly, i had no choice but to let him go. so i did. sort of. (the first time you fall in love, it changes your life forever. no matter how hard you try, that feeling never goes away.)
m- and i were never the same after that. oh, we were still 'best' friends, but once you've see the edge of someone you love, it's difficult to return to 'before.'
we still did silly, girly things. hung out at rocky mountain records & tapes, ate steve's ice cream on the mall, danced wildly to depeche mode, daydreamed about the boys from steamboat ... eventually, i found another boy, 'the gay one.' and one day, not long into our senior year, m- decided she was done with me. one day, she moved out of our locker, stopped speaking to me - except to tell me that i was 'dull. unoriginal. and unworthy of any more of her time.' she went full-blown "harriet, the spy" on me - telling everyone my secrets and sharing the notes i'd written (to entertain her) about our classmates.
with that, we were done. i know where the first crack occurred, but, to this day, i'm not certain what triggered the final break. maybe it was the new boy. or memories of the old. new friends? her parents' divorce? success.?taking what she felt she was her due? it's the one mystery i don't really try to solve.
truth is ... got exactly what i deserved.
i should have stood up for myself long before it came to that. i should never have let her believe her behavior was okay. but most importantly, i should have told her every day that she was beautiful and smart and talented. maybe then, she would've have been able to see that i could be in love with a boy and still love her.
looking back, she may have known the truth of the devil and i even before we did. she must have felt that nearly imperceptible shift and realized that the closer he and i became, the further i would move away from her - into the one place she couldn't follow.
(to watch someone you love move away from you, even if she's headed toward the thing you want most for her, is to walk the tightrope of your own happiness - which is another truth i wish i'd learned earlier...)
we were both too young to understand that or maybe we did understand it, we just didn't know what to do about it.
so i did what i always do. i shut up. and i shut down. (hard to believe i can 'shut up' i know, but i can.) i ate lunch alone. i didn't talk to anyone. i punished myself for not living up to her expectations of me - no matter how unreasonable.
what i should have done was stand up. i should have confronted her. I should made the effort.
we tried to reconnect, years later, but it didn't take. she lured me in and froze me out again.
what was it louise told thelma? you get what you settle for.
it may very well be that my friendship with m- is the root of why i obsess over how my choices will affect other people.
it means i miss out on things i want sometimes. it also means i have the power to make the people i love very happy.
it's maddening sometimes. it turns out, it's also kind.
if m- is the reason for that, then it was all worth it.
maybe there was nothing really wrong with me after all ... maybe she was just a bitch.
