So a couple weeks ago I was viciously personally attacked by a crazy woman. These things happen. If only it just happened once.
Her ex and I hung out last night and he attacked me in a way... he tends to hassle me a lot, and I deserve it. I'm really uptight, and not honest w/ myself, and the dumbest things strike me as really important when I know, logically, that they're not.
Okay.
But last night I could only hear is ex-girlfreind in his words. Last night he gave me shit and I was feeling really vulnerable and I couldn't really take it.
Let me just say that this freind is one of the only people in my life who has ever noticed when I pretended things were okay and they weren't. It was uncanny. Most of the time if something is bothering me I act out, but when something's really deep I don't, I pretend it's okay (probably unconvincingly, but enough that my parents don't notice and so on), and this freind has always caught me and talked to me. I've known him for two years, and as far as I can recall he's the only friend (as in completely platonic-- one lover noticed as well) I've ever had who's ever picked up on my unspoken pain. I can't help the sense that last night he picked up on my weakness and targeted them. I don't really have any hard evidence for this, except that he hit every single weak spot and when I finally called him on one thing that I could talk to him about he laughed in my face.
We were sitting in this noisy club and he kept calling me pretentious. This is a problem for me, because at school, there are times when you're supposed to play this pointless 'smarter than thou, better informed than thou' sort of game, (not a lot at Wells but it still happens, especially when chatting with Cornell students) and I refuse to play it. That's not what learning is about, that's not what life is about, so it shouldn't be what school is about. But I read a lot and I can't really keep from talking about what I'm learning about. This is incredibly annoying when you're at a party or a night club, but he didn't say "I don't want to talk about this right now" he didn't change the subject, which is how he used to handle me, he called me names. That's bullshit. So I told him, 'hey look, this is something I refuse to do at school and I get judged for it, like I'm some other species or a dirty girl or less intelligent or something, and that's annoying but I don't mind taking it, but then I come into town and you call me pretentious because I'm telling you something you could be interested in, you dick' (we've actually taught each other a lot in the past). He laughed at me, and said, 'I called you pretentious and you gave me a lecture' and I laughed because that was true and that's the sort of thing I need freinds like him for and I loved him right then. Then he looked at me and said, 'You're not serious are you?' and I looked him straight in the eye and said 'Yes!' and he laughed more, and harder, and I couldn't deal with it. It was like he didn't actually hear me. He's not so stupid that he can't tell when someone he's known for 2 years levels with him. He played my emotions because he could.
My freind's ex-girlfreind likes to have control of him. She hates me for any number of reasons, but I can't help thinking that one of them is that she dropped out of school pretty early even though she was really good at it, and I think it depresses her to see someone with whom she has a lot in common in school and loving it. I am annoying to her, but there are parts of my life I think she might like, but that she thinks she can't have. So she started calling me pretentious first, and I get the feeling that my freind picked it up from her, as well as his sudden total disinterest in anything much.
He's not in school, in fact he dropped out of high school (like me) and hasn't been back for anything, ever (unlike me) but his mind is still active, and he's really really smart (smarter than me). He used to ask me questions about things, and ask other people he knew things, all sorts of random stuff, and we would have these amazing discussions about ideas, which is what I was hoping for when I went to college (sigh).
But those conversations appear to be over now. When she's in town she won't let me near him, and when I do get near him, he just repeats what she says about me. It's like he's gone and died.
I lasted for 18 years with out a freind as amazing as him, I guess I can grow old and die with out one. I left the club last night, and I said "I've had enough, fuck you, I'll see you in Hell". I mourn him now as if he actually had died, or perhaps as if I did.