Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Thu, 03 Jan 2008

Shadows of the past

And now, a bit of story time with Ian.

Way back in junior high school, I was a sad little kid. I was convinced no one liked me, which naturally reflected back on me in the fact that no one seemed to like me. Shocking, I know. Anyway, one of the things that happened is that I developed a sort of panoply of crushes on different girls in school. Each of them was completely sincere, but also as completely unexpressed. I'm probably the only person who knew what was going on in my head. That's a good thing, of course, because had I expressed them, I probably would have created all sorts of problems for myself.

In any case, one of the girls I found my eye favoring was K. She shared a math class with me for many years, and I think I sat behind her in the 7th grade class. She was very attractive, with dark hair cut in a bob, and an easy, genuine smile. I was, naturally, completely incapable of talking to her.

We continued sharing math classes through the curious machinations of fate. Nothing ever came of the crush, although I did finally work up the courage to ask her to sign my yearbook in 10th grade, just before I moved to Oregon, completely abandoning my suddenly burgeoning social skills. (Yes, asking her to sign my yearbook represented serious progress. It's ok, I'm much better now.)

Fast forward numerous years. This will seem random, but bear with me (it's still pretty random, but it does all join up). Now in college, I met B. She was my first real girlfriend, and we shared a relationship that lasted years. Shortly after we started going out (and being very serious despite the mere months we'd been together), I went to Scotland for a year. It was something of a shock to the relationship, but we seemed to be able to manage it through the exchange of long emails and the occasional high-priced phone call. Eventually we worked out that we could send microcassettes back and forth in the mail at a pretty cheap per-minute rate compared to the phone.

One morning, for one of our strictly meted phone calls, I realized that she'd been mentioning the name of a male friend rather a lot. Long story short, she admitted that she'd slept with him numerous times in the last week, but was still in love with me. Even longer story short, I spent the next two weeks about as miserable as I've ever been.

She ended up flying to Scotland a couple months later, and everything was fine. We never talked about the infidelity again, and it wasn't an issue. We went on to have several happy years. We broke up eventually, but we'd both seen it coming, and despite my strong reaction to it, it was for the best. We had dinner years later, and although it was interesting to see her again, we didn't have much to talk about. No hard feelings on either side, but there were good reasons we weren't still going out.

One of the things we discussed during our years together was our mutual dislike of marriage as an institution. There are reasons for it, but I won't divert into that discussion just now, let's just establish that it was one of the many things we agreed on.

Fast forward again, to this morning. For some reason, I found myself wondering where K (my math class crush from jr. high) was. I do this occasionally, and listlessly poke around to see if I can find the person I've suddenly remembered. This time, Google combined with a relatively uncommon name hit the jackpot. I found K's wedding announcement from 1996, and a moment later had found her current business's website. She's living a few states away with her husband and three young children, and it looks like life is pretty good for her.

After a moment's deliberation, I composed and sent an "I don't know if you remember me..." email. To my happy surprise, I got a reply a short while later, and she not only remembered me, but sounded pleased to hear from me. Encouraged by this, I sent her a brief recap of my life between the last time I'd seen her and now.

Chuffed by the success of this venture, I figured I'd try looking B up. I still think about her, and wonder how life is treating her, so why not?

I quickly found a site mentioning her, and it seemed to be a listing of where this person I'd found was registered. I figured I'd gotten someone else with the same name (improbable, but I guess it could happen; B has a pretty uncommon name). I looked around the site a little bit more to make sure I'd found the wrong person.

As I looked, I realized that, no, this was the right person. It was the same B. I further realized that this was her wedding website. That was a bit weird, but as nothing to the shock I felt when I realized that she'd gotten married to the guy who had been the recipient of her attentions while I was in Scotland a decade ago.

The world seemed to tilt sideways to gravity. B got married. To that guy! My head felt strange, it was as if gravity had split and was tugging me two different ways. The rest of the day passed in a kind of haze, my mental state and reality seeming to come at each other from odd angles.

Now that I've had most of a day to examine my reaction, I recognize that it was mostly combined shock that she'd gotten married at all (and used the phrase "united in holy matrimony" no less -- she's completely atheistic last time I checked) along with suddenly resurgent memories of how I felt for those two weeks in Scotland, swaddled in hitherto incomprehensible grief and impotent rage. Those feelings and memories have long since faded into the background of my life, so it was odd to feel them again, even if it was only a shadow of the real emotion, a mere whisper of the true feelings.

Further examination, once the feelings faded back again, reveals happiness. I find that I'm glad B found someone she loves enough to marry (considering her previous aversion to the idea). I'm also perversely glad that my two weeks of hell in Scotland weren't for nothing. She wasn't hooking up with some random swain who didn't matter to her -- that was the man she'd go on to marry, a decade later. I still have an unreasoning dislike of him, but that's not based on rational thought, it's based on emotional impressions that are now so much ancient history. I may have exchanged ten words with him in my life.

Probably the worst part, once the emotions had receded to the background again, was that she didn't invite me to the wedding. I don't know whether it was from forgetfulness, or a calculation that watching that particular union might not be a tasteful thing for me. Either way, I'm a trifle miffed, although I also think I understand. It doesn't matter anyway, the event is months old, and it seems likely that we'll never be in contact again.

I now find my head swirling with fond memories of both K and B, clashing with an odd feeling of unreality after (somewhat masochistically) reviewing B's wedding photos. My head is a very strange place for me to be right now.

As if to cap off a supremely weird start to 2008, I received email near the end of the day that one of the musicians I'd been playing with on and off has died. He was around my age, and seemed like a very nice guy and a skilled guitarist. I don't know the cause of death. This recalled the beginning of 2007, when I discovered that my long-time friend Kjersten had been killed in a drunk-driving collision in Oregon. Kjersten was also a skilled musician, and a valued friend, although we hadn't been in contact for many years. I really didn't know this guitarist well enough to be deeply affected by his demise, but I can't sit unmoved by the death of someone I knew, even in passing.

In all, this has worked out to be a really weird, square-peg/round-hole kind of a day. To K, if you're reading this, thanks for the pleasant response to my email: that was a bright spot in what clearly ended up being a bizarre day.

Posted at 20:03 permanent link category: /misc

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.