I'm going to reconcile with Carolina.
ight. I'm going to reconcile with Carolina
I am attending college again, and even though my school is very large (~35,000 students), one tends to run into people that he or she knows on occasion. Therefore, it should not be shocking that I ran intoCarolina
I have not seen her in just about a year (since last September). After I graduated (the first time), I did not get to see her nearly as often as when I was in school, but we continued to talk on AIM a lot. This past January we had a big argument (that I have written about before), and we have not talked since then. She hurt me very badly, and I felt that it was in my best interest to cut her off completely. I hated her then. I am not bandying the word "hate" in jest; I truly hated her in the vilest sense of the word. I have not spoken with her since January, and I offered no explanation. I simply just quit talking to her.
Last year, she and I were working on writing a story together, and we created a Livejournal just for this story so we could discuss it with ease online. We had a lot of fun working on it (I truly hope that I can meet another woman that I can be creative with), but naturally, it was never finished. Indeed, we never even left the planning stages (the story was to be a novel)! When I looked at this journal three or four months after our January Spat, I noticed that she had removed her screenname from it. I suppose that she was sending a message that "I am no longer of any importance to her and that I have no place in her life any longer," and naturally, I was a little upset by this, so in retaliation I removed her name from my then regular Livejournal's friendslist. The very next day I noticed that she had removed my name from her friendslist too (and she had a huge friendslist of over 100 people...she's a livejournal junkie...so she must have been looking hardly in order to spot my missing name on her friendslist....)
Thus, it seemed, our Silent War was commencing. Both of us were trying to show the other through silence and deletion that we had no place in each other's life any longer. Through this process of deletion, we were effectively erasing our past. It was rather childish on both of our parts.
I have long since forgivenCarolina
The weird thing is that even though I have forgiven her, I have not yet told her! And just because I've forgiven her doesn't mean that I felt like talking to her; it only means that what has been done is in the past and I am over it. I'm not perfect, and I'm sure to make grievous errors from time to time (as I have done in the case with her), and there will be situations in life when I will hurt someone and that person will need to forgive me. Why shouldn't I forgive her then? Hate, I experienced, only corrodes one's soul. I was overly bitter when I hated her; bitter about everything, and I felt so alone and depressed. Hate only has the power to destroy, and fortunately for me, I was able to recognize this. I realized that I had to forgive her in order to move on and grow from this; holding on to these bitter feelings truly serves no purpose.
As I stated above, I ran intoCarolina
I saw her first; it was pure coincidence that we were near. I was walking aimlessly around the big university fountain in order to stretch my legs between classes. During the circling of the fountain, I just happened to see her approaching from the direction of the library. When I saw her, we were only about 15 feet apart from each other. I was actually glad to see her, and I approached her because I wanted to say "hi" and that I have no hard feelings towards her anymore.
She was shocked to see me. Because I have not talked to her since January, she had no idea that I came back to school, so it really must have been rather shocking for her to look up and see me, the one that she shared many good and bad memories with, standing right in front of her. I was still feeling a bit dazed at finally seeing her again after so much time; so much so that I forgot to smile and wave at her immediately after she saw me. I just kind of stood there in front of her. When she saw me, her eyes went wide and wild in that deer-in-the-headlights kind of way. Her mouth dropped open, and I heard an audible gasp. After a second or two, she regained her composure. What did she do next?
SHE WALKED RIGHT ON PAST ME WITHOUT SAYING "HI" TO ME OR EVEN OTHERWISE ACKNOWLEDGING MY PRESENSE!!!!! I knew things had gone badly between us, but I really didn't know that they were so bad to where she didn't even want to say hi to me. Stunned, I stood there in amazed stillness and watched her walk away. A few seconds later, I started to follow her, and when I got closer, I shouted her name. "C-a-r-o-l-i-n-a!" She momentarily half-tilted her head in my direction upon hearing me call her name, but she then focused in front of her and walked even quicker away from me. I resigned myself to the fact that she was not going to talk to me at all, and I just watched her walk completely out of my life forever.
Perhaps I should have told her months ago that I forgave her, hahahaha!
Strangely, I was not very upset when she ignored me. Perhaps it is because I am over the bitterness of the past. I'm largely indifferent to what she thinks about me now. But still, it was a big "what the fuck" moment! I found it hard to concentrate in my next class because the incident had left me so confused.
I know whatCarolina
Except for one thing.
It is not convincing to me at all.
I shall postulate that it is through her actions of Inaction, her blatant show of ignoring me, that proves to me that She is Soooooo Not Over This. Instead of giving me the impression that she is indifferent to me, she gave me the impression that she still hates my guts; wouldn't someone who was truly over something and now indifferent to it (and me) at least say "hi" in a civilized manner? Her response (or lack of it) is blatant evidence to me that not only is she not over what happened, she cares a great deal about it even still - a full eight months after it happened!
That she would still hold such a grudge against me is rather dumbfounding to me; after all, she was the one who said, "Of course I don't need your friendship!" all those months ago. If I was so expendable to her then, then why should she care so much about it now? I thought that she was practically telling me to "go away" last January. But if she's the one who effectively told me that, then what exactly is she so angry about now? The only thing that I can think of is the little matter of me abandoning her and not offering an explanation for it (LOL! I say that like it's such a little offense, but I know that it was actually rather drastic, and it is definitely nothing that I should be proud of). I cut her off in order to protect myself from getting hurt even more; she truly seemed so uncaring then, and I would have never imagined that she would even care enough to be sad or angry about my abandonment of her.
WOMEN ARE SOME DAMNED CONFUSING CREATURES! I HOPE THAT ALL OF YOU WOMEN OUT THERE UNDERSTAND THAT!
The only rational conclusion that I can come up with is that I meant a lot more to her than she let on, and a lot of her boasting that "she doesn't care" was actually a mental defense mechanism to prevent her from getting too close to someone, me in this case, and getting potentially hurt. Or it may be that she didn't realize that I meant a lot to her at the time that she said those mean things, and it is possible that she realized what I meant to her only after I left her life. Yes,Carolina Carolina
It seems as though I hurt her too. That is the only rational explanation to account for her obvious antagonism against me.
Now I know that this friendship is lost, and I am not attempting to patch it up again. However, I mentioned at the beginning of this Damned Long Post (as always, it seems) that I wish to reconcile my part in all of this with her. I no longer wish to play the Silent Game. She obviously "showed me up" in a way that can only deem her the Victor of it. This Silent Feud of ours is, like all conflict, ultimately futile. It is childish; we have both acted extremely immaturely, and I now feel as though we need to grow out of this state. We are both adults, and we should therefore handle things with fairness and responsibility; not childish mind-games! Therefore I am going to write her a handwritten letter in order to show her my thoughts about all of this. I will give her an explanation of why I abandoned her. I will explain how I felt hurt by what she said. But my main purpose is to tell her that I forgive her, and I will describe the adverse and sickening aspects of hate and why one needs to forgive in order to heal his or her wounds. Ultimately, I will suggest to her, she should think about forgiving me for all that I have done wrong if she wants to move on completely.
Nay, our friendship likely will not be patched, but I don't want us to die each other's mortal enemies. Ultimately, we had a stupid and silly quarrel in the Grand Scheme of Things; many people have endured far worse pain and still found it possible to forgive those who hurt them.
I don't know if I will tell her this, but I still love her, to a degree. I am not talking about romantic love - heavens no, not anymore! But she is really the first girl that I fell in love with, and even if she didn't reciprocate it, that doesn't change that I once loved her. She is the one ultimately responsible for instilling passion within me, and going through this ordeal with her is something that has resulted in me becoming much more confident and mature! Why shouldn't I have some love for someone who, at the end of the day, has had mostly positive impacts on my life?
It is because of her that I realized that I love the Pursuit of Knowledge for Its Own Sake. It is because of her that my creative side has been unleashed. Without knowing her, who knows, I might not have had the courage to follow my dreams. I might have settled.
For these reasons, I am going to reconcile my part in all of this, foolish though I am.
I am attending college again, and even though my school is very large (~35,000 students), one tends to run into people that he or she knows on occasion. Therefore, it should not be shocking that I ran into
I have not seen her in just about a year (since last September). After I graduated (the first time), I did not get to see her nearly as often as when I was in school, but we continued to talk on AIM a lot. This past January we had a big argument (that I have written about before), and we have not talked since then. She hurt me very badly, and I felt that it was in my best interest to cut her off completely. I hated her then. I am not bandying the word "hate" in jest; I truly hated her in the vilest sense of the word. I have not spoken with her since January, and I offered no explanation. I simply just quit talking to her.
Last year, she and I were working on writing a story together, and we created a Livejournal just for this story so we could discuss it with ease online. We had a lot of fun working on it (I truly hope that I can meet another woman that I can be creative with), but naturally, it was never finished. Indeed, we never even left the planning stages (the story was to be a novel)! When I looked at this journal three or four months after our January Spat, I noticed that she had removed her screenname from it. I suppose that she was sending a message that "I am no longer of any importance to her and that I have no place in her life any longer," and naturally, I was a little upset by this, so in retaliation I removed her name from my then regular Livejournal's friendslist. The very next day I noticed that she had removed my name from her friendslist too (and she had a huge friendslist of over 100 people...she's a livejournal junkie...so she must have been looking hardly in order to spot my missing name on her friendslist....)
Thus, it seemed, our Silent War was commencing. Both of us were trying to show the other through silence and deletion that we had no place in each other's life any longer. Through this process of deletion, we were effectively erasing our past. It was rather childish on both of our parts.
I have long since forgiven
The weird thing is that even though I have forgiven her, I have not yet told her! And just because I've forgiven her doesn't mean that I felt like talking to her; it only means that what has been done is in the past and I am over it. I'm not perfect, and I'm sure to make grievous errors from time to time (as I have done in the case with her), and there will be situations in life when I will hurt someone and that person will need to forgive me. Why shouldn't I forgive her then? Hate, I experienced, only corrodes one's soul. I was overly bitter when I hated her; bitter about everything, and I felt so alone and depressed. Hate only has the power to destroy, and fortunately for me, I was able to recognize this. I realized that I had to forgive her in order to move on and grow from this; holding on to these bitter feelings truly serves no purpose.
As I stated above, I ran into
I saw her first; it was pure coincidence that we were near. I was walking aimlessly around the big university fountain in order to stretch my legs between classes. During the circling of the fountain, I just happened to see her approaching from the direction of the library. When I saw her, we were only about 15 feet apart from each other. I was actually glad to see her, and I approached her because I wanted to say "hi" and that I have no hard feelings towards her anymore.
She was shocked to see me. Because I have not talked to her since January, she had no idea that I came back to school, so it really must have been rather shocking for her to look up and see me, the one that she shared many good and bad memories with, standing right in front of her. I was still feeling a bit dazed at finally seeing her again after so much time; so much so that I forgot to smile and wave at her immediately after she saw me. I just kind of stood there in front of her. When she saw me, her eyes went wide and wild in that deer-in-the-headlights kind of way. Her mouth dropped open, and I heard an audible gasp. After a second or two, she regained her composure. What did she do next?
SHE WALKED RIGHT ON PAST ME WITHOUT SAYING "HI" TO ME OR EVEN OTHERWISE ACKNOWLEDGING MY PRESENSE!!!!! I knew things had gone badly between us, but I really didn't know that they were so bad to where she didn't even want to say hi to me. Stunned, I stood there in amazed stillness and watched her walk away. A few seconds later, I started to follow her, and when I got closer, I shouted her name. "C-a-r-o-l-i-n-a!" She momentarily half-tilted her head in my direction upon hearing me call her name, but she then focused in front of her and walked even quicker away from me. I resigned myself to the fact that she was not going to talk to me at all, and I just watched her walk completely out of my life forever.
Perhaps I should have told her months ago that I forgave her, hahahaha!
Strangely, I was not very upset when she ignored me. Perhaps it is because I am over the bitterness of the past. I'm largely indifferent to what she thinks about me now. But still, it was a big "what the fuck" moment! I found it hard to concentrate in my next class because the incident had left me so confused.
I know what
Except for one thing.
It is not convincing to me at all.
I shall postulate that it is through her actions of Inaction, her blatant show of ignoring me, that proves to me that She is Soooooo Not Over This. Instead of giving me the impression that she is indifferent to me, she gave me the impression that she still hates my guts; wouldn't someone who was truly over something and now indifferent to it (and me) at least say "hi" in a civilized manner? Her response (or lack of it) is blatant evidence to me that not only is she not over what happened, she cares a great deal about it even still - a full eight months after it happened!
That she would still hold such a grudge against me is rather dumbfounding to me; after all, she was the one who said, "Of course I don't need your friendship!" all those months ago. If I was so expendable to her then, then why should she care so much about it now? I thought that she was practically telling me to "go away" last January. But if she's the one who effectively told me that, then what exactly is she so angry about now? The only thing that I can think of is the little matter of me abandoning her and not offering an explanation for it (LOL! I say that like it's such a little offense, but I know that it was actually rather drastic, and it is definitely nothing that I should be proud of). I cut her off in order to protect myself from getting hurt even more; she truly seemed so uncaring then, and I would have never imagined that she would even care enough to be sad or angry about my abandonment of her.
WOMEN ARE SOME DAMNED CONFUSING CREATURES! I HOPE THAT ALL OF YOU WOMEN OUT THERE UNDERSTAND THAT!
The only rational conclusion that I can come up with is that I meant a lot more to her than she let on, and a lot of her boasting that "she doesn't care" was actually a mental defense mechanism to prevent her from getting too close to someone, me in this case, and getting potentially hurt. Or it may be that she didn't realize that I meant a lot to her at the time that she said those mean things, and it is possible that she realized what I meant to her only after I left her life. Yes,
It seems as though I hurt her too. That is the only rational explanation to account for her obvious antagonism against me.
Now I know that this friendship is lost, and I am not attempting to patch it up again. However, I mentioned at the beginning of this Damned Long Post (as always, it seems) that I wish to reconcile my part in all of this with her. I no longer wish to play the Silent Game. She obviously "showed me up" in a way that can only deem her the Victor of it. This Silent Feud of ours is, like all conflict, ultimately futile. It is childish; we have both acted extremely immaturely, and I now feel as though we need to grow out of this state. We are both adults, and we should therefore handle things with fairness and responsibility; not childish mind-games! Therefore I am going to write her a handwritten letter in order to show her my thoughts about all of this. I will give her an explanation of why I abandoned her. I will explain how I felt hurt by what she said. But my main purpose is to tell her that I forgive her, and I will describe the adverse and sickening aspects of hate and why one needs to forgive in order to heal his or her wounds. Ultimately, I will suggest to her, she should think about forgiving me for all that I have done wrong if she wants to move on completely.
Nay, our friendship likely will not be patched, but I don't want us to die each other's mortal enemies. Ultimately, we had a stupid and silly quarrel in the Grand Scheme of Things; many people have endured far worse pain and still found it possible to forgive those who hurt them.
I don't know if I will tell her this, but I still love her, to a degree. I am not talking about romantic love - heavens no, not anymore! But she is really the first girl that I fell in love with, and even if she didn't reciprocate it, that doesn't change that I once loved her. She is the one ultimately responsible for instilling passion within me, and going through this ordeal with her is something that has resulted in me becoming much more confident and mature! Why shouldn't I have some love for someone who, at the end of the day, has had mostly positive impacts on my life?
It is because of her that I realized that I love the Pursuit of Knowledge for Its Own Sake. It is because of her that my creative side has been unleashed. Without knowing her, who knows, I might not have had the courage to follow my dreams. I might have settled.
For these reasons, I am going to reconcile my part in all of this, foolish though I am.
Now I know I know a song about Carolina - some old black and white movie musical song - hmm --. Anyway, WOW a HAND WRITTEN note!! Let us know how it goes! I would say (if you were a girl sorrowing over some guy) "don't over-analyse it", because men don't usually think or act in a very complicated way, do they? But since you are a male dealing with a FEMALE I congratulate you on your analysing .. but I am just wondering if you have left any permutation of reasoning unanalysed? If that makes sense. Ie. I wonder if you haven't thought of something....
Do you know the song I am trying to remember?
Posted by
anonymous jones |
9:58 PM
Hmmm...I think that I have heard OF that song, but sorry, I don't know it.
:(
It is very well possible that I may have missed thinking of something, but she was difficult to figure out even in the BEST of times! I suppose that as I meet more women I'll continue to be perplexed by them. :P
It may be true that lots of men don't think in terribly complicated ways, but then again, you haven't met ME! As I wrote as a response to one of your posts, I view myself as having both masculine and feminine traits; I believe that what we view as "gender roles" is little more than social programming on a massive, historical scale. Other than a few minor variations in male and female behavior that may differ due to biological reasons such as difference in hormone levels, I don't see how men and women are really all that different.
Yet despite our sameness, women still perplex me when it comes to relationship matters. ^^
I am still going to write her a letter, but the more I think about it, the more I do not wish to be friends with her again. I still want to make Peace with her, of course, but I do think that it would be awkward to be friends with her again after all of this.
Who knows what will happen.
Posted by
Chauntecleer |
8:28 PM