Saa, I'm writing a journal entry and its NOT about a con! (X_X look at my past 4 entries . . . . ) Though it is about that other . . . thing . . . I write about (though don't share so often). Chris.
I thought I had forgotten him, I honestly thought so. An occasional memory is okay, but as long as I kept pushing on he couldn't hinder me.
I guess I should at least explain a little about our relationship.
Chris and I had been on and off friends since our junior year, though we had known each other in passing our sophomore year. I'm not sure really when, how, or why he became so important to me, but he started out as merely a dependable art critic who actually said something besides 'hey, thats good.' In all honesty, a good deal of my improvement could be credited to him. Maybe. But in the start of my junior year, he was really the only person I knew in my lunch group, so I started to hang with him. At lunch. And for 4 months, thats as much as it was. We talked together at lunch, talked online. Nothing outside of that, really. (Then again, I was busy with band a lot.)
Then one December day he invited me with a bunch of his friends (including Thomas, who will be spoken upon more later) to go see a movie or something, and we eventually all wound up at his house. I was tired, and I curled up on the floor while the rest of them were playing video games. Eventually the video games turned into physical games and someone almost hit me with a chair. Almost. Everything seemed to stop then, and everyone was like 'hey, leave Heidi out of this.'
I felt distant, but as I looked back later, I wished for them to protect me like that again.
Soon, Chris, Thomas, and everyone in 'that group' became a sense of independance to me; they were the first group I hung with who didn't ask their parent's permission to do everything (I was 16 at the time, this was a big deal for me) and kind of lived the way they wanted, usually in Chris' basement. I wanted that too. I began to leave my other friends behind and hang with Chris and co more and more often.
Then Sam died.
Sam was my puppy; he was a 4-year-old golden retriever I had raised since he was 8 weeks; I had trained him and everything. As wierd as it sounds, I get very emotionally attatched to animals, although I can be quite distant from people sometimes. Don't ask. Anyway, while my sister hammed it up at home, I went to school the day after he died. I don't like being near my family when I cry, really, but I couldn't stop crying during school most of the day. But it was at lunchtime when I broke down that Thomas did something very surprising - he actually wiped away my tears.
Making the Thomas saga short, from christmas break to spring break the two of us grew closer as friends. He even found out about my scars and seemed to really care - we had a lot of long serious talks, and a lot of phone calls where we both did noting but listened to the other breathe. I had said I didn't want to be any more than friends; in my mind I knew I shouldn't, but I wanted his strength so badly. Unfortunately for people like me, I didn't realize Thomas didn't understand this kind of subtle hint. While I became more and more obsessed with him, he seemed to care less and less about me.
What really broke the both of us was my 'posessiveness,' as he called it. The fact that when I thought he cared for me I expected him to be loyal. Well, he started going back out with his ex (who I also hated for a long time after that) and things dissolved rapidly from there.
Eventually, of all the people I had befriended that fall, Chris was the only one left who seemed to care. He says I took advantage of it, threatening him with my scars. My parents tell me I was seriously not mentally well, and that a lot of things I did were neither rational nor sane. Regardless, in June of 2003 I was thrown into the psych ward when my parents found out about my scars.
The summer passed reasonably well; we had season passes to kings island and I was the designated driver (aka only one with lisence) for most of the trips. Thomas, his ex, Chris, my sister and I were the usual crowd, sometimes joined by several other of chris' group. Some things happened but it sums down to Thomas didn't like me (and picked on my sister some too) but could really care less. My sister, for the first time in a very long while, actually felt like family to me. And Chris . . .
In his own way, he really tried to help me.
Summer ended, and marching band started again for me, and I saw none of them for a good 4 months except the occasional in-hall pass or chat online. Once marching band ended I tried to get together again with Chris, and finally succeeded in the form of a movie. Unfortunately, Thomas and another of the 'group' were going along (a guy who had been 'kicked out' of the group because he and Chris weren't really getting along for a while. He had never liked me so much anyway, thought my whole cutting issue and depression were nothing and no one suffered like him/he was the only one with answers because he had learned to 'accept' life) The movie was good but the company was bad - I wanted so badly to tell Chris, to talk to Chris alone, but whether purposefully or not, the other two would not let me close to him.
(Meanwhile I had also regained the frienships I had broken earlier with the friends I shouldn't have ever left.) Also for a while I had been trying to convince Chris to come to church with me; I had taken him to Cedar Point with my youth group that summer (one of my more powerful memories) but he never has agreed to come.
Although I had gone to the psych ward and was now on anti-depressants and counseling, my need to cut had never really disappeared, only diminished. The summer and fall months left me with a few more hidden cuts. I told chris, though.
Then Chris finally got fed up with me that November. From November to May, really, the two of us played the painful game of catch, where I was desperately trying to talk to him, while he was blocking me out any way possible. (Including the use of his 'groupies,' who had seemed to take up residence in his house.) We cycled through the game and periods of decent friendship, I the ever-relentless; he the ever apathetic.
I had thought finally in June he was my friend again when he had started to agree to do stuff with me and my friends.
I guess I was wrong.
"This has to stop. I'm getting tired of coming home from work and finding that I have 14 calls from the Black residence. I'm tired of checking my email and finding that I have 6 emails from the same address, most of which just telling me every event in your day. I don't like waking up to find that while I was asleep someone had come into my house and left me presents or tried to steal my stuff (i.e. pillow).
"I'm glad you're happier now then you used to be. I really am. I'm glad you've been doing well at cons. I'm glad you got into the college of your choice. I'm glad that you've done all these things without me. And that's how I want things to continue to be. I want you to be happy, I want you to be successful. But I really don't want to be there with you when you do it.
"I know you like hanging out with me. But I really don't. When I'm with you and your friends, I have to restrain myself from saying things that I would normally. In a way, I'm lying to everyone, including myself, and I don't like to lie. In all honesty, I tend to lie to you more than I do anyone else, I'm not sure entirely why, probably because I don't trust your sense of self control. Everyone deserves a second chance, but I've given you way more than that, and you've still managed to do something non favorable every time.
"I know I shouldn't have agreed to do something with you after graduation, but my nice guy inside took control momentarily, and I regretted the decision immediately after you walked away. The movie went alright, DDR was alright. But it needs to end there. If you won't do it for you, do it for me, for my mental state.
"I want you to go to college, I want you to do what you like to do. If that's drawing go for it, if you find you like cooking better along the road, go for it. But without me. We've had a tumultuous relationships, I've learned a lot from it, I hope you have too. There were good times, there were bad times, but that's the way life is. And this part of life needs to be over. Now. So this is my way of saying goodbye. Stop calling, stop visiting. An occasional email is OK, but not once every few days. Mail me from college once you get there, just to let me know how you like it, and how things are going, and we'll see how things go from there. But let this go. Now."
To explain how this hurts is like trying to explain colour to a blind person (pardon my use of metaphor); unless a person has actually seen the colour its impossible to comprehend.
Ah well, now that I've written myself silly on 'scars,' I guess I'll hafta explain the rest. I sell knives. really REALLY freakin' awesome ones. (www.cutco.com) The goose is from a contest with the knife-selling office; he is now our not-really-un-or-official mascot, and the pencil is part of that contest too.
The Heidi has spoken.
Sta.sh
and now, 
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