I’m pretty sure I’m not bipolar….

First of all, I need to apologize for the delay.  I got hooked on that game Indigo Prophecy.  Calling that game a “game” is a bit of a misnomer, but that’s what it is.  Anyways back on topic…wait a minute that is on topic.  In fact, today’s blog is about video games as much as it is about lost friends.

When I was in High School in my junior year, I believe, I had a friend named Ron.  I knew him through one of my classes.  Beyond that, we have very little in common.  He was very much into the JROTC scene and hopes to be in the military when he graduates, a very noble pursuit but certainly not my cup of tea.  That’s all he talks about.  I can’t remember us talking about anything else.  Why was I even friends with him?  Oh wait that’s right.  I was being the lowest form of a friend there ever was.  The parasitic kind.

He had a Playstation.  Yup.  We were friends because he lets me play his Playstation.  What can I say?  I wanted to try Resident Evil 2 and Final Fantasy 7, games I’ve only read about in game magazines and was desperate to try out.  Every so often he lets me come over to his house to play those two games.  They’re not the kind of games where two people can play at the same time so I play while he tells me what to do next.  I had fun although I don’t know if I can say the same for him though.  All he does is watch me play.  We did this enough times for me to finish Resident Evil 2.  I didn’t finish Final Fantasy 7 until way later when I got my own Playstation around 1999, but I got about ¾ of a way into the game.

I knew I was leeching off of him, but I was having so much fun I didn’t care.  Thanks to this unhealthy relationship, I became a fan of the Resident Evil and Final Fantasy series.  As for what happened to Ron?  Well I don’t know.  Summer came along and I didn’t keep in touch with him during that time.  During our senior year, we didn’t have any classes in common, and I didn’t try to seek him out.  So that’s how I left it.  I got what I wanted without losing anything.  Did I regret it?  A little bit.  I’m sure it’s not something Ron would look back on and regret.  Hell it’s not like we slept together or anything (shiver).  Still I would rather have never been the kind of person who would leech off of other people intentionally.  It’s in the past now, and I hope that’s where it stays.

Mark Twain said that once.  I know it to be true a great deal of the time.  That is why I try, however weakly, to make friends with people I meet regularly.  The ones who knows me well enough know that I don’t actively go out to look for friends, but that doesn’t mean I’ve never succeeded in befriending anyone.  I’ve definitly managed to make some friends here and there, but like most of my ventures, I’ve had more failures than successes.  This month, I decided to showcase 4 of those failures.  All of which, you should know, is completely, utterly, and totaly my fault.   Come to think of it, all except one, but we’ll get to that later.

Welcome to Lost Friends Month

I want to talk about a girl I once knew.  Her name is Dawn.  I don’t remember exactly how we met, but I’m pretty sure it was from all those school plays that we did together.  As you’ll eventually learn from my future blogs about my other lost friends, a mechanic exist that keeps me befriended to another person.  What I can’t understand about my friendship with Dawn was that there was no mechanic.  We were friends for some unknown reason.   The school plays introduced us to each other, and we had some classes in common.  Beyond that, I really can’t understand why we became friends.  We were so different.  She has a fully developed love for music.  I was just getting started.  She was smart and just about aced all of her classes.  I was just passing.  She can act very well.  I was stiff as a board onstage.  All I know was that we can talk to each other.  For the most part, I listened while she talks.  She once told me that she’s usually the quiet one in the conversations.  I guess she met her match.    I think it was sometime during my senior year that I decided to see if we can be more than just friends.

Now comes the messy parts.  Around the same time, or possibly before I’m not sure, she found a boyfriend….online.  Where did he live?  New Jersey.  I was in a bit of a pickle here.  At the time, I didn’t want to act on my feelings.  You can thank my low self-esteem for that.  I was pretty sure she would reject me (later on I learned that I was right), but I didn’t want to lose a friend just because of that.  Funny thing is that ocasionally she would ask me for advice on what to do about her boyfriend being in the East Coast and all that.  I always helped her out regardless of how I feel.  We stayed friends even after I graduated High School.  Hell, we even stayed friends when she moved East to attend a prestigious computer school (I told you she was smart).  For the longest while, she lived her life, and I lived mine.  Every so often we chat online, but I’ve always hated chatting online.  Ocassionaly (how do you spell occasionally?) she would come back for vacations.  I always try to fit her into my life.  Even though she has no real reason to do the same, I expected her to reciprocate.  She never does.  I always felt a bit left out of her life.  I wanted more, but I knew that she doesn’t.  One day I realized that I just can’t continue this friendship anymore.  I literaly shut her out of my life.

I remember later on while I was online, she sent me an IM.  This was a long while after I made that decision, and I was begining to doubt if I made the right one.  I stared at that IM for a while thinking about all of the things I should have done when we were still friends back in High School.  Then I logged off.