October 6, 2002
In Fair Verona
Leafing through my two high school year books, my near-to-combusting senior book. I touch some pictures reverently, remember the moment, the person, the feeling, the youth of it all.
Others I skip quickly over, then turn back and glare, relish, remember and rekindle the ashes of anger that dwell yet in my breast.
I hate him, you know. I remember what he looks like, in my mind, remember exactly, but somehow just the sight of him in a photograph is like seeing him again for the first time, or, rather, the last time, and loathing him and loathing him and wishing I had never shared so much of myself with someone so obvlivious to my greatness.
Because I am, you know. Great. I'm a good person, and an honest person, and he was neither.
I miss Jenny. Really miss her. We were so close, so giddy and serious at the same time. What is she doing now? Is she still in school? Is she okay? Does she finally have a good man who will treat her right?
I think I am going to call her. Maybe not today. But soon. Just to catch up. We can get lunch, like we used to. We can go to Wendy's.
When did this happen? How have I grown up so much? How has it been a year and a half already? How has anything come to be as it is?
How haven't I noticed until this moment?
Forgive me my nostalgia. I don't miss high school, by no means. I don't even painfully miss anyone I went to school with. If anything, I am grateful to have it behind me. To have them behind me.
But sometimes, like today, when I wake at a quarter after twelve and remember Jody's request for a certain photograph of us at graduation (middle fingers proudly extended and grins on our faces), and I go in search of it, and instead find something else entirely... I am not sad. I am surprised. Surprised by how big that year was, how overwhelming the years before. I experienced so much in so short and so sheltered a period of time.
And I'm beyond it. While it is not so drastic a separation as, say, junior high from now, it is a rift all the same. I no longer feel like high school Jillian. I am not sure I even know what she was thinking anymore. She was in love, and she was idealistic. I am the same way now... but different. Not wise... but better. I know just a little better.
And it's cringing for Ryan all over again. Grimaces at the sight of his face, typically scowling. How did I ever think he was wonderful?
There was one picture, just one, where I thought, that was a sweet moment.
We were sitting on Brittany's couch at a random Drama party, and he has my face squished between his hands and he is kissing my cheek, and I am struggling. And I remember giggling madly and fighting him, fighting him...
And times like that were rare. That memory is paired almost exclusively with another of that day, when we leave the party to go to a movie. I was depressed that day, though I cannot remember exactly why.
At the movie theatre, there is nothing playing that I want to see. Ryan shrugs, leans his seat back, and pulls his hat down over his eyes.
And he let me sit there, stewing, ready to cry, while he attempted to sleep. While he ignored my obvious mood.
He did that alot. When there wasn't anything to do, he would pull his hat down and rest his eyes. Times like that were not opportunities to speak with me. They were times to take a break, to wait until he could get me alone and in some private place and make-out with me. Whether I wanted to or not.
I was luke-warm alot. We had to schedule when we got a chance to be together, because of being in high school and both of us having psychotic parents. So we'd see a movie. When it was finished, we'd be driving home, and he'd just veer off. After a while he stopped even asking if I wanted to, and if I made any sort of objection, he'd just look at me and make some plea about how we never really got to see eachother, and about how little time we had left...
There was a conservatory on the same street as his house, and it was always abandoned. We'd pull back there, and he'd park the car, and then he'd just reach over and kiss me and proceed to undress me.
Sometimes I wanted to.
Too many times I didn't.
I try to say to myself now that it was different then, that I really did care for him, that I really didn't mind and often felt the same way as he did. But I can't see it anymore. I can't remember the exact emotions of cold March days in the front seat of his car, sometimes the back.
I don't want to remember.
Loving him was a rollercoaster. I go back and read old entries and it was pissed at him one day and in the throes of adoration the next. There were so many signs, so many things I didn't say, didn't see... didn't want to recognize. I loved him and he loved me and that was all there was to it. There were other things in the world, surely, but not when he was within my range of vision. I became subjugate, if not necessarily to him, to what I felt for him.
Because I did feel. I just had no foundation for those feelings.
There was no trust. And, if I recall correctly, I told Ryan that I trusted him far before I told him that I loved him.
And he told me he loved me for the first time in an email. Totally unprompted. Totally unfounded.
Why did he love me? He didn't love anything about me. Compliments were rare, actual listening to me was far rarer.
What was I? Who was I?
I don't know that Jillian anymore because she allowed so much of herself to remain undefined so as to keep him to herself.
It's sad, because I could have been all of me and he still would've stayed with me. It wasn't that he did or did not like aspects of my person. There was no reason to hide anything. He wasn't paying attention anyway.
Where did all of this come from?
I remember he smiled at me alot. But was he smiling at me, or smiling at what he owned?
I remember being dragged behind the curtains at Drama practice. I remember being uncomfortable in so many places, uncomfortable with him, uncomfortable with what he wanted at such strange times. There was a couch back there. There was a costume closet. There was the balcony.
What did I miss when I was so grossly occupied with him?
Did he ever talk to me? What did we talk about?
I cried last night in the bathroom at work. Bawled. For a good person. For an honest person. For the terrible beauty of our situation. For the man that I want to marry, for the man who isn't afraid to tell me that he is scared of marrying anyone.
For a man who isn't a liar.
A Man.
Not a boy.
astera at 12:52 p.m.