It’s kind of irrelevant where I am right now. All that matters is that I am in front of a computer…at a fairly late hour…feeling very nostalgic, upset, and unable to focus on the project that I have only recently decided to completely rewrite. Why do I feel this way? It seems my past has caught up to me once again, taken me roughly by the wrist, and raised a hand to smack me to the floor. All of this happening in a matter of 5 seconds. It’s beautiful, really…so beautiful I wish I could cry.
The people of my past are moving ahead just as I am. More specifically, the friends of my past. There isn’t much I have forgotten about one of my closer friends, but simply realizing that I had pushed aside all those memories of him sitting before his keyboard, playing songs he had been practicing to me…it stung my heart. With another year of college coming to a close, once again, former comrades are contacting me, requesting my presence. I hadn’t thought of them, but they had thought of me. I have blinded myself from those I knew in high school for the few I can truly value as best friends today…but they still wish for me to call them when I return home. There are a few I have wished to call, but I fear a repeat of the past two summers: I call. They are busy. They call. I am busy. Summer ends and we never really get together. Or, the most horrid one of all: We actually do get to spend time together, but we have nothing to talk about because now we have nothing in common. My former best friends in high school fall under this category…and have consciously been demoted to friends, while I now have a few others who take their place.
My financial advisor and I got on the subject of me learning Japanese and possibly going. He said to me at one meeting, “You know, I think you were born in the wrong country. Maybe even the wrong body.” My eyes grew wide wide when he said this. I smiled and stared down at my left leg riding atop of my right; my left hand covering my knee, with my right hand putting a gentle pressure on top of it. My response, bashful and timid, before the intimidating, bald, heavy-set man was:
“You really have no idea…”
After the play tonight, the megane-ko that continues to flirt with me said, “You’re so much like a girl.” Anyone who has been reading my blog knows that aside from times like this when I’m sincerely upset, I do not hesitate to speak my mind, which is sometimes considered a male trait. So, with her knowing this, it makes sense for her to say something like that, even though her reasoning behind that statement was simply my perpetual indecisiveness. My response was: “Thank you…I realize this.” All of what I spoke on before pains me to no end, which only further exploits the fact that I am so much like a girl. I don’t mind though…rather, I encourage it, despite my hostile, stay-the-fuck-away-from-me aura. What’s terribly sad is that those past friends do not know this of me, nor would they understand such a thing; I went through many metamorphoses in high school, most of which they couldn’t perceive in me. Whenever I tried to open up to them, they didn’t get it. So, I eventually found a select few who would get it, and they have continued to ever since then. I love them; I can’t love my former friends like I did. I can only be who I was to them when they saw me every day in high school, never letting on that my soul is not the Renai they knew.
No…they never knew me (Renai) to begin with…Ironically, I was only just beginning to perceive myself.
Meganekko Memoirs 