Mistaken Madness

This is a diary of honesty.  There’s nothing I’ve put in here that hasn’t been truthful.  I think we all know by now that I in no way glorify myself or mask my mistakes.  I always place myself in the harshest light of truth.  And with that said, I’d like to remind you of how I’m a screw up by revisiting the Beau incident.  To refresh your noggin’, I had plans with the roommates to hang out on V-day.  I was looking forward to it like a huge dork because I wasn’t going to be alone on V-day, which was going to be a first for me.  Sure, I wasn’t going to be with a special girl but at least I’d be with people I cared about.  So, on the day we were supposed to hang out Beau texted me and canceled.  I was pretty upset and even more upset that he canceled on me to hang out with his girlfriend, Chana.  Well, he says they aren’t going out but they totally are.

So, I stopped speaking to him.  I wasn’t trying to give him the silent treatment or anything.  I wasn’t trying to punish him and I didn’t think I was being immature.  I just simply didn’t want to talk to him or look at him because of what he did.  Well, this went on for about a good two weeks or so and it was eating me up inside.  As angry as I was at him and as much as I wasn’t speaking to him, he didn’t seem to care.  He never asked me what was wrong or apologized for canceling.  I figured if he didn’t care that I was mad then I made the right decision to cut him out of my life because if he didn’t care, then he didn’t matter.  Yet still, I didn’t like the fact that we weren’t talking, especially because I had to live with him.  Especially because we had two classes together this past quarter and we’d have two classes together during the upcoming quarter so he’d be pretty much unavoidable.  Also, I didn’t want to live in an environment of silence like I did with Keith.  I remember being so lame, practically groveling to him, asking him what I did, what I had said that made him so mad that he didn’t want to speak to me.  And he wouldn’t tell me, never relented on his icy silence.  And I didn’t want to be like Keith.

I realized that getting through the next three weeks, not to mention the next quarter, was going to be hell if I didn’t resolve things with Beau and since he apparently wasn’t budging, I’d have to eat poop and start talking to him again.  I just had to find a way of going about it.  I decided on the upcoming Thursday.  We’d usually walk together to class but the past few Thursdays, he’d been at the animation building all night catching up on his stuff so he wouldn’t return to the room.  At first this was a good thing because I didn’t want to walk with him but now I was hoping he’d be in his room so I could wait for him to walk out so we could walk to class together and have a talk in private.  That morning, I got dressed and waited for him to come out of his room.  He never did.  His door was open so I poked my head through to see he wasn’t there.  Great.  So, he was already in class. 

So, I get to class and he wasn’t there, either.  Awesome.  I didn’t know when I’d get the opportunity to talk to him again, at least in a situation where it would just be the two of us.  Class ended and I went back to my room for a pee break (‘cause I try to avoid public bathrooms) and a snack and then had to turn around and go right back to the animation building for my next class.  And there he was.  There were several students sitting in between us so I couldn’t get close enough to him to talk to him.  The biggest problem I was having was the itching.  For the past two weeks, my anger and disappointment in yet another person had turned into ropes that tangled up inside my stomach.  I couldn’t go on like this.  I had to worry about finals and that was an unnecessary stress to deal with.  I couldn’t wait to talk with him any longer.  I was glad that the class was basically an independent work class.  We didn’t have to hear a lecture or do any paper work.  We just worked on our senior films at our own pace.  This gave me the opportunity.  I took a seat behind Beau and about half an hour into the class, I tapped the back of his chair.  He turned around and I motioned for him to come over to my side. 

“I don’t want us to not talk anymore,” I said.

A smile spread across his thin lips and his eyes widened and his eyebrows relaxed, as if some sort of relief had stroked his face.  Or, at least that’s what I tell myself I saw.  Just to make myself feel better, I pretended like my silence was eating him up just as much as it was me.  Turns out, it kind of was.  We talked about it and he admitted that he was bothered by my actions but said his pride got in the way of him inquiring as to why I wasn’t talking to him.  I went on to explain why I was mad and then things got…embarrassing for me.

Beau said he couldn’t understand why I was mad and I told him I didn’t like the fact that he blew me off to hang out with his girlfriend.  He repeated to me that the restaurant would have been too busy and I corrected him and said that he texted me saying he’d be too busy.  He then corrected me and said, “No, I texted you that the restaurant would be too busy, not me.” 

“Well, I have it in my phone, I know what you texted.”

“Okay, show it to me then.”  Beau seemed unconvinced.

I scrolled through my texted messages with a huge grin on my face.  Oh, I’m gonna show him.  I recognized the first part of the text and opened it up to reveal the full message.  It read, “Steve and I decided to wait on going out because it’ll be so busy.”

It’ll be so busy.

Uh….oh.

My mouth opened and my eyes widened this time but there was no relief in sight.  Instead there was a hot, white streak of humiliation that flooded my face.

Turns out I had read the message wrong.  I was so positive it read “Steve and I decided to wait on going out because I’LL be so busy,” not “IT’LL be so busy.”

So, not only did I find out that I was angry at him for the past two weeks for no good reason, I’m also illiterate.  Great!

Well, I poured on the apologies and Beau just laughed.  I can’t believe I read the message wrong.  All that anger.  All that frustration.  For nothing.  We had a laugh about it but I was really embarrassed.  Oh well, I suppose it happens.  Just another dumb incident in my dumb life.  The thing was that even though Beau hadn’t actually done anything wrong, I found myself still angry at him.  There were these residual feelings of frustration.  I guess I was feeling so deeply that, even after everything was resolved, I couldn’t shake my anger.  Eventually, the negative feelings faded away but I guess during that time I realize how I was affected by Beau’s non-betrayal.  And that scared me.

The rest of the quarter went much smoother, just as I had hoped. 

I’d feel bad about feeling like a jerk if I wasn’t so used to feeling that way.