Challenge Accepted.

that was just callous, to ignore the situation I got stuck in. I thought you were a bit more open minded than that. how does one choose between friends, no matter the caliber, and family? Like I told you, “blood, whether shed or shared still holds value”. maybe if you had a sibling…or something that would just help you understand where I’m coming from here…honestly, I’d rather you just out with the whole mess, on account you’re the better explainer. leaving people in the dark isn’t well to do. btw, my ass I blinked that promise away, you’ll never be in that situation, you haven’t the right to judge what you do not understand. I am offended by that, really.

“Ignore the situation . . .?” Oh, that’s a good one, Jason. Very crafty. How does one choose? I don’t know. How about you tell me? You’re the one who did, remember? Fine. I’m such a better explainer? I’ll let it all out here. EVERYTHING. Everything I remember.

My sophomore year I met a guy named Jason. He and I became friends through a mutual friend of ours named Chuck. Because Chuck and I so often talked about my best friend named Dolly, Jason’s interests turned to her, and that summer, when Dolly came down to visit, Jason and she got together. We had a lot of fun over that summer, despite the fact that a good deal of the time I felt like a third wheel. Regardless, I considered Jason my best friend besides Dolly, and she loved him like nothing else. After Dolly went up to Staten Island, however, I didn’t see Jason, save for two times. Once when he came over to my house, and once when he came up with myself, Ryan, and my parents to Staten Island on August 20th, to celebrate Dolly’s birthday. The one time that he was over at my house, his mom came while we were in the pool, and sat outside, not even in the drive way, getting all pissed off because we didn’t hear her honking. And it became increasingly difficult to get ahold of Jason by phone after Dolly went back up. And it didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t figure out why.

So school starts, and I was happy, because Jason was in my choir class. But then, Sept. 16th, his mom calls up both my mom and Dolly, and tells Dolly to stop playing mind games with her son, and that she wasn’t to call there again, and hangs up on her without letting Dolly say anything. Then, she spends a fricken hour or more on the phone with my mom, telling her that I was practically stalking Jason at school, pumping his teachers for information, etc. Things only went downhill as the rest of the month and the start of October came. I hadn’t stopped calling Jason, because back then, he had told me he knew nothing of his mom’s calls to either of us, and I wanted to know his side of things. So, I kept calling, trying to ask him about this stuff. He had his own line, why should his mom care? Well, September 24th, she stopped me when I was walking home from the bus stop, and told me that if called Jason again, she would have a police tracer put on his phone, and have me arrested. She also threatened to have a restraining order placed on me, so I’d have to stay so many feet away from him at all times, including school. Which, frankly, really scared me. I thought at that time that she could pull off these threats, and he and I were in the same choir class!! I didn’t want to have to switch out of the class, and I thought it was a possibility I’d have to. I stopped calling him after that day, the 24th.

I called him once after that.

Because just before October 4th, I talked to him in school, and said that what his mom was doing wasn’t right, she had to be confronted, and stopped. And I thought he agreed with me. We agreed that we would do this confrontation at the church, after the service, that Sunday, October 4th. I went to the church wearing the shirt that Jason had found for me on the Virginia Beach choir trip, and holding Purpl-grr, the alien that I consider him to have won for me at Great Adventure, despite the fact that I was playing the game. I waited through the entire damned service, not able to concentrate on a word Rev K said, because I was so busy waiting for Jason to get there. He never came. So, I came home, and figured, I hadn’t called him in how many days, what was the harm in calling him once? I decided that if he didn’t answer in four rings, I would hang up, and forget about it, and talk to him the next day at school. Well, I was about to hang up when his sister answered. She said he was busy doing something, or some such, and asked who it was. I told her it was me, and she said he would call me back. Well, he called back a couple of minutes later. My mom answered the phone, and confirmed to me it was him. But when I picked up the phone, it was his mom’s voice that greeted me, once again with threats, and ‘how dare you call here’s,’ and whatnot. I snapped then, and started yelling back, because who the Hell was she to be saying this stuff to me?

Neither Dolly nor I understood what was happening, and we were both in the dark. Soon, she turned to anger at Jason, when all I felt was hatred towards his mom. But Dolly felt that Jason had some doing in all that. She felt that he should have fought for us, weren’t we important to him at all? And similar questions. I always felt that she was unfair to ask such questions, because look at who his mom is! But I’ll continue on that train of thought later. Because believe me, it WILL come up again. Long story short, after his mom putting us through a month of Hell, with multiple (now I know empty) police/restraining order threats, lying about God only knows how much stuff, and causing God only knows how many tears between Dolly and myself, she had told me at the Baptist Church that Jason and I could go back to hanging out. That we could be best friends again. But I was always too wary to call him, and I never heard from him. And he made it pretty clear back then that he didn’t want to be around me, anyway. That’s what I thought then, anyway. He wouldn’t answer me on anything I asked, and soon, I gave up. I’d lost my best friend, and I didn’t even understand why.

Heh. I didn’t realize it back then, but his mom cost me more than just Jason. She cost me Dolly, too, in many ways. Because Dolly didn’t feel able to come to me with everything she was feeling during that time period, and then afterwards, and it spiraled into me losing her as well.

I reconciled with Jason about two and a half years ago. We talked on IM late one night, ironically enough, in September. When I told Dolly about that, she had her reservations, to say the least, because after being as hurt as she was by Jason and his mom, she wasn’t about to open her heart to him again. Not too long afterward, she and I had or falling out, and we didn’t speak for about two years. Jason and I, on the other hand, I thought our friendship was flourishing. Yes, in secret, because as everyone knows by now, his mom’s a freakin’ psycho, and by the time we reconciled, he was over 18, so there was no way to go to the police or anyone, about the emotional abuse she does to this day to him. If anything was to

be done, it would have to be because he was going there and making a case.

He ran out of his house once before. The December after we reconciled. But the loudest, nosiest, gossipiest hen of all the ones at the Baptist Church, (who his mom is “coincidentally” so tight with,) called up our house, and convinced Jason to go back. He and I have stayed friends on the sly, and as anyone who’s read the backlogue of this diary knows, I visited him up at the dorm last semester, and have been consistently driving up there this semester to see him. And not too many entries ago, I wrote of him walking out of his house on Sunday night, and showing up at mine. Mike, myself, and Jason walked around Sycamore and Veteran’s Park until fairly late. Midnght-ish, around there. Though he wouldn’t tell us any details of what happened, we got that about three weeks ago, he and his mom got into an argument where, if I recall correctly, she basically said she hated him. And over the past three weeks, different other things have happened, that he refused to divulge, and it finally culminated on that Sunday night when he’d retorted something, his mom had released a stream of obscenities, and he’d walked out, sick of how he was being treated.

He assured both Mike and myself that he was definitely NOT going back to that house. He could no longer live there, he was out for good, except to get his things. He promised me he wouldn’t go back. And I promised him that he would never have to. On Monday morning, after only about four hours of sleep, at around eight in the morning, his dad calls, and as I watched, Jason’s promises and resolve not to go back faded to the background. His dad convinced him to let him be picked up, and to take the car he usually drives to go up to Kean, and attend his class that day. Well, his dad came about ten minutes later, and took Jason out to breakfast. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep, so I stayed up, worried about him, and typing an E-mail, and I believe, an entry about all this. So, about nine-thirty, Jason comes back to the house, and says that he needs to talk to me. We walked around our side yard, and he tells me that he was going back to the house. As my face fell, he also said that his dad told him that he and I could hang out again, and that even his mom reluctantly agreed. They just had a few conditions. But they did want to sit down and talk about all this. While I wasn’t crazy about these “conditions,” which I thought were assanine in the first place, I was willing to sit down and talk. Stupid me, I actually dared to hope that something would come of it. But I asked Jason what happens if they don’t, because I did tell him that I doubted they would follow through on their promise, considering I’d heard this song and dance routine before. And he told me that he promised that if they went back on theirs, even slightly, he was out of there again. He told me it was something I could count on.

Well, later on Monday, he told me he’d give me a call about when this ‘meeting’ would happen. He never called, though, and I spent the rest of Monday, and all of Tuesday going out of my mind with worry. I had no real way of contacting him that I trusted, and I didn’t know when he’d stop by. I’d hoped he would on Wednesday, and no one has any idea how relieved I was when I looked out my window and saw him standing there.

(Wow. I’m really testing this new spacing capacity with this entry!!!)

Anyway. He came on Wednesday, and we sat down in the living room, oddly enough, where I’m typing this now, and he said that he had good news, and bad news. Then he changed it to bad news and worse news, and . . . You get the idea. Anyway, he tells me that, I believe it was the previous day, his mom, sister, and dad sat down with him and gave him an ultimatum. Them, or me. He picked them. And then told me that that didn’t mean he would stop seeing me on the sly, but the thing was, we probably wouldn’t have any time to see one another over the summer, since he’d be working, and wouldn’t have classes to go to, etc. His “good news” was that it looked pretty definite about him going back up to the dorm next semester. Yeah, the news depressed me, when I heard it that morning, but in many ways, I didn’t care. It was nothing new to me, I’d heard it before. Oh, wow. They went back on their promise. Big surprise. But yeah, a little niggling thought remained in the back of my mind. Because he’d made me a promise about if they broke theirs. ‘What happened to him being “out of there?”‘ I wondered. Because that was a definite break of a promise on their parts. But at that point, I almost didn’t care. We had hours to hang out, and I was going to make the most of the day.

I did a pretty good job of it until we were at an upper playground at Holmdel Park. That was when I started asking him about why he went back, among other things. He said that he wouldn’t abandon his sister. I don’t know how, because there was more to the conversation than just that, but I don’t recall it off the top of my head, but anyway. My mind makes odd leaps when thinking. I can’t give an offhand example, but things that I’ve read, or things I’ve thought about in a situation will come back to me in this flash, and I’ll connect things whereas normally I wouldn’t have, because for whatever reason, my mind wasn’t sharp enough at other points to make that leap. But, we walked down to another playground, and I walked over to the swings, just remembering Dolly’s diary entry, where she asked, didn’t she and I mean enough to him to risk his mom’s claws? (For the life of me I can’t remember what entry of hers that was in, and it’s bugging the Hell outta me!) And I thought about him saying that he wouldn’t abandon his sister. And my mind made a connection. We hadn’t meant enough to him. Despite us being two of the most compassionate, independent, unique people he’s ever met, (his words, there), despite being the two people who were waking him up, making him feel again, making him want to feel again, we didn’t mean enough to him for him to fight his mom for our sakes, because he doesn’t want his sister to hate him. That’s why we went through Hell for a month, for over a month. For the last Goddamn six years!!!! That’s why he lets them walk all over him, break their promises, that’s why he broke his promise to me. THAT’S WHY, JASON, I SAY THAT YOU BREAKING A PROMISE IS AS EASY AS YOU BLINKING. You’ve betrayed me. You play off changing subjects on a person so you don’t have to answer to anyone when you don’t want to, you’ve broken promise upon promise to me, and this is the biggest one yet, and frankly, I’ve lost a good deal of respect for you. Moreso, since you apparently think I understand nothing about what you’ve gone through these years, and therefore have no right to judge you. Maybe you should read a bit more carefully. I wasn’t judging you in my last entry. I was depressed, and I was crying when I wrote that entry. I didn’t know how to tell you what I knew I had to. But, fine, you say I should write all of this, I’ll put it here.

I hastily called you my best friend, and now I’m wondering if was nothing but a fool in doing so, b

oth times. Because the first time, you were cruelly ripped away from me, and neither me, your best friend, nor your girlfriend, meant enough to you to fight for. This time around, you told me what I thought was all of why you hid back then, and I believed you, and let my heart reopen to you. Yet, yesterday, you admitted you had no intention of me ever finding out that you didn’t care enough about us to fight. I’m torn on what to do in this situation, simply because I hold my promises dear to me. And I promised myself I would not abandon you. I told you yesterday, as I had my arms wrapped around you, that despite your defenses, no matter which ones I’d broken through or which ones were still present, I was your best friend, and I wasn’t going to be so easy to get rid of.

But how can I?
How can I be around you?
How can I trust you when you’ve so adequately, beyond a shadow of a doubt proven to me that promises mean nothing to you?

Yes, I still hope to see you on Monday. If nothing else, I want to see you in person and say/ask these things. And I’m giving you a chance to explain yourself. But I will say one more thing before I complete this entry. If you pull your cryptic BS with me, or insist that you have no answers, then . . . I’m done. Think over this weekend, and if I am a valued friend to you, and you can give answers to me, then come. If not, then don’t. Because you were given an ultimatum once, and you made your choice. I by no means am going to impose the same choice upon you, because I am not that callous, stupid, or cruel. But regardless of circumstance, the fact remains, you made the choice. If you can give me no explanations, then I’m holding you to your choice in that ultimatum. No, I’m not saying goodbye yet. I said I wasn’t going to be lost so easily. Believe me, this is anything but easy.

–Notes–

just wanted you to know that my mom had said that your diary entry “Honesty” made a lot of sense to her. 🙂 [Nora’s Diary]
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Wow…this is all too complicated for me…I don’t even know what to say…I guess because I’ve never met a person like Jason? But he is right, blood is thicker than water. There is not one friend on this planet I would put before MY family. [Jill*Rose]
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It hurts to have people close to you not value you enough to fight back… there must be something… I pray that there is a reason [Angel Knight]