I Had My Chance Today . . .

And I didn’t take it.

::Sighs::  Okay, I’m actually going to explain what all’s going on in this head of mine.  I’m going to say right now, these are the jumbled thoughts of my mind just being poured out here in the diary, so if it doesn’t make sense, bear with me till you reach the end.  If it still doesn’t make sense, note me.  I’ll try to explain it in a collected manner.

I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster since I talked to Mike.  Everything has just been thrown up in the air, feelings-wise for me.  I wondered if I was still in love with him, part of me actually wanted… wants… maybe-possibly-could-want to see if a relationship between us could work now . . .  And I’m jealous as Hell of who he’s dating now.  That narsisstic, manipulative, selfish, petty, lying, cheating, photo-whore, Jill.  See, simple story: Mike’s junior year, he was having some problems because he liked this girl, and two other girls liked him.  Well, one of the girls who liked him was Jill.  Ironically, he’d liked her awhile before that, but the feeling had fizzled on a school trip he went on where he got a crush on the other girl, who oddly enough, is a friend of Jill’s.  (Still!  Despite her being a manipulative person in her own right.  Though maybe that’s why they are still friends, now that I think about it.)

Anyway, she did this whole "mystery girl" thing that summer, and then told him who she was at the end of July.  Mike did go out on a date with her when she asked him to, just to see what would happen if they did, (though he told me later that he kind of felt cheated because she suggested they each pay their own way, and she brought this get-in-free card she had, so Mike was the only one shelling out money.)  He’d said back then that it was as if he was going out with his sister.  There was no romantic chemistry whatsoever.

So, it’s like, okay, you’ve gotta tell her that.  But things didn’t happen, and it just got worse, and the girl he liked rejected him, and by that time, Jill and I were talking, (Mike actually thought we’d be good friends since we’re both writers,) and what I didn’t know was that she was hoping that through she and I talking, I’d be able to put in a good word for her, since I was the closest person to Mike at that point, and that she and Mike could get together.  Well, I didn’t know that she was hoping for that, and even if I had, I would have told her that he wasn’t interested in her that way.  But I didn’t know, so couldn’t say that, and then Mike and I got together.

Jill and I, Jill and Mike, too, didn’t talk for a few months because she was understandably upset about someone else getting together with the guy she liked.  But we got back into contact, though rare contact.  E-mails and once-in-awhile IM’s were about it.  Anytime we made plans to hang out, something "always came up" on her end.

It was . . . I don’t know, maybe the summer after the alter was discovered?  Yeah, I should cover a bit about that, shouldn’t I?  There were so many signs that I can look back on now and see, but I had no idea they pointed to that . . .

Mike and I had an argument at the end of January in 2002, I believe.  Yeah, 2002.  Anyway, for whatever reason, I finally just said something like, "If you’ve got something to say, just let it out, Mike.  Just let it out!"

He let it out.  "It" was his alter, a literally crazed and homicidally angry alternate personality, though we didn’t know that then.  It was actually thanks to his meditation attempts when he was younger that his mind split into not one other, but two other personalities.  The Alter, and one we later discovered, and nicknamed the Recessive.  I might get into the different aspects of those two later.  Suffice it to say they were all Mike, but they were able to act independently of the Dominant, the personality who was out most often, the Mike that the world saw.

Yeah, maybe I should have said you know what? This is too big for us, you need to get professional help.  But I didn’t.  I honestly thought we could handle it on our own.  Heh.  We actually did.  Whatever else I accomplished for the positive or negative where he’s concerned, he’s a whole person and a good deal of that is because of my help.

I digress.  My main point for bringing up the Alter is that the Alter had residual feelings for Jill still pent up within him, something that came out during a conversation we had at Union Beach one night.  Well, that night, I had an idea.  What if Mike were to go out with her, hang out with her, etc., and see if feelings truly were there?  That way, he could have the chance that he was never willing to give me.  The freedom to see what else was out there, the freedom to make his own choice.

He accepted that, saying that he would do it as long as I was sure I was okay with it.  I still really cared about him then, and I remember at least thinking, if not outright telling him, that I wanted him to be sure about who he wanted to be with.  And that this was a good way of finding out.

So we talked to Jill, actually, I told her about it over IM, leaving out the part about everything concerning the Alter.  I just said that residual feelings for her had come back up in Mike, and I wanted him to be sure where his feelings were concerned.  And things set into motion for this whole thing of them hanging out, getting to know each other, etc.  At the start, all three of us agreed that conversations one of us had with the other, or anything like that, we’d be completely open and honest about, because at least Mike and I agreed at that point, that was really the only good way to go about this.  To be completely open and honest about everything involved.

Jill had agreed, at the start.  But after one time of them hanging out, talking, Mike reading her eyes, and that stuff, he told me what happened, and what he felt and thought from his perspective.  But when I asked her, suddenly she turned it into, "Well, I think this should really be a need-to-know-basis thing."

That annoyed me.  But again, I digress.  The upshot of the whole thing was Mike telling her that while he might once have been able to fall for her, those feelings for me weren’t diminishing.

And now, they’re together, and I feel . . . cheated.  I know it’s stupid because this isn’t even the circumstance, but I feel like he chose her over me.  He chose someone who lied to and cheated on her boyfriend over me.  He chose someone who drops people at the drop of a hat, someone who says she has no idea what loyalty to her friends is, someone who was petty enough to decide, ‘oh, this guy, (someone completely different,) isn’t worth having a crush on anymore because I’m going to college now and that’s where all the hot guys are who of course will fall all over me,’ someone who claims she can’t fully trust anyone, and yet has no feesible reason for having that claim.

I don’t want Mike back.  I just don’t like the whole feeling of "he chose her over me."&nbs

p; Because it wasn’t as if he got together with her two weeks after he moved out.  I’ve probably been completely out of his mind.

But I don’t know anymore . . . if I want Rob as a fiance.  I need intellectual stimulation and from him . . . I get none.  I’m used to someone I can talk about any subject with.  I’m used to someone I can speak as fast as I want to with, who still understands what I’m saying.  I’m used to being able to pick back up on a subject I was talking about three hours, or even three days ago, and while there might be a bit of a pause, the person picks up on it pretty quickly, instead of sitting there, "Huh?  What?  I don’t get it."

I’m devouring books at a speed that I haven’t reached since high school.  I’m picking up new ones whenever I get the chance, just to attempt to keep my mind sharp.  Because something that Mike Keller told Mike, and that Mike told me has been haunting me lately.  His message equated to the lines of . . . How do I phrase this?  I’ll just give the example.  Mike taught me how to play chess, and I was and still am a fairly unorthodox player.  And after so many games with me, Mike went and played someone who’s playing ability was either equal to or a bit higher than his own, and he was more prone to not catching things and making stupid mistakes, not counting on his opponent to cacth them, since he’d been playing against someone of such a lower ranking than him for so long.  Someone who wouldn’t necessarily catch those mistakes and openings.

It’s the same thing with me.  My mind was sharp around Mike.  He kept me on my toes, mentally speaking.  But now, with Rob, I don’t have to be on my toes.  I don’t even have to be flat-footed.  I have to stoop.  He’s the one on his mental toes, and he still doesn’t reach me.

I admit, he’s better than he used to be.  He’s reading a Hell of a lot more and that’s a big plus right there.  Not to mention his reading speed’s gone up extremely from when we were in New Jersey.  He’s not at my level of speed yet, but then, few that I know are.  (Not bragging, I just don’t know many people who read as fast as I do.)

Though I know that given the right incentive and motivation, he’ll undoubtedly keep improving . . . I don’t know.  The only thing I do know is that to some (BIG) degree, I want to break up with him.  But I also know, to another (BIG) degree, that I can’t.  He has nothing to go back to in New Jersey, and I seriously doubt that he’d want to stay here alone.  Hell, if nothing else, I do care about him as a friend, and I wouldn’t want him to stay here alone.  But I don’t know if I want to be together with him anymore, either.

And he gave me the chance to tell him that today, because he turned down the radio in the car and asked me, point blank, if something was wrong.  Was I sure I was okay?  Would I tell him if something was wrong?  I said no.  Nothing was wrong, I was okay, yeah I’d tell him if something was.

I just . . . can’t do it to him.  I don’t want to hurt him.  And I know the whole argument for well, if I wait, aren’t I just gonna wind up hurting him more and all that.  And I know that he’s not the only one I have to think about, I also have to consider my happiness.  But he doesn’t have a home to go back to.  His dad . . . don’t even get me started on his dad.  And his mom is a coward who’s hiding behind the limitations that she’s set on herself.  I have nothing against his brother and sisters, but you’d think they’d be a little more eager to contact him, you know?  I think his sister’s sent him one text, and they’ve talked to him on the phone a couple times when his mom’s called up on a holiday or whatever.

In any case, unlike Mike, where in his case he could’ve gone back to live with his dad and grandma, it would have just been a matter of inconvenience for him, Rob doesn’t have that to go back to.  And neither of us has friends he could stay with, even temporarily, and even if one offered, I doubt he’d want to impose.

I don’t know what I’m gonna do.  I have a few ideas, but each one lands me in the same situation I was in with Mike.  If Rob and I break up, he’d still be living in the same house as me, because no matter what, I would not ask him to go back to his family’s house.  They’ve as good as said they don’t want him there, and I’m not gonna send him somewhere that he’s not wanted.

::Sighs::  It was supposed to be so simple . . .  I mean, Rob helped me thoroughly get over Jason.  But . . . who’s going to help me get over Mike?