Point Of No Return

No, Jason, this does not relate to you.

Jill,

I read your latest entry about missing Andrew and letting yourself become dangerously close to him.  I have some “words of wisdom” (Beatle lyrics!!) I’d like to write about.  Maybe they’ll help you.

When I was younger, in and before middle school, I was the most idealistic person there was.  And I dreamed big.  Correction: BIG.  I knew someone, that I thought I loved, and I honestly beleived we’d start dating once high school came, we’d go to our proms together, go to the same college, and eventually wind up getting married.  All this, of course, after he realized that he felt the same way about me, and loved me with everything in him.

Heh.  That never happened.  In eighth grade, we had something of a falling out, and we haven;t spoken since.  I think I went a bit crazy during that year.  I’m glad that I didn’t do as much damage as I could have.  Long story short, I was hurt beyond belief, and that year was the year that I so often wished I could just stop caring, because everything hurt too much for me to go on.  I thought a lot about suicide that year, too.  But I never took any action towards it.  I had enough emotional pain, and since the only way I could think of to kill myself would be to cut my own wrists, I didn’t want to add physical pain, in case I survived.  So, I suffered through.  And I do mean suffered.  I had no confidence, no self-esteem, no self-worth, and I didn’t feel I had any reason to live.  The one person who I thought I loved, and who I thought would be the only person I would ever love, had turned his back on me.  I didn’t want to care, yet somehow, no matter how hard I wished not to, I could still feel things.  I still looked at him and felt love, longing, and God only knows how much of a mishmash of other emotions.

Slowly, though, I got over it.  I’m still a dreamer.  I still think about the future, but after that escapade, I never thought about the future with anyone in it except me.  I knew whwere I wanted to be, I knew what I wanted to do, but I decided I wasn;t going to count on knowing anyone in ten years.  Except Dolly.  Boy, did I take another hit when things there blew up.

Yet, I find myself thinking about my future now, and . . . the people that I know now are in it.  Ryan, Mike, Jason, you, Melanie . . .

Maybe I won’t know all of you guys in the future.  Maybe we’ll have falling outs, drift apart, or perhaps we will remain friends throughout our lives.  We can’t tell what the future holds, though we can try to hold on to the people that we know when the future comes.

I’ve rested my trust in the hands of a lot of people, most of whom have betrayed me in one way or another.  It’s only in recent times that I’ve realized trust can be rebuilt to an even higher standard than what was there the first time.  Melanie is a perfect example.  We both betrayed the other’s trust, yet we talk now, and while I still feel it’s more one-sided on the sharing department, perhaps it’s not.  People confide in different ways, and maybe hers is in a way other than verbal.  Or perhaps it’s in the little things she says as encouragement.

Okay, back on subject.  My point is, as battered and beaten and bruised as your trust gets, don’t ever wish that it wasn’t there.  Don’t regret that you’ve gotten close to someone.  Because when the person, and people, come along who won’t betray you, and who will give you no reason to doubt them, it makes it worth all the betrayals.

See, now I’m going onto you, Jason.  He was someone I never thought I’d be friends with again.  For a long time, he was someone I thought I never wanted to be friends with again.  Yeah, I’m rehashing again, but I hope this time I’ll get it all out.  See, everything that happened with his mom, I could have dealt with and fought back, and kept fighting.  And I would have, had I thought that Jason cared about me.  I gave up, retreated, didn’t want to hurt anymore, because I thought that he didn’t care about me.  I’ve learned over the recent weeks that that was anything but the truth.  And I’ve been remembering different times in high school where he was around, after the whole thing.  In his own way, telling me he still cared.  But I never heard it.  I didn’t want to.  After all the hurt, all the tears, all the rejection, I never thought I’d be able to trust him again, even though something in me desperately wanted to for a long time.  He was never very far away in my thoughts throughout the rest of high school and afterwards.  Sure, I went through other situations, and they distracted me, but they couldn’t make me forget.

Yet, ask me who I trust more than anyone, and you know who I’ll answer?  The one I never thought I’d talk to, let alone trust, again.  Jason.

Back to Jill.  I guess that’s my bottom line.  Yeah, you’ll be hurt when you’re betrayed.  But people can surprise you.  Don’t be so consumed in the insecurities and fear of, “Oh, my God, I’ve let them get close to me,” that you miss who the person is who’s gotten close to you.

I hope this helped you, Jill.

Bye. J J J

–Notes–

Thanks Kate 🙂 I’ll write more later but I’m veeery sleepy now since it’s 1 AM… [Jilliebean]