“Over It”

"Over it" strikes me as a strange phrase.  What does it mean to say "I’m over it."  That you’ve forgotten?  That you don’t care?  That everything is back to normal?

I thought I was over the Dave drama.  That bit of embarrassment is not something I think about or care about and I don’t feel compelled to stare at the ground when he passes by, which is what he does when he sees me.  I could have gotten revenge in a big way by pulling the nastiest April Fool’s prank ever and it would have been so easy to pull off, but it didn’t seem worth it to me, so I didn’t do it.

That said, I was filled with jealous rage when Dave’s friends, (Elana, Anna, Ali, Rachel, etc.) asked Steph to sit with them at Senior Ball.  Steph, who’s had plenty of drama with Dave that I doubt she’s fully over with. (Wouldn’t Elana be going with Dave and Steph going with Kendra?) Steph, who doesn’t dance.  (May I remind you that my amazing date John and I are both hardcore dancers, just like Elana, Anna, and Ali.)  I spent the whole AIPAC conference with Dave there and everything was fine and they asked Steph to sit at  their table and not me?

So I thought I was over it, but I guess I wasn’t.  (I am over the table issue though because I’m sitting at a different table with cool people wo are also harcore dancers).  I suppose the real thing I lost after the whole Dave thing wasn’t Dave himself, but his friends, whom I thought liked me.  My favorite memory from that time was the time that we all went to Banana Joe’s…one of the few times I had gone clubbing with people who liked dancing as much as I did (Dave himself not included in this category).  My least favorite memories are more plentiful.

Anyway, I bring up this unflattering story because I’m reminded of something else that happened at dinner that signals that I might not be as "over it" as I thought I was.

So for the most part, dinner was pretty good.  I sat with John and his friends.  Two moments were awkward for me (though I doubt the rest of the table really noticed).  The first was when Jamie, who was sitting next to me, had a hickie and I was really tempted to jokingly ask who gave it to him, but just as I was about to, it occurred to me that if I asked him, I had no idea how he’d react.  Would he think I was jealous? (Trust me, I’m not)  Would he get pissed and say something smart-ass to embarass me, like "Well, it wasn’t you!" (No, didn’t think it was…obviously…)  Luckily, I was smart enough not to say anything.  I am incredibly curious to know who the hickie giver was.  Does that mean I’m not "over it" or that I’m merely a gossip seeker like everyone else?

The second awkward moment was when the conversation discussed Filipinos, Jews, and at one point, something about Jews hooking up with Blacks.  If I were with any other crowd, this could have been a decent moment to mention a true and amusing story about Jews hooking up with Filipinos.  Then I remembered that since Jamie told everyone everything, the entire table was filled with people who already thought of me as a person of licentious behavior and telling that story wouldn’t put me in a good light.  Fortunately, I have horrible sense of timing and missed the opportunity before I incriminated myself.

If I were truly "over it," wouldn’t these moments have not bothered me?   Wouldn’t I have not felt paranoid?  BTW, don’t get me wrong, dinner was good.  But it does make me wonder about what it means to be "over it."  Like that’s such a vague term.

Like what does perfect "over it" look like?  Right now, I think I’m pretty good about the Levy Award and 99.9% of the time I simply don’t care, but when I walk through the Hillel house and see the plaque, I still feel this little twinge of resentment, reading Lindsay’s name and knowing that when future generations of Jewish students walk through the Hillel house, they’ll see things like the photos (none of which I’m in because I’m so unphotogenic) and the plaque and have no idea that I did anything worthwhile at Hillel too.  What will it take for me to see the plaque and not care?  A large donation to Hillel to get my name plastered somewhere in the house too?  How long will it take for this to not bother me in the slightest?

Maybe it’s not an issue of time but an issue of distraction.  If I really put my mind to it, I could become bothered about all sorts of stuff that a millisecond ago I was "over."  Certain things, like issues/incidents involving my sister, do not bother me for the majority of the time (as was the case at one point when my rage was an obsession of sorts), but only at certain moments when I am forced to think about it and I have nothing to distract me from my anger.  Is the fact that I don’t think about it most of the time a sign that I’m "over it"?  Or is the fact that I grow extremely angry when I do think about it a sign that I am not "over it"?

Then again, maybe "over it" is dependent on time.  I’m trying to work myself into a state over something that happened in middle school as a thought exercise and it is extremely difficult.  Time does seem to act as a sort of earth that makes it a lot harder to dig up that which was buried.  I barely remember middle school, let alone anything that was worth getting worked up over.  No, never mind, I guess there’s the geography bee.  And the embarassing time when I was completely in love with my 8th grade social studies teacher and I wanted her to live with her like a daughter….but even though I can remember these things, I can’t recreate the intense emotion that I felt back then when I clearly wasn’t "over it."

So maybe it’s an emotional threshold.  Like there’s some arbitrary cut off point of emotional intensity level that dictates when one has reach what is defined as "over it."  So "over it" doesn’t actually signify a zero-reaction level, but instead, some arbitrarily defined margin, kind of like how "fat-free" isn’t completely fat-free, it just means that there is less than 0.5 grams of fat per serving.

Which is close to zero, but…..