2003-07-28 - 11:41 a.m.
I met Israel yesterday on the street and we shook hands. He is big and handsome. I ate a slice of pizza and we went to sit in Thompkins Park. Then we got into a fight! I've been thinking lately about how I feel like no one knows me, i can't really be myself and show all my best sides to any of my friends. I am always holding something back. I'm sure, alright, a lot of people feel like that. But what do i know about them? the thing is, I have a lot of best friends. I love a lot of people and I am always getting calls and letters from my friends, most of whom live far away. I imagine this web of connections laid out between me and all my friends around the country, how they are thinking of me and i'm thinking of them and we worry for each other and miss one another. But there's really no one who i don't hide things from, who i don't want to like me and think i'm funny, so I only let certain parts show. i remember even thinking about this when i was a little kid. I thought that Danielle was my friend who knew me, who i could be really comfortable around and not always be thinking something to myself, apart. That was 6th grade I think, that i thought that about her. Then I had my high school friends, whom i loved like crazy and all, but i always wanted them to like me, to be the most loved friend of all of them. Then with Alisdair in college i finally felt like someone could see me--he thought I was mean and funny and practical and smart and all of these things. Not just nice and sweet, or whatever people think. It was always so easy to talk to him, my god. He knew all about my fucked up family and my stupid sexual hangups. I was really retarded with him and also really smart, we talked about more complicated things than i ever did with my friends in high school and I could show myself, what i really thought about things, and what i really thought was funny or amazing. It's just so hard to break out of thinking about what other people think about you, how you want them to think of you. I'm sure how i want them to think of me and what they do, what i want people to like about me and what they do like about me, I'm sure those things do not really converge the way i think they do.
Anyway, then i was thinking about writing as a response to that feeling, of not being able to show your true self to anyone. Israel and I got into a fight because I said that you can really love someone and they can really love you, unselfishly and truly and all of that, but it doesn't mean that they really know you the way you want them to, or you, them. Or in the end, that it really makes you feel less fundamentally alone. He was like, whoa , sister. He is just really different from me. I don't even want to get into it. It was nice talking about never having that though with someone who is a prospective boyfriend. It felt really honest, because i was kind of acknowledging that i would never have that with him either.
He won't be my boyfriend but i did like seeing him yesterday. I just treated him like a normal person, and he doesn't seem to like me as much as the amount of times he's called me suggests, which makes me like him more. He's not so desperate. This is kind of all over the place. I am too stressed out about being caught writing in this, at work, to relax and get my thoughts together.
