I think I’m being ghosted.
I get not talking to people you once talked to a lot, especially online—heck, I’m the poster child of that. I’m terrible at keeping up with people if I don’t see them around! Every time I try to consciously change that, it seems like the rest of the universe conspires to give me an endless amount of stuff that’s due within the next few days.
But this ... really hurts.
(This is going to be a long post but I wanted to type it out to get it off my chest.)
So there’s this girl. She was on the periphery of my social group last year; I TAed a class she was in, but other than that, I didn’t have many interactions with her. Then I had to switch sections of German for the spring semester and we became fast friends. She’d often call me to pick her up on the way to class (for, even though she didn’t live far away from where class was, it was extremely cold at 7:50 in the morning for several months at the beginning of the semester). We’d go to concerts on occasion (all classical, given our music-school-student statuses) and we’d study German together as well. All was totally platonic; I’m astonishingly oblivious to flirtation, but even I knew that no signals were being sent. Heck, I’d have to keep her from opening up Bumble (which I learned was a dating app) on her phone during our study sessions, just so actual studying could happen, because she’s the kind of person who fantasizes about romance to a stereotypical extent. She called me “the honorary uncle” to her future children.
Would I have asked her out, given alternate circumstances? Let’s just say that if I’d had the merest inkling that she were interested, I’d have run that risk. We’re very similar people in a lot of ways, we hold ourselves to the same standards and values, we’re always an encouraging presence in the others’ lives, and she’s inordinately cute. But I knew that I valued her friendship, and I appreciated her presence in my life in that capacity ... so why risk anything? After a rejection or breakup, “staying friends” is a mere platitude about 98.6% of the time.
The thing is that we were just ... there for each other. When she had a rough night with some scary experiences, I was the first to learn about it, and I stayed by her side to calm her down, had her call her roommates and campus police, and accompanied her to Wal-Mart late at night so she could get some pepper spray. When a ton of crap went down in re: my grandmother, and I needed someone who would sympathize, she was there for me. When the A/C went out in her apartment, I lent her the biggest fan I could find. When I got sick towards the end of April, she checked in on me and made sure I was getting lots of rest. In appreciation of her presence in my life, I wrote a piece for her and she became the first confirmed performer on my upcoming senior recital.
We kept in touch a bit over the summer, but not extensively. I spent a month in Maine, and she spent twice as long interning at a drama camp that sounded like a truly wretched and miserable experience once we caught up about it. Understandably, she all but dropped off the face of the earth for a while, but we still would occasionally talk.
The fall semester began pretty much right when I get back from BrickFair, and though I don’t have a class with her this year, we still would run into each other. Not long after the school year started, she came down with mononucleosis. At the beginning of September, I took to sending her some funny picture each day. She really appreciated them and told me on several occasions that she was happy to have her mornings brightened in such a fashion.
Thus began the longest continuous streak of days in which we’d text or otherwise electronically communicate. Throughout September, we’d pretty consistently chat about pretty much everything, including some extremely late nights when she got Deep™ about her emotionally unstable middle and high school years. It wasn’t a one-way street; she would start conversations as often as I would, and we’d always ask about the other’s day. (Plenty of times, she’d send me funny pictures, like a picture of Donald Trump as a block of Spam.) Good news or bad, we’d always tell one another. On one occasion, we went to a concert and then ended up walking around her neighborhood until half-past midnight. When she broke up with a guy that she’d gone out with a few times over the summer—a relationship that she described as “not good for her”—I found out before she even updated her relationship status on Facebook, right after her best (female) friend. (As you might imagine, I had mixed feelings; I didn’t like the fact that she was sad, but I couldn’t dislike the cause of it.)
Overall, it was just nice. I enjoyed her company and she seemed to reciprocate.
In any event, she was talking one day about red velvet cake and how much her soul desired some, so I hatched an ingenious plan to bake some red velvet cupcakes for her. As the frosting required refrigeration, I had to let her know of my plan beforehand. She said—before I’d even made the things—that she appreciated me being there for her, and caring about how she was doing each day, and that it all meant a lot to her.
As I type this, it occurs to me that it all sounds very romantic, but it really wasn’t. (Well, maybe the tiniest bit—but I’m also the type who would do this kind of stuff for any of my friends, and goodness knows I don’t have crushes on all of them.)
I took the cupcakes to her before a big performance, and so—while she didn’t eat any then and there—we hung out in the very short period of time before she had to perform. I went to the concert, naturally, and then afterwards, she, I, and another friend of mine went to get some late dinner. I took her back to her house and we ended up, once again, in one of those profound conversations about the nature of humanity and the universe and its implications in our respectively weird lives. While full of our usual wit and banter, we both ended up talking about things we don’t usually tell other people. It was vulnerable but comfortable, and that’s a rare experience.
It only ended because an alarm went off on campus at 1:30 AM, blaring out the sound of an air raid siren before a voice came over the speakers, talking about a “dangerous individual.” I texted her after I got back home to see if she was alright, and she said that she was. “We have to find times to hang out that aren’t super late at night,” I told her. “Agreed!!” she replied.
And everything changed since then.
Her friends have said that she’s still around and okay. She’s still active on social media (though a little less than before). Yet since that late night, she hasn’t just been unresponsive to my daily memes, she’s not even looked at them. The only interaction we had was when, in the middle of this past week, I said that I hadn’t heard from her in a while and wondered if she was still doing okay (given a spate of crimes that have occurred near campus). It took her most of the day to respond, and even when she did, it was more laconic than usual, with none of the usual trappings of her electronic communiques.
Now fall break is upon us, and with it, continuing tension about whether or not I’ve lost a friend. (Granted, the stress is increased since it involves a friend I also happen to have a moderate crush on, but still!) I’ve replayed the events in my head and can’t make heads or tails of it. She’s still going to perform my piece on my senior recital (and, last I heard, she was still very excited about it, because she would sometimes text me out of the blue and talk about how gorgeous it was). According to those who see her every day, she’s doing a lot better and—while not 100%—is more or less as functional as a student without mono.
In a distorted irony, of the friends I have (whom I see on a regular basis), she is the only one I’d feel comfortable talking about this situation to—and obviously, I can’t.
We can all agree that relationships suck, but this isn’t even a matter of that. This is someone going cold-turkey on even talking to you after being comfortable enough baring their soul to you. That cuts deeper.
Does she like me but is afraid that I don’t like her? Has my reticence come back to bite me? I don’t have any hope that this is the case, but it would be the best outcome as far as I’m concerned.
Did she start to see me as being overbearing? I don’t see how, but if so, she should feel comfortable enough by now to tell me. In case it’s this, I’ve given her space, even though my day feels a little less complete without her causing my phone to buzz at intervals.
Does she suspect that I may have feelings for her (well-hidden though they may be), and has done her best to distance herself so she doesn’t have to reject me? If so, I wish she wouldn’t assume romantic intend behind guys who do nice things for her ... but if so, that says something about society, not her.
I keep going back to this whole situation in my head over and over and over, and it’s kept me from writing the papers I need to write and write the music I need to write and apply for the grad schools for which I need to apply. We will run into each other; it’s just sort of a given on our tiny, tiny campus (not to mention that she’s still obliged to be on my recital). I just needed to blast all this information out into the void and whoops, turns out Tumblr has become that place. Whoop-de-freakin’-do.
In other news, my grandmother is at least doing okay. Her house didn’t flood during Florence and it’s now on the market. The thing is, if it doesn’t get sold soon, we’re all going to be in a world of financial hurt.
My composition professor is a very nice man but he’s getting older, to the point where he gives me conflicting advice on different days. At first, he told me that I should probably apply to about ten different schools. I started applications to ten (because the deadlines are so early) and now he’s telling me that I need to apply to five, max. Like ... I’m sorry that you feel put upon to write that many recommendation letters, but it’s not like I have much of an option if I really want to take a stab at a career in music.