#journal entry 16

Well, this might get a bit personal, and a startling beginning, but I haven't been sleeping well lately. I've been restlessly trying to get some motivation, but my drive has mowed down due to an increasingly unrelentless bout of loneliness and maybe even depression?

I'm unsure, though the story stretches a bit when I add it in.

I should explain, and no, I'm not actually going to burn anything. Except maybe my retinas from all this screen usage at bright levels. Yesterday, I left myself out of the journal entry list due to a sudden childish amount of hate for a one-time friend. I have had many days like this, where I can't get over the long standing relationship, and the anti-climatic, inevitable end.

I have had relationship strains ever since, and have never been able to really trust or become truly close with anyone else. This isn't in the romantic sense either, though at one point in the issue it was. While I'm sure the issue shouldn't be mentioned here, I'm unsure of what else to write about myself besides it, since it did technically reoccur to me yesterday.

Throughout the past nine years, if my math is right, I have known this girl who I shall refer to as Kim, for personal reasons. We were the greatest of friends, since the second grade. When the end of the grade came about, we were split, and didn't see each other, though our memory of one another was still recent in our minds, or at least mine, in my case.

The third grade, I found another friend, another girl who will be referred to as Lili. We bonded just the same and through her I grew to love certain things like art. The following year was when everything changed.

Lili had left for a different school, and I hadn't seen Kim for a long time either, though apparently she was still at the same school as I was. In the middle of the year, I was accepted into a private school, an arts school. The fourth grade would have been a terrible transition for me, had I not found out that Lili was in the same class as I was.

We would be friends for this and the next year, with myself diving deep into the written arts in balance with Lili's art ones.

The sixth grade, and to my delight, Kim had joined in by the end of the previous. For those next three years, the three of us were the happiest we had ever been. I had everything I could have ever wanted. Companionship with two people I knew, an understanding relationship between people, a group of closeknit people my age, beyond these two girls. I couldn't have asked for more.

But the happiness faded.

After my years in middle school, as any American teen would understand, high school rolled around.

They have been, and I may one day say otherwise, the worst years I have ever been through. They were days where my social life had been all but forgotten in favor of my academics, something I took little effort in doing back in the old days, because it came so easily to me. I had attempted to fix it, by meeting up with Lili and Kim on Fridays after school and hanging out, talking about our interests, or... Theirs anyway.

You see, something happened without my knowledge for the longest time. The two of them, Kim and Lili, grew a bond, a relationship of romatic proportions that I could not comprehend for the longest time after Kim had told me in our second year of high school. But I saw it.

Looking back, I felt ashamed that I didn't realize it earlier. I blamed myself, called it my mistake, tried fixing it, doing anything and everything in my power to bring myself back into their light.

I was too late.

And I wallowed in self-loathing, pity, hate, spite, near frustration for the time until now, despising everything that came out of it, and I still have yet to get over something that meant so much to me. It left me crying for days, realizing how lonely it felt being like a third wheel to something I had no control over.

I couldn't change their minds. Especially from five, six, and now seven long years after putting them together in one room, introducing them to each other, molding our relationship into an established platonic understanding. I no longer knew these two, who I valued with everything I knew and loved. I was so well developed in an attachment to them, this blew my mind and shiveled up my heart.

It was something I had found no answer to, until I learned about my emotions. I learned, just like any other teen out there, that my emotions were complicated and existed and were hitting the point of change. I found out about my love and my envy and my anger and greed and all these other terrible things I knew little of and once shut out because I knew they were bad for me.

They took me over. I was jealous of Lili, because I was in love with Kim. I wanted something back, a relationship long gone and forgotten, and fought for days. I cried as well, fighting with even myself to try and fabricate a way to return to some form of happiness. I could never cope with something so akin to betrayal in my eyes.

Of course, I found other friends in high school. Kim couldn't see Lili throughout our school days, since Lili had gone to a different schoool entirely. I could have gone with her, maybe gone down a different path.

But I felt a twing of loyalty, a love for Kim I could never let go. I sacrificed a better education to be with Kim, though I would never admit it to her, because she never saw me in that light. I regret the decision now, knowing how things have gone to this moment.

My other friends would comfort the feelings I had gone through, though I had to work most of it out on my own. I lost the spark I once had for written work when I came to high school, and have long since been trying to get it back in whatever way possible.

I found respect and understanding online, though my longing for a personal touch is limited, sadly.

Since Kim's confession to the relationship, I have been searching for my own, and have found myself trapped even more by the desire. I never asked for much, though my findings have brought terrible people into light, leading to my abandoning their pitiful ways instantly.

My friends, the new ones, were all I had and now have left, and soon, things will end just as quickly as they begin, I fear. I have grown a sense of pessimism since those days, being unable to find true happiness anywhere.

I blamed myself for years, and only recently directed the cause to them, because I never thought to do so ever. I was far too loyal, and now too foolish to care about the consequences. I was already too far gone, and my true happiness was well worn into a blade I threatened to use on my own heart every night. It was painful at first, but I could no longer take the agony of loneliness and self-pity.

I wanted to be human again, to be happy again, to find meaning again in a place that had tired my heart and soul to its limits and blamed me time and time again for my low efforts, which I soon figured were untrue. I had to make a choice, and I made it, trying fruitlessly once again to get back into the partnership, last year on Halloween.

One of my newer friends invited me back to my old neighborhood where Kim and I used to go hunting for candy long into the cool autumn night. The sweets were splendorous, but the overall reward was only temporary. Kim had brought Lili along, which I had ever so predicted. However, Kim's other friends had soon found her on the streets of the community, and they were just as eager as I was to gain her attention.

Lili and I were left to the side then, meeting a few wandering strangers and cracking side jokes to one another, just like back in the old days. While it was all well and good, I noticed Lili's struggling. I knew for a fact that she didn't enjoy the chattering of the boys surrounding Kim, though we both knew for a fact their efforts were meaningless, I even more so.

I saw the opportunity, and commented to her on how it felt, being shoved to the side to be barely remembered. She looked to me with a confused yet hurt expression, before agreeing on just how terrible it felt. I would never know the effects of my words, and that was that.

But in trying to continue this relationship to see how it would probably work out, I realized nothing would change. I tried to change, and that never worked out. I tried making them understand, and the results were just the same. I knew I needed to confess my difficulties, show who I was, how I felt, and what I desired more than anything to return to our relationship.

After that Halloween, I began frequenting Kim with multiple notes on the subject, at first dancing around the subjects I wanted to fall into, until I finally broke the whole situation down. I decided to put the fate of our relationship in her hands. You see, I felt my efforts in bringing back what we had being a one-sided deal. I had done my hardest to do things she liked, while sacrificing my own interests in the process. I lost myself, I had realized, in trying to get back into the group.

So I gave her a choice. If she would put more effort of her own into what was left, maybe we could bring something out of it all. The most meaningful thing we had was platonic, so I ended it there, abandoning any and all romantic thoughts I could.

Through her final letters, I noted her own waltz around my questions. She avoided the efforts, and I knew what had happened. Kim had been through with me. I was trying to grab at the dust she had left behind trying to get back to her. I had given her a choice.

She never responded.

I never got to know what her true feelings were. Back in the fifth grade, if I had been told I would fall in love with her, I would have given a curious response, though would have likely questioned it little. I had given her a kiss on the cheek that year, which I equated to a fondness for her that I had yet to fathom would turn into something more, something inevitably worse.

My mother told me I grew too attached to those two. I would have eventually lost them, given every future circumstance, and even if they weren't together, the three of us would have eventually lost touch, knowing our previous situations. I had lost companionship far beyond what I would have ever expected, and my love had felt trampled over before it could live long. My envy would grow, and would die soon when all is said and done.

I have now lost faith in keeping connections. Everything keeps changing and I have lost so much early on that my trust in others had dwindled. My few new friends find my old personality surprising, when I tell them my story. I find myself weeping at night, when I reevaluate my situation. I've secluded myself, limited myself, to this far and few interactions. I have become something so filled with emotion, I am unsure if I am who I really am, and not a monster trapping an innocent creature that gets only moments of freedom a day.

I wore and limited myself, and this is how I ended up here. I'd cry and belittle myself, still sometimes blaming my heart for being cruel, my life for being ironic, my existence for being just entertainment for others. I can no longer see happiness, much less true love in my future.

Maybe I'm just young and pessimistic still, and still have a long road ahead of me, but my reaction to such a situation has left emotional scars I might never get rid of. Sure, there was never a battle to be won, lives truly lost, or a score to really be settled, but it was something that meant so much to me that I may never let it go until well into my late life, when I'm dead and can no longer feel remorse for my actions. When everything is over and I know everything yet nothing.

I should end this story here. I have nothing meaningful left to say about it. There is nothing left, since I never got an answer. It would be the worst finale to this tale, but I truly don't know how it ends myself. Maybe that's just life. Not knowing about the end until it happens, and never truly getting a chance to cope with it. But that's all I'm going to say.

Hopefully Nife can bring a better story to the table, whenever they feel like writing up something. But that's out of my control too, so I leave it at that.