helplessromanticist

Today was a day full of regrets. I was woken up early by my cousins, for it was the oldest one’s birthday and she wanted me to play with her. I had stupidly played the asshole and refused to get up not realizing the special day that it was and missed out on playing with her until she got back from SF with her family, yet another event that I should’ve gone to to be with them, but no, my refusal to wake up forced me to fail to join them. When they came back, I played with them and took them to Toys R Us to look at Smurfs toys and then play games with them when we got home. That was probably the most fun I had all day. At 6, I got a call from my friend, Adrianna, who was house sitting and was feeling lonely. I kind of wanted to go to get away from the little terrors and stupidly, I chose wrong and went to her house to hang out with her. As soon as I got in the car, I got this strange gut feeling that I was doing the wrong thing and the most rational thing in my head was that it was because I was leaving my cousin on her birthday for a girl I didn’t even like that much. But as rational as that seemed, Sophie’s face popped into my head and I began to think about Sophie and how much I cared about her and it started to feel like I was cheating on her for some reason. Even though we had no sort of relationship, I felt like I was letting her down and that it wouldn’t be the same. The entire time I was driving to Adrianna’s house, Sophie’s face kept popping into my head and the descriptions that I typed up about her in the last post began to play through my hears. I arrived at Adrianna’s house and it was boring. We sat around and looked at stupid pictures on the computer and played pool. There was little to no conversation and it was quite boring. The whole time I was playing pool, I was constantly distracted by thoughts of Sophie’s perfect face and the disappointment on my cousins’ faces as I walked out the door. All night, all I wanted to do was talk to Sophie while playing games with the kids. Unfortunately when I have returned home, Sophie was not online and the kids were already asleep. Today was a total loss and made me feel like a true asshole who isn’t worthy of anything good. But this means that I have to work twice as hard for the remaining three days that my cousins are here and not do anything else that has me feeling feelings of “cheating” and listen to my gut for the first time in my life.

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

Since my last post, I have finally decided on what I will be doing with the Sophie situation. My thoughts originally were to cut her out of my life and go on without her in hopes that everything would be made slightly easier. This, however, was not the course of action that I took. For one day, I had thought about everything that had gone on between the two of us over the period that I’ve known her and I outweighed the pros and cons. While I realized that the con was pretty hefty, the pros always seemed to out weigh it and the fact that she was one of the few people who understood me and actually knows things about me that I barely realize myself helped make the decision easier. The fact that I could once again not bear to spend a day without talking to her once pushed me back into my zone of infatuation and I was once again smitten without even having to see her. I continued talking to her every night and staying up late regardless of my cousins’ constant badgering (they were staying at my house, one is 8 the other is 4) come morning. There were so few people in my life who are able to make me laugh at the stupidest things and understand my jokes and even fewer that could predict some of the random responses that barely manifest in my head before they’re put into words. With Sophie being the amazing girl that she is, she does both of them with ease. Several days ago, Sophie and I made a plan to go ice skating with my cousins and Tori. The plan was: I get Sophie, we go get hot pockets (for there was a discussion about how we wanted pizza and burritos and we figured that the two combined would make a pizza hot pocket), get Tori, convince her to go back to my house with us (for some reason, Tori’s the only person in the world who doesn’t like to hang out at my house while Sophie prefers it to Tori’s), watch a movie, and go ice skating. The first two stages went swimmingly and while this makes it sound like the last few went poorly, I assure you, this was not the case. While on the way to Tori’s house, we called her and she said that we were going to pick her up and she replied that she had forgotten and her mom wouldn’t let her come out. I was quite happy and a bit nervous to hear this for it allowed me time alone with Tori, but it without the barrier that is Tori, I was prone to making a fatal error that would ruin our relationship. Regardless, after Tori hung up, I looked over to Sophie and she looked at me and she said “well shit…” and I said “do you still want to do this?” and she said “yeah, why not?” And so we continued with the plan. We went back to my house, ate a hot pocket while watching Coraline and then went to the skating rink. We skated together side by side through speeding up and slowing down and we were the closest thing to a couple and that day was the closest thing to a date without the hand holding, but I got around to that later anyways. First, I must say that Tori doesn’t like the movie Back to the Future and on July 4th, I showed it to Sophie and she loved it. This time, since Tori did not join us, we watched parts II and III to finish off the trilogy and then worked our way outside. The time was approximately 1:30 and she wanted to try my old pair of Heeley shoes (The shoes with the wheel on the heel of the shoe that kids like to wear) that she surprisingly fit. After I let her try it on her own, I reached out and she grabbed my hands. As soon as she touched my hands, I felt her warmth and I made sure to hold her hands the perfect amount so I wasn’t hurting her, but tight enough that she knew that I wouldn’t let her fall. I got her rolling around in no time. We went down to the park where she tried out my ripstick (strange concave board that has two wheels on castors) where I had another opportunity to hold her hands. We hung out at the park for a while until she got a call from her mom asking her where she was and she responded with saying she was on her way home. Right before we headed back, I remembered that I had promised to try to pick Sophie up and put her on my shoulders and she had insisted that she was too heavy. I managed to pick her up almost over my head but not quite, I was really close though and the fact that she was screaming and struggling wasn’t helping matters much. On the way back, she told me that she was quite impressed with my strength and it made me proud that she found another quality impressive about me. On the drive back, we decided to stop off where we had blown the tire and actually get out of the car to investigate the lights we saw. We still didn’t figure out what they were though. On our little walk out to the peak, she said she was cold and I put my arm around her and gently rubbed her arm to try to warm her up. To my despair, a short while after, she said “you can stop now…”. We eventually made it back to her house where she gave me a hug and as she reached over, her arm grazed my lips and I may have accidentally kissed her, but she didn’t seem to notice. She smelled amazing too, by the way. We said good night and I wished her luck with her mom seeing as my lollygagging had cost us nearly 20 minutes and she was officially “late” clocking in at a 3:09. I then went home and went on my computer only to see her come online shortly after as well. We talked for another hour before she decided that she was tired and had to go to sleep. It was an amazing night and all I could think about for the ride home was how close we sat next to each other while watching the movies. We sat barely a foot apart from each other, our arms were practically touching and we were leaning in so close to each other that when we would slightly turn our heads to talk to each other, which we did for most of the movies, I was able to see every freckle, the deep green of her eyes, the curls in her hair, and the sweet smell of her breath. I could barely get my mind off how gentle her voice was when she talked, the light gentle tone of her laughter, and how I could hear each exhale she made that made me want to hold her closer to me. I remember the way her eyes seem to search my face as she looked at me looking for something that I wasn’t sure of, how a few strands of hair fell in front of her face and ended just past her nose, and the smile that tugged at the sides of her mouth as I would smile at something she said. It was unbearable to think about how I could feel the gentle warmth of her skin whenever her arm would brush mine, I could feel the the tenderness of her skin mixed in with the bit of roughness that came with a girl who knew how to stand up for herself, and the movements she made that brought the caress of her skin ever so closer to my own. For the first time, I was unable to pay attention to two of my favorite movies of all time just because of her presence and I knew that every time I watched those movies, I always searched for something new, but now… Now I don’t even remember watching the movies, I just remember that I was there. With her. Now, as I sit here writing this, I can still feel the warmth inside of me that she seems to leave me with every time I see her and talk to her and since I am determined to never let this go, I don’t see this feeling leaving me anytime soon. All I want to know is this: Do I have a chance?

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

For the last couple days, I didn’t talk to Sophie and it was a strangely satisfying feeling. What I came to realize was that she didn’t talk to me because she was focusing on her school work for her last two days of summer school. As soon as school ended for her, she was right back on Facebook, posting statuses and sending me IM’s. Everything seemed as it was before except for the fact that I was, strangely, much less chatty. She didn’t seem to notice, I thought, because she would take forever to respond to my comments and questions which led me to believe that she was talking to other people. This begged the question “Why is she talking to me…?” For I believed that I was truly some sort of hindrance to her, distracting her from talking to other, more interesting, people. I began to believe that she and I were truly never destined to work and my relentless attempts to get her alone would surely have peeved her into not wanting to talk to me of her own free will, but sure enough, there she was. Every second that passed after I would make a comment made me want to close the window more and more just so I could co back to the oddly satisfying feeling that I had finally achieved from not talking to her for that short period of time. The things I would have been able to accomplish had she not IMed me… The time she had IMed me was 11 and at 12:30, she decided to go to bed because the previous nights she had gotten back on a regular routine schedule and did not want to screw it up. Of course, before this, she would talk to me and I would take forever to respond because I was on WordPress moving all my blog posts to somewhere new that I may be able to get a bit more publicity. Another thing about this is that I knew that before we had taken a hiatus, I would drop whatever I was doing and half-ass everything that needed to be done in order to talk to this girl, but that day… that day, the moving came first. I didn’t feel the urge to stop after each one and say another witty comment or make some stupid joke about something stupid and trivial that happened in one of our days, I just continued with the copying. Sure enough, 12:30 came around and we bid each other good night. That night, I found myself quite bored listening to random songs and figuring out what part of my life it could symbolize (boredom stuff…) until “I’ll be” by Edwin McCain came on. When I heard the lyric “I’ll be love’s suicide, I’ll be better when I’m older, I’ll be the greatest fan of your life” the true meaning of the song finally struck me and I realized that that was the situation that I may be in currently. As much as I would like to sacrifice my love for her and become purely a friend, I don’t know if I could bring myself to do it. When she wasn’t talking to me, everything was simpler and I could focus on other projects, other people for a change. As much as I enjoyed talking to her, my own personal feelings of foolish abandonment and neglect seemed to overpower the need to satiate my nightly chats. While I was still on the fence, for the umpteenth time, I was leaning towards cutting ties. With Tori leaving, it seemed like an easy task to cut Sophie out of my life and with her already distracted by Ryan and another fellow, Issaiah (ex boyfriend of her best friend), I may be able to slip under the radar unnoticed. Around this time, I finally fell asleep and so began a new day. I may not have mentioned that I have relatives coming in to stay at my house and so my parents have been in a cleaning frenzy and the whirlwind of brooms and dustpans has swept me up in its wake despite my numerous tantrums. My escape had been IMs with other friends for several minutes until I was called back to action, that is, until everyone went offline. Except for, of course, Sophie. In a fit of desperation, I spoke to her, it was brief, but it was more like previous times, I even blew off my mom’s yelling just to talk to her. For that short period of time, I had forgotten all about cutting her out of my life and again all I could remember was how much I wanted her in it. We talked until she went to see Captain America with her family and she signed off Facebook. After she had left though, feelings of “what have I done…? What does this mean?” set in and my uncertainty returned and the metaphorical fence once again rose beneath my feet. As I cleaned, I continued to ponder these ideas, once more, yielding no useful information. She came back soon enough and, this time, she initiated conversation and we chatted for another period of time. Once again, the fence sank and I was smitten once more. Stupidly, I even made plans with her to get Tori and Caitlin and go ice skating again. Of course, in time, she went swimming and everything reverted again. “Why would I do that? Now I have to see her, I don’t want to see her… But I do want to see her, but I don’t need this… Make an excuse!! just get through it…” Everything was so conflicting that I wasn’t sure what to even think about anymore. The jury’s still out on that decision too. After Sophie returned, Tori wanted to Skype with us so we all got online and sat around feigning interest in each others’ topics. It seemed that I was the only one who seemed to notice the faking and just stopped talking altogether. When 10:00 came around, Tori went to sleep and I tried once more to make conversation with Sophie. I noticed that I was more chatty once Tori had left and I was not ok with that. As soon as I noticed the error, I stopped talking and let Sophie talk. Apparently, Issaiah finally caught on to Sophie’s little game of leading him on only to reach nowhere and deleted her from his facebook. I was happy for her but whereas before, an action of such would have made me completely elated and exuberant, I just felt a simple feeling of “I’m glad that worked out for you.” Turns out, someone else sent Sophie flowers and she and Tori were set on not telling me who, but if I know Sophie like I think I do, it was Ryan. Ever since she met that guy, he’s been a wrench in my works and it tickled me inside when Sophie pulled out the flowers receiving an “awww, how cute” from Tori and a “Do you like them…? Do you want them?” from Sophie. I laughed because it was funny and maybe I would be able to stop competing with him. Unfortunately for me, I reminded myself, I’m backing out of this race of my own accord before things get too out of control. I suppose this new development will manifest itself into a decision sooner or later, but for now, it is simply that, a development. Both of my obstacles are out of the way and I seem to be on good terms with Sophie, but do these feelings I have mean that I truly don’t want to date her? or am I really starting to dislike her personality? It could be said that she’s clearing the way, making things more open for me and she could be waiting for Tori’s departure to acknowledge my advances. Or it could be said that I am an idiot who needs to start making more decisions in a more decisive manner. For the time being, I’m willing to side with the latter. And my thoughts on this matter are currently siding with cutting her out of my life. She also cut her hair, it’s pretty short now… I don’t mind the difference and it is “cute” I suppose, but maybe I really don’t like it subconsciously… As much as I hate to say it, time will tell… Fuck father time, he needs to start jogging.

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

For the last two days, I haven’t talked to Sophie. In a fit of hysteria on the first day we didn’t talk, I thought to myself that it would be better if i were to just let her go and forget about whatever feelings existed so as not to be heartbroken when the inevitable truth decided to present itself. The first day, I decided to send her an IM but she never responded. It was only slightly before that that I had the idea to not talk to her, yet when she didn’t respond, I didn’t get the feeling of satisfaction that I believe that I should have felt, rather, I yearned to talk to her. In an attempt to fill my time, I chatted with four other friends of mine in attempt to distract myself from the thought of her, but none were as stimulating as the conversations that were brought up between Sophie and myself. Somehow, I survived the night without talking to her and went on my merry way for about an hour. After that hour of feeling… content… I began to feel something strange emotionally. For the first time in a while, I began to feel empty and began to question myself and what I’m doing. The strangest thing that I was unable to figure out was “why?” it did not seem like something that corresponded with me talking to Sophie, but it was a strange coincidence that this feeling of confusion would wash over me the first abnormal night that I have. This led to reinforced thoughts of letting my relationship with Sophie drop before any more emotional scarring is formed and also led me to bizarre ideas like “I’ve made her mad and I have to fix it… She’ll talk to me when she’s ready” or “she’s never going to talk to me again, there goes a good friend” or “fucking Tori, she said something didn’t she???” and as the stages of depression ran through my head, I wasn’t getting any closer to the answer I sought. I continued to ponder these ideas for the rest of the night while not once did the thought that she was studying cross my mind. This previous night, I had gone out with a friend of mine where we walked around the mall, shopped, and saw Harry Potter. When I arrived home at 10:30, I had received a Facebook message from Tori seeing if I was free to skype with her and Sophie. Sophie had also sent me an IM asking the same thing. Of course, both of them sent their notes at 7:30, about the time we were going into the theater. I felt sad once more that I had missed another opportunity to chat with my object of infatuation and this did not help the “forget about her” matter either… Soon after she had sent me the IM, my chatbox said that she signed off soon after. This turn of events led me to believe that she had blocked me once more and was truly not planning on talking to me for at least some time. After some of what I like to call detective work, stalking is the more technical name, I found that only about half an hour before I got home, Sophie and Tori were talking on a wall post about how they were going to wait for me to get on and how I still had not responded. While I was on Sophie’s page, and it was her birthday the next day, I dropped a line wishing her a happy birthday. The few posts that surrounded mine all got a personal message with an attached thank you while mine got a mere “like.” I’m not saying that I didn’t appreciate the “like” and compared to the other things that people said, mine was quite meager, but something a little bit more substantial would’ve been nice. I also sent Tori a note apologizing for not being present and asked if she would want to videochat tomorrow. Although I feel like I’ve righted everything that I seem to have done wrong, I am once more feeling the emptiness that seems to be floating inside of me. I am unsure if it is residual or of this truly has to do with something else, but I know that until I fall asleep, it will be bugging the shit out of me. The big question now is “What am I going to do about this situation?” My friend that I hung out with today is aware of my situation and suggests not hanging out with Sophie until Tori has left and I completely agree, but after reminiscing on all of two times I did something with Sophie alone, she always suggested going to get Tori. With her seemingly hell-bent on getting me and Tori in the same room together, I feel almost forced to the conclusion of not talking to Sophie alone anymore and feigning interest over our little videochats. As enticing as it would be for me to continue talking to Sophie after Tori goes to sleep, I will have to find a way to not be captivated with her while finding a reason to leave the conversation and let her go. The plans I had made with her could all easily be altered into doing it with someone else or just not doing anything at all. With the way everything has been going, though, it doesn’t seem like they would’ve happened anyways. Sophie has told me about the other guys who have been bugging her and she wished that they would just leave her alone. I suppose that it is about that time now where I leave her alone so she could have one less guy ogling at her all day. I suppose this is a good time to bring up the quote “If you love something, let it go.” This now begs the question of “Do I ‘love’ her?” My uncle is in a strange situation with a woman that we don’t like and he married her after knowing her for a mere 8 months. While talking about him with my mother today, I said myself “I don’t believe ‘love’ can be attained from a mere 8 months” and she agreed saying that those were very wise words. Now I have to take myself into account against my own “words of wisdom.” I have known this girl for 5 months, 4 of those 5 months, the girl refused to talk to me so it’s like I’ve known her for one. Sure I love everything about her, but when I ask myself what about her I like, it always comes back to her physical appearance, and that seems to outweigh everything else. I always tell myself that I want someone for who they are, but every book I pick up seems to get judged by the pretty pictures.Sophie’s summary looked interesting and I have done what I believe to be skimming the first few pages, but with such a nice looking cover, it’s hard to get much farther. So, is it love? After all this reflection, I have to say no. So what is it? Like is too weak of a word, admiration doesn’t seem to fit, adoration seems close but the finger isn’t QUITE on it yet, and love is too much. Infatuation seems to be fitting, but I try to steer away from that word because it makes me seem like a… loser/stalker/idiot/helpless… a romanticist, perhaps?

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

A couple of nights ago, Tori got herself an iPad with a built in webcam and decided that it would be cool to skype with me and Sophie. We had a good time and made jokes and laughed and whatnot for a couple hours before Tori got tired and went to sleep. After Tori left, Sophie and I stayed up for another 3 hours talking like we used to do except this time it was with our voices and we could see each other. We talked about nothing in particular like normal and there was nothing that seemed particularly different about our conversation that really made it worthy of talking about on here. I showed her more of my accents that I had been working on and impressed her a bit more with that. I was so happy to be able to see her and talk to her in “person” though and be able to see her face and hear her laugh when she laughed at my jokes and see her smile when I said something flattering. We chatted for quite a while until my mother heard us and felt it was necessary to come in and yell at me and watch as I shut down my computer and lecture me until it seemed pointless for Sophie to wait for me and sign off. As soon as my mother left, I turned my computer back on and signed back onto skype just to see that Sophie was already gone. As short of a post as this is, I felt the need to put this down so as to always remember that night even though it’s already quite hard to forget. Tori had come back the next day and said that she would want to do it again and I will wait for those times when she decides to skype us again because I know that it will be then that I will be able to spend another 3 hours seeing Sophie’s face and Sophie’s face alone and hearing her amazing voice without the grinding voice of Tori’s interjecting stupid ideas constantly. I did come away with one extra idea, however, that I loved seeing her face and seeing her smile and hearing her laugh made me like her so much more and I look forward to the next time I see her all the more because although she looked beautiful over a webcam, I know that her true beauty is even more radiant in person.

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

It’s been a while since I’ve updated this and I don’t quite remember what I did and what I didn’t say so if things are repeated, I apologize in advance. Last Friday was the day that Sophie and I were supposed to go to the circus… Alone. Friday, however, turned out to be the day that Sophie and I went to the circus… With Tori… The story was: Tori had seen the circus off the side of the freeway and asked Sophie to go with her to see it. I’m not 100% sure if Tori knew that I was going or if I originally had originally planned to take Sophie alone, but nevertheless, she was going now. I’m not sure if I had said this before, but Tori is apparently mad at me. The day before, the day Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Pt. 2 came out, I had hung out with Tori, Sophie, and Caitlin to watch the first part of the last movie and drive them to the theater. I could not join them because, apparently, Tori “forgot to get me a ticket;” go figure. Anyways, I hung out with them and practiced what turned out to be a very authentic British accent. Sophie was very impressed with the accent and laughed about how it freaked her out because it didn’t seem like me anymore. I was quite proud. Anyways, we went through the night talking and hanging out, making jokes and whatnot as we usually do until they went into the theater and I went home. After the movie ended, Sophie came home and went right on to facebook and proceeded to tell me about the movie and the experience and such. Turns out we pulled an all nighter and were awake talking to each other until about 9:30 when we both fell asleep at the computer. At 1:00, we both woke up and almost at the same time, apologized for falling asleep. We then spent the next couple hours talking until she had to run some errands with her mom. After she had returned, we resumed our talking until we decided that it was time for pickups and time to head to the circus. When I had picked up Tori, she asked “What’s the circus we’re going to? When Sophie invited me, she just said it was a circus and I wasn’t sure which one.” And here, I froze. I realized that what seemed like an innocent “join in the fun” was really a “don’t make me go alone with him.” I wasn’t sure what that meant and I wasn’t really sure how to find out in the subtle way that I tend to take care of everything else. I tried my best to drop the circus topic and make pitiful attempts at smalltalk until we reached Sophie’s house and she took over for the talking. Some time later, Tori got very excited about having cotton candy and snow cones and excitedly asked “have you guys ever had cotton candy???” Sophie and I both laughed because it was a very stupid question. Don’t say you’re not laughing, it’s stupid right??? Anyways, Sophie and I were laughing hysterically saying “yes, we’ve had cotton candy.” It’s here that Tori freaks out and says “I think it’s really rude of you guys to laugh every time I say something like that, you make me sound like I was deprived as a child or something.” And the car went silent. I looked in the rear view mirror at Sophie in the backseat and said “what the fuck was that…?” with my eyes and she shot me a “I know right?” look. The car remained silent until we reached the circus where Sophie and Tori began talking to each other. We got our tickets and entered the tent where our tickets were checked. Apparently, the circus gave me a sign to stay away in the form of an accidental free upgrade to arena seating while Sophie and Tori got bleacher seats. Stupidly, I didn’t take the free offer and joined the two in the bleachers. About two minutes before the show was about to start, I leaned in towards Tori and said “hey, now’s your chance to get your cotton candy and snow cone, cuz you don’t want to miss any of the show” and she insisted that she was fine. Sophie began to chime in saying “yeah, you seemed so excited about it in the car and now you can get some, just go” and she noticed the people walking around selling it as well and pointed them out. Now Tori begins lecturing us about how she’s fat enough already and how it’s just empty calories. I know for a fact that this girl hates exercising, even walking, and thinks that eating less will help her lose weight and I know that there’s no point in her not eating it because of the “empty calories” but I’m too good of a friend to say anything. So, like a good friend, I say “hey, it’s the circus though, it’s a special occasion, fuck the empty calories, you were so excited about the food here, just get some!” and Tori snaps back with “Just drop it, alright.” in a very stern tone. This pissed me off because this marks the second time she has bitched at me about fucking cotton candy… Who gives a shit about fucking cotton candy enough to complain about it twice? And at that point I just shut up and didn’t say anything to her for the rest of that half of the show. The first half of the show was amazing, I’d describe it a bit, but that’s not the point of this blog. At intermission, they were bringing people down to the stage to take pictures with a snake for 10 dollars. Sophie and I were quite excited and got ready to go take the picture… Until Tori wanted in on it too. We decided that it was fine and while Sophie and I were getting totally psyched up to hold a snake, Tori was standing there trying to convince herself to go through with it. I looked over and I could tell she was shaking and I said “you don’t have to take this, you’re obviously scared… We’re not going to think any less of you if you back out…” Sophie helped with a “Yeah, it’s alright if you don’t want to do it.” But Tori looked at me, and in the same damn stern tone as before, she said “Drop it (my name). Just shut up about it already.” At this point, I was ready to knock her the fuck out and go home. But I shut up and took the picture while feigning happiness. We finished the show, got our picture, got back in the car and drove off to drop Sophie at home. When we got to Sophie’s house, she wanted to show us her backyard which had one of the most amazing views I had ever seen. I walked out as far as I could and although it was cold, I held my composure and stared out at our city in awe. Sophie came over and stood close to me and I could feel what little warmth was coming off of her small frame and it was comforting, nice. Tori, of course was complaining about how high up we were and how cold she was. Just to piss her off, I stalled and pointed at random clusters of light to see if Sophie and I could figure out what they were. Soon enough, we went back out to the car and Sophie gave Tori what seemed to be a series of failed hugs. After the third attempt or so, I began thinking of how Sophie had asked Tori to come along and how I essentially blame her for the monstrosities of the night caused by Tori’s presence. I began to walk back to the car completely ignoring the chance of getting a hug from the girl I had been fawning over for weeks now. As I walked away, I guess they had wrapped up their hug and I got a “goodnight (my name)” yelled to me and I turned around and tried to act as cool as I could with my half wave and my “later.” The ride home was surprisingly not as awkward as I had anticipated, however, I didn’t get the “I’m mad at you” vibe that Tori seemed to give off at the circus. This made me confused. When we got to Tori’s house, she suggested that we do a Harry Potter marathon and then go see the last movie in theaters (a fourth time for her, keep in mind that the movie had come out THAT day…). I agreed and bid her good night and drove away. I arrived home to an IM on my laptop saying “how was the ride home?” from Sophie. I told her how it was and we wound up talking about how awesome the circus was and Tori’s strange behavior. I had originally thought that the two of them were so close that they would immediately take each others’ side for any reason at all and I wasn’t expecting the conversation that I got from Sophie. Sophie agreed with me on everything that went on with Tori that night. She also told me that she knew the reason that Tori was mad and that it was nothing that I did and it shouldn’t be my job to talk to her and it’s her problem that she has to bring up with me. I think I knew the answer to my own question though. I am quite certain that Tori still likes me (for what reason, I’ll never know) but she has noticed how much I like Sophie and It really does show, I’ve noticed it quite often. I think that Tori is mad at me because I don’t like her back which is a stupid reason just like the stupid cotton candy thing… After that all passed, I began to get tired, and I tend to get really cheezy with girls I like when I’m really tired. The following day, I had a family picnic to go to and I had to be awake at 7:00 to make water balloons. She had told me that I should go to sleep that I would need rest in order to be awake so I wouldn’t get into trouble. I responded with “I would endure any punishment my parents could possibly bestow on me if it meant I could talk to you. She laughed and called me melodramatic. Time went on and it became 2:00 and she reminded me of the water balloons and I said that there’s nowhere that I wanted to be more than right were I was. She laughed and said “lying in bed?” and I said “Lying in bed talking to the only person who has found a way to keep me entertained for an entire day.” She laughed again and I don’t remember what happened after that. Soon we got on the topic of her dancing and her life and such. She said that lately she’s been feeling kind of crappy and when I asked her why, she said it was because she wasn’t stretching. I tried to help her by figuring out what it was that was stressing her and making her forget to do her stretches. I asked her “what in your life is new and distracting?” and she said “School and people… Actually… You, to be specific.” And I was frozen again. I didn’t know what to make of that. I wasn’t sure if I was a good distraction or a bad distraction. I knew I didn’t want to be a bad distraction but I also recalled another conversation that we had about how she was beginning to get annoyed by Ryan, the boy she used to like that I got insanely jealous over. And another guy, the ex-boyfriend of her best friend had been hitting on her recently and she had told me that she would never go out with him no matter how hard he tried. When I had asked her if I was annoying her in any way, she said that I wasn’t, at least, not that she could remember. She had also said that she is too polite to some people sometimes and I wasn’t sure if this was one of those polite cases or not. Of course, all this is just speculation and I could be completely off base about everything, but those last five words haunted me the following day and the rest of the night after she had gone to sleep. I had waited forever to hear those almost fairytale like words of “Actually, it’s you…” in response to a “who do you choose?” type scenario. However, now that I’ve received a response of such, I’m unsure of what to make of it. I want so badly for it to mean something good, for it to be a hint that she returns the feelings that I’ve had for her for the last 7 months, but I may never know. My stupidity and bashfulness has gotten in the way many times before and as much as I would like to rid myself of these petty nuances, I know that I will never be able to leave them behind. And now, for the last few days, I have been asking myself “what do I do?” From the depths of my mind, the idea of “Friends, Lovers, or Nothing” is starting to go from sounding like a pleasant idea that I could be content with, into something horrible and I know that whatever move I make from here on out has to be the right one, else I fall between the cracks and the amazing friendship we have now will dissolve into nothing.

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

In the last post, I said that I intended to ignore all forms of communication with Sophie and that I would try my best to not initiate any form of contact, but it’s not like she made it easy for me. The time I posted the last blog feels like a lifetime ago. A lifetime that’s been filled with conversations with her about… well, about the same thing as it’s always been about: nothing. If I recall correctly, I succeeded in ignoring Sophie for one day where I preoccupied myself with exercising and watching TV. The following night when I was supposed to be at my grandparents’ house helping them with things and taking them to the doctor, I turned on to check my facebook for a brief second and she caught me. She had initiated a conversation and while the thought was always in the back of my head to stop talking to her, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. She was at a friend’s house for a sleepover and chose to talk to me. When I asked her why, I knew that I wouldn’t be able to leave her in the lurch for any extended period of time. She had said that she was in a kind of bad mood and knew that I could make her feel better. This revelation, if you could call it that, elicited a groan from me. Not the “what bullshit” groan which it probably should have been, but rather a “I’m never going to miss a night talking to this girl if I can help it” groan. We talked the night away til her laptop battery had died. The next day, she had her driving test (which she passed, I was very proud of her) and she got a new phone. That night while she was IMing me, she was texting the “boyfriend.” I remembered before that they didn’t talk on facebook much because he didn’t go on a lot. They texted mostly because it was more “convenient” and because of this, she ended up sending him over 4200 text messages over the course of one night. Unfortunately for her, her father did not register this phone for unlimited text messaging and she wound up owing close to 900 dollars in fees. According to her, her sister works at Verizon and is “working on fixing it.” Confusing, right? yeah, I thought so too. Anyways, since then, her father’s been quite upset and has decided to limit her texting even more and believes that she has no need for more than 4 texts a day. One plus: She has facebook on her phone and whereas she and the other guy used to text each other and get charged, we chat all day for free. Every day, as normal, my feelings grew for her because of something she says or an idea she has, or the way she thinks about certain things. Of course, with all these evolving feelings, comes the destructive brother: Jealousy. I was talking to her the next day and I made a stupid crack about her and her “boyfriend” and she got mad. She claimed to not be mad, but I know her and I saw it in the way that she typed that she was. She had quickly signed off and claimed to have gone swimming. Later when she got back, she reassured me that she wasn’t mad, and she seemed less mad then. I conned her into telling me about their relationship and where it was and although she likes him, she doesn’t consider their relationship close and when I asked why, she said it was because they never see each other. While a little piece of me decided that it was a sad piece of information for her, the rest of me was throwing a party where everyone was screaming “HAHA SUCK IT!!” We soon got off that topic and eventually wound our way around to the topic of circuses. A couple days earlier, I had seen a circus tent off the side of the freeway and was curious about checking it out. Seeing as I don’t much like Tori and I wouldn’t really want to hang out with anyone else by Sophie at the time, I asked her about her interest. She was very interested. When I asked her if she wanted to go with me to check it out, she responded with a very enthusiastic “YES.” Now, the first time I asked her out (stupidly) after we first met, I asked to buy her dinner and she said “sounds like fun” and when I asked to clarify a date, she responded with a “let me get back to you on that” resulting in a “let’s be friends.” This time, when I asked her when she wanted to go to the circus, she responded with a “I’m not sure yet.” My hopes weren’t too high because I was kind of expecting a resounding “no” right off the bat, so I just let it slide knowing that I would probably not see this carnival after all. After letting that topic drop, a little while down the line, the topic of her rapidly approaching birthday came up. Turns out, her birthday is the same day as the last day of summer school for her. This is where my latest and greatest proposal came in. I had been dogging her for days about doing something fun for her birthday, but she continued to say that she didn’t want to do anything just sit at home and maybe clean her room. So I asked her if, for her birthday, she would like me to take her back to my hometown and go back to the pizza place we went to a couple weeks ago and then end with some laser tag. This was also met with a resounding “YES.” A day has since passed and she has still not spoken to her parents about either event which leads me to believe that she is subtly giving me a no… for the second time. I suppose I am alright with not doing either, but I am also a trife disappointed that she got my hopes up so high with the capitalized “yes”s. I’ve told a couple of my friends about the coming weeks and they said that the circus might not be thought of as a date because the set up wasn’t really a date-like setup. The birthday dinner and fun on the other hand, screams date. They said that if she doesn’t see it as a date, at least she should know that you have some sort of feelings for her. and now I’m left with one of those moments where I would give anything to get inside her head for a bit and see what she’s thinking of all these things… I’m officially disregarding the last post because,let’s face it, there’s no point for all the negativity in there especially since it didn’t even work. I do remember saying that I wanted to be friends if nothing else although more would be nice and it seems like if the next couple weeks’ plans come into effect, it’ll be time for me to either make it or break it. If I would like to stay friends, I would have to dial way down on everything, comments, attire, language, etc. If I wanted to aim for something more, I would have to become a bit more sophisticated in my comments, attire, and language. I am also going to have to figure out where this line is between friend and relationship and start deciding what side I want to land on. Knowing now that Ryan, that’s the boyfriend’s name, is more of less out of the picture, I have to decide what I want to do while playing off of Sophie’s reactions. If everything I’ve done in my past is leading up to something, all the retro-romances that I have been talking about are going to contribute to how these next few weeks will play out. I like to think I can act well in any situation, but in retrospect, that was all practice and the time for the show is about to start. Alright, all this optimism has been put down and now I gotta face the other side of the spectrum where Sophie’s parents may say no to both plans and I’m back to square one with her. Or square two, wherever the fuck I am right now. But as far as I know, the only thing I can do to attempt to reassure myself about how she feels is to keep making plans to see her as often as I can and to talk to her as much as I can and impress her as much as humanly possible. With the tail end of summer approaching, time is running out for speculation, while I may have the school year itself, it’s less likely that I’ll be able to get anywhere while school’s in session when I’ll probably see her less than I already do except for random hallway meetings. All I can ask for is that her parents aren’t mad at her about coming home late from the little July 4th party or all the other times she’s recently been caught doing things after hours. But if it doesn’t happen, I suppose it’s no skin off my back, and I can save myself some money, cuz right now, I’m looking at paying close to 150 bucks and I don’t even have a job yet…

Since I guess I’m still finding things to say;
Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

Over the last few weeks, my feelings have been growing stronger and stronger with Sophie, but today, I began to get the feelings of doubt invading my mind once more. I recalled times before when I would refer to the boy she liked as her boyfriend and she became so angry whenever I called him that that she would deny it every time and it made me laugh a little to see her so flustered. More recently, today specifically, I talked to her and stupidly brought him up and I began to realize that she hasn’t been denying it for a while. I then did a little investigating of my own and stalked her page, particularly where the guy was having a conversation with Sophie’s best friend (not Tori). One of the first things that he had said to her once the conversation was established was “I assume you know who I am” to which the best friend responded “It’s not like someone didn’t keep me up all night talking about a certain someone…” It seemed apparent to me that what Sophie and this guy had was more than I originally thought and am now faced with a similar decision that, for some reason, I was unable to follow through with before. Looking over the evidence, I thought that maybe I would have some sort of chance if I could beat this guy to the punch, but now I realize that as always, I’m more concerned for Sophie’s happiness than I am for my own social status. I’ve always cared more for how she feels about things than how I felt, and now I see what I should try to do like I’ve done many times before. This idea came to me while listening to the song “Arms” by Christina Perri with the message being the struggle in your heart when you first fall in love and the doubt you feel when you aren’t around the person and the line that struck this chord in me was “I can’t make you bleed if I’m alone.” It seems like a kind of selfish thing in one respect that I thought about it in, but the way I’m seeing the situation now is that if I’m alone, I can’t be hurt by her. It’s an obscure way of looking at the quote, but I’m beginning to believe my explanation is the best way to describe how I feel right now… Perhaps tonight/this morning is just an off night for me and come morning, i’ll be able to see clearly about how all this is just a stupid phase and I should be trying my best once more, but I’m hoping that I don’t. I’ve noticed that she constantly texts the guy no matter where she is or who she’s with and I did say to her before (stupidly) “If you can talk to a person and forget the rest of the world exists, you might as well date him.” I tried to play the role of the good friend but I don’t think I can do it for much longer. All this time I’ve been wasting talking to her, gas I’ve been wasting picking her up, and the extra time thrown out the window due to the over-analysis of everything she said has all been for nothing. I feel that as soon as I am able to successfully cut this girl out of the large portion of my life that she’s occupying, the sooner my “business as usual” can resume. I often tell her how I have so little time to do a lot of things I want to do, but I am starting to think that I would have plenty of time for that if I didn’t spend it all thinking about her and talking to her. I’ve dealt with people who have used me before and as much as I would like to think of them as close friends, there is always a piece of resentment inside of me that makes me hate a part of them. So in attempt to not tarnish this beautiful image I currently have of Sophie, I believe it’s about time for me to throw in the towel and raise the white flag because I’m giving up. A previous post referenced a John Mayer song “Friends, Lovers, or Nothing” and how I wanted to be anything but nothing. But here I am at what seems to be a moment of clarity wanting to be exactly what seemed so taboo a mere 10 hours ago. If this will keep me from hurting myself and would stop me from destroying myself from the inside out, I have to accept that the best way to live is to make what we have between us nothing. I have decided that starting tonight I won’t talk to Sophie. I will be cordial of course and respond to her if she IM’s me, but I will also make a point to excuse myself from the conversation and give reason as to why I’m not returning. With all the efforts gone to waste, I realize that a potential relationship with this girl is but a lost cause. Maybe now I’ll be able to get some more things done. Farewell Sophie, I leave this as a reminder to myself that there is no reason for me to try so hard anymore, you have all you need. If my ignoring is successful, I will probably post the link to my facebook and let you see this for yourself while never showing my face again. There is no blame involved here but for that of my own. My sheer stupidity and callousness has driven us apart and especially with this not being the first time this has happened, the only one to blame, if at all, would be me.

When I find more reason to type,
HelplessRomanticist

Yesterday, as you should know, was the 4th of July, Independence Day. My friend and I had brainstormed ideas for what to do for this holiday a couple days ago and finally decided to either BBQ food at my house and watch movies, or go to San Francisco and hang out around there for the day. Because we were so short notice, everyone had already made plans except for Sophie. Since we did not have enough people to go to SF, we decided that we would have the BBQ, watch movies, buy and set off our own fireworks, see a fireworks show, and end the day with a bonfire. Our plan went off with barely a hitch. Sophie was busy for a good portion of the day, but at 6:00, she finally got free of her summer school homework and we were able to pick her up and get some last minute fireworks for later. We watched Back to the Future because Sophie had (alarmingly) never seen it and because we cut the time so close, we rushed to the city center to watch the fireworks. What we didn’t know was: The streets had been blocked off for the show and so we were stuck in traffic behind some trees so we couldn’t see the entire show. The show had lasted a measley 20 minutes and after that we spent a good hour trying to get out of the traffic jam created by the road blocks. In that time, we listened to music, sang along, talked, made jokes, and yelled at cops although it felt like it took forever to get out of there, it was quite fun. When we got back we grabbed our bag of fireworks and went out to the nearby park to set them off. The first one we set off created lots of lights and a very loud crackling sound that caught us off guard and made us run off to find somewhere else to set them off. After another half hour of driving around, talking, and singing along to songs, we found a hill where we were able to set off the rest of the fireworks and get some cool pictures. Shortly after, we headed back to my house for the bonfire. We ate cheesecake and pie and stared at the fire while talking and making jokes same as the rest of our day. for three hours, we stared into that fire, and for those three hours, the silences were never awkward. Around 2, my other friend went home leaving Sophie and me alone with a fire. We kept talking and it was like we were on Facebook chat still talking about nothing and laughing at each others’ bad jokes. Around 3:00, we decided it was time to put the fire out and take Sophie home, however, we didn’t want to put water on the fire to ruin the pit just in case, so we tried everything else. the last thing we tried was to put the cover back on the BBQ pit we were using and wait it out. In the meantime, we talked a bit more and Sophie had told me more about her past and people she’s known and trouble she’s gotten into and I put my arm around her again and she leaned into me and we kept talking and forgot all about her parents calling her asking her where she was and just watched the smoke leave the BBQ. She began to talk about quirks she had picked up and she said something along the lines of “I’m a little bit crazy, I know” and I said “Yeah, but you’re my kind of crazy” and put my arm around her again and gave her a sort of half hug. She also went over to the BBQ and began touching the lid, something I had already done and almost burned myself doing. She began to drum her fingers on the lid and I grabbed her hand and said “don’t do that, it’s hot.” When she asked “Why not?” I said “I don’t want to see you hurt yourself.” As soon as I would let her hand go, she would go right back to drumming on it until I would take her hand again and I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to just stand there holding her hand and gaze into her eyes like we had done so much after my other friend had left, but my previous endeavors had left me with a constant “don’t do it if you’re not certain” feeling, and with Sophie, I’ve never been certain of anything. Another thing she said that I have forgotten to mention but I have replayed in my mind ever since she said it was when we were talking about what we wanted to do with our lives. She said “I don’t like to think about the future too much, if you enjoy what you’re doing in the present, live in the present.” and that whole time she said that without taking her eyes off me and I couldn’t take my eyes off of her either. Eventually, we gave up on the fire and just left the lid on and the smoke billow out while I drove her home. We drove slowly, sang some more, talked a bit, laughed at each others’ butchering of lyrics, and as soon as I dropped her off at home, her brother came sprinting out of the house saying “you’re so fucked, you should probably sneak in.” And I expected Sophie to be a little bit panicked, but she gave me a hug, got out of the car, turned, looked at me again, and waved saying “thanks, I had a lot of fun tonight, I’ll see you later.” I responded with a smile and a “See you later, good luck.” And with that her brother rushed her around to the side gate. As soon as I saw that she was safely inside, I drove off as fast as I could to check on the fire which still hadn’t gone out and I had to resort to using water several times. She came onto facebook a little while later and said that she hadn’t gotten into much trouble yet, just that her mom was a little pissy. I reminded her how tired she claimed to be earlier and bid her good night and sweet dreams and that was my independence day. It turned out to be the second time that I was able to see Sophie without Tori around making everything awkward, and again, it was an amazing night that I would not wish to change, had I the power to change it. I thought back over the course of the day and even while we watched the movie, I didn’t notice Sophie checking her phone as often as she did while we were with Tori. Of course, me being me, I analyzed everything that had happened after my friend had left us alone and everything seemed to be going so amazingly well that it left me with a feeling of longing to see her again. Because I’m too lazy to retrace through this post and find where it really goes, I will say here yet another thing that happened. We were talking about how she was only 17 and she was soon going to be turning 18. I remembered from her Facebook page that her birthday was on July twenty-something and that she would soon be 18. I had thought that it was the 24th, and I said “you only have, what 20 more days till you’re 18?” and she seemed surprised that I knew that until she realized, I guess, that I was slightly off with my numbering and informed me that it was actually the 21st that she would become one year older. That’s when I told her that I will try to hold another bonfire in celebration of her birthday and she said “I’d like that.” Time for analysis. I took that as truly meaning that she would want to have a bonfire on her birthday although since we would no longer have mutual friends because Tori was moving away within the week, that we would be doing this bonfire by ourselves. Now I’m making little bets with myself as to if she’ll really want to do this with just me on her birthday and I’m wondering if her “boyfriend” can do anything to top it. And I say bring it on…

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist

This post is coming quite late, but I wanted to put it up sooner, but got lazy. Friday was the day that Sophie, Tori, and I went to my hometown where we went shopping and ate food and the like. I picked up Tori at 10 and then proceeded to go get Sophie. The night before I had told Sophie that I would dedicate a song to her in the car because our conversation had brought her to say something that had completely caught me off guard and made me like her even more. When Sophie got in the car, I immediately said “this is the song i said i would dedicate to you” and played the song “A-W-E-S-O-M-E” by Reel Big Fish. She loved it and was smiling the whole time and much eye contact was made through the rear view mirror as I drove. I wasn’t sure how Tori felt about the whole thing, but frankly, I didn’t care. About 45 minutes later, we arrived in my hometown and decided to stop by Rasputin’s (a used music, movie, and book store) first because I was looking for a couple things that I unfortunately didn’t find. We then went to the mall where I began to realize that Sophie was texting non-stop to the boy I so jealously labeled as her boyfriend. We stopped at Starbucks and a few other places, not completely entertained by what we found. After Tori complained about getting hungry, I suggested going to the local pizza place that I believe to have the most amazing pizza in the world as this was my main reason for wanting to go. I was positive that Tori said “that sounds good” before when I had originally (and begrudgingly) invited her, yet here she was saying how she “doesn’t like pizza.” After this alarmingly infuriating turn of events, Sophie took the words right out of my mouth. “Who the fuck doesn’t like pizza?!” I was shocked, star-stricken if that could be the term for it, so much so that all I could do was stare at her and stammer the word “Seriously…” I knew that Tori didn’t want to get pizza but in attempt to fix the situation so Sophie and I would get what we wanted (I knew that Sophie wanted to get what I dubbed as the most amazing pizza she will ever have) I offered to stop somewhere on the way to get Tori something else she would get pasta at the restaurant. She finally agreed to get pasta at the restaurant and we were on our way. When we arrived at the restaurant, we quizzed each other with what seemed like mostly impossible questions from the trivia cards on the table. What I had not known before was that Sophie’s favorite poet is Robert Frost, so when she found a question that quoted his poetry and I didn’t know, she seemed a bit disappointed. That is until I recalled my 8th grade English class when I was forced to memorize “The Road Less Traveled” by Robert Frost. So when I saw the hint of disappointment on her face, I said “I haven’t read a ton of his stuff, but I particularly liked the ‘Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and sorry I could not travel both and be one traveler, long I stood and looked down one to where it bent in the undergrowth’ one… The road less traveled, that’s it…” After I finished, she stared at me and said “I love that one..” Once again, in that moment, I could only see Sophie and I was quite sure that Tori was fuming either on the outside or the inside, but once again, I didn’t give a fuck. After lunch, we went to Q-Zar, for those of you who don’t know, it’s an arcade with a Laser Tag arena. We decided to play, much to Tori’s dismay, a round of laser tag which was a lot of fun for me and Sophie, Tori, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be having such a great time of it. After Q-Zar, we jumped back in the car and returned home. Of course, we dropped Sophie off at home first, and the drive to take Tori back was quite awkward. The day ended and I wasn’t sure still where Sophie and I stood or where she truly stood with her “boyfriend.” I was also unsure if there was truly anything official between them after their one date because looking at it from an immature perspective, they’re 17 and I know how desperate teenagers are for some sort of “love.” I hoped that I was still working my magic at impressing Sophie and that I’m getting closer and closer to being able to call her more than just a friend. Although I’m reminded of a John Mayer song lyric reading “friends, lovers, or nothing, there’ll never be an in between, so give it up” and it makes me afraid for our future, will we be friends, lovers, or nothing? I know that I would want to keep her in my life for as long as I can and I would do whatever it takes to ensure that, but once we start to fall between the cracks, will be go back to being nothing?

Until next time,
HelplessRomanticist