Je suis résignée…

A lot of my buddies are writing about Valentine’s Day, how much they look forward to it, or how much they loathe it. I can’t find it within me to care much, really. I won’t have a Valentine, I have never had a Valentine, and I no longer expect pleasant surprises on that oh-so-special-day. I’m not quite cynical enough to see the day as a totally commercialized event, but I’m getting there.

The problem is, I probably will care on Friday and Monday, when all my buddies are reporting back all the great and special happenings of the Valentine’s weekend. Bouquets of flowers, dinners, movies, etc. Friday I will still be scrambling to finish the homework from the three days of school I have missed, and on Saturday I have my SAT IIs. Saturday night and Sunday are time for more homework, maybe a little Diablo playing. While I’m fine with the fact that I don’t date and am not dating material, there is just something that inspires what little idealist I have within me to see happy couples that truly like each other be together. It also brings out an ever-so-slight tinge of green, and more than a hint of nausea. Most is nausea, true, but the other portions shouldn’t be denied.

But I realized yesterday that I have no love interests, no crushes. Well, there is a crush I’ve had since the ninth grade, but it’s just become a source of bitterness and inner turmoil, so I don’t really count it. But that’s no crushes. No guys I lust after and secretly hunt for in school. I have to ask myself, is this maturity, a calming down (finally) of those blasted teenage hormones? Or is it just resignation?

I have also realized that after I leave Harding, to go wherever I do eventually go, I will probably never see my buddies again. Michael and Jenny and their… friends… are going to UNC Chapel Hill. I didn’t even apply there. I mean, all of them are going there. These are people that I have hung around just this school year, and although I enjoy the company of Michael and Jenny, I could do without some (read: most) of the other folks. And I will pass through their life like some ephemeral moth. “Melissa…? Melissa… Yeah, she was that really smart girl that liked computers. She was even in IB, wasn’t she? I remember her from Harding. Yeah.” As if one of my hobbies and the set of courses I took define me. I can’t decide if that bothers me. I can’t decide much of anything today, it seems.

But wherever I go to school, I will have to pick up all over again, just as I did when I changed schools 5 times in elementary school, and 4 times in intermediate and middle school. I guess I’ve gotten comfortable at Harding, because I was able to push my parents to remain in one city for over four years. Trust me, it was nothing short of a miracle. I won’t even have the luxury of any family where I am going to college (any of the colleges I may get in to). But I’m tired of fighting to make allies, friends. I feel like every year, even at Harding, I’ve had to do it. Be a little nice to her, because she’s the ringleader of this group. Be very nice to him, because he is very smart in history, your weak area. And that says nothing about the weirdos that attach themselves to me. How to be subtly mean to drive away just about anybody. Should be a book. It probably is. The problem is, I’m not good enough at it to make it work all the time. Either that, or the advantages of hanging out with the computer nerd (free tech support! yay!) outweigh any bitchiness they might have to deal with.

That’s not to say that I don’t want to have friends. Of course I do. But I don’t want to have allies and hangers-on. Who do I tell my problems to? My friggin’ website. Do any of my buddies read this? Maybe two.

This is going nowhere and solving nothing. I’m off to read about someone else’s life (Anna Karenina by Tolstoy, I think).