a note on (friend) crushes & nostalgia
My good friend Danielle Jones-Pruett said the other day that crushes are a form of nostalgia. I like this. I'm not a big sucker for hanging out with my memories and feeling sad about how great things were. Things were great, but are even greater now. And I used to have "things" with sentimental value, but after realizing that the things had no value beyond my association with them, I got rid of most of them. I still have those memories, and if I loose my memories some day (which, hereditarily speaking, is a huge, scary possibility), I'd rather not be stuck in a house devoid of memory surrounded by objects that mean nothing to anyone. That said, nostalgia and I have a complicated relationship...
When I was in kindergarten, I wanted so badly to be friends with this one girl that I gave her all of my favorite things, like my Garfield pocket mirror and Halloween candy (not the Smarties, but good things like Skittles & Heath bars). She never became my friend, but I remember trying really hard to get her to like me. I was only 5ish, but it changed me to realize not everyone would be my friend. I can't remember her name or what was so special about her. Maybe it was that she had brown hair and everyone else was blonde? Regardless, I officially blame all of my friend crushes on her.
Matthew and I went to the co-op a few months ago, and as we were leaving, he said, "Why did you just check that girl out?" I hadn't been "checking her out"-"checking her out," but was thinking: "Wait, do I know you?" And of course I didn't (otherwise I would've talked to her and not just checked her out), but something about her made me certain we should be friends. If I saw her again, I probably wouldn't know it was her, but I imagine I'd still get the feeling that we should know each other. And this feeling reminds me of the feeling I had when I gave the girl in kindergarten all of my worldly possessions so she would like me. It wasn't that I just wanted her to like me, but that I was sure we'd be good friends.
...or was it that I wanted to be her? Maybe she had a better lunch, which meant a different family-- a different mom, maybe no brother, maybe 4 sisters. Maybe she had a cat instead of a dog? Or a pretty dress? Or a large vocabulary? So maybe the nostalgia isn't so much for the friendship that never was, but for all of the people I never got to be in order to become the person I am? Which means the most disappointing thing about life isn't that we die, but that we only get to be one person. Even the men with secret families... they're still really just one person with secret families. Maybe I write poems to be the girl in kindergarten who got to look at herself in my Garfield mirror each morning?
When I was in kindergarten, I wanted so badly to be friends with this one girl that I gave her all of my favorite things, like my Garfield pocket mirror and Halloween candy (not the Smarties, but good things like Skittles & Heath bars). She never became my friend, but I remember trying really hard to get her to like me. I was only 5ish, but it changed me to realize not everyone would be my friend. I can't remember her name or what was so special about her. Maybe it was that she had brown hair and everyone else was blonde? Regardless, I officially blame all of my friend crushes on her.
Matthew and I went to the co-op a few months ago, and as we were leaving, he said, "Why did you just check that girl out?" I hadn't been "checking her out"-"checking her out," but was thinking: "Wait, do I know you?" And of course I didn't (otherwise I would've talked to her and not just checked her out), but something about her made me certain we should be friends. If I saw her again, I probably wouldn't know it was her, but I imagine I'd still get the feeling that we should know each other. And this feeling reminds me of the feeling I had when I gave the girl in kindergarten all of my worldly possessions so she would like me. It wasn't that I just wanted her to like me, but that I was sure we'd be good friends.
...or was it that I wanted to be her? Maybe she had a better lunch, which meant a different family-- a different mom, maybe no brother, maybe 4 sisters. Maybe she had a cat instead of a dog? Or a pretty dress? Or a large vocabulary? So maybe the nostalgia isn't so much for the friendship that never was, but for all of the people I never got to be in order to become the person I am? Which means the most disappointing thing about life isn't that we die, but that we only get to be one person. Even the men with secret families... they're still really just one person with secret families. Maybe I write poems to be the girl in kindergarten who got to look at herself in my Garfield mirror each morning?
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