I Never Thought I'd Want to Let You Know Me

Hey you!

Yeah, you!

I don't know who you are, or if we have any similarities, but I'd guess we do. For instance, we both read that opening and found it rather unamusing.

Where are you tonight?

Maybe you're the same place as me, at home. It's a Friday night, and I'm sitting here, supposed to be getting ready for a softball game. (Are we still so similar?) I eat a gigantic spoonful of peanut butter because it is supposedly good for me. With all the added sugar, I doubt it, but I enjoy being misled here because this peanut butter brings me a strange sort of joy.

I smack my lips together in an attempt to swallow the large tan glob. I laugh at the sound I'm making, then laugh again at the sound of my laughter. I laugh until I'm crying, and then I'm not laughing anymore; I'm thinking. (Maybe you've been there.)

I'm thinking about each and every time I have enjoyed this sticky substance in such a manner. I am not as tough as I pretend to be, not the smiling silly face everyone thinks I am. (You aren't either, are you?)

Very few people can read eyes. I'm glad. They can read lips and teeth, but not eyes. When I'm laughing through my pathetic lunch of a sticky glob of refrigerated peanut butter, they smile too. He smiles. And everything is just perfect. No, really; it is.

Nothing is even half all right though sitting at home by myself, crying over a spoonful of peanut butter. I wonder where he might be. Who is he? He is a friend, just a friend, not a best friend, but a friend nonetheless. He is smart, funny, makes strange sounds, musical, and can't write even a half-decent poem if his life depended on it. One time he tried for English class. We all had to. He wrote his during band. I watched. He asked for a bit of help. I helped. Of course, a girl in my position could only help so much. He wrote the first things that popped into his head. I tried to at least help him find some form. "Repeat the fist two lines at the end," I instructed.

There was nothing deeper than a child's pool in that poem.

He thought it was one of the best he'd ever written.

So he might be lacking in the English department. So what?

Isn't it ironic that all my attempts to forget about him (get over him) are done through writing? Yes, it is about time I got over him. Why? Because whatever I feel towards him is not reciprocated. I write love stories off a feeling I have yet to experience.

The other day my softball team confronted me. "What's that on your neck? Is that a hickey? Natalie has a hickey!"

My neck was itchy, so I scratched it. Their "hickey" was simply redness left over from this mysterious itch.

"Who was it? C'mon, you can tell us!"

"It was a mysterious little mosquito."

I am reasonably open to discussing just about anything, but when the subject of love and guys comes up, I get just a tad bitter. What didn't I do? What does she have that I don't? Why is it never me? Am I not good enough?

No, I guess I'm not.

Every time something starts to go right for me, it turns out I was wrong. Again.

I am 16 years old, and have never been kissed. I ask my closest friends what it's like. They tell me how wonderful it is, and I realize that I ask just to torture myself. I like feeling that empty ache in my chest. (We really are similar, aren't we?)