Ramblings of a Seventeen Year Old Pseudointellectual (Reprise)

The question I asked my first Listener on this site was ?Is it inherently narcissistic to visit a site whose sole purpose is to allow me to talk about my inane first-world problems with strangers who are obligated to care??

I?ve been doing this for a while now, and it?s actually helped quite a bit, but I still wrestle with that question. See, my friends seem to think I?m a narcissist, and it follows that because they?ve come to this conclusion I must at least act as though I am one, otherwise the idea would never have been planted in their brain. Unfortunately for me, I don?t really feel like a narcissist, in fact I feel the opposite. If I were a narcissist, I wouldn?t so often be painfully aware of my myriad shortcomings as a friend and person, at least I don?t think I would be. Additionally, I happen to think self-centeredness is one of the worst traits one can have, and that we should strive above all else toward altruism. Whatever the opposite of an Objectivist is, that is what I am. Of course, similar to utopia, altruism is not attainable. Even if I were to selflessly donate a kidney to a stranger, I would still feel good about doing that, I would be affirming my core philosophy, and thus I would be getting something out of it. Thus, that action is not altruistic. The only way to be altruistic is to do so without thinking about it.

I know someone who seems to do this; she?s one of those impossibly good people. If I were writing her as a character in a story, I would consider her a Mary-Sue, a character who is unrealistically good. In addition to that, she?s perhaps the most beautiful girl in the world, and I am not an ideal user of superlatives. Of course, beauty is at least somewhat subjective (facial symmetry and other ?objective? indicators of attractiveness aside), so it?s not that much of a stretch to say that, to me, she is the most beautiful girl in the world. You may disagree, but in my subjective reality, she is.

I?m getting ahead of myself; I will describe her and my relationship with her in excruciating detail later in this post. It?s quite a good story actually, but the ending is kind of lackluster. For now, a little bit of the narrator?s backstory?

When I was in middle school, my parents died, and that is definitely a nexus of my chronic depression, though I was never really happy before that either. I wasn?t really depressed before they died, but happiness has always eluded me. Throughout middle school I had a lackluster GPA, not great but not awful, but I always been kind of a star pupil back in elementary school. Teachers would write glowing reports about my deep understanding of various subjects, my ability to think critically and complexly, and how I actually got around pretty well with my peers in spite of the stereotype of the ostracized-smart-kid. My formula was quite simple, I was just nice to people, and I said things that were interesting. Regardless of what teen movies tell you, being well-liked is actually quite simple, even through High School. At least it was for me.

But this changed in middle school, where suddenly points and assignments mattered for your grade a whole lot more than whether or not you understood the subject. It didn?t matter if I was a good writer or if I read beyond my grade level, or even if I did well on the test, if I skimped on homework my grade sucked.

MY seventh grade Art teacher once pulled me aside.

?You?re failing my class, why haven?t you turned in half of your projects??

?I?m not sure, I don?t finish them.?

?You?re on task; the projects you have turned in are good. I think I know what your problem is. You?re a perfectionist; you?d rather take a Zero in the grade book than turn in a project that?ll get you a C.?

Which is nice I guess, caring about the quality of your work is a good trait I think, but it never helped my grades, and so I hovered around the 3.0 mark.

This was quite a wake-up call. I was smart but not a good student. Suddenly my defining characteristic of having been the smart kid was ripped away from me. I was thoroughly unhappy, my self-worth tied to my GPA. And you know what? It really is. It doesn?t matter if you?re smart or stupid; your GPA is what ultimately decides how much you are worth to society, that is assuming you aren?t a special snowflake (some people actually are, but I?m not, my only special quality was being smart, and suddenly I?m not).

Oh I?m also a pretty good musician. I play flute, oboe and piccolo, and I?m in a bunch of different ensembles. I?m in three concert bands of varying levels (Freshman band, HS Wind Ensemble and City Band with a bunch of old people who?ve been playing their instruments longer than I?ve been alive), I?m in a Jazz Combo and a Jazz Big Band, and I am a Drum Major (a conductor) in my school?s marching band. I also am in a Community Orchestra and I play in Pit Orchestras for theatre productions in my area (I?ve done The Music Man!, Footloose and the Sound of Music). However I?m not great, I?m just slightly above average.

A fat lot of good all that does to someone who wants to be a Physician. I guess I could go into music, but it?s not what I want to do. It?s kind of funny really, usually you think of some kid who is good at art but whose parental units want them to go get a ?real job?. I?m the opposite. My grandparents, with whom I live, were musicians and I think want me to go into music, but I want to be a Doctor. Of course, I?m not good with actual schoolwork (I?m a pretty good test taker, I?ve never gotten below a 4 on an AP Test).

So yeah, the future is daunting to me. I?ll probably join the military, become an officer and see if I can?t get that to take me through med school, but it?s all quite daunting.

My other interests that haven?t come up are Politics, Literature and History. I?m way into these subjects despite them being not intrinsically as useful as, say, math. Don?t get me started on Strauss Howe, Literary movements, Keynesian Economics (which I fully support, it just works, whereas laissez-faire and trickle-down don?t, just look at The New Deal, World War II and The Great Society) or anything by Jared Diamond because I will not stop.

Oh I was also romantically rejected a couple of times, which isn?t majorly significant but it didn?t do wonders for my self-esteem.

Okay, so through with exposition, we can get to the actual story.

I?m a Link Leader at my school, I was last year too. I get a group of freshmen and form social connections with them.

Before any of this though, there was summer rehearsal. It was my first year as Drum Major, and I was the newbie among the three of us, eager to prove myself. Anyway, I was standing before the band room as the freshman filed in, signed papers, were issued uniforms and sat down with their instruments. In walks this freshman trombonist, the only freshman trombonist, and my friend, a clarinetist, leans to me and goes ?That?s the next girl you?re going to like.?

?She?s a freshman, I couldn?t possibly.?

?Whatever you say.?

As it happens, this is the impossibly pretty girl I mentioned earlier. She sits down, and I don?t notice her for the rest of rehearsal. At a band day for a local university (wherein we and several thousand other HS Band students play for a college football game) I fixed her chin strap, and that was the extent of our interaction.

At a football game, during Pep Band, I decide to stand up in the low-brass section, where I find them passing around food. Everyone but her of course, whom I will henceforth refer to as IPFTP, for Impossibly-Pretty-Freshman-Trombone-Player.

So I begin to tell a story, a story about a Sousaphonist who always ate in class and whose Drum Major didn?t care, until one day his horn wouldn?t play. They tried everything, but finally had to get the hose. As the shot water through the horn, out pops a dead bird and a large amount of green sludge.

At the end of my story, no one was listening, which I pointed out

??and the moral of the story is, don?t eat and play, but no one is listening to me, so I might as well not be talking.?

?I was listening; you managed to keep me entertained for a minute or so.? IPFTP says,

So we had a brief conversation, she was in the school production of Taming of the Shrew, and it turned out we were the two people at the school who actually like Shakespeare, but it was mostly just small-talk. She has this dignified way of speaking that some may see as snobby, but I liked it, I started using bigger words and more ornate sentences, which was a welcome change.

That said, we didn?t become fast friends, I figured surely she must be surrounded by friends who just adored her, because she was impossibly pretty in an adorable way, (when I brought her up to friends the exchange usually wound up something like ?Who? ?She plays the trombone.? ?Oh, you mean the adorable/cute one who doesn?t talk much/reads a lot?? ?Yes, her.?).

If this were a teen movie I?d say ?I assumed she was popular? but popularity isn?t really a thing at our school, everyone has their friends and knows each other, though I read somewhere that only popular kids say that.

At school, we settled into the daily routine, my friends and I, and while we sat in the Lunchroom at first we quickly migrated to a certain Biology classroom that doubled as our Leadership room, which was quitter, had more music, and cooler people with whom to hang out.

One day however, the Biology room was locked, so we had to go to our old table. There we found IPFTP sitting alone, methodically eating her lunch with a book open beside it.

?You guys are back.? She said meekly as I sat across from her and asked, half-jokingly,

?Have you been sitting here alone all this time?? expecting her to say that she was waiting on her friends or something.

Instead she just nodded; to which all I could say was ?Oh.?

So we sat there with her and made small talk. I felt terrible, Link Leaders aren?t supposed to let people sit alone at lunch, that?s something that happens to the socially-awkward, pseudo-homely protagonists of bad teen movies before their inevitable transformations, not in real life!

I talked with a friend about it, who was devastated (?Nooo, poor little thing, she?s so cute! How can she not have friends!?) and after I confessed that I wanted to ask her to sit with me, insisted that I do it.

So I did, and that?s when we became fast friends. We talked about Literature, we did History Day (an extracurricular activity in which you do History projects for fun), I saw her play four times during which I met her parents (who seemed to like me),

My first exchange with her mother had begun as follows:

Her mother: You must be [Narrator].

Me: Why yes I am.

Her mother: The flute case and Jazz Band uniform gave it away. I?m [IPFTP]?s mom.

Me: Oh hello. Yes, I just came from a performance.

We sat together on band bus-rides and in pep band, and we met in the Library every Tuesday and Thursday after school to look at books. We even spent Christmas together, her grandmother being sure to get me a gift as well (a remote control helicopter).

And very quickly I fell in love with her. Around Christmastime we went to see a play with the Theatre club called ?Oliver!? and the whole time the viewers at home (and the theatre kids with us) were probably shouting ?Just kiss already!? We met that day at school, raring to go, and I paid her my first awkward ?You look nice.? To which she blushed and said ?Thank you, so do you.? (I wasn?t even dressed up). Her mother had insisted she wear at least semi-formal attire to go see a play.

We bought each other things behind each other?s backs (neither of us like being paid for) and spent the time before curtain up wandering around the lobby, communicating in Early Modern Englifh .

Finally we sat down against the wall and waited for the house to open, IT was cold, and we couldn?t find the other Theater club members in the crowd, so we just sat and read the program together, pointing out oddities and interesting things. When I decided to check the time, this awkward exchange occurred upon my brushing up against her to get into my pocket.

Her: ?I?m sorry I didn?t realize I was sitting so close.?

Me: ?Oh I don?t mind, I mean, uhm, I hadn?t noticed.?

Her: ?Oh, okay then.?

Viewers at home: ?Just kiss already!?

Curtain up came and we sat together, separated from the rest of our party, free to point out solo instruments and conducting patterns, as well as ways in which the book was better. It was probably the best night of my life.

It wasn?t long after that I was gone, and a friend of mine, the same clarinetist from earlier confronted her.

Him: ?So, who do you like??

Her: ?I won?t tell.?

Him: ?Is it someone who?s normally here but is gone today??

At this point she blushed and nodded, to which my friend exploded.

Him: ?He SO likes you! It?s so obvious!?

Her: ?I know, I know, I?ve just never had a boyfriend before, please don?t tell him.?

He of course told me. It wasn?t the first time someone had confronted her about me.

After that first exchange with her mother, I later found out that they?d gotten into their car.

Her mother: You know he likes you.

Her: Yeah I know.

Her mother: And you like him.

Her: Yes.

Her mother: I don?t see what the problem is.

IPFTP?s mother had actually brought it up fairly often, as did the rest of her family.

Anyway, the next day at the Library, we were reading through her Health book, trying to find a topic to discuss. We read the section on Forming Healthy Relationships, which I find hilarious because it was totally not planned, before finally we became bored and shut the book.

?Any topics of conversation?? she asked,

?Well, there?s always your conversation with [the clarinetist] yesterday.?

She blushed scarlet, ?I was interrogated! Tortured!?

We both laughed, before I asked, ?So am I really that obvious??

?Yeah, you kind of are.? She replied, smiling.

And that was the extent of that conversation; it took us another week before I finally asked her to be my girlfriend. And so we were dating. It was quite surreal really, I was in love with her and she was actually my girlfriend. We even held hands (?May I uhm, hold you, uhm, hand?? I would ask, to which she would say ?You, may.? Confiding in me that she?d been trying to work up the courage to ask the same thing, eventually we got to the point where we realized we didn?t need to ask permission.)

We spent Valentine?s Day together and she surprised me with cookies from a local bakery inscribed with our names, along with a copy of The Fault in Our Stars. I had gotten her earrings.

We?d been at a natural food store, biding our time between Solo and Ensemble performances, and she had lingered on them for a moment before quickly moving on (?Sorry, I do not wish to make you wait for me to look at girly things!? ?It?s quite alright, really.? ?No, we must find something we?re both interested in!?). I was in my Concert attire, so it was quite easy to pretend I?d dropped my tie and return to the store whilst she and another Ensemble member waited in the car, I ran in, bought the earrings and then came out, tie in hand. I intended to wait until Valentine?s Day, but I ended up giving them to her the next day at the Library.

Four months later, we were sitting together, I had just gotten her a necklace (For no particular reason, I just liked seeing her face light up when she opened it) and after much hesitation I choked out ?I love you [IPFTP].?

?So that?s what you?ve been fidgeting about, well I love you too!?

We did all the things couples are supposed to do, we communicated, we respected each other, and we were best friends who told each other everything. We ended every conversation with a classic poem that we liked; I was quite fond of Keats. Usually the poems were not romantic, but rather just things we found intellectually stimulating.

We visited a myriad of local shops, a forest that doubled as an art gallery, she took me to a baseball game where I struggled to understand the rules, we saw choir concerts, we went for long walks, and went to a theme park (with the Band, after a sixteen hour bus ride, it?s a great story really, but this post is long enough as is)

We even did decidedly unromantic things, like participating in airsoft wars with my friends.

One we were performing reconnaissance, watching the enemy from some tall grass in the middle of the night, laying atop our laid-out camouflage jackets, our weapons beside us. She seemed tired, and I recommended we sleep in shifts.

?My mom told me not to go to sleep around boys.? She said, smiling as she shut her eyes and grasped my hand,

?Somehow, comrade, I don?t think this is the situation she had in mind.? I whispered back, as the other team scanned the area with their flashlights. They didn?t catch us, and we were able to rush their encampment and overwhelm the enemy team thanks, in part, to IPFTP and I?s recon.

But one day, this summer, she broke her ankle. She had been counseling a camp for children and fell off of her bike, embedding rocks into her knees and breaking her medial malleolus, requiring surgery.

She was in a lot of pain, and I dropped everything to go see her. I even missed an audition. I ran to a local store (everything we buy for one another is local) and picked up a card and a chocolate truffle, and wrote a brief message inside (normally I?d write long, eloquent but I didn?t have time)

We sat together, holding hands and watching the first Harry Potter film, which I had not seen (I read the book, don?t worry, I always imagined Snape with a more Posh accent). She complained not about herself or her terrible pain, but about not being there for her camp kids, every one of whom she took a particular interest in. At the ER, she?d apologized to the ER staff for the inconvenience even as they scrubbed the exposed bone on her knees in order to try and remove the rocks embedded in them (all without sedation).

She was so selfless, and never before had I loved her more than I had at that moment. After the movie, she got up and walked around, but she didn?t make it far, finally collapsing on a couch in tears from the pain. Her parents made her take Vicodin, which she hates because it gives her hallucinations.

Finally, I went home. But I hated not being with her, because seeing her in pain could never be as bad as imagining her in pain. I called her again and again, and I visited her each of the first three days. But IPFTP is an independent person. She doesn?t like to have people help her. It makes her feel bad when she relies on people.

Finally she called one day.

?I have been wanting to talk to you.?

?Is it about my incessant calling??

?Not exactly, I hope we can still be friends, but I don?t think I want to be your girlfriend anymore.?

?Okay.?

?Okay??

?Yep, thank you for calling.?

?Goodbye.?

And that was it. Never before had I realized how dependent I?d grown on her, and how I was suddenly lost without her. I mean my life hadn?t magically improved upon dating her, but at least I had her.

My grades sucked but at least I had her, my parents were dead but at least I had her, my friends think I?m terrible person but for some reason still hang out with me but at least I have her.

That?s another thing, she always respected me, she never thought I was a narcissist, she didn?t just put up with me, she loved me. That?s the thing, being popular is easy, you just have to be nice and say interest things, but my friends who know me personally realize my faults. With me at least, familiarity breeds contempt. It?s easy to be well liked, but not easy to find someone who loves you, and she loved me.

Some side notes: I respect her decision and do not want to pressure her to date me again, I hold no animosity, she did nothing wrong. I don?t believe in the Friend Zone because no one should be obligated to have a relationship with anyone for any reason, the only reason to be in a relationship is if you want to be in a relationship.

Now it?s the next year, and I?m still unhappy. I have no one to turn to anymore, I got so used to telling her everything and having her to back me up, but now I don?t. Now I?m here writing eight page forum posts about my life to strangers. Her and I are rebuilding our friendship, but it?s hard, I still love her and we haven?t spoken about the fact that we dated for six months (a long time for teenagers). She?s doing physical therapy and can walk again with crutches.

I felt terrible watching her struggle down the bleachers after a pep rally, so later I insisted upon helping her, and she let me, which was nice. I carried her trombone and music and walked back with her, and we talked about the rest of the summer, she?d gone to Europe in spite of her injury, putting around Paris in a wheelchair.

My friends are great, don?t get me wrong but they have a perhaps justifiably low opinion of me, and I miss her terribly every time they comment about my laziness or my narcissism, because she would never say that, in fact quite the opposite.

To her, I was a good listener, I was selfless, caring, kind, funny and intelligent and while maybe those things aren?t always true, I liked having someone with such an elevated opinion of me. Not because I want a yes-man, in fact she and I disagreed on quite a few things (though we never actually fought, not even when we broke up) but it was always respectful, we could always hear each other?s opinions without blowing up at one another.

We?d talk about current events or the future and she?d ask questions and say ?Your opinion is really interesting to me.?

It occurred to me sometime after we broke up, that we never did get around to kissing and had only hugged once. Barring of course the Awkward-Teacher-Hug, a term we coined for the sideways hugs that teachers are instructed to give to students in lieu of actual hugs.

I miss her so much; I hope we can remain friends. One of the listeners on here said we should surround ourselves with people who make us feel whole, and she made me feel whole. Without her, it?s like a piece of me is missing, I?m surrounded by people who love and support me but I still feel lonely.

And again, don?t misinterpret me, my friends are great, they?ve done so much for me, and they?ve always been there for me. Even if they think I?m a narcissist, they still support me and hang out with me, they?re better than what I deserve.

There is a moral here: Don?t be me. You should never rely on someone to be happy or complete, it?s not their job to make sure you?re emotionally healthy, it?s yours, and putting something like that on them is not fair. I didn?t realize how dependent I was on IPFTP, because it just so happened everything else about our relationship was basically healthy, until after we broke up.

Okay I?m done. Feedback would be appreciated. If you made it this far, thank you for reading all 4,214 words of that!

Addition: I might post this in more than one location, I hope that's okay, if it's not please let me know and I'll remove the re-posts. I don't think I saw anything in the Rules about posting the same thing in different forums, but I might have missed it!

In fact, this is one of those reposts, I decided to see what kind of reaction this would get in the ?Life Story? section, since it?s more like a Life Story than a diary entry, where I?d originally put it. I made some minor additions and revisions to the original

Other candidates are the ?Surviving Breakups? and ?Depression? sections, but I don?t want to plaster this all over the site, that would be an act of narcissism. If you think it would belong in a different section, let me know. Also let me know if this is against the rules, because I'll stop. This site has been helpful to me, I don't want to break it's rules.