The Girl Next Door

There always comes a point where girls would enter into my blog. And I guess it will be this one. After reading j garza's blog, it's comes down to that whole 'best friends' thing yet again. As I've pointed out earlier, I basically rely on just two people who really I don't get to talk to too much on a regular basis. Actually, one of them I ran into last week on campus. Nice talking to him, but that's beside the point. Alright where to start.

When I say the girl next door, I mean that literally, she grew up right next door. I grew up with her brothers, and she grew up as my younger sister's friend. So we've always had that connection to each other and each other's family. We were basically in the same social circles at school and church.

It was when I was in college/church mission and she in high school that that started to change. One night we had a really serious talk, one that both of us share things that you just don't share with anybody. I then left back out on my church mission for another year and a half. All right, I get home from that. She's now a college students at a different university, but only an hour away. We spent some time together over Christmas, did a lot together, and really, really understand each other and what each other have gone through. She was also dating a guy at the time who had absolutely no clue what's involved in a relationship. Not that he was a bad individual, he was just clueless. Me being a very close guy friend and basically like a brother, I help her through her two bad relationships. She also helps me through my... I wouldn't say relationships, but my trials of life. She's the only person ever to see me cry, and I never cry. Just so you know, at this point it was truly best friends. We knew just about everything about each other. Things continue to be perfectly fine. Summer comes and she finds a job out of state where she really can't keep contact with anyone but family. So the next time I talk to her is just before school starts... this is when things got bothersome for me.

All of the sudden, my feelings about her change, it caught me way off guard. I had no clue what to do about it. We had never actually talked about us, although everyone else and their dog had. I can't tell you the countless amounts of people that have told us that we should get married, etc, even strangers would tell us that. Anyway, these thoughts consumed me as far as what to do about it. I decided really not to do anything until Christmas and see just how she felt. Well, it so happened when I went home for Christmas, my parents and sister decided to fly out to California to visit my sister out there. Basically I was at home alone for the week during Christmas, so I stayed basically at my best friend's house most of those days, catching up with her brothers and her family, played games with them all and had an absolutely wonderful time. Obviously, I had a second purpose in being there too. I wanted to see how she felt about me. I never did ask her exactly, I just watched her. I know her well enough to tell exactly what's going on in her life. You live beside someone their entire life and know a lot of how they feel about things without them having to say anything, it's not that difficult. I could tell that she only thought of me as a best friend and nothing more. I took that as my answer.

At this point, I told myself, that's fine, we can just be friends like we've always been, and I can just ignore my feelings for her. Okay... like that was ever going to happen. I still saw her fairly often for being as insanely busy as I was. Each time, it would get worse and worse though. I would absolutely love the time we spent together and have fun, or talk about the serious things that are going on in our lives. And afterwards, I would just feel completely frustrated and depressed knowing that she didn't feel the least bit like that towards me. This continued to build and esculate inside my soul, more and more. Having never liked a girl so much, who didn't return that same type of love continued to eat away at me more and more. I can't tell you how much it hurt when she was mooning over a particular guy she dated for a couple of months, then went to Russia for two years, and was going to be returning back to the US that summer. Just so you can get a timeline of what's going on at this time, compared to my other posts. It was that past Christmas that I quit relying on music to bury all my problems. She saw all of that also, the second time she's seen me cry. No one else has ever seen me cry, or will ever. As a side note, this is when she found out why I love music so much, which to me is so personal, I won't even share it on this blog, or anybody else. So anyway, now I'm left quite vulnerable to my feelings.

Summer starts and I finally decide to tell her how I feel, but I also started a landscaping job that had a ton of mandatory overtime, and for a little while that kept me busy. Then absolute hell turns loose. My shoulder dislocates on the job site. This has been an ongoing problem, and I have to quit the job, much earlier than intended. So that screwed up a lot of my plans, and gave me WAY too much time on my hands. I end up going home for a week or two. The girl next door is leaving out of state in a couple of weeks for her summer job. Had a wonderful time talking to her the first night, just making me realize what an absolutely wonderful person she is and how much I want to be with her and around her. She though, is keeping really busy and I couldn't work up the courage to tell her anything. I picked up running to try to passify my thoughts. I'm not a runner. The longest I ran was 4 miles at one time. The day before I'm about to leave my parents home to come back to my apartment to find a job I ran stinking 10 miles to try to clear my thoughts. I tried to tell her that night, but she kept way too busy with everything for me to sit down and actually talk to her.

The dreadful next morning... I get up, I vowed to tell her before I leave, and by God I will. I call her up and ask her to come over. She did, and I absolutely unleashed it all on her. Every bit of it. How my feelings for her had changed, how I knew she didn't feel the same way, how I felt frustrated about it, and how I had absolutely no clue what to do about it, and really nobody but her to talk to about it. I told her I didn't know what to do, if I should just not see her anymore, because it was hurting me so much, or whether telling her might have changed something for me, and the thought I left implied that a great way to change it was that she could like me in return. I think, no I'm sure I absolutely shocked her. She was completely oblivious to the hell I was putting myself through and how I felt. She had no clue of what to say. After talking for about an hour about that and a couple of other things, I loaded my truck up, said goodbye, and left. She sent me an e-mail for my birthday a few days later. After that she left for her summer job where I would lose complete contact with her till she got back.

By the way, any girls who read through this, how in the heck are you supposed to do the above mentioned properly so it's not so, oh.. I don't know... insane, maybe a little smoother, less shocking? Just curious, cause it's too late now.

So afterwards, I'm all alone, job-less, and absolutely too much time on my hands. All I can think of is back to that conversation I had with her last, what I could have said different, said better, anything that I could have done to have changed it so that she may actually like me in return. I'll spare you what my thoughts actually were, there's too many. I thought it was just girls that think about relationships so much. Yeah right. I apply for jobs, but me being the absolutely honest person I am, nobody wants to hire somebody halfway through the summer when they've got to start school and quit the job. So I continue through my dark thoughts and personal hell for the remainder of the summer. When school finally did come around, I have never been so excited to start school.

So at this point she should be back now. Right? Well, she decided to stay at her out of state job because of the tuition hikes across the state that she would keep the job she has out of state and earn a little bit more money. At least, that's what I heard through the grapevine of the R.S. So I start off the semester completely ignorant of what's going to happen. No problem, I threw myself into school like there's nothing more important. I'm not sure how many people could handle the brutal schedule I hold myself to, just to keep my thoughts from being too depressing. I get up 6:30 in the morning, get ready, eat, then from 7:30 till at least 7:00 at night, I don't stop for anything. Since school started in August, I've eaten lunch three times. Otherwise, I basically don't eat lunch, and then usually a very late dinner at 10:30-11:00.

Well things have gotten better for me. I don't think about her as often, but certain things can set me off, like when we played her former school in football, and since I'm with the band, I had to go to it. Just seeing everything again of the places we've been to just brought it all back up. I'm still as busy with school, although I obviously make time to write this blog among other things.

I even tried to date others girls, or like them or something, yet I can't. Even if I see a girl that I think would be fun to date, it just has absolutely no appeal for me. Not to mention as socially declined as I can be sometimes, the chances are slim to none. I can't seem to make myself move on out of this. In my mind, there's only a couple of ways this will resolve itself. Either she's going to have to be in a very serious relationship with somebody else, or she's going to have to change her feelings about me. Obviously I very much wish the latter.

Well the next time I'll see her is probably this upcoming Christmas, and only God knows what going to happen. Although if it happens the way all things happen in my life, it won't be till March that this issues will resolve, if it follows the example of my other life changes of every nine months. Just so you can see what it is. December 2002 - get home from mission, continue to develop relationship as purely best friends... nine months later Sep 2003 - my feelings change.... June 2004 - I tell her how I feel... nine months after is March, but December is when I most likely will see her again. So basically, I'm in a period of waiting, where things are in limbo, and I can't do a thing about it. This part of it is just plain annoying.

Alright just some side notes really quick - why I never shared this with anyone... people who I'll tell how much I like her with try to sympathize with me about how she doesn't feel the same way, and I don't want sympathy, I want resolve. My younger sister who grew up with the girl next door, would be absolutely digusted with the idea that I would like to date one of her best friends growing up. I wouldn't ever tell her how I feel about this, or other family members. Actually, one brother does know, because he strait up asked me, and I won't lie about it, well I guess two know, because he told another brother. And another brother's wife I think suspects something. Gotta love extremely large families of four brothers and four sisters, not to mention spouses, neices and nephews, etc,etc. I love em' all.

Another side note, knowing me and her and how well we know and trust each other, I would have no trouble showing all my blogs for her, even this one.

In some ways I feel like a crazed psychopath. Here's a girl I've never even dated, and I put so much thought into her, like her so much more than I could have imagined, rely on her more than I have any person. You'd think I sound like a stalker or somebody. You shouldn't think about this as much as I do when you haven't even dated them, even if you are best friends. Oh well. Only time will tell what happens. Didn't know love hurts so much.