((So I finally fell asleep, and after some talking, feel like I should post it, so all 2 of my followers can read it I guess. I'm not sure how this will come off to someone outside but I feel like I want to have a copy preserved online, and I want to be able to be called out on some bullshit later if I try and change the story lol ~J))
So I'm trying to fall asleep. And I can't. I begin composing what follows in my head, and I don't know why, but tonight is the night I write about this topic.
"The shot you never take"
I hate that title, but in all honesty there isn't a way to explain it.
When I was about 11 years old, I was still playing with action figures and inventing stupid plot lines using them with my best friend. We played on weekends and occasionally after school. The internet was a new thing we hadn't gotten the hang of. I had AOL at my house, on my family computer. Before this we had largely used the modem for StarCraft and Diablo.
We were fans of Transformers. As such, it was often a topic we would search on the internet. This lead us to a chat room. Now unlike the AOL chat rooms I was used to this one had open role play between, what I would eventually would learn, dozens of people playing a completely free-form game, they would fight as named characters (Optimus Prime, Galvatron, Megatron, Grimlock... etc). This fascinated us because we basically did the same thing, with action figures. So we began, simply enough, at his house, he would go in as Galvatron, and I would be optimus and we would fight. Largely ignoring everyone else... Soon enough he lost his interest, as with action figures, as we got into true tabletop war gaming with Warhammer. I didn't stop going to the chat room. I made up a ridiculous character called Galvatron Prime (Ultimate), and started messing around, not really knowing what I was getting myself into (A decade long love affair with online role play that forge some very long lasting friendships with people all over the world).
Then something happened. I got INVOLVED. I started crafting stories with people I had never met before. My character made friends, fought enemies, and got injured in the process. This is when my creative energy was ignited I believe. I created a "son" of my character, and an elaborate back story where a god cast him away due to prophecy and a demon stole him to fulfill it. And one of my RP friends became entangled in this story.
Of course, her character (I wouldn't know she was a real girl for almost a year, but as an 11/12 year old boy on this newfangled internet, I was naive enough to believe anything!) was already betrothed to another, but her character had a "Friend" to introduce so she could be more directly involved.
All that to lead up to us becoming extremely close In Character(IC) and though it would still be some time until we would actually talk Out of Character(OOC) a lot of my own personality would shine through, especially when I retired the stupidly named, and over powered "Galvatron Prime". We branched out of the chat room, as it was too chaotic to tell stories in that fashion and instead talked over ICQ. We bounced through a lot of characters, each; I believe representing a facet of our personalities (at least in my case). And then we became friends. Like real friends. We would spend hours RPing late into the night on ICQ, and chit chatting OOC on MSN.
Flash forward to age 16 or 17, and in retrospect, of course I had feelings for her. But she was with some dude. And I respected that, until she started telling me stuff, and how he was treating her. Not cool. And I made it clear my stance on the matters. We kept RPing and talking, but she rarely brought up her love life.
A year or so later, I guess I'm 18 or 19 at this point as she's moved to the city, and we're no longer simply chatting, or occasionally phoning each other. We're full on best friends, hanging out. She's going to school and I'm.... well in-between whatever I was doing. I'm about to leave for my first trip out of province on my own, ever, visiting another internet friend in Vancouver. My cell phone rings. It's her. They broke up. I can't really do or say anything. All I want to do is be there for her, and I'm literally 2 hours from getting on the plane. She apologizes for making me feel that way, and says I should go (And my ride screaming at me that we need to go doesn't help), and that our mutual friends will be hanging out with her, so she'll be okay.
It was the longest 2 weeks of my life. I had a blast, visiting friends, and exploring a city that, oddly, would eventually become my home for 2 years. But between texting (a new free thing my phone could do), Long distance late night chats, and MSN on my friends computers, I saw a transformation in her. I don't want to say a break down because that's not a fair explanation. In my mind, and since we never talk about it, she had an idea of this girl she wanted to be in her head, and tried like hell to present that to me, and everyone. And when she and her boyfriend broke up, she started exploring who she was and wanted to be. It didn't help that she had my 2 best friends agreeing with her every choice, good or bad.
I got home, a red eye flight, and without even sleeping, I went to see her. And it's that night it happened. It wasn't even just the sex (because I was terrible, 32 hours awake, little caffeine and stress from the situations). It was the realization that I LOVED this girl. The kind of love that defines a person.
What I say next in this story isn't fair as I don't actually know what her thoughts on the whole situation were or are, let me be clear.
I had this great moment, this realization, this grandiose revelation about how I feel for this girl. But I was a miss-stepped rebound at best, and a big mistake at worse. I went home that night, confused a bit, but largely feeling good. Once I figured out where I was mentally, I would talk to her about it.
We never talked about it. She made a flippant comment which has given me the impression I have above. This I do not blame her for. She was vulnerable, I was stupid. Hindsight makes it obvious it was a mistake. With everything going on at that point (my life was very dramatic while another friend was in my life), I didn't have very long to dwell on it, so i packed it away, inside.
She gets back with her boyfriend. I'm not happy. She drifts away because she feels guilty (I think, or she wants to protect me, end result is the same though). I do what I can to move on.
I start seeing someone. Someone i fall hard and fast for. The kind of thing that can never last. I taught her a lot about herself. She taught me a lot about myself. We fight a lot.
At some point the first girl breaks up with the scumbag again, and flutters back into my life. I'm happy to have one of my best friends back (in retrospect, the only person at the time who knew everything about me, and I mean everything). One thing leads to another with the current girlfriend, we break up.
And here’s where things get missed. I'm so fucked up over the break up, for months. I don't recall an exact moment in that time, but she takes her shot, and I'm too stupid/blind and too wrapped up in my own shit to notice. She doesn't take rejection well (even if it's not intentional rejection). At some point, before my break up, we had a conversation, at first, joking, but she said something that stuck with me, I don't know why drunken ramblings on a pizza run matter, but she said "Well it really won't be that surprising when we end up together" said as a matter of fact, I laugh at first, and she doesn't, "It's very obvious isn't it?" I laugh and open the door to the pizza place for her. We never talk about it.
We stay friends, but slowly, as a lot of things and people do, we drift apart. I never revisited the idea, not until tonight, for whatever reason I guess I wanted to get it all down.
I talk with her on and off. I especially try and contact her while I'm in Film school, as I'm basically taking the characters we crafted together, removing all the melded fan fiction elements to create my own world, or more specifically, our own world, for a television pilot. Communication is spotty at best.
I move back to Toronto, cut back to a few months ago, a mutual friend from Montreal is coming to visit. initially it's just he and I going for beers (we met in the same chat room). Whimsically, I invite her to come along. Surprisingly she agrees, so that’s awesome. She's been with her boyfriend for a long time, and it's nice to hear how happy she is, I'm going through a break up (it would start the next morning), so glad to be out drinking. She says something that catches my ear.
She's always, in the past, tried to get me and her boyfriend in the same place together. I've met the guy before, he's nice. I don't remember much but I know he makes her happy so wtf do I care. I explain that to her. Her reply blows my mind, "He feels like he stole me from you". I don't know what her end of the story sounds like, but I know that for me, I never felt that we were ever mutually at a place where that could possibly be true.
The night they met, I was called, last minute to a house warming at her new apartment. She spent most of the night trying to flirt with him, I spent most of the night playing PS2. Which was fine, I wasn't expecting anything(not true of course, there was, well some story to it but when it comes down to it, it doesn't matter). I never once felt that was ever the case; ever CLOSE to being the case, so I guess it's one of those flippant comments she makes, that lodges into the back of my skull and results in an analysis of almost 2 decades worth of friendship. It’s weird the things that have power over you; and telling at that.
I've gone back and forth on rationalizing the earlier events in our relationship, from being really angry, too apathetic. I've known her from my age of 11 to almost 28, that’s 17 years. Maybe there's an alternate reality where things happened, but I live in this reality and All I have are the experiences that make me who I am.
Maybe there's a RomCom in there that I need to write, and this is just part of the process of getting there. Or maybe I needed to tell this story, even if it is on a blog where no one reads it, or an email sent to one person.
