Lost and Found

72 hours. 3 days. Not even half a week. It still feels like every minute stretches out interminably. The mail for the week has come and gone and I'm now counting down to next week's delivery. And it's just starting to settle in my mind. I'm alone. Alone. By myself. On my own. I took my pill this morning and wondered why I even bothered. No one wants to have sex with me. Not that I couldn't use it. Pills are for people who have people. And I got nothin'. I'm stuck with all the crap I started and don't know how to finish. Stuff that I thought I could do when I had help, but now that I don't it seems impossible.

I watched Crumb today. And all I can think is I can't show this to my class. They'll revolt. They won't be able to handle it. But I don't know what else to show. Crumb is a weirdo, but so is everyone. But no one wants to think they are. Which is why they can't handle it. But I'm feeling scared about what to do about this movie and my class and I want to call him for his support and opinions but I'm also worried about having to start over from zero when I'm so close to one hundred.

Not that it makes any difference. Because I don't feel any better. I'm starting to feel numb, like everything is getting soft and it doesn't matter what happens from one moment to the next. My nihilistic tendencies are starting to take root. It's about time. Because I don't want to care about anything. Because caring is too painful. As soon as you start caring, it's over. You're only setting yourself up for bad things.

I first wondered about how people care about each other in high school. Because I would have a crush on some boy for some unknown reason, and he would all but ignore me and ask my best friend to the Homecoming Dance. I may have been skinny, but she was popular and athletic and a boy could be seen with her. But no boy ever liked me. And I couldn't fathom why no boy liked me or how people found other people that liked them. It seemed so impossible. So I gave up on them.

And then I got to college, and there was this whole slew of boys that didn't know what a nerd I was all my life and didn't remember that time I threw up in third grade and they just saw this skinny girl. And I thought that now I could find someone I liked that liked me for sure. I hung out with a couple of boys and then I met this one and we really seemed to like each other and we made out a couple of times and then he told me he had a girlfriend back home and they were going to get married and I was crushed because I thought he liked me but I was really just a substitute.

I thought sometimes things were getting better, because I would meet someone who was interested, but it always faded after about a week. And that's been how it is for almost ten years. But then I met someone who seemed crazy about me and I thought he was the cat's meow and I thought this is it, this person really wants me and I will never get tired of him. And he kept saying, this is the real thing, I know it, and I was glad because I thought so too.

But then he started saying things like "you're clingy" and "I don't want my friends to be right" and "I feel like that couple that has a baby because they think it will fix their relationship". I was confused because I didn't know there was anything wrong with our relationship that needed fixing and I got hysterical because I thought he was going to leave me. And he promised that he never would, that he had no intention of leaving me and I calmed down.

And then we took a wonderful trip together and two days after we got back that was the end. So I found myself in the same exact place as tenth grade when the boy I thought would change my life rejected me. And I'm filled with the same confusion as back then because I still don't understand how I will ever get someone to like me back. Because this seemed like it; he even said so. But in the end it wasn't. How do people find each other? I found him. But he didn't want to be found. So now I'm lost.