OK... You Found Me

I can't hide anymore.

Not like I was really trying, but somehow I'd managed to lose track of so many of the people that were a part of my life in my teen years. I miss quite a few of them, I've even been looking for some, but up until Myspazz, I'd drifted apart from so many of the people who knew me "back when."

Last week was an interesting one. Well, actually, it started a couple of weeks ago, when I bumped into Noah at the college. I hadn't seen him since about a year after we graduated, and even then it was a bumping into thing. I hadn't hung out with him regularly since we were 18 and he was supposed have painted a mural on my bedroom wall. (Damn you, Mom.) Last week, another friend found me through Myspazz, although it took me a bit to remember her.

Then Brian found me. Brian was my boyfriend for about a year, from mid-junior year on, or approximately the year that I was 17. He found me through Myspazz last Thursday, and I have to admit I didn't have a clue to who he was at first (although I'm going to blame that on the fact that he didn't have up a picture and not because I was too lazy to scroll down and see that he'd graduated from my high school). I started thinking back and remembering Brian, something I guess everyone does when they reconnect with someone they haven't heard from in awhile.

Thinking back made me feel really lousy.

For those of you who have been reading my blogs for some time now, you have probably gotten a sense for the level of misogyny that I possess. Most of this is in regards to how I've been treated by women, but a good deal of my experience in the field of knowing the hows and whys that women can be such fucktards is from what I know about myself. I think I subjected Brian to every single one of the shitty things that I've brought up in my blogs. I'm fucking floored that he'd even care to find me in the first place.

Brian was (and I could probably say was almost 100ertainty, STILL IS) a "nice guy." He was, in fact, very leery of the attention that I paid to him in the beginning of our courtship. What else would a "nice guy" think when he has a girl jumping in his lap and running her fingers through his hair, but to think that she's just fucking around? (My aggressive nature has been with me since birth so don't be so surprised when I tell you I was this way in high school.) I eventually lured Brian to my dark side, and he treated me far better than anyone else ever did or has since.

However, I put him through the fucking wringer for all of his trouble. I demanded things and would pout and stomp my feet if he put up any resistance to them until I got my way. I ran him in circles and he always came through. I described a scene in one of my old blogs about the guy running out in the middle of the night to get his girl a specific drink... I made Brian do that. It was this "California Cooler" Snapple knock-off drink that we'd only found at Long's and he would drive to go buy me one, drive it all the way over to my house and then drive himself home. YEAH. I did that to him.

Now, I'd like to think that I wasn't having him do all this without some kind of repayment. I have always been the girl that put out at the end of the evening in exchange for the movie and meal. Yet Brian never seemed to mind whether or not he got sex. I later discovered that this was the ultimate sign of a "nice guy" but I remember at the time feeling very irritated by it. I hadn't yet embraced the truth that not all men are ruled by their dicks, some just do things for you because they care. In a ignorant teenaged mind however, it came off as him looking like a "pussy" in my eyes. I cringe to admit that now, because it really demonstrates the depth of my stupidity, and I don't want to try to use my youth as an excuse for such behaviour. I was mean and it needs to be said. I was mean to someone who absolutely in no way deserved it.

I had to embrace just how mean I was when I told my mom and sisters that Brian had found me and both of my sisters remembered the old nickname they had for him. "The Slave??" they cackled. "Man, you could get him to do ANYTHING." They were right, I could get him to do anything. I felt so evil when I heard them recalling times that I had gotten him to drive them around with us, take them places, pick them up from school. Even now, in my cynical family, Brian's kindness was recalled as a weakness. I can understand why. I wasn't someone that deserved to have been treated so well. Especially not the 17 year old shithead Zara. I've gotten better over the years, had my guts kicked in more than enough times to have learned to appreciate a good person, but I still feel like I need to earn that again. An unhealthy sense of self-loathing, but an omnipresent one nonetheless.

My mother knew then that Brian was a guy I should have kept around. She was so excited to learn that I'd heard from him. She remembers him with a great fondness, in the manner with which he deserves to be remembered. I think there is a good chunk of her that wishes I hadn't broken up with him after he'd left for Stanford (yeah... this dumb bitch left a guy who went to STANFORD... go ahead and rub that shit in on me, ok?). I can't undo it, and due to some other monumental things that happened in my life, I wouldn't want to.

So I'm doing what I can. Being the "nice guy" that he is, Brian probably has no clue just how I feel about everything that happened between us. Hell, he IS the one who looked for and contacted ME, so I'm pretty certain he's not harbouring any ill will. But I needed to say it, to own up to it. I treated you with an intense amount of disrespect, Brian, disrespect that took me years to recognize as such. I want to let you know that I realize that now, and for what it's worth, I'm truely sorry.

The value of a "nice guy" is no longer lost on me. I still don't want to end up with one, because frankly... I don't deserve one and they don't deserve to have to put up with someone like me. But I'm supremely grateful that there are guys like Brian out there. People that are balancing out all of my cynical, bitchy wickedness.

Fox news might not be fair and balanced, but I'd like to think that humanity can be.