I met a girl at my school a few years ago, she came in to the bookstore to price some biology books that she would be using a semester down the road, which was quite a rare occurrence, with our student body it's usually last minute or never. Her name was Jennifer, and she was not at all the kind of girl that I found myself lusting after, but there was something about her I found interesting, quirky. After we had a small talk in the bookstore, she became a regular, whenever I was working she would kind of pop up. In fact she would pop up conveniently wherever I happened to be on campus. It was creepy, but in a cute creepy way.
So I decided to give this girl who became sort of a mini stalker the time of day, she never had any money so she couldn't do many of the things that I found enjoyable, mainly going to the movies, and playing pool. Her poverty was so intense that she wanted us to go to six flags, on the buy one get one free with a coke can deal, which I thought was hilarious, smart, but hilarious.
We ended up dubbing this intelligent but money deficient young lady "Broke Girl" my friends and I name people we have been doing it all our lives, deal with it. So after a while those little quirky things that I found charming at first quickly became annoying, the popping up, the awkwardness, the lack of money, and I decided to leave this girl alone in the fashion that I dealt with most women I no longer wanted to deal with. I ignored her out of existence. I treated her like she wasn't even there, I was so cold about it, if she saw me near a train station I would just swipe myself into the subway because I was sure she had no money to follow me in. Eventually she got the hint, and she stopped coming around, and when I did see her in passing which slowed to being a rare occurrence, we said nothing to each other, in fact she did her best not to even look at me.
I saw her yesterday after a few odd years, on the bus. I was heading to my mother, and we locked eyes. I saw a look in her that tore me up inside, her face sunk and she just looked like she wanted to cry almost instantly. I being older, wiser, and having finally developed human empathy, felt a guilt like no other. I wanted to apologize to her, but she just got off the bus. The only crime she committed was having a crush on me and being herself, and because I was such a turd, I hurt her, for no reason. I am sure she isn't the only woman that I have hurt in my time, but she is the first to resurface since I made my changes for the better.
I am sorry Jennifer. It turns out that you were worth my time, but I was not worth yours.
With that I make peace with the matter. The guilt I am sure will linger, for a while, but this is a side effect of me growing up. I accept and embrace it.
Stay tuned, I also finally answered an unanswerable question. I have my words locked and loaded, I am just waiting to blow your mind.
1 comment:
guilt... smh... the story of my life...
something like that happened to me upstate... I started talking to this girl from the dining hall, we messed around and after i got back with my girl, i started ignoring and avoiding her, even though we were cool enough.
I know the girl, even though she liked me, knew that we were never going to work out and just wanted to be chill, but i had to avoid her cuz i didn't want an awkward moment... guilt indeed.
and I can't wait for the A to this Q; quite curious...
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