At the Grocery Store Again

I have all these back logs of entries I've written but haven't yet had the time to put in. My new life is great. I love it.

Moved back near my original home... Well, within driving distance at least.

It's odd, but it's as if the past is coming back to punch me in the face--sort of.

It's long enough post-college now that many of my high school classmates are back in town. It's driving me up the wall. My hs was very very small. A graduating class of about one hundred. We spread ourselves out all over the globe after high school and keeping up was never going to be easy.

Of course, with facing them, comes facing my self from that time. I was an utter dork. The epitome of it.

I'm still awkward, but back then, I was a head case. Wait, I think I'm still that--well, it was much worst back then.

I was a loner, for the most part. I crushed but never made it known. I ran and swam and tons of other shit, but no one really paid attention. I changed radically soon after leaving home. For a while, every six months I would be a new person. If I met myself six months back, the new me wouldn't have recognized the old. I was socially developmentally and emtionally delayed. It was painful, but rewarding to go through it all.

I eventually lost touch with almost everyone from hs, especially after I took off some time from school.

Last night, while grocery shopping, I ran into this girl whom I had schooled with for over six years. I had a major crush on her back in the day.

She was average pretty in appearance, and had a very beautiful body. She had been an elite gymnast for years. She was one of the tall skinny ones, not the stocky type.

Beyond her appearance, she was brilliant. She was an intuitive genius, able to arrive at incredibly cogent conclusions with less trouble than other braniacs who relied on straightforward logic. Her form of knowing was so sensible and superior. In middle school, we mildly flirted, but I was waaay too aloof to make any sense of it. She an erotic aura about her, like Jolie.

By senior year, we were all grown up. More secure in ourselves. Our class had bonded tremendously, and the faculty spoke of us highly as one of the "nicest" classes in a while. That year, after having lost touch with her for two years, we ended up in the same advanced humanities courses.

She was naturally a loner, though she was a gifted athlete and had a distinctive family background. So, early on when we moved onto hs, she decided to be popular. It was a rather smooth transition for her. I saw her grow this new personality--without wiping out the real her--as she began and successfully managed to "fit in".

Her knowing, seductive, and yet benevolent smirk, never waivered.

She didn't speak up often in class. She was somewhat reserved. But when she did, every so often, I'd be blown away by the fact that she could state so brilliantly something that I had also thought about for so long, but could never just flatly say out loud.

That year, she also dated one of the hottest guys. He was super tall, athletic, and just fucken gorgeous. They seemed really happy together. During the last official days of school, we swapped year books. I didn't know what to write. So I just wrote what I felt. I ended by writing... "You have a beautiful mind." Corny as fuck, but hey. Her mind is literally like looking at galactic cloud. Profound, dark, and filled with seemingly small yet infinite wonders.

After we finished writing, we gave each others year books back, and immediately read what we had each written. We smiled to each other, said, "Thanks..." We paused and didn't know what to say. When I finally blurted out, "It's funny... we sort of wrote the same thing." She looked away from me, broke into a warm grin, and said, "Yea, I was just about to say that... that's funny." Well, we said to one another, "keep in touch!"

Yesterday, at the grocery store, I saw her. Moments before doing so, I got this wierd knot in my chest, and I got this gut sense--you're going to see someone you haven't seen in a very long time. A few beats later, and she walked into view. Holy fuck. She was wearing a spaghetti string top, and swear I could never forget her sculped shoulders and breasts. She was looking around, for something, aimlessly almost.

I don't know if she saw me. I didn't want to say hi, just yet. I didn't know what her reaction to me might be. Plus, I did really look pitifully trashy. No way to redeem the situation. I figured she would live in gay neighborhood though. It's trendy, like her, and just enough "counter-culterish" to be off the beaten track.

We just recently connected on line. I figure we'll either run into each other again, or figure out a time to meet on-line. I think I read somewhere on her page that she's with someone, and it's pretty serious.

Along with her e-mail on line, came one from another long lost friend. Except this one, had been a fall out. But that's a longer, and for blog's sake, far more interesting story.