Validation

How smiles and friendliness can change the world! Awesome film

Hope has been evicted.

“I love it when I see him and he smiles at me, because I know that for a split second, I crossed his mind.”

One of my best friends wrote that in an old journal of mine a few years ago, when we were still hopeful and eager and totally boy-crazy, obsessing over our crushes, whoever they were at the time. (And there were, always, a few) It got me thinking about another friend of mine, and how I always felt the same way when he would smile at me.

Aside from being sort of a sweet moment two people share, that smile from across a room, or in a crowded bar, those innocent smiles can become incredibly frustrating. It allows for hope to occupy a place in your heart where perhaps hope shouldn’t hang out. For years, hope is still alive and kickin’ and in times of loneliness rears her annoyingly endearing head in the form of possibility, the possibility that one day, when the timing is right, when he is right, when I am right, that it just might work out between us. Despite the differences, despite the past, despite the distance.

I will never “fight” for a boy. Oh, I’ll fight. Just not for boys. Boys aren’t worth fighting for. (Sorry, boys.) But I fought for him once. (Well, argued is more accurate.) For his friendship. And he has become one of my closest friends, which is to say that I consider him a close friend, even though I rarely see him, we hardly ever talk and we’re very different people. But there is something, a connection, between us, that will probably always be there. And I can’t define it, but it is a something. Especially since hope is still sleeping on my couch. I can’t define it, which is outrageous to me, the girl who has to clearly define everything in her life, who cannot let the sun go down without analyzing how and when and why.

I can’t define it probably because I don’t know what I want from him (and also probably because he is my in-between “crush” – the person  I think about when I am in-between dating boys, or let’s face it, experiencing a long dry spell, even if it is partially self-inflicted) but also because I don’t think what I want is a relationship with him. I’m great with the friendship thing. I don’t want to marry him and have kids with him, do I? I don’t think so. But when I think about him marrying and having kids with some other girl, I get really jealous! I know! It is so ridiculous!

What I need is a new boy to obsess over. The old ones (because he isn’t the only one) have worn out their welcome. Hope needs to pack her bags, move out, move on with her life, and let me move on with mine. But to be honest, I don’t want a new boy right now. I don’t want to think about any boys. I wish there were some switch in my brain I could turn off so I wouldn’t have to think about them at all for the next few years, while I focus on school and my writing career and saving money so I can travel more.

But I can’t have it my way. Hope will see to that. Either I find a future boy, or I continue to ponder the possibilities and the what-went-wrongs with the past boys. I’m an intelligent girl. I have much more important things to ponder than boys! (Like, for instance, why I find it difficult to use “men” and “women” instead of “boys” and “girls.” Even though all involved parties are on the brink of 30. Perhaps it is because this blog post has the tone of a whiny adolescent who’s biggest worry in life is what lip gloss to wear to the high school football game on Friday night just in case she makes out with the guy from her spanish class behind the bleachers at half time.)

If you are new to my blog, I apologize. And know, I rarely write about this kind of stuff.

In conclusion, I’ve decided to inundate my life with projects, and writing, and studying, and exercising, and reading, and literary and art festivals, and overall selfishness. The good kind of selfishness. The investing-in-my-eternal-happiness kind.

And if a new boy so happens to even look my way, I’ll ignore him, whole-heartedly.

And if an old boy creeps into my thoughts, like an immigrant stowaway aboard a cargo ship, I’ll think about him fondly.

But I will not tolerate Hope. Not that Hope, at least.

I’ll deport her ass the minute she presents her passport.