12.30.2002

John,

What I am about to tell you is the positive and negative impact you've had on my life. Please do not torment yourself over this. Because it's not really you. This is actually the positive and negative impact of being in that gifted class for two years.

Before 5th grade, there was of course 4th grade, which I remember well. I was still in Catholic school, still in uniforms. I remember being funny and loud and having a lot of friends and really enjoying my life. I was just myself, and people liked me for that. I ended up switching to public school because I kind of told everyone I was moving to Columbus, which we thought we were, but it kind of fell through. I wanted to avoid the awkward situation of going back to school after the big deal everyone made.

So I decided to go to public school. I have a distinct memory of going into that very bitter and cynical. I guess I was trying to be cool (some girls at my old school had a bit of a problem with my off-the-wall personality), but as soon as I got there I became angry. I had envisioned myself being some kind of immediate all-powerful goddess, but when I got there and saw all those kids who knew each other, and I didn't know anyone, I realized that was not going to happen. To make things worse, this situation presented me with a bit of a different demographic of kids my age. Compared to public school kids, Catholic school kids seemed so...smart and...mature. These public kids hadn't seemed to completely make it over the hump between monkeys and humans. I was clearly more intelligent than I had previously thought. And I was angry because I was smart. Because I KNEW everyone was pretty much a moron and couldn't possibly have the mental capacity to be my friend. The entire 5th grade year was like that. Nobody understood me, and I understood everyone, it seemed. Everyone was so shallow. And I forgot to say why I was angry. I'm pretty much limited to three emotions: angry, happy, and horny. As of fifth grade, horny had not quite developed yet, so I had two emotions. I'm assuming this is from not wanting to be weak, and surely being sad is a weakness. I've always been sort of macho like that. And since I surely wasn't happy, I was angry. I just wanted to fit in. And I couldn't because I had no desire to be around these people (my pickiness always prevails).

I felt even more awkward and out of place when I spent half the day up stairs in the gifted class. I had decided that if these were the smartest people, they surely must be the most interesting. Andrew, Jared, and you became the comic relief in my epic that had recently taken a turn for the worse. The gifted class became the high point of my day. You guys were just so funny and you had so much energy...And I knew that I was just like that. The real me had so much in common with these guys. It was like the light at the end of the tunnel. Real, intelligent people. Not monkeys! Unfortunately, the real me had been buried under the weight I had on my shoulders from the transition between private and public school. I had become so awkward and so far-removed, I didn't even recognize myself anymore (and I had really bad teeth, which never helps).

I'm sure you know what happened next. To put it easily, the light at the end of the tunnel vanished and I fell into a pit, with only my mouth to defend myself against endless verbal abuse. Even though it was pretty rough at the time, I'm for it today because I don't know who I would be without it. Now I don't take shit from anyone, much less a group of pre-pubescent boys.

Things got even worse when the orthodontist jammed two palette expanders in my mouth, then I couldn't even talk. As if the Michigan accent we're enough (it's not strange enough to distinguish, but not normal enough to go completely unnoticed. This is why most people thought I talked "weird").

But even then I still greatly appreciated the most interesting people in my life. Sure, they were constantly putting me down, but the other funny things they did made it worthwhile.

Sixth grade was kind of a transitional year for me. It's when I really started to find myself again. I was more confident, my teeth were straighter, I was funnier, and better at arguing. I stopped hanging out with the emotionally distressing neighborhood girls I had called my friends for the past two years. I began to thing that me being on a higher level than everyone else was a good thing. I discovered I could easily mess with people's minds (I told everyone I was fucking Japanese!). Maybe that whole Japanese thing looked like me trying to get attention, but I just wanted to be unique. Everyone else is Irish or German or whatever. No one was Japanese. So I decided to be Japanese. Funny how I hate Japan now. But my favorite characters in my movie were still the boys in the gifted class, though the cast had grown a bit. I like sixth grade. It was when I finally started to like myself.

I adjusted to seventh grade with considerable ease. I liked the way things worked in Middle School. We were no longer children. We were teenagers. We had 9 periods, 4 minutes in between each. People were always shoving and being rude and hurrying about. Like a miniature version of a city. And I love cities.

Of course, this year there was no gifted class. The cast and location of my little movie changed a lot. But it also remained the same. Now we were in Ms. Kirns's class, where there were more girls than boys. Our teacher was pretty much a pothead and a basket case. I don't remember her teaching anything to us in that class. As always, it became boys against girls. And since you weren't there, Andrew was the ringleader of the boys, with Howard, Ross, Kyle, and Matty as his minions. And I became the ringleader of the girls, with Julia, Kelly, Grace, Carly, Franki, and a bunch of others I can't really remember. We were like a whole, but somehow divided. I think we would all consider ourselves "inside" of an inside joke, but we still argued all the time. I was always head to head against someone. Kyle or Howard would do a terrible impression of me saying "word processer" (though I don't remember where the root of that was), I would do a terrible impression of Howard trying to say something smart, or of Kyle being confused. Andrew and his friends would sing this song they made up about me called "Jap" that went to the tune of "Shaft." I would sing "Walk Like an Egyptian." They would sing "Turning Japanese." I never really had any answer to that one. There aren't very many songs about Egyptians.

These boys became co-stars of my movie (I was now officially billing myself as the star). I'm convinced Andrew knows just as much as I do that we're exactly alike (in a certain sense) but he wont' admit it. He's too stubborn and stuck in his ways.

I'm going to admit it, John, I am completely in love with Andrew. And he fucking hates me. It tears me apart, but there ain't a goddamn thing I can do about it. I think it's also the same thing that holds me together, knowing someday he's really, really going to regret it.

Now I don't have a single class with him. I barely see him, except on Wednesdays because he has a guitar lesson after me. But even then I don't acknowledge his presence. It's very painful. It makes me quite mad. He's in my dreams every night, and it kills me knowing that this is hopelessly a one-sided thing. I hate him for hurting me that way, and I love him in spite of it. I wish I knew why I liked him so much so I could stop.