Until the Stars Are All Alight

I've been having nightmares. I think I've had one every morning for the last four or five days. 

Not, like, scary-creepy nightmares like I used to have, the kind where I'd wake up before anything horrible happened and then think that it might make a cool scene in a horror movie. This is (for me) an entirely new breed of nightmare--I find myself hopelessly stuck in an immensely frustrating situation.

So...on to happier topics.

Kat's seriously starting to research me coming up to Alberta for New Year's. YES. (I wanna see my goddaughter, dammit!)

So I shall leave you with this quote, which made me think of Duncan when I read it earlier today. (What with the carpe diem-ness of it, plus it's a musical metaphor...)

No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve in quality as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing it is to reach the finale. The point of music is discovered in every moment of playing and listening to it. It is the same, I feel, with the greater part of our lives, and if we are unduly absorbed in improving them we may forget altogether to live them. --Alan Watts

Retreat (at camp) is this weekend, and I hadn't ever heard back from Kyle via e-mail as to whether or not he wanted to go, so I called him today.

Tried, anyway. His mom picked up and informed that he has moved out! O_O

Which, like...I knew he was planning on it. But--WOW! That was sudden! And the last I'd heard he had almost decided against it, or at least to put it off.

So he's SOMEWHERE in a town that I pass EVERY DAY on my way to and from school. But here's the bad news--he hasn't left any contact info. His mom said that she hadn't talked to him in a few days, but knows he's got no phone yet. She said she'd call me when she talked to him.

I got a phonebook, looked up "apartments" in the yellow pages, and called all the ones in that town with no results. (Though he MAY be in with friends, not in his own place, I really don't know.) I think the one woman I talked to thought I was some kind of stalker, lol... (I don't know, do I qualify for real now? Lol.)

This bothers me. I'm really, honest-to-God afraid I'll never hear from him again--which is kind of silly, because if I hear nothing I'll just call his mom again sometime next week and at least try to find out what building it is and leave my number this time. (I told her Kyle had my number, but then, he loses things, lol.)

But...mmm. I'm worried. Not that he won't do okay (he will, provided that his friends are decent people), but of being so close and yet so far away.

I'm trying to focus on the fact that if I do actually track him down I'll be able to spend a lot more time with him, since he's only 15-20 minutes away. Yayz!

(On a side note, it would actually be the first time I've had a friend--as opposed to an acquaintance--live that close to me! I think the "nearest" friend I've had was LynnDee, and that's a good 30-minute drive from my place...)

Okay, okay, get ready for a good story. This entry's going to reference "Detour to Destiny" but not in a way that only the fans are going to get it. (In other words, those of you who don't read it should still read this entry because it's not ABOUT D2D, it's about a RL thing that I talked about in D2D.)

In D2D, there's a passage where Sarah (my character, duh, lol) tells Frodo about all her past "love affairs" (if you really want to call them such).

   "Anyway, I'm getting off track. The third guy in my life--and the last, there have only been three--quite simply never liked me."
   "Then why did you go out with him?"
   I sighed. "That's the catch--I didn't. I just...I fell in love with him, but when I told him he said he only liked me as a friend and didn't want to be more. So I just had to deal with that. We're friends, and that's it."
   "Do you still care about him?"
   "He'll always be a friend of mine. And...well, I think I'll care about him until someone else comes and sweeps me off my feet, makes me forget that I ever cared about anyone else. After that experience, I just decided to wait for someone to find me instead of getting my heart stomped on over and over again looking for Mr. Right." I couldn't tell Frodo this, but I thought of myself like Éowyn, still caring for Aragorn, not knowing that Faramir was just around the corner.

That's all true (or at least it was, there were other developments after that was written, but that's what I'm getting to). It's where my custom Hobbity-made avvy came from. (And, gosh dang it, I'm STILL hunting my Faramir!)

That "third guy" is Kyle. He more or less broke my heart when I was about sixteen (what a summer that was!...). I don't know that I need to necessarily tell it all over, I wrote some stuff about it at the time.

• A Love Story
• If You Knew
• Everything I Read: Kyle's Song

But it really was amazing to me--was and still is--after that, we really did remain friends. Totally. It's not like we've ever had an awkward moment after that--we've both kind of gone on like that moment never happened, starting with right after when it did happen, before we even hung up the phone. And at the time, I was sure I would never get over it, but last summer, I realized that I finally was over it. Shelly's the one that made me realize it, actually.

Every year at camp we do cabin skits (or team skits sometimes, but last year it was cabin skits), and the counselor in my cabin wrote a skit in which there were two complicated parts and then a lot of small parts for the kids, with the idea that she would take one complicated part and I'd take the other. The two complicated parts were "Good" and "Evil" (think of the angel and devil on your shoulder kind of thing). She gave me the choice and I chose evil, lol. It meant I'd get to wear black and cackle and all that jazz, lol.

When I told this to Shelly, she was all, "Did you pick it because it made you think of Kyle?" (Kyle was kinda-sorta goth when I met him, and is still more dark than light, though he's come a long way since then...was it really four years ago already??? Anyway...)

I kind of paused. "No, that never even crossed my mind..."

And Shelly pointed out: "See? That means you're getting over him."

And that reeeeeally irritated me at the time (I shrugged it off, though, "Yeah, I guess..." It's not like I fought with her over it), because I didn't WANT to get over Kyle. I totally wanted to like, pine away, lol. Not really. But I wanted to have to be made to move on, by some guy, if that makes sense. I wanted to be rescued from Brokenheartsville, not find my way back on my own.

But I thought about it over the next several weeks and, as we all know, by that fall I had sufficiently come to terms with this discovery that I was able to admit that I was crushing over several guys in Acting I (and II, when it carried over). And we know how the Tim thing went (BTW, I'm SO totally already over that--I think that if nothing else I've learned that it pays to be cautious and not get too starstruck), but I'm still scoping. I'm not, like, lighting incense in front of the picture I have of Kyle, lol.

But then life carried on, a certain b*****d ruined everything--er, things went down at camp that drove off several of the LITs (Leaders In Training, which Kyle and I both were, along with Shelly and the RL Cody and Mike, among others). Kyle wasn't there last year and hasn't been showing up at retreats throughout the year, and I had kind of thought that he'd been driven off permanently. Since he's a borderline internet-phobe, we quite simply lost contact. I'd lost track of his number, and even when I'd had it it was a royal pain to call him (this was before free minutes after nine PM, back when Dad was the only one with a cell phone that no one was allowed to use). And I had pretty much resigned myself to never seeing him again. I mean, I know how things go, I figured I'd hear about him sooner or later, but thought it could never be the same.

But then Nickie (one of said LITs) graduated a few weeks ago. I went, and Kyle was there! I had heard he would be (like, I talked to Shelly that day and she said he would be), so I went on a bit of a power trip, knowing that I'd changed (physically, for the better) since we'd last talked, and I dressed up a bit nicer than I needed to, thinking that I'd point out that I was surviving just fine without him (since I thought there'd probably be an awkward exchange of "hi" and that would be the last we'd ever see of each other). But Kyle, (thankfully, in retrospect) being male, didn't pick up on it, and furthermore, made a point of giving me his email and phone number. He came to the "gathering" (it was sooooo NOT a party, lol) at Nickie's house afterward, and it was actually me and him and Shelly's sister (who'd ridden with me) and Shelly's ex-best-friend (LONG story, ties in with that b*****d, sort of, though the problems were rooted back further...and really, it's not my story to tell, nor do I feel like rehashing it, anyway), so me and him were talking, and it was JUST LIKE old times. (I feel old using that phrase.)

That was a Saturday night, and I emailed him on Monday morning but got no reply. And so I was all, "Well, I'll call him." Because it used to be a big ISSUE to call people, since we had no cellphones. But now it's free after nine (within the US anyway) and all that jazz. But I still kind of get this anxiety (stage fright? lol) when I call people for the first few times, no matter how well I know them IRL/online (like I can call Shelly, no big deal, but to call, say, Hobbity, would kind of freak me out), and it had been so long since I'd talked to Kyle that it might as well have been the first time. (And I think that even if I counted up all the times I'd called him it would still be really low...less than ten for sure.) So I put it off. "I'm working 'til close, I can't call on my break or after work." "I'm sleepy." "I have to get this written." "Well, I want to, but if I call now his family might be asleep." Whatever.

Now, the graduation was May 20th, and I hadn't called him yet.

I thought about it on my way home one night last week (but I had worked 'til close and though that's an excuse, it's a legitimate excuse, I'm not going to call people at 1 or 2 AM without prior permission, lol), and finally told myself--"Well, if you can't call him AFTER work, call on your way in." And then I hemmed and hawed to myself, and then at last I said to myself: "If you don't call him, and SOON, you're going to lose contact with him again. And he's too good of a friend for you to let that happen."

So this morning I finally worked up my courage, and on my way into town I called him. I figured (given his past history) that he'd rush off the phone after about ten/twenty minutes, but we were still talking when I got where I was going, kept talking, talked for an hour total (maybe a bit more, actually), and it was ME who finally (reluctantly) said that I had to go, and that I'd call again.

I'm thrilled, I can't explain this elation that I'm feeling. Really. I just can't stop thinking about how happy it's made me.

And before anyone suggests it, no, it's not because I have hopes for the relationship to turn romantic. I mean, I still say what I said at the time, if he showed up on my doorstep with a dozen roses and asked me to go out with him, I would in a heartbeat. But I'm not expecting that to happen, not even HOPING for that, and I'm exploring other avenues *coughguysatworkcough*, trying to get a boyfriend.

But anyway, I'm on cloud nine right now. I've regained something I thought was lost forever, and I don't intend to lose it again. My...preciousssss. All is right in my world again. ^_^

Here's a funny tidbit for anyone who's reading D2D, BTW (and I don't know what made me think of it but here ya go anyway): Originally, when Shelly sent me that first chapter, she just put a surname in and I was all, "I don't like that, can I change it?" and when she said I could, I came up with Ebort. She had my character named Sarah Stringold. XD