Velour

I still get the feeling I'm not allowed to say anything without offending somebody, but I've got to take some kind of stand. At first, I didn't think I was ready. I thought the words would get all jumbled up and send the wrong message. After a lot of introspection and a pretty in-depth conversation with one of my objective friends, I think I know what to say.

My issue started in preschool. Like a lot of kids, I never liked being yelled at, by my parents or by somebody else's. Especially by somebody else's parents. I seem to recall this one episode in particular. I was very young, very small, and one of my preschoolmates kept yanking on my hair. Every day, yank yank yank. Monday, Tuesday, yank yank yank. It upset me. But I didn't tell my mom about it because I didn't want to get called a tattle-tale, a term which back then was worse than murderer. However, I did finally snap at the girl right as she was yank yank yanking on my hair, and she went crying to her father. He proceeded to yell at me like hair-yanking was completely acceptable.

Ever since then, I've had a negative stigma about people who feel it necessary to make their parents call me out. It happened again when I was ten, or eleven, I visited one of the neighborhood boy's houses to play on his swingset. It was the summer. One of my other neighborhood friends was with us, but left for some reason I don't remember. My mom came to pick me up and we left together. We were halfway down the sidewalk when that boy's mother came screaming after me. Instead of the boy himself politely asking me to help him clean up the mess that he made, his mother decided it was all my fault that there was a mess of backyard toys scattered about her backyard.

So let me be allowed to be traumatized by that.

And let me just make it clear that I'm not trying to pick a fight. I just need to get all this off my chest. I need to see it laid out on the page.

It makes me feel like a toddler again to have someone's parents call, and talk down to me. I know I'm not a grown-up. And I know that everyone I know thinks I'm just a bitch who tries to "sound smart." But at this point in my life, and yours, I think that you shouldn't be asking your parents to scare me into being nice to you.

I'm going to say something controversial here, something that everyone will find one day and will ruin my life, and say that I don't think you should argue to me that your life is hard, that you have crossed wires in your brain, and that because of that, I should give you special treatment. I treat people with the same amount of respect that I'm given, most of the time even more. And let me just say that I have my days. Nobody gives me any sympathy when I'm depressed.

Once again, I'm not trying to pick a fight.

I'm saying that I still care about Diantha, no matter how badly she treats me, but I care enough about her that I'm going to let her make her own decisions. If she wants to repair things with me, then that's up to her. So far, what I've seen is that she's turning to Frankie, probably going to her and gossiping about me. So that's the way it is.

I still care, I've just had enough of being talked down to, being called immature and self-centered, and getting my attempts shot down. My arms are open, but I've been hurt too many times to go running for a hug I'm probably not going to get.