I Want You to Want Me: Moments From Time

I haven't blogged in forever. So much has happened lately and often there is hardly a spec of something positive in this blog, I realized. It's weird, but I tend to only blog if I'm unhappy or need to vent or have a problem with something. I mean it all tends to be "negative," but this is something that is happy.

I am happy. And scared and feeling like an idiot, but I suppose that's all relative.

This summer is making up for last summer. Last summer was the worst period in my life aside from senior year in high school.

I got my first job, a wonderful internship which has given me so much experience and allowed me to meet so many new, interesting people.

Argh I don't even know to recount all that's happened exactly. I guess I'll just to start 'there' and work backwards. I mean I've really really fallen behind. Far far behind myself.

---

Walking around Great America in the summer heat. It finally felt like summer, the smell of sun screen and baking in that fierce golden sun with bathing suits and shorts, screaming children and parents with strollers. Amidst all that chaos we walked and talked, something we just naturally do and let the time go by practically unnoticed. We always have walked side by side, strangely interacting with time and space that keeps a buffer between us. He's older and likes to reprimand me for believing myself to be as equally "aged." Or old, rather. I retorted, "I'll feel as old as I feel."

"How old do you feel?"

"Old."

It's hard for him to understand and for me to explain. I feel both young and old. But I feel like I don't understand my generation and do not identify. I feel sometimes like I'm a weathered old grandmother whose sweet simplicity cannot comprehend the fast paced world that I'm actually from.

He'll have lived three years ahead of me, come this fall.

---

We were walking with all those people around us with care in the world that afternoon. We had left a kiddie pool area that was strangely themed after the Australian outback. We were in search of the gondola like ride that flies over the entire park. We had baking on a planter in the sun trying to dry off after I had decided to cool down by running in and out of the fountains. He had followed me, rather competitively (with himself, I assume).

He complained teasingly about the damp cotton while I was feeling triumphant in my bathing suit beneath my board shorts ensemble.

We talk and talked about all things under the sun.

We had been talking about relationships, a topic that had been brought up once again. Another golden afternoon, a Sunday sometime ago, he had asked me, "Have you dated before?"

So we had spoken about our mishaps and our wishes and our woes.

This particular day, had taken a similar road down that familiar-already-visited conversation.

"I can't believe no one has asked you."

Ha, I can!

"I don't know. I guess nobody was interested in me. I got used to it, I mean I'm comfortable with being single. Really I am. I mean sometimes I just want someone to hold hands with, little things like that, but for the most part I'm OK."

I had been gazing off into the distance when I remember saying something like, "It's not that I don't/didn't want to date, but nobody asked me. Nobody was really interested in me I guess."

Then there was a pause.

And then,

"Hey--Laura?"

"Yeah?"

"I like you..."

I wasn't looking at him when he said this. I was looking in front of me.

I smiled.

"Really?"

"Yes...I just didn't know if I was going to tell you. I just didn't know when I was going to tell you."

"I like you too."

"You do?" He sounded surprised.

I seized the opportunity to tease him, perhaps using humor because I was feeling shy. Happy, but shy.

"Oh, would you have rather I said something else?"

"No! No, it's just nobody has liked me in a long time."

He likes me.

---

I want you to want me
I need you to need me
I'd love you to love me
I'm begging you to beg me

I had not known what to make of him for a long time. I wasn't sure how I felt about him talking to me and doing things with him, how it influenced me if at all. My friends called it way before I did, the ones who saw him that is. Then in that golden light, in the heat when we forgot all about the time and the sun fell across the hills and down and away, I realized how badly I wanted to be close to him. It was silly, sitting next to him leaning in towards him, when I realized how subconsciously I was drawn towards him.

I made up my mind not to say anything to him about what stirrings I felt for him. I told him later that I even considered telling him before he left or even after, but had made up on my mind to say nothing at all. I was so happy he had told me. So happy.

I was afraid to tell him, because I was afraid he wouldn't think of me in that way.

"I thought you didn't like me, because I'm so awkward."

"No I like you BECAUSE you're awkward. I'm awkward too."

We didn't speak about what we had shared for a while.

So I don't even know if we could say the time we spent together was a date.