| Freaky Story from Chicken Soup For the Teenage Soul.... it's all toooo familiar:
The Player
It was his attitude that got me. That self-assured smile and those cocky mannerisms gave me the irresistible urge to challenge such conceit. I had never met a person so sure of himself. He assumed that when you first met him, you have no choice but to like him. It made me want to prove him wrong. I would show him that I could not only resist his charms, but that I could beat him at his own game.
So our relationship began as a battle, each trying to gain a foothold, trying to pull ahead of the other and proe our dominance. We waged and unrelenting war of mind games, insults and tests.
But somewhere in the middle of our warfare, the teasing became playful and we became friends. We found in each other not just a challenge, but someone to turn to when we didn't feel like fighting anymore. Josh loved to "communicate." He often talked for hours as I listened, covering every topic that affected him and his life. I soon realized that he was more concerned about himself than anything else. But it didn't seem that it would be a conflict in our relationship.
It was several months after our friendship started that Josh began a discussion about love. "It takes a lot for me to love someone," he told me, in a tone more serious that I had ever heard from him. "What I need is trust. I could never fall in love with someone who I didn't feel I could tell everything to. Like you. You're my favorite person in the entire world. I could tell you anything," he said, looking straight at me.
I blushed, unsure of what response I should give in retuen, afraid that whatever I said would betray the new emotions I had begun to feel for Josh over the past few weeks. The look in my eyes must have given me away, because from that moment on, it eemed that he began to do everything in his power to make me fall deeper and deeper into the way I felt about him. Was it love? He seemed to glow in the sttention that I paid him. And I enjoyed adoring him. Yet it didn't take me very long to figure out that Josh had no intention of returning my devotion.
When we were alone, he would kiss me and hold me and tell me how special our relationship was to him, and that he didn't know anyone else who made him so happ. But a few weeks into our relationship, I found out that he had been involved with another girl and had been for some time. The pain I felt at his betrayal was overwhelming, but I found I couldn't be angry with him. I felt sure inside that he really did care, and that it was his friendship that was important to me.
I let our relationship grow. I was happy and it seemed Josh was too. We'd spend nights together, just us and , I thought, proved to everybody we were secure by only acting as "best friends" in public. He would look in my eyes and tell me he cared about me and I wouldn't be able to doubt it. This made me fall more and more in love with him. At times he did thinks to upset me but I just couldn't ever be mad at him. I would forgive him without and appology and never look back on it. So finally, I gave him a part of myself I can never take part. Something I would soon regret.
At school one day, I saw him standing with a group of girls, and by the flirtatious smile on his face, I could tell he had again been working his magic. "Josh!" I yelled down the hallway to him. He looked up at me, then back at the girls and with a groupie under each arm, he turned and made his way in the opposite direction. I stood completely deflated, not wanting to acknowledge what had just happened. but I couldn't avoidthe truth any longer. My "best friend" had ignored me so I would hurt the reputation he was working on.
After that, I began to watch Josh, not as someone who had a crush on him, but as an outside observer. I began to see the darker side of his personality. It was only when I moved away from him that my cloudy vision cleared. It was as if the shadow my adoration had thrown over the situation grew smaller, and I finally saw what I had not been able to see before.
Josh spent day after day making new acquaintances that he thought might adore him. He flirted with girls knowing how to make them feel pretty. He knew how to play the game just right - to make sure that everyone felt they had his complete attention. When you were with him, you felt he was interested only in you. He hung out, telling jokes and acting cool, giving off an aura that made people want to be around him. But now I could see that he did it all for himself because he needed to be surrounded by people who thought he was great.
And while he acted as though he really cared about these people, I heard him belittle them behind their backs, saw him ignore them in the process of making new friends. I saw the pain on their faces that I understood only too well.
I talked to Josh only once more after thatday. Even though I understood his nature and was opposed to everything he stood for, there was still a part of me that wanted him to care, and still wanted thengs the way they used to be.
"What happened?" I asked him. I cringe when I think how pitiful I must have sounded. "I mean, I thought we were best friends. How can you just give up all the time we spent together? All the things we talked about? The... love that you always told me was there?"
He shrugged and replied coldly, "Hey, these things happen," before he turned an walked away.
I stood watching him go, with tears running down my face. I cried not for him, but for the friendship I thought we had, for the love I though we had felt. I had lost the game in a big way.
-Kelly Garnett
Too freaken familiar... I hate when I read things like these and they make me realize my own depressing hell. Blahh. Yeah. Blahh. |
