Jake is here now. Our home is now his home. At first, I was extremely excited. But already, I feel as though I'm out of the group. Per­haps I'm just being extremely emotional…eh, prob­a­bly. I'm very inse­cure when it comes to my friends. I would say I'm para­noid, but the voices are telling me not to talk any fur­ther about it, so I'll just leave it at that.

The other nite, we decided to invite a cou­ple of peo­ple over to the house. We had planned for a rel­a­tively quiet evening, with a movie and some bev­er­ages. How­ever, what was orig­i­nally intended became an ugly, bas­tard child in mere min­utes. Only one of the two peo­ple we invited over showed up…but she brought two friends…and they called their friends.

All of a sud­den, there were 15 peo­ple at our house, all of them strangers. We drank, did our best to have a good time, and tried very hard to min­gle with our (un)welcome house­guests. One girl, a 16-year old, got very ine­bri­ated and paraded around our base­ment like an idiot for sev­eral hours, raid­ing my closet and try­ing on my clothes. She was cute, but that's beside the point. The whole thing was quite aggravating.

On top of this, Jake got extremely drunk and got into his usual "why does the world hate me?" mood, even going so far as to call­ing me out in front of the strangers, shout­ing, "What makes you any bet­ter? You have [this] and [this] and [this] prob­lems…" That was embarass­ing, and just made me sad.

Even­tu­ally, peo­ple started to leave and I needed to get out of there, so Dan and I went for a walk. Dan said he was proud of me (first time I've heard him utter those words) for mak­ing some of the per­sonal strides I have lately, which we talked about for a few min­utes. We also talked about his lack of moti­va­tion in ini­ti­at­ing change within him­self. The con­ver­sa­tion was refresh­ing; some­thing I think we both needed.

The next after­noon, Jake came down to my room. I was fac­ing the com­puter; I didn't say anything.

(insert hug here)

And that was it.

* * *

I met Jen­nifer what seems like eons ago in junior high. We were both involved in music, and as such, inad­ver­tently spent a good amount of time in close prox­im­ity to each other. I remem­ber devel­op­ing a crush on her almost imme­di­ately. Sim­ply put, she was always sweet, nice and gen­uine. Her kind words, beau­ti­ful smile and com­fort­ing hug were never forced.

Being as she was a year ahead of me, we lost touch when she moved on to high school and I became a fresh­man. I had never really thought about it at depth, but I did kind of miss her. I did always think she was out of my league, though.

I re-met Jen­nifer last week­end. It was quite a fluke, actu­ally: I stopped at King Soop­ers to talk to Dan real quick. I turned around, and she was there.

"Chris?!"
"Oh… Hi!"

We talked for a few min­utes and agreed to find some time in the near future to hang out and spend some time together. And although I hadn't thought about her in years, my inter­est was, for some rea­son… renewed.

The first nite we tried to plan some­thing, it fell through. A few days later, the same thing.

We spoke on Sat­ur­day, as she said she would have that evening free, allow­ing us to finally get together. But she broke it off. I felt a lit­tle bit bet­ter as she promised to call me on Mon­day or Tues­day, so we could go out. I joked that this would be the "last time", and she said, "I promise, don't worry!"

Mon­day went by. No call.
Yes­ter­day. Nothing.

Per­haps I'm a bit too trust­ing, but I can't stand it when a per­son breaks a promise. If you feel that you won't or can't do some­thing, then why promise that you will? What's the point…it just hurts peo­ple. I sup­pose most peo­ple throw it around with less empha­sis than I would when I think of a 'promise'. Oh well…another bro­ken promise to add to the pile. My faith in the female soci­ety is…well, again, low­ered. This is get­ting old.