I have returned to throwing my narrative voice out into the darkness that is the interwebs. Not because I have anything particularly insightful to share or because I have reached a certain milestone in my torrid life story, but because I am devastatingly distracted by my own thoughts. Or maybe the prospect of writing a comparative paper on Sartre and Merleau-Ponty on a Saturday night is not as appealing as it sounds (crazy, right?) and thus the return to the written word for personal gratification. I feel antsy. What a stellar word that feels exactly like what it means. I've recently had some developments on one of my friendships that is causing me to become this crazed person that I don't particularly love. It's as though I have undergone what I like to call the 'Phineas Gage'. If you don't know the epic, let me impart my wisdom. So one fated day, Gage was working his dull 9 to 5 job at the railroad. He and his fellow compatriots were working with some heavy duty explosives and dear old Phineas just got too close for comfort. One of the packages suffered what many old, decrepit men suffer when they get too excited by this month's Cosmopolitan. Caught in the crossfire, Gage got a good healthy dose of railroad spike right in his frontal cortex and was never the same ever again (namely he became a total asshole). To this day, pitiable psychology and neuroscience students are told this cautionary tale again and again by their less than humorous instructors. Of course, like all of my tall-tales this one is to be understood with a grain of salt because I am not a journalist and I am not here to deliver the cold hard facts (thought I'm not so sure if journalism, namely FOX, does this). So thus returning back to the original narrative, I have caught the 'Phineas Gage' because I too have a proverbial railroad spike in my frontal cortex. I have this infuriating presence at the forefront of all of my present thoughts that refuses to be dislodged. It's making me a psychopath. As most of my preoccupations have historically been about people, my present one is no different. I will hereby refer to this individual as 'Railroad Spike'.
So 'Railroad Spike' came into my life at the beginning of my time of higher education and not by typical means. Like your long-lost cousin, thrice removed, my degrees of relation to him are equally as convoluted. Yet he is one of my closest friends on this now greening campus. At first, I never thought much about the nature of our relationship, though I did have moments of infatuation that were squashed when he and another friend of similar stature to him started acting like the most nauseating couple. Then randomly one day he invited me to an event, mind you this was a proposition to attend a college version of a "fourth-graders birthday party", and the ball-game changed. Maybe it was his Batman onesie or the epic, bacchanalian game of WWII, but I woke up the next morning dehydrated and a little dazed. I wasn't sure what to make of his toddler-Batman to my punk-chic elementary school diva wearing a shirt that said #bored. But finals week rolled around and made us closer through mutual suffering and late nights at the library. Then we started hanging out more and our mutual interest in Game of Thrones and the like became reasons for more kibitzing. Last night and today really proved that my feelings towards him were more than platonic. A weird, lurid dream and watching him kill it on stage (he's in a band, no big deal, save for the fact that I find that extremely attractive) have made me insanely hot under the collar and preoccupied. But the thing with this moron is that he will never make the first move and I have no indication to encourage one from me. So thus I am a frustrated mess (or maybe I just need to express my promiscuity actively).
Writing this has actually been pretty therapeutic, so maybe I can hold out and be patient for a bit longer. That way I don't spontaneously combust and react violently like Coke and Mentos and scare him back to California.
