No Mary, no Julie, no Uncle Sam. Was I the battling you-know-what of my high school? I might have felt that way. My heart was broken, and it would be a long time before I would ask another girl out on a date.
When I asked Mary to the junior prom, I did not know whether we would like each other enough to be more than just friends, but hope springs eternal, and I certainly entertained the idea after meeting her the previous year. Even so, I was not expecting more than friendship when I asked her to the prom.
How could I have any right to expect anything? I began to wonder if I had a right to any expectations of anybody, whether they were girls I might be attracted to, or just my friends. Sometimes, it seems, I did expect too much, but at other times I doubted that I could expect anything at all.
What can anyone reasonably expect from other people? Kindness, respect, love? Certainly if one treats others with kindness and respect they might feel that they should get some in return. But it is clear that no one can expect people to act the way they want them to. I could not expect Julie or Mary to like me the way I liked them; they either would or they would not. In that sense, at least, my feelings for them were not relevant.
Our disappointments often come when others do not feel the same way we do. I might think I was close friends with some of those I came to know my junior year, and I might be surprised to realize that they did not think the same. One of the great trials of high school for me lay in trying to deal with it when others did not feel the same way that I felt about them. Even today one of my big fears is that none of it, the friendships or the good times we had, was real.
On top of all that had happened, in February my grandmother passed away; within a matter of days my grandfather passed away as well. They had divorced when my mother was still a child, but though my grandfather had remarried, the passing of his first love was enough to break his heart.
As for me, these events were added to the list of difficult things that had been happening that year, starting the previous summer when I nearly lost my mother to a brain tumor. In reality, I was not as affected as I portrayed myself to be. Was it because my heart was already broken, was I a little numb, or was I just a teenager? In any case, the passing of my grandfather actually provided a nice break from the school year as my family went down to San Diego for his funeral.
I think to a certain extent I was martyring myself. While I would not ask a girl out on a date until the following September, I was hoping like crazy that a girl would ask me to the girl's choice dance in March. In the end, I was not asked, and it was another thing to add to the list.
There were five girl's choice dances between my sixteenth birthday and my high school graduation, and I was not asked to any of them. There is a classic episode of the old TV comedy Father Knows Best where Bud is the only boy who is not asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance at school; it's a great episode, but it hits too close to home for me.
For a moment, though, there was a little bit of light. My efforts to be friends with Julie seemed to be paying off as I was able to say hi to her a few days in a row, and then we actually had a short conversation. It did not last. On some days she was friendly, but on others she wouldn't even acknowledge me.
I was struck recently at the contrast in my reaction to the rejection I received from both Julie and Mary. I found it very difficult to forget about Julie and move on, whereas, though my heart was broken, I did not find it particularly difficult to accept Mary's decision. I seemed to be exhibiting a little bit of maturity with one that I seemingly could not with the other. Maybe it was because I had been able to build a good friendship with Mary, or maybe it was because I knew where I stood with her but felt that I had no clue where I stood with Julie.
By March, I had decided to wait until after my mission before trying to have a girlfriend. That decision, however, did not erase the feelings I had for Julie. One day I called Sally to ask if I could come by and talk. Sally suggested that I talk to Julie and tell her how I felt about her, but also tell her that, because of my decision to wait until after my mission for relationships, I just wanted to be friends. I followed this advice and it went rather well; Julie appeared to respond favorably to our being friends.
After that I still needed to settle things with Mary. In April I called her up and asked if we could talk, and we decided to meet in a public place. I asked her why she had canceled on the dance and she said that she didn’t like having her picture taken. Apparently my asking her to pose for me led her to think I wanted more than just friendship.
She also said that her father was out of work and that she didn’t have enough money to buy a new dress for the dance. I said I didn’t care about that kind of thing and that I would have been happy enough if she had worn a particular dress she had worn to school once or twice. Let's face it, I would not have bought a new suit, or even a new tie for the dance, so why should she have had to buy a new formal, and expensive, dress?
We talked about some other things and she told me about how disappointed she was the year before because she could not try out for a choral group because she had injured her leg. All in all it was a great discussion from which we both learned a lot, and we became better friends as a result.
Winter changed to spring and the school year neared its end. It had been an eventful year, with good and bad things happening. I was changing, too. Making so many new friends was a great blessing, but one that brought new challenges.
For all the good, I had a few blind spots; I had so many doubts about myself, I could not see that I had value as an individual. I told myself that nobody had challenges like I did -- not as many and not as difficult -- and my junior year had given me a long list of challenges.
The biggest mistake I made that year, however, was putting my new friends up on pedestals. There had to be something special about these friends who had reached out to me because, I told myself, there was nothing particularly special about me. In recent years I finally took my friends down from those pedestals; while I still think there was something special about them -- I knew others who went to the same high school at different times who did not have the same experience -- but there was indeed something special about me, too.
I had done such a small and simple thing in taking initiative that I must have minimized it's importance in my mind, but great things were truly brought to pass because of it. And many of my new friends would tell me that I was special. I do not say that to brag, but rather to remind myself that my role in what happened was important, and to remind myself that I did and do have value.
The biggest lie is that an individual, be it you, me, or someone else, is worthless. We are all God's children and as such we all have value. Anything that tells us that we are not special comes from the Father of all Lies. Knowing that simple fact should make it easier to reject the voices that say we are not good enough.
I attended a baptism recently, and I stood in the circle as the candidate was confirmed a member of the church. In the blessing the father said to the little girl that even if she was the only one who needed the Savior to go to Gethsemane and to Golgotha, the He would still have gone, because He lover her that much. That is also how much He loves each of us, and how much He loves all of God's children. We should never forget this simple truth.
No comments:
Post a Comment