Oh, Once In Your Life You Find Someone, Who Will Turn Your World Around, Bring You Up When You're Feeling Down
--"Heaven", Bryan Adams
I met Jina first in December of 1992. We bonded over our shared love of Avonlea, thought we didn't quite get off on the right foot since Jina called Sara Stanley, my favorite character on the show, "boring." However, once that small faux pas was behind us, we got along swimmingly. I found her intelligent, funny, and possessing a strong sense of spirit that I find lacking in most individuals. If anything, I thought Jina and I would be best friends forever. It's her that I immediately hit it off with and not Breanne.
I didn't meet Breanne until July of 1993. We got along fine, but at the time we met I was still infatuated with Jina so I treated Breanne like the writer she was. I thought she was going to be someone who contributed to my 'zine, Our Magazine, and nothing more. I mean--I kept in touch with a lot of contributors, but none of them save Lucy did I eventually consider a close friend. We joke about it now, but the truth is we were both put off by each other in those first few months. I found her stubborn, quick-tempered, and rather vain. If somebody had told me that she would be the one person I would come to depend on for just about everything, I would have told that somebody he or she was crazy.
I guess that's the danger of basing your future with a person around a first impression. First impressions are often misleading. Well, that's not true, I still find Jina intelligent, funny, &c... but I no longer feel that sense of connection that we once shared. My opinion of her didn't exactly change. The only thing that changed was the circumstances surrounding her.
My mistake with her was attempting to move our interaction with one another to a level that it was never meant to go to. I was an idiot, plain and simple. I mistook my burgeoning fondness for her for something resembling love. When she didn't reciprocate my gut reaction was to destroy everything that the two of us had built up. I gave her little choice but to give up on me. Again, I think I was led astray by this notion that she and I were meant to be together forever. This idea that it was our destiny to end up lasting for all time made everything I did at the time seem justified. When you build up this picture of how everything will turn out it's heartbreaking when this other person cannot quite see the same picture. That's what happened between Jina and me. We started off seeing ourselves one way, but gradually I saw us moving on and she didn't.
The same wasn't true about Breanne. I didn't think we would amount to anything in those first few months. Indeed, it wasn't until Jina and I had our falling out that those ideas of ending up together started being focused on the Little Miss Chipper. I mean--I liked her. I thought she was a good writer. I liked talking to her. But even in those early days she and I would have screaming matches that would make me consider just cutting her out of my life. It seemed every other week we would find a new subject to disagree about which we would blow up into a shit storm that wasn't truly warranted. Fight after fight left me with the impression that she and I would just never be that close despite how much she made me smile during all those other times.
Taking a look at that, that should have been one big clue about how Breanne and I were fated to end up together. Whereas Jina and I had one huge fight that caused us not to talk for ten years (!), Breanne and I have been pretty much fighting all our years together. Yet one fight has never been enough for me to back away completely from her for very long. The longest we have gone without talking to one another in the seventeen years we've known each other was eight months. Eight months sounds like a long time and it probably is, but it's nothing compared to not talking to someone for ten years.
I don't know--I just think it's funny that the one person I pinned all these hopes to ended up almost fading into obscurity a mere three years after I met her and the one person I was sure I wouldn't see after a few years ended up sticking around for almost two decades now.
It gives me pause about the theory that we're destined to find one and only one person who will change everything. Or rather it gives me pause that we're capable of recognizing such a person right from the get-go. I mean--you hear all this talk about people knowing they would fall in love with a person upon gazing on them from across the dance floor. They have no qualms in their heads that it's their destiny to be with that person. I have yet to meet one of those people myself. Everyone I know it's always been the same; the people who stick around in their lives were the people they didn't think much of at first. It's always the people who snuck up on them in their daily dealings that ends up becoming indispensable and not the person they put the effort into. Call it a quirk of fate or the gods' having a little joke at our expense, but nobody seems to roll the pass line right from the get-go.
What I can buy into, however, is the idea we do meet the one person who has the power to change our life around. It happened to me and I've heard it happen to other people. It's not so hard to put faith into the theory that certain people were put into our lives to transform them into something better. I mean--if we had the power to better ourselves eternally I don't think there's a single person who wouldn't choose to do that on their own. Sometimes we need others to kick start out lives into overdrive. Sometimes all it takes is to find one person who believes in us when we don't quite believe in ourselves all the time.
They don't even have to do that much. They could just leave a message on your phone at four in the morning saying, "Don't give up, Patrick. Please try again." They could call your parents to explain all the stuff you can't explain to them personally. They could just IM you just to say, "Hey."
I know I'm blessed to have someone in my life who means so much to me. I guess I'm just thinking how astonishing it is that I overlooked her for so long. It's true what they say; sometimes you really can't see the forest for the trees. That's the difference between something that's meant to last and something that isn't--the difference between Jina and Breanne--one thing falls apart despite all your efforts to keep it together and the other endures no matter what happens to try to kill it.
If it's meant to last--if a person is meant to be with you for the long haul--there's nothing that can be done under the sun to change that. I'm stuck with Breanne... and that's a good thing.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
I met Jina first in December of 1992. We bonded over our shared love of Avonlea, thought we didn't quite get off on the right foot since Jina called Sara Stanley, my favorite character on the show, "boring." However, once that small faux pas was behind us, we got along swimmingly. I found her intelligent, funny, and possessing a strong sense of spirit that I find lacking in most individuals. If anything, I thought Jina and I would be best friends forever. It's her that I immediately hit it off with and not Breanne.I didn't meet Breanne until July of 1993. We got along fine, but at the time we met I was still infatuated with Jina so I treated Breanne like the writer she was. I thought she was going to be someone who contributed to my 'zine, Our Magazine, and nothing more. I mean--I kept in touch with a lot of contributors, but none of them save Lucy did I eventually consider a close friend. We joke about it now, but the truth is we were both put off by each other in those first few months. I found her stubborn, quick-tempered, and rather vain. If somebody had told me that she would be the one person I would come to depend on for just about everything, I would have told that somebody he or she was crazy.
I guess that's the danger of basing your future with a person around a first impression. First impressions are often misleading. Well, that's not true, I still find Jina intelligent, funny, &c... but I no longer feel that sense of connection that we once shared. My opinion of her didn't exactly change. The only thing that changed was the circumstances surrounding her.
My mistake with her was attempting to move our interaction with one another to a level that it was never meant to go to. I was an idiot, plain and simple. I mistook my burgeoning fondness for her for something resembling love. When she didn't reciprocate my gut reaction was to destroy everything that the two of us had built up. I gave her little choice but to give up on me. Again, I think I was led astray by this notion that she and I were meant to be together forever. This idea that it was our destiny to end up lasting for all time made everything I did at the time seem justified. When you build up this picture of how everything will turn out it's heartbreaking when this other person cannot quite see the same picture. That's what happened between Jina and me. We started off seeing ourselves one way, but gradually I saw us moving on and she didn't.
The same wasn't true about Breanne. I didn't think we would amount to anything in those first few months. Indeed, it wasn't until Jina and I had our falling out that those ideas of ending up together started being focused on the Little Miss Chipper. I mean--I liked her. I thought she was a good writer. I liked talking to her. But even in those early days she and I would have screaming matches that would make me consider just cutting her out of my life. It seemed every other week we would find a new subject to disagree about which we would blow up into a shit storm that wasn't truly warranted. Fight after fight left me with the impression that she and I would just never be that close despite how much she made me smile during all those other times.
Taking a look at that, that should have been one big clue about how Breanne and I were fated to end up together. Whereas Jina and I had one huge fight that caused us not to talk for ten years (!), Breanne and I have been pretty much fighting all our years together. Yet one fight has never been enough for me to back away completely from her for very long. The longest we have gone without talking to one another in the seventeen years we've known each other was eight months. Eight months sounds like a long time and it probably is, but it's nothing compared to not talking to someone for ten years.
I don't know--I just think it's funny that the one person I pinned all these hopes to ended up almost fading into obscurity a mere three years after I met her and the one person I was sure I wouldn't see after a few years ended up sticking around for almost two decades now.
It gives me pause about the theory that we're destined to find one and only one person who will change everything. Or rather it gives me pause that we're capable of recognizing such a person right from the get-go. I mean--you hear all this talk about people knowing they would fall in love with a person upon gazing on them from across the dance floor. They have no qualms in their heads that it's their destiny to be with that person. I have yet to meet one of those people myself. Everyone I know it's always been the same; the people who stick around in their lives were the people they didn't think much of at first. It's always the people who snuck up on them in their daily dealings that ends up becoming indispensable and not the person they put the effort into. Call it a quirk of fate or the gods' having a little joke at our expense, but nobody seems to roll the pass line right from the get-go.
What I can buy into, however, is the idea we do meet the one person who has the power to change our life around. It happened to me and I've heard it happen to other people. It's not so hard to put faith into the theory that certain people were put into our lives to transform them into something better. I mean--if we had the power to better ourselves eternally I don't think there's a single person who wouldn't choose to do that on their own. Sometimes we need others to kick start out lives into overdrive. Sometimes all it takes is to find one person who believes in us when we don't quite believe in ourselves all the time.
They don't even have to do that much. They could just leave a message on your phone at four in the morning saying, "Don't give up, Patrick. Please try again." They could call your parents to explain all the stuff you can't explain to them personally. They could just IM you just to say, "Hey."
I know I'm blessed to have someone in my life who means so much to me. I guess I'm just thinking how astonishing it is that I overlooked her for so long. It's true what they say; sometimes you really can't see the forest for the trees. That's the difference between something that's meant to last and something that isn't--the difference between Jina and Breanne--one thing falls apart despite all your efforts to keep it together and the other endures no matter what happens to try to kill it.
If it's meant to last--if a person is meant to be with you for the long haul--there's nothing that can be done under the sun to change that. I'm stuck with Breanne... and that's a good thing.
Yours Swimmingly,
mojo shivers
Labels: Breanne, Bryan Adams, comparisons, contrasts, Jina
posted by mojo shivers @ 2:26 AM
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