my head hurts. i’ve been trying to sleep throughout the evening, but to no avail.  for some reason, my brain is running a marathon tonight.  it’s slow and steady, the thinking, but constant.  too bad i don’t have that kind of physical endurance on the street.  i’d be a lean mean running machine.

anyway, but then i started thinking about the most random and potentially more terrible case of heartbreak i’ve ever experienced, and i started feeling — now, probably 15 years later — supreme amounts of rejection and insignificance, lying in my super duper awesome bed while will plays video games in the loft.  quite the juxtaposition.

when i was a freshmen, i feel madly and adoringly in love with this dude named chris.  he was tall and handsome.  not so much dark.  pretty much no one in my town was.  regardless, he played basketball and had a great mouth (i’m a sucker for a dude with a nice mouth, say like jemaine clement, but this assumes they know how to use them).  plus he was smart, but c’mon that was relatively unimportant at the time; he was popular and he dated popular chicks.  so really i had no chance.  but, hey, i was a nubile tween in love.

about this time, i had braces, no sense of style, no boobs, and definitely no feminine virtues.  as my girlfriends around me started talking about boys, i was still playing baseball with them in the vacant lot in my neighborhood.

but, what i did have (and still have) was zero fear of talking to people.  i remember calling jeff leopold, our senior star quarterback who come to think of it was actually ridiculously hot, for one of my freshmen friends, casey.  i talked to the guy for a good five minutes.  he had no idea who i was, but i managed to find myself in actual conversations with him.  i ended the call by asking if he was interested in my friend.  he was.  ice broken, junior-high high-school style.

i would call chris, too.  he would humor me and talk to me here and there, but overall he was way out of my league and knew it.

my best friend amy, however, was much more *in* his league.

so flash forward about six months into me pining whole heartedly after a figment of my imagination embodied in this lanky sophomore.  i’m sitting at a track meet cheering for none other than chris.  my friends are all with me.  i go grab a snack, and as i’m coming back, lo and behold i see amy and chris talking.  close.  wait, are they talking?

so i turn to another friend.  she already knew.

everyone knew.

i stood there humiliated with my awful hair and terrible 90s clothes and no boobs, trying to piece together the scenario i was living — one that involved everyone feeling sorry for me and keeping something totally obvious from ruining my imaginary love affair.  in what probably was three seconds on a gray spring day in the stadium, i learned all-at-once that falling in love with an idea can cause terrible heartache, that i was vulnerable to blindness thanks to an active imagination, and that my friends could let me down in big ways.

i walked home — nearly three miles — and when i stepped inside, probably close to 8 p.m. and without my mom having known where i was all evening, she instantly knew something was different.  she comforted me without asking questions.  somehow she just knew.  it’s crazy to think about it now.

i don’t think i’ll ever forget that feeling of wanting something so terribly and then learning that not only did i not have it, but others around me did.  and i was jealous.  and i felt inferior.  and i was humbled.

in the end, HE WASN’T EVEN A GOOD KISSER!  it’s too bad, too, because when i grew boobs and graduated from high school, suddenly he was approaching me.  this time, it was me who was totally uninterested.  surprised?  intrigued?  totally. but i literally had no interest after he kissed me at a party.  like the fantasy was shot by a less-than-stellar performance in a matter of seconds.

or maybe the lesson i learned was too strong, and he didn’t stand a (second?) chance.

there.  it’s out.  now, brain, how about a little sleep tonight?

i went for a run last night to clear my head.  i hardly ever do this because i hate running.  unless it’s from something like an angry dog.  or if it’s sprinting.  i like to beat people. but i never attest to being an endurance athlete (pattern much?).

anyways, i ran down to a secondary school stadium and then did some stairs.  i was listening to angry music and breathing hard.  the air was damp but my throat still was dry and it stung.  my legs burned and my buttcheeks were itchy.  (this is notoriously a problem for me since my butt protrudes to such a degree as to be colder than the rest of my body at any time, so when it starts warming up, it’s like i’m 6 coming in from playing in the woods after a snow and feeling my feet tingle and burn and itch while they thawed as mom brought me her ridiculous hot cocoa made from the real stuff).

i looked out over the top of the stadium to a baseball practice going on.  some teenager was moving his hips to what i imagine was some song in his head.  i remembered doing cartwheels in the outfield during ponytail league because not many 8-year-old girls were hitting the ball my way.  i bet i danced, too.   then i looked back at the track to see one student practicing with his coach, sprinting over and over.  i wished for a moment that i was the student, just being responsible for sprint after methodical sprint while my coach told me about my technique and held his stopwatch.

i switched my music and started running back home.  halfway there, i stopped and started walking.  in no hurry.  when i got home, i didn’t want to be home yet.  i sat on the cold metal picnic table.  my butt got super cold again.  i stretched and watched a couple geese fly in gracefully to land on the pond.  i watched a peaceful floating mallard get annoyed.  i watched a dude walking work hard to keep his dog from jumping in the pond after them.

i smelled thaw.  where the blue spruce trees start warming up, and i can detect mulch again, and the grass looks greener. and i just sat and breathed and waited for epiphones to roll into my brain, one after the other.  but none came.

so i went inside to warm my butt.