here i am, perfect as i’m ever going to be.

i’m sick of compromising myself to fit in. my recent experience with jarhead taught me that it usually doesn’t work anyway–i should’ve learned this lesson long ago from watching 90s sitcoms, instead of waiting for a stupid boy to hurt me, but then, i’ve always done things the hard way.

but before i elaborate on my new philosophy on the individual, let me explain what happened with jarhead (obviously that’s not his real name): i didn’t even really notice him, other than to think he was attractive, until i found out he thought i was cute and wanted to take me to prom. he’s not a junior or a senior, so he couldn’t ask me. i asked him. he said yes, and that he “couldn’t be happier about who he was going with.” after an awkward few days where neither of us really knew what to do, he made it pretty obvious that he liked me. at a track meet, for example, i pretended to be offended by something he said and he pulled me back into his arms and hugged me for twenty minutes, holding my hands in his.

and then, after prom (which was amazing) he suddenly stopped texting me, even though he still came to talk to me before track practice every day just like before. i invited him to a movie night i was planning, with my best friend and her boy. he said he’d ask his parents. and he didn’t ask them. i cleaned the house for about 7 hours, and put a lot of effort into planning this movie night, and he still didn’t ask. then finally, the day of, i find out that he didn’t even want to go and that was why he hadn’t asked. i dragged out of him that he had been acting like he liked me to “make my senior prom more memorable” and that he just liked me as a friend. the reason he didn’t want to come to my movie night is that he didn’t want to perpetuate the rumors currently circulating that said he and i would be in a relationship soon. he “wanted no part in that.”

now, just wait a minute.

is he fucking stupid? how brain-damaged do you have to be to think that leading a girl on for weeks just to make sure she enjoys prom night with you is a good idea?!

and he still doesn’t see anything wrong with what he did.

so i changed his name to Asshole in my phone, and we don’t speak anymore. he’s just a stupid little boy, and unworthy of my affections. and what’s really ironic is that i didn’t even like him until i found out he liked me.

now to get to my point. i compromised the integrity of my personality for him. he’s a conservative and a christian, and i am neither, so i toned down my beliefs to ensure that i didn’t alienate him or start an argument or something. he’s younger, so i didn’t make jokes about stupid little kids (freshmen and sophomores). he’s pretty mainstream, so i didn’t play screamo or techno in my car or wear anything excessively emo to school. i buried myself under some happy, ditzy little girl that i am not, and i knew exactly what i was doing when i did it.

the way things turned out has helped me remember who i am. i listen to la roux. i paint my nails black sometimes. i was a huge supporter of obama during the election. i’m agnostic. and in the long run, you can’t build a future on who someone else wants you to be, whether it’s your fiance or your boyfriend or just a group of friends you think will like you more if you tweak this or that fact about yourself. life doesn’t work that way.

things fall apart, everything comes out in the end. you can lose yourself that way, and i think if jarhead had actually liked me and i had continued the way i was, i would’ve been in danger of doing exactly that.