The following was written on March 11th, as part of an email to a friend.

Today, R. was sitting right next to me on the floor in Mr. F's room, when I hear a very contemptuous voice, M.'s Evil Friend, say "Look! Now he's hitting on R." So, M.'s Evil Friend was talking about me, with an audience of M. I then hear M.'s Evil Friend say the word gay a few times, as well as some obnoxiously yelled, incomprehensible - and almost certainly negative - comment about Proposition 8. Most importantly, I also hear M. say, "I even went to SAP," in a kind of aggravated way. I assume that he went because of his paranoia that I am “incessantly” looking at him, since he and M.'s Evil Friend were just talking about me and my sexual orientation a moment before, which, frankly, is a little bit ridiculous. While I pretend to not understand why he is acting so negatively, I really do. Essentially, people are afraid of what they don’t understand, and M. doesn’t understand deep emotions and aesthetics. He occasionally attempts to feign depth out of his shallows, a deception that dissipates easily under a distrust of the eye and an active inspection. This lack of emotional depth is at the crux of the problem: he interprets my (former) intense infatuation for him as being purely sexual infatuation, which I assume is mostly what he feels for girls. I remember, when he didn’t hate me and thought of me as being very intelligent, that I would just watch him with quiet happiness—his cute face, boyish demeanor, idyllic and carefree disposition, self-confidence, assertiveness, and ability to just go out and try to get what he wants, without being anxious about whether what he’s doing to achieve that goal is 100% acceptable to everyone. And that’s NOT creepy to feel that way. I’m such an anxiety-ridden person, always worrying about other people are thinking about me, worrying about all the work that I should have done at home that now needs to be finished during school somehow, inhibited by my complete lack of confidence, being soft-spoken, so as to not appear assertive, and trying not to attract attention in any way I can. M. just doesn’t do those things, so it’s completely natural that I would find those traits extremely endearing, as I associate negative connotations with the above traits.

Given his unbelievably strong preference for tangibles rather than intangibles (he didn’t know what Creationism is the belief that God created the Earth and everything on it simultaneously. It’s not only that he didn’t know this fact; it became clear, as he continued talking, that he had never, at any point in his life, wondered how the world got its start. Unbelievable.), which, in addition to size of general knowledge (another area M. is deficient in), correlates highly with depth of emotion and openness to experience, explaining his lack of both—and his strong disturbance to the situation between me and him.

I’m guessing that he was angry because the SAP people didn’t do what he wanted them to do. I don’t really know what he would have wanted out of them, though. Force Mrs. F. to change seats? Ensure in the future that I’m not in any of his classes? Besides, I don’t see under what pretense they could grant him what he wants, as he has no reasonable charge towards me. “He looks at me too often!” Of course, there is the collage, but that is not sexual in any way, shape, or form. As I said before, he doesn’t really understand the feelings that fueled the collage’s creation, beyond that it means that like him in some “weirdly” high degree, which to him means that I’m sexually attracted to him in some “weirdly” high degree. I’m sure that none of this aided by that fact that he already thinks that I’m very odd—wearing “Wal-Mart Clothes,” carrying all of my books, talking very quickly, having an unkempt appearance, limping to keep my schoolbag on my shoulder, fluctuating from being very introverted to very extroverted, etc. According to more than one person, these qualities all give the appearance of being “shady” and “that I can easily be pictured masturbating in front of computer over gay porn all night.”

It’s really all quite upsetting to have everyone, including the man that I once “loved” and who, consequently, is possessive of an opinion that has much effect on me, think of me as being some pervert that should be feared—a metaphorical Frankenstein, composed of a mess of sexual perversions and fetishes. It is a truly, truly, truly upsetting thought to know that you incite fear in people. All the more tragic is, one, when they think that you do so purposely, as M. does, and, two, when you are probably the least likely person to do something to someone that they would rather you not do. I cried, literally, every day of preschool, kindergarten, first grade, and the first two-thirds of second grade because, “I miss my Dad!” I cry at almost every movie and whenever someone else cries, so does Eric. People with more callous dispositions (cough) upset me to no end. My sensitivity surely exacerbates the pain derived from unintentional engendering of fear in people.

I feel that all my problems are helplessly interrelated and just intensify. Due to my sensitivity, I might look at M. to see if he’s upset, which causes him to be even more creeped out, which causes everyone to see me in a more creepy light, which causes me to care less about my appearance since no one is going to like me anyway, which causes everyone to see me in a more creepy light, which...

The M. part of the equation just continually intensifies, intensifying the rest of the chain, because the more creeped out he becomes, the incentive to not look at him, as I don’t want to anger him, grows proportionally with the incentive to look, as I have anxiety over how much he hates me. Because the incentive to look was stronger initially, it continues to be stronger because, as I said, they both grow proportionally, which, again, causes the M. part of the chain to intensify, intensifying the entire chain of anxiety.

Now THAT'S one hell of a tangled web,

G.L.A.Y.

P.S. I just checked, and this is 1,100 words long. When does my emo certificate come in the mail?