My feelings were hurt by Ben yesterday. He told Julie that I had been mean to him. I went to apologize. I told him it was unintentional and even unnoticed. I stood before his roommates, looking at him and gave away my pride. He rolled over on the couch and told me it was no big deal, that it's not like it's keeping him up nights. He turned back away. All I could do was walk out. I couldn't explain my hurt. Had I been disappointed that I hadn't wounded him? No. I felt small because he had not acknowledged my effort to be his friend. I felt that I was no big deal.
That was my last visit to apartment 130, at least for a while. It's not because of Ben. It was a feeling I got putting on mascara before FHE. I looked at myself in the mirror -beautiful, Caitlin said- and hated something, knew something had to change. I skipped the meeting to which I ought to have gone and sat alone in the apartment, listening. An observer would have witnessed one side of a conversation, as if overhearing a phone call. What is it that has to change? What am I meant to do? /I can't. I have to apologize to Ben. /Fine. I'll say my goodbyes then. /Not at all? /I can do that....When I went I did not say goodbye. They don't know I'm not coming back. How can I tell them? There's no reason to it. How can I say to them, I'm sorry but I have been wearing too much mascara recently so I can't come over anymore?
The connection as I see it is this: vanity. Or self-consciousness. Either one. Sure I like putting on makeup, I like playing dress up. I've done it at slumber parties and before the mirror with my roommates. I often enjoy how I look, but I am afraid that that was all I was becoming. I was losing myself in a mess of paint and powder. I have always given bad first impressions to those who end up meaning the most to me. The reason is quite simple. I trust my friends more when they go through the bad and still stick around. If I can get the bad out of the way at the very beginning then I can stop being afraid, stop wondering when they are going to find something in me that they hate, something that will make them leave. With apartment 130 I have done just the opposite. I have flirted and flounced and primped. I needed mascara. Ted did not recognize me. And the thing is...I am much too vain to do that. I believe myself beautiful without a facade, and all I want is someone else to realize that, to think, she might not be wearing mascara but she doesn't need it.
I loved that Ted was thrown off when I wore mascara. He should be. I don't wear it, and he knows me. That is what means the most, being known. Ted told me a week ago that when I hurt so does he. He once told me that when he met me he thought of me as a cute fun girl worth getting to know. Now (and here comes a phrase meant especially for his amusement) why can't I find a guy like that?
I called him when I felt slighted by Ben, and I told him that I needed to talk to someone to whom I wasn't completely expendable. He laughed at me, at the turn of phrase and the modest hope of my value to him. I used to hate when Ted laughed at me. I hated feeling that I wasn't good enough. I was scared to show him who I was, because to have him laugh at my inner self would have killed me. But, lo and behold, when I let him see me, he did not run away, did not find anything to hate. He still laughs, but he doesn't leave and so I love his laughing. It reminds me that I am known, all my ridiculocities (made up word but effective nonetheless) and I am loved.
I think I can go back over to apartment 130 when I decide that I am fine with rejection. Because, when that time comes, I believe that I will not meet with it. Ted taught me that.
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