KID 90

Here I go again, obsessing about the same film, but I feel like I have to. If I'm going to dive in here, I may as well start at the beginning, and Watching "Kid 90" was like the first domino that tipped and fell and led to me having an affair. Weird, huh? The way one seemingly inconsequential decision can end up changing so much. I wish I could tell Soliel Moon Fry how much her film inspired me, and how much I related to almost every single aspect of it. It almost felt like watching a movie about myself in a lot of ways. All but the being famous, and having super big boobs, but every girl has things about their bodies that they are ashamed or embarrassed of or don't like so even that was relatable to a certain extent. Like Soliel, I have always been able to make friends everywhere I go. Even in high school, a time when we all feel so alone, I look back now and realize I had so many different pods of friends that didn't even know each other. I always had my original childhood Verano loop crew: Mani, Mary, Ben, Luke and Andrew. Come to think of it, I'm still friends with every one of them on Facebook to this day. That's wild. Then I made new friends from just hanging around in middle school like Melissa and Anita. I had cross country friends, then drama friends, speech friends (from St. Mike's as well and Los Alamos). Then I had youth group friends from church and even friends who I met through other friends who were homeschooled or went to different schools. I really have always had a lot of friends. I've been very lucky in that way. I'm not shy and I just find it easy to talk to people and get to know them. But there are always those few special people in life that you hold onto in your heart. People who make the biggest impressions on you, the fondest memories, the most special connections. One person Soliel talked about quite a bit in Kid 90 was Danny Boy and the relationship that they had. Other than the kissing (because we never did that) it really made me think of my friendship with Jesse. Celine, you may even remember him. He was a cross country friend originally but he was just basically my best friend for a couple years. He was always at our house because he couldn't stand to be at his own house. He even came with us to Socorro one time to help us move you out of your dorm room for the summer. We were so close for a time. And we never dated but there were always feelings on both sides. And we both knew it, but were just too young and stupid to do anything about it. Eventually we grew apart and stopped hanging out as much. I think I pushed him away because I couldn't really handle it when he started seriously dating, which is ironic because I had a boyfriend almost the entire time we were close friends. If I'm being truly honest, which is what this is supposed to be about, then I guess I'd have to say it's because I've always had terrible double standards when it comes to what I can take, and what I expect others to be able to take. Sigh. That still seems to be the case. I'll get more into that later. We've lost and regained touch many times over the years. It's so interesting the way we remember different things. We had to compare memories to put a more complete picture together. And who knows if there are still stories that are lost because neither of us remember them. When he graduated, I remember saying goodbye. He remembers coming back twice to visit after he moved to Texas and says he saw me. The second time I was with Bram. I don't remember either of those times. Then I ran Iinto to him at his work when I was with Edward. I visited him at his place a bit after. I remember that. He doesn't. But that was the last time I saw him. When I got my job teaching at Capshaw and moved to Santa Fe, we lost touch again. I've thought of him from time to time over the years and wondered how he was doing. He's never had any social media and I'd lost his number so I had no way to check in. I tried Googling him a few times to no avail. Then gave up. Then I saw "Kid 90." At that point I think I got a bit obsessive. I don't know why it was so important to me, but I couldn't stop thinking about him and any possible way I could find him. It was like, in the end of the film, Soliel reconnects with Danny Boy and gets to talk to him and ask him if their flrelationship had been as special to him as it was to her, and left the same sort of impression. She got to have those answers and have that closure and that reconnection and I wanted that. And that's really all that I wanted. Just to check in, and know that he was OK, and happy, and that he still thought of me and looked back on me with fondness and that I meant something, or had meant something to him, and that maybe we could stay in touch and be friends again. I never wanted to do any harm or cause any damage. And when I thought of that super old phone I still had sitting in an old drawer, and when I charged it up and turned it on and looked inside and found his number, when I sent that first text and reached out hoping to find him still out there on the other side, I did it with only the best of intentions. But that connection, and that closure caused so much damage, cost so much. Far too much. The extent of that damage is what I'm grappling with today. In my life as well as his. Despite how all of this may seem to some, I truly do not enjoy hurting people. Especially the people I love. So how do I carry that? How do I live with that every day and be OK with myself? These are answers that I don't have yet. Maybe I never will. I know that I'll never be able to be happy until I can forgive myself, because I'll never feel like I deserve to be. Right now I feel like that's OK, because with the way I feel about myself now, I don't feel like I will ever deserve to be happy again. I also don't know how that's ever going to change when I'm back to not knowing if Jesse is OK, or what the current state if his life and marriage are; if he hates me or will ever forgive me for the wreckage I caused in his life. With that always hanging over me as a giant question mark, how can I ever begin to be able to forgive myself? Do I need to? Can I live just carrying this and blaming myself for this forever? I can't say that I especially want to, like I said, at the moment I definitely feel like I deserve it and well, I might not have any other option.