Misunderstandings and Understandings

10-14-11

Fiction-y thing. It's sort of long, but yeah, all the parts are necessary. Also, a few posts ago, some of you asked me a question, and all I can say is, "Have a look at this and see if you can get an answer out of it."
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Why did the letter say what it said? Why had he written that? She didn't understand. Sure, she'd asked him to Sadie Hawkins, but that wasn't because she had a crush on him; it was because he'd say yes, and she'd been told no too many times already. He was one of the first real friends she'd had, and now...now it was gone.

But why was he going to blatantly ignore her now? And inform her that he was going to do it? It's not like the school was huge; people would quickly notice that he was ignoring her. And why? Why couldn't she know? Why would knowing "plunge her into the depths of hell," as the letter had said? What was so wrong with her that someone would just stop wanting to be her friend?

She wiped her eyes and refolded the letter and tucked it into her bag. Time to head to Sabbath lunch. Alumni weekend and all, couldn't let anyone see her crying. Couldn't let them know that she was hurt. Not with all the people around, anyway. Maybe not even when they were gone. And maybe she would just never let anyone know what was deep inside. Maybe she'd just lock it away.

--

Because her parents were having to move, she found the letter in the stacks of paper she was sorting through. Why had she kept it for all these years? The letter was just a painful reminder of the stupid, insensitive thing he had done, the thing that her mind always reverted to whenever she had seen him on campus, when she had ended up sitting next to him in one of her first college classes. A stupid thing to remember, really.

She had forgiven him (well, at least, she had tried to give the whole situation to God, but that didn't really always make things better), but he really didn't see that he had done something wrong. Had never seemed like he thought that he had done something wrong. Somehow it was because of her. Somehow, since there didn't seem to be any reason for it whatsoever, not even after all the years that had passed.

But keeping the letter, well, that was just keeping a reminder of the hurt and the pain and the anger, something that she really wasn't anymore. Keeping the letter just meant that his action still held sway over her. Well, not anymore. She'd grown enough in the past ten and a half months that she didn't need to be told that she was holding onto something that was hurting her. She wiped her eyes and ripped the letter into tiny strips and threw it in the garbage bag.

--

She hadn't realized that it was joking banter. Leave it to her to ruin a pleasant texting conversation by taking things too seriously. That happened way too often. And why had she reacted in fear? Because that feeling--the sick-in-the-stomach, slightly panicky feeling--was fear. She learned a lot in the last few years, and that was the name to that feeling. Why had she reacted that way to joking banter? Why had she only felt better when her friend had texted that it wasn't a serious conversation? Why did she always overreact to things like that? What was wrong with her?

You've been asking the wrong question, came the answer one morning when she was getting ready for school. You've been asking what's wrong with you. That isn't the question. Then what was the question? If she'd been asking the wrong question, it made sense that she hadn't been getting any answers to some questions--not to the questions about relationships, not to the questions about her future, not to the questions about what was wrong with her. The real question is, What caused you to think that there was something wrong with you? Yes, you're sinful, but you're Mine. There's nothing wrong with you that I can't fix. There's nothing wrong with you in the way that you've been thinking for so long.

And her thoughts flitted back to the first time that she could remember thinking that there was something wrong with her. The Enemy had worked through that boy and whatever his reasons were to hurt her. The boy probably not on purpose, of course, but the hurt had been the effect all the same. She'd spent eight years thinking that there was something fundamentally wrong with her, leading her to hide behind baggy clothes and homework instead of pursuing relationships and friendships. Eight years. And now...now it was gone. Yes, she'd still have to work on having the correct thoughts, but the misunderstanding had been replaced with an understanding: There wasn't anything wrong with her, not in the way that she had thought for so very very long, and it was so very very freeing. She wiped her eyes and picked up her backpack, ready to head out the door, and smiled.
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More later.