Love

11th grade was, up to that point, the best year in my life. This happiness can be attributed to the fact that I was in love, a feeling that made me see the world through rose tinted glasses – and it was beautiful. I met Cheri through one of the least likely places to meet women; the Science Olympiad team. She was truly everything that I wanted; much smarter than me, beautiful, and caring. Cheri’s parents didn’t allow her to date guys, so our relationship was effectively hidden from them. We spent a great deal of time with each other – during school, after school, when we had a few hours between the end of school and when her dad picked her up, and we talked nightly on the phone. (An amusing aside – we would fall asleep with the phone still on, which angered my dad, since he had to pay for the minutes I used.)

In 6th grade, I utterly feared seeing my girlfriend outside of school. In 7th grade, I was too scared to turn an online friendship into a real one. My Myers-Briggs type is INTJ, which means that I am bad at flirting and small talk (logic experts need not take offense – I am bad at flirting and small talk, which, in combination with other factors, makes me an INTJ, not the other way around). My relationship was far from being perfect. Cheri was ashamed of me, a realization that I was very slow to come by. I was, and remain, a goofy person; I enjoy making silly jokes and going off on random tangents. Although she never told me, I think that this really bothered her. Indeed, we rarely spent time with mutual friends; for example, we only went to one school dance.

To add further complications, Cheri was in love with someone else. When I was going out with her, I usually ignored this, because I felt that it was outside of my control. I knew that she loved me, and I didn’t see any way to make her stop loving the other guy except to just be myself. However, I believe that this added to the shame that she felt in dating me; I was always being compared to him, the opportunity cost of dating me under evaluation.