"What came first? The sad song, or the misery?"

My grandfather died.

He died in November. I think. I got the call really early in the morning, like 3 am. I was awake, but it really caught me off guard. I know it was sometime after Halloween, because I had to miss the party that weekend. I got the call early on a Friday. I went home but I didn't tell any of my friends. I felt weird, like, embarrassed or something. It was such an odd time, I had no idea how to handle it, or even how to go about faking handling it.

And I am dating a guy named Randy right now. Sort of. We've been dating for a long time, but I don't want to anymore. I don't know why.

I can't remember if this was going on before or after grandfather died. I just remember being really annoyed with Randy all the time, and at the memorial service I wanted to shoot him. But not because I was so upset, because I didn't want him to be there for me. I didn't know what was going on. This was the first person who had ever died in my family, and it was my first funeral.

I'm reading this book right now, High Fidelity, which I think explains my situation and feelings perfectly.

"What happened to me during the funeral was something like this: I saw, for the first time, how scared I am of dying and of other people dying, and how this fear has prevented me from doing all sorts of things, like giving up smoking (because if you take death too seriously or not seriously enough, as I have been doing up till now, then what's the point?), and thinking about my life, especially my job, in a way that contains a concept of the future (too scary, because the future ends in death). But most of all it has prevented me from sticking with a relationship, because if you stick with a relationship, and your life becomes dependent on that person's life, and then they die, as they are bound to do, unless there are exceptional circumstances, e.g., they are a character from a science-fiction novel...well, you're up the creek without a paddle, aren't you? It's OK if I die first, I guess, but having to die before someone else dies isn't a necessity that cheers me up much: how do I know when she's going to die? Could be run over by a bus tomorrow, as the saying goes, which means I have to throw myself under a bus today."

This book is me, in 15 years, if I'm not careful. However, this book does have a happy ending..so maybe it's not all that bad.

The bold part, I had a friend, Matt Paris, really a friend of Randy's, but I knew him too. Anyway, he was dating this girl named Lauren (she's goooooooorgous, and sooo nice!), anyway. He broke up with her last year for that same reason. And I didn't get it then, but I get it now. Not really because I think that's the position I'm in now, but because I just get it. I thought he was crazy back then. I mean, I knew her, I knew how great she was, and what a dummy he could be, and I couldn't believe he let that go. But now I know...sometimes it happens.

I don't know if I fell out of love. I know that I was, for a time, actually in love, and that makes me feel much better about my life. Like, it's not all been wasted, because some people never find it, but I don't know what to do now.

I guess Randy and I are kind of still dating, I mean..he pays for dinner sometimes, and we make plans to go to parties together, but I think it stops there.

I just don't know. I was really happy at some point, I know that. But now...I'm not. And I don't know how to end it, I've never had to do that before. And we go to the same school, and we know all the same people, and we eat lunch together. And it seems really shallow? is that the word? Anyway, it seems like just a big inconvenience to break up, because I'll get the looks. I swear I'm not meaning this in a selfish way, althought I know that's how it's coming out. It's just, like. I want the normal, fun, enjoyable college years, and this is just one more thing that makes it weird and not enjoyable.

I don't know how this happened. And I thought I was ok with it, but I just don't know anymore.

Ohh yeah, there's another part.

There's this other guy. This isn't the reason my feelings for Randy stopped. And I know this. I can't explain it, and I'm not just saying it because someone's going to read this, and I don't want anyone to think of me differently. I just know it.

Anyway, he's nice. But he's kind of flaky. I really like him, and he's told me, in a round about way, that he likes me. But it bothers me that first, he hasn't actually come out and said that he likes me back, and two, it's really flaky. I try to make plans with him, nothing. The day before I came back to school from Christmas, we were supposed to hang out. And it didn't happen. And the same things happened with Randy in the beginning, and I just think that if this actually goes somewhere, in two and a half more years, I'll be writing this same thing down, (only, hopefully, no one will have died this time). And I don't know if I can make that plunge again. I'm deathly afraid of rejection, and at the age of 20, this isn't such a good thing.

So, this was the way for me to get this stuff off of my chest. It's been bottled up for faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar too long. And it's one of those things where, if I would have written this down on paper, and burned it, it wouldn't matter because it's out now. Only, out there for the whole world to see.