They Like Me! They Really Like Me!

It's clear that there is no way in bloody hell I will be able to get away with not going back east for the 3rd year in a row.  This trip is tedious at best, and I just hate, hate, hate flying.  The whole process just sucks out loud.  I hate the thought of those all-too-revealing x-rays, but the molestation pat down is even worse.  The flight itself blows too.  Going east you lose 3 hours, so a 5 hour flight feels like 8 hours.  On the other hand, going east you get a decent tailwind, but still, when I get in, no one wants to come get me at Logan Airport.  And I honestly can't say I blame them.  I love my friends; I would never ask anyone to navigate through that clusterfuck in Boston to get to the airport.  It took them over 20 years to finish that disastrous "Big Dig" and I'm not entirely sure how it has helped streamline traffic to the airport.  But I digress...

On the upside, my cousin Sharon lives there and we have a lot of laughs together.  Thanks to Facebook, I'm back in touch with a lot of people from my youth.  I can't deny that it's bringing up a whole lot of nostalgia, lonely childhood notwithstanding.  Sandwich really was a nice place to grow up and I'm not the only kid who felt lonely or like an outsider.  I mean, that's all part of growing up.  Who doesn't feel lost and alone?  But I have, apparently, had a very skewed picture of how I was viewed by my peers.  Diane always used to tell me I was crazy whenever I told her that I remembered being friendless.  Invisible.  Wanting to be invisible, at least until my senior year when I was so alienated and angry that I provoked my classmates into taunting me for my blue hair, wild make up and army jacket covered with Sex Pistols and Clash pins.  I was recently told by an old friend that not only did he have a huge crush on me, he thought I was unapproachable and one of the most popular girls, b/c every time he saw me, I was talking to someone or walking w/ more than one person.  I was not only flattered, but floored. He had a crush on me?  ME?  Popular?!?!?! If he had told me that in person instead of by message, I would have turned around to see who he was actually talking to; like to the person standing behind me. And for the record, if he'd asked me to be his girlfriend, I definitely would have said yes. It is possible that my life would have turned out extremely differently had that happened.  The unapproachable thing made me feel kind of bad, because this is the second time I was told something along those lines, the first being by a guy in my class (his exact words were, "You were the girl who wouldn't talk to me."  Ouch).  Apparently my shyness and fear was misunderstood as aloofness. 

I decided to put a status up on Facebook, asking if I were to go back east this spring, would anyone want to hang out?  The responses were amazing.  So much so that for the first time since I can recall, I am actually looking forward to going back east.  I would have to stay there 3 weeks in order to visit everyone who asked me to, and these include stops in Vermont and Maine. 

I'll be leaving SeaTac on Thursday, March 24.  It's an all day flight and I get into Boston right smack in the middle of rush hour.  I'll be on the Cape till the following Thursday, March 31.  I don't care how broke we are, I'm flying first class both ways.  I refuse to tough it out with the plebes in coach anymore.  Coach sucks.  Last time I flew coach, I passed out.  It's a wee bit pricey but if I'm gonna be forced to put up with the draconian security procedures, crowds and an interminably long flight, I'm gonna be comfortable.

This situation reminded me how I've always thought how unfortunate it is that a dead person can't see the outpouring of love for them at their funeral.  I always think how sad it is that all those people didn't make it a point of telling the person how important they were to them, before they died.  You can go your whole life and never find out how much you have touched someone else's life.  While I thought I was largely forgettable....convinced I was largely forgettable, it turns out that I was well liked.  People who I thought tolerated me at best, or didn't like me at all, really did like me.  I can thank Facebook for that opportunity to talk to so many old friends.  I was so terribly insecure about my personality and was scared of anyone who was out of my comfort zone, which was pretty much everybody except for my small group of friends, who were mostly the children of my parents' close friends.  During my darkest days, and there have been quite a few of them, I had considered checking out for good. Felt backed into a corner.  Fight or flight.  No one would miss me anyway, no one would care, everyone would be better off.  "Hey!  Didja hear Joanne Mendonza died?"  "Who?"  You know, the whole George Bailey thing.  I never would have known that people did care because I'd be dead, and it'd be too late to realize that I had something to live for after all. That I'm not destined to die alone and friendless, a hermit crone in the rain forests of the Olympic Peninsula. 

So it's off to Sandwich I go, in late March.  But not without a fully stocked prescription for Xanax.