Kawaru's Saga. Part 1

Here's a story sent to me by a reader- Kawaru...

My pathetic, little story, as much I'd like to believe it's only a story, began during the summer just before I started my sophomore year of high school. To give more of an understanding as to why I refer to it and much of my life as being "pathetic," I must give a bit of background information. Until my freshman year of high school, I had never hugged a girl though many of my friends already had girlfriends and they made it look as though it were not a difficult thing to do. But it was hard for me because I've always been shy. (For future reference, I consider myself average-looking, rather intelligent, and very tall.)

When band camp started my sophomore year, I really didn't expect any of the things that happened afterwards. For starters, I made all new friends, one of them, a girl named Carrie. I had heard of her before, because her older brother was one of my friends and he always mentioned her in conversations with us (us being myself and a friend of mine, James, who was her boyfriend at the time). Her brother made her seem like a really fun person, but heck, I didn't know any girls-- not any that I could stand to be around, at least. But he talked about her as though she were cool. Her boyfriend talked of her in a less classy manner.

Sure, there was the occasional "Carrie is cool" or something like that, but it was usually "yeah, we made out and she took her shirt off" or "I'm gonna try to get her to have sex with me" and crap like that. (Realize that we were freshmen in high school and she was still in middle school at the time.) James was my friend, but he always seemed like he just wanted to get laid. And he REALLY wasn't making this girl out to be anything more than a common dime-store hooker. But being the nice guy I am, I refused to judge a person I'd never met.

But I DID meet her. She was one of the people I met that first day at band camp. We all had to introduce ourselves, and after I found out who she was, I went over and talked to her. "Carrie?" I introduced myself. "Hi, I'm Kawaru. I've heard a lot about you." (I was referring to things her brother had said.) She introduced herself and said she'd heard about me too. Apparently, James mentions me to his other friends. I guess that's cool that he's not ashamed to have me as a friend.

But I was amazed. She didn't look anything like what I thought she would. Judging by the other type of girls James had dated, I was very surprised to see that her hair wasn't dyed some bizarre colour and that she didn't have a nose-ring. She looked like a normal girl. Actually, she was very pretty. And I found out she had recently broken up with James. Here I am, with a very pretty girl, who seems nice so far, and she's single. This has got to be a dream. Please don't let me wake up.

With how my previous luck with girls went, I knew there was no way Carrie would fall for me. So I decided I just wouldn't do anything. Every day, it seemed like she kept talking to me and hanging around me more and more. I got more hugs from her in a day than I had in all the rest of my life. Her smile drove me crazy. One day at practice, I opened my folder to take out some music, and she had taped a really pretty wallet-size picture of herself to the inside of my folder. And since I hadn't taken the hint by that time, when school started, she began writing notes to me on all my school folders. Not just any notes, but very kind words about me. And every sentence ended with an exclamation mark where she had drawn the point like a heart. And always "love, Carrie." I was beginning to think that maybe I did...

But she started going out with John, a guy I'd known for almost 4 years at the time. We were pretty good friends and he was a cool guy. But as has often been the case with me, people that are good friends for me, don't always make good boyfriends for my female friends. He cheated on her, much the same way James had cheated on her before. Of course, at the time, I didn't know about any of this, because although I am open and honest with everyone(maybe a little too honest at times), no one ever thought to tell me anything about themselves, so all I knew about any of them was that we all liked the same kind of things. Of course, when they broke up, I didn't have to feel bad about wanting my friend's girl.

(And for a while after she broke up with John, she went out with a little punk for a week. I'd known him for a very long time, also, and later we all found out he was gay. [nothing wrong with that, I have a good friend who's gay-- I'm just pointing out that she has dated all kinds of people but she must think I'm not good enough for her.])

Eventually, I found that there was never a moment when I was not thinking of her. No girl had ever been even a friend to me before, but this girl seemed different. She was so nice, so kind, so real. We got to know each other better over the next few months, and found out that we had a few similar interests. I figured I should tell her how I felt, but I was afraid to. I was afraid of rejection. I couldn't stand it again, especially not from her. So I remained silent. It pretty much went on like that for the whole school year: I liked her and couldn't tell her how I felt, and I thought that she might have feelings for me too.

The next year started off pretty much the same, but things soon became complicated. This is when the problems started. It was the second football game of the season. I don't care for football, but the band had to play at all the games. So anyhow, just a little before halftime, we were getting everything set up for the halftime show. When we were ready but there were a few minutes left on the clock, she gave me a hug. But it felt special, different. I looked into her eyes during the longest hug ever. I didn't want to let go. I wanted to kiss her. Then, right before I made my move, another girl in the band, Katarina, walked up right next to us and blurted out, "aww, you two make a cute couple." The Kodak moment was over. I felt her pull away and we both just kinda looked at each other nervously for a while, until Carrie just smiled and started laughing. "Ha ha, yeah, right." I agreed with her, pretty much, and acted like that was the silliest suggestion I'd ever heard.

That night, she told me she'd recently gotten a computer and had gotten on internet. She told me her ICQ nick name, so when I got home, I searched for her and added her to my list, and we talked on ICQ the whole rest of the night. We started talking on the internet a lot. Quite a bit more often than "in real life." And we hardly ever talked on the phone anyway, because I wasn't too terribly fond of telephones.

But one night, she was acting strangely. Well, about as strange as you can tell from reading instant messages. And then, everything began to fall apart:

"He doesn't love me the way I love him... I can't live like this, Kawaru..." Of course, I had no idea what she was talking about, but I was afraid that there was someone else. And how it happened so fast, I also have no idea.

"What? What are you talking about? What's wrong?"

"Nash tried to hurt himself, and he doesn't seem to care that what he's doing is hurting me... he says he loves me, but if he did, he wouldn't try to hurt himself..."

"Nash? What are you talking about?" Nash was a close friend of mine. I'd known him since kindergarten. I had never even seen them so much as talk to each other. How is it that all of a sudden she's in love with him and he's breaking her heart?

I know this dialogue sounds really campy, but try to understand that I am typing this from memory of things that happened four years ago. Also, the things that she says, are quite accurate, because as you'll see, she is an overly melodramatic person and she seems to think she is living in a soap-opera.

"He doesn't need me... then there's no point in living anymore..."

"No point in living? Carrie? Are you alright?"

"....goodbye, Kawaru..."

"Goodbye!? Carrie? You're not going to hurt yourself, are you?" I was genuinely frightened. After a minute with no reply, I became even more afraid. "Carrie? Are you there? Please don't hurt yourself!" Still another minute and no reply. "Carrie, please, for my sake, don't hurt yourself, please tell me what's the matter...."

Finally she answered. "...why? Why should I not do this? What is there left to live for? What is the point? What's the fucking point!?"

"Because I care about you. Carrie, you're the best friend I have, and I don't want to lose you. I need you, Carrie. Please dont' leave me..." A minute or so passed. "I love you..."

She acted as though she couldn't believe it. But there I was, sitting in front of my computer, completely believing all of this, scared to death and crying because I think that my best friend is about to take her own life. And I told her I loved her. I told her how I felt. How much it would hurt me if she were not there. And I meant every bit of it. I struggled with her for an hour trying to convince her that I really cared for her and that I wasn't just lying. (She seemed to think that since Nash had been lying to her, I must also be lying.)

But finally, she calmed down. During band the next day, the directors were gone so we didn't actually play, we just had a kind of substitute to watch us and make sure we behaved ourselves or something else ridiculous like that. I found her, she'd been looking for me all day. I hugged her close to me. "Carrie... I'm glad you're alright. I was really worried about you." She started crying.

"I'm sorry to make you worry... last night, I just didn't know what to do... I didn't know you thought so much of me... thank you, Kawaru..." And she cried some more. And she promised she would never leave me.

"Don't worry, it's ok. Here, let's sit down." I sat down on the floor and she sat next to me, over in our own little corner of the room, and she laid her head in my lap. I ran my fingers through her hair over and over again telling her everything was going to be alright. Thus, I became FreeTherapist for the first time ever. (It wasn't until a little bit later that I would don my cape and become Captain.)

Also, I had talked to Nash earlier during the day. He had nothing at all to say about the matter except that Carrie was ok.

From that point on, it seemed like the two of them were spending a lot more time together. And every night I was telling her, "goodnight, sweet dreams, I love you" and she would always say she loved me too. And I knew that any "more than friends" feeling she might have once had for me, she didn't have them anymore. She liked Nash. (Still, it felt good to think that someone actually cared about me.)

She always kept having problems with him. He was just using her. And he was very good at it. He had this way with words that was the only real difference between the two of us-- he was good at BSing, and he had been a habitual liar since the first day I'd known him. And through all these problems, she would cry on my shoulder. Captain FreeTherapist was on call 24/7. And I literally mean 24/7.

If she had a problem, I considered it my problem as well. I would stay up all hours of the night to talk to her about whatever was wrong. Any time. And I would cry about things hurting her. Because of always putting her ahead of everything else in my life, my family started to think I had a serious problem(they didn't know that I even liked her as a friend; but I was moody and quite unloving toward them at the time, now that I think about it), I got very sick because of staying up late every night and hardly eating, and I nearly failed my AP English class. (I had a teacher who hated everyone and made it extremely hard to pass the class. By making 95 or higher for the last three six weeks, I barely passed with a 71. That's how badly my grades suffered. And in a moment, I'll get to how I was able to devote enough time to English to actually pass.)

But I'm getting ahead of myself. There was a while during this time, that she just kinda quit caring about things, I suppose. I guess perhaps she couldn't take Nash's apathy towards her most of the time. I told her again and again how I felt. She always clamied that she "didn't know how to love anymore." She said that she was dead on the inside, with no feelings to give. She wouldn't talk to me for a few days.

When she opened up again, she made me a promise. She promised that if she ever felt that she was able to care again, I would be the first to know. Was I? Heck, no. I found out when she needed Captain FreeTherapist to cheer her up after she broke up with her boyfriend, Ethan. I had never even heard of this guy, and she said he lived in the next county over. She said he was "kinda" a model, and she sent me a picture of the guy. There is no one around here who lifts weights that much, and why would a model that looked like that waste his time on a 16 year old girl? The picture was obviously fake. And I was angry that she had started going out with another guy. She broke her promise.

But I did not tell her I thought the picture was a fake. I told her I was sorry about all that had happened and told her I was there anytime she needed me. She apologized a lot for breaking the promise. She said it like, "it's just... he's been a good friend for a long time... and one day, I just kinda saw him differently than I did before..." Sure, maybe I can understand that. But then she started hanging around Nash again.

And she started getting into arguments with Alexandria, one of her friends, over him. (Now, looking back on this, I think she started going for him again just to make her "friend" jealous, and to make me jealous too.) Nash and Carrie went over to each other's house just about every other day. What they could be doing, no one could guess. No one really cared but Alex and me. Carrie would tell stories, stories I guess she thought were amusing. She talked about how she and Nash broke a bed at her house. Then she'd start saying "it's not what it sounds like." (But the biggest piles of crap are yet to come.)

One time, James, Carrie, and I went over to Nash's house to hang out, because we were all friends with him(some of us more than others, apparently). (note: he knew how I felt about Carrie. I had told him many times how much I cared for her and for him to not hurt her. He always said he was on my side. Yet he lied and he hurt her constantly.) We all went back to his room, because his mom was watching TV in the living room. After a while, Carrie and Nash were wrestling on his bed. Wrestling on his bed, not in the violent way but in the playful way, right there in front of James and me. I guess you can imagine how pissed I was.

I told her later that that made me feel very uncomfortable and it angered me. She explained that sometimes Nash just "gets like that." Sure. After a while, I think she gave up on him once again for guess who-- another one of my friends. Joe was a guy I'd known almost as long as I'd known Nash. We were pretty close friends and I'd say we were very much alike. I don't know much except that she hung around him and his sister Christina(another good friend of mine) a lot, and Carrie made it seem like she was hanging out with Christina a lot and that Joe just happened to be there.

I remember one time, the two of them were doing a sort of "ladies' night out" thing. That was their excuse for not letting me go to the movie with them. But Joe decided to tag along and on the way to the theater they just happened to stop by Nash's house, and decided to pick him up. (I really hate feeling betrayed by my friends, though Joe is at no fault here because though Carrie came onto him a lot, he never tried to do anything with her[he was smarter than that, because he could see right off the bat that there was something just not right about her-- he later told me, "Kawaru, the girl you've chosen to love, is not an easy girl to love..."] and he didn't know that it was supposed to be "ladies' night out.")

(And during the whole time Carrie was trying to get at Joe, she never spoke to me. She treated me as though I didn't exist. She woud alwas look away when I walked by. The whole thing was rather childish. That's why I don't know much about the things she tried.)

Sometime later, getting back into all the lies she fed me, she claimed she was being stalked. She had told me a little about her past once, and she used to live in a big city. (She did live there when she was very young, this is true.) She had these friends, Patrick, Sean, Jessica, and Chris. Patrick, Sean, and Jessica were siblings. She was friends with all these people yet her parents never even knew they existed. (Sean was real at some point at least-- that was verified by her older brother, whom I've never known to lie to me, and has said about his sister once, "Kawaru, let me tell you something about Carrie. She tends to 'embellish' things." Oh, how right he was.) For some reason, Jessica started to hate Carrie, I think it was because she was jealous that Chris liked Carrie and not her. So she blamed Carrie for all her problems and then went psycho and moved away. Sean was psycho from the beginning and he actually shot Chris to death. Carrie said that he died in her arms and that he could've been "the love of [her] life." That's a bunch of crap because when she lived in that city, she couldn't've been any more than 8 or 9 years old. No one is in love at that age. But back to the present, now Sean was back and he was stalking her(by the way, he escaped from the asylum in that city).

(Later, after this whole thing had blown over, I talked to John about all of these things. Once, when he left for a while to go visit some family members out of state, he came back to her saying that Sean was stalking her. Also, she has a little silver necklace with a heart-shaped locket that she said was given to her by Chris. John told me he gave it to her for her birthday. John has never lied to me, so I chose to believe his story.)

I know this whole thing seems rather hard to believe(the fact that some girl would make up this fantasy world) but if you're calling me a liar right now, you won't want to read the rest. I swear that everything in here is completely true(except for the things that she told me which are blatant lies).

(Another point of interest: when she told me all of these things, she made me promise not to tell anyone about it. I asked why Sean was never arrested for murder. She said it was because he didn't have a family so there was no one to press charges. That's a bunch of crap. And I asked her why she couldn't tell her parents and she said it was because they would worry way too much and start becoming overprotective of her or something. I told her she should talk to the police. She said they wouldn't believe her[now that I think about it, not very many people would've believed her, except for me, of course]. I finally called her brother about Sean. He kinda freaked out, so I guess the guy still exists and is a pretty bad person, but that's when I found out those bits of truth behind all these lies. When she found out I had talked to her brother, thus breaking the promise, she told me I betrayed her trust[which I did, but I had a good reason. What good is keeping a secret if someone can get hurt because of it?] and that she didn't think she could ever trust me again[a lot of people know me as the one person they can trust]. And she quit talking to me for a few weeks. But no more rambling, back to the main point of a few paragraphs ago.)

She was being stalked. This guy had a gun. One night, she pulled a most elaborate hoax. She said on ICQ that she heard a door open and that she knew all the doors were supposed to be locked and she was the only person home. No one else was supposed to be there until morning. She said she was going to turn off the lights and try to sneak out the back with a knife to defend herself if she ran into Sean. I was not the only one talking to her on ICQ that night though. Christina was, and so was Aaron(another friend of mine, one of the few she hasn't tried to date). So they knew that something was going on.

Christina already knew that there was someone supposedly stalking Carrie, but I don't believe Aaron did. Christina and I went out to Carrie's house as quickly as we could to try to help her. Aaron stayed at home by his computer to wait for any news and call us on Christina's cell phone. Just as we were getting close to Carrie's house, we got a call from Aaron. He said that she sent a message saying she was back in the house and that Sean had left. What was up with that, nobody knows.

(A few months later, she said she had to tell me something. It was a story of how she thinks she might have killed Sean. Yeah, it was a bunch of bull crap. But I think she just wanted to have a reason to get mad at me. See, while she was telling me this, I was checking my email. She had sent one of those stupid chain letters that say "send this to five people you know, or you'll have bad luck." Those things are stupid, and everyone knows that I don't like receiving them. They just clutter up my box. So I replied to it and said "that's BS." That's all I said, and you could clearly tell I was replying to that email. She sent a message back about how heartless I was for calling her a liar after she told me what was "the most traumatizing thing that's ever happened to [her]." And then she refused to talk to me for another few weeks.)

But finally, Nash left. Nash left for good. He just decided to move to the other side of the country. Good for him, he finally got caught in all his lies and had to leave the state. Good. He was my friend, but if I said I wasn't bitter toward him for all he'd put Carrie and me through, I'd be lying. That far away, he couldn't do any more harm and she surely wouldn't chase after him any more. I was wrong...

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Kawaru's Saga. Part 2- Electric Boogaloo...

"By defining relations between men and women in terms of power and competition instead of reciprocity and cooperation, the [women’s] movement tore apart the most basic and fragile contract in human society, the unit from which all other social institutions draw their strength." -- Ruth Wisse, PhD.

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