Way I See It: an Email Novella
Page 6
I’ve been agonizing over this all night. You have to believe that I’m not taking this whole thing lightly, but I guess what I’ve decided is that this isn’t going to work. There are a lot of reasons. The biggest one is that this whole episode has introduced a bunch of doubt into my mind, and when I try to think of going back to the way things were, I just can’t imagine it. I know that no matter what happens, there will be this creeping amount of doubt in the back of my mind and I won’t be able to shake it.
Tristan told me to get dana to send me the original email. unfortunately, she’d deleted it. But why would he offer that if he didn’t know that there would be nothing in the email that would prove him wrong? I keep turning that over and over in my head. i don’t know what to think. on the one hand, tristan has been pretty backhanded and even cruel. on the other hand, he’s my best friend and he says he’s been doing this because he’s looking out for me and he doesn’t trust you. And he did only get rude to me after i insulted him. So, there’s that.
Mostly, I just don’t know what to think. You admit that you used to find tristan attractive. i’ve always found you attractive. If you’d started dating tristan instead of Dana, my attraction to you wouldn’t have gone away. why should I believe you that yours did? And why did you start dating me when you totally hated me before? Did you really just decide I was the best you were going to get? I can’t live with those kind of questions, and no matter what you say, I’ll still have them.
So, you’ll always be a big and beautiful part of my life, but I just can’t let it go on any longer. We’ve got to stop seeing each other. I’m sorry, but we do.
Eric
From: Sarah
To: Eric
Date: Sat 8 Mar 2003 5:26:39
Subject: I’m innocent.
I thought the best way to deal with all of this was to e-mail you all so that you could all hear everything that I have to say. Also, that way, no one can send edited versions of my e-mail to other people and fuck me over that way.
Tristan, only you and I will ever know what I said to you on the two incidents you have so blatantly exaggerated and LIED about. So, as Eric says, I guess neither Dana nor Eric will ever really know what I said or how I feel about all of you. However, I need to at least get this all out for everyone to hear, for my own sanity at least.
1) When Dana and I first started hanging out in Reetown we met Tristan, Eric, Odin, and Heath. Heath and Odin had girlfriends, as we first found out, and I made a comment to Dana that I found Tristan “cute.” Dana agreed with me.
2) Flash forward one month. Tristan asked Dana on a date. Dana asked me if I would be mad if she went out with him. I believe her exact words were, “You called it first.” I said, and I actually remember this verbatim: “Geez, Dana, all I said was he was cute. It’s not like I want to bear his children.” So Dana and Tristan started dating.
3) It was no secret to anyone, myself included, that Eric was seriously into me beyond words. However, whenever I hung out with Eric he just blushed a lot and said things like, “Uh, howareyou?” And then he’d run away. I thought he had the personality of a lamppost.
4) On the first night in question, Dana was arguing with whoever she could about the punch bowl, because she was in the running for one of the prettiest girls in the party. I, bookworm and nerd, was of course not in the running. So I remember having a poor pitiful me conversation with Tristan in which I told him I wished I had a boyfriend. He said I should have one. After all, when we’d first met, he’d thought I was kind of cute. I responded that I had found him easy on the eyes as well. Then he said that I was smarter than Dana, but not as well endowed, so things might have worked out between us, but might not have. I said, “Dana gets lower grades than me, yeah.” That was it.
5) Upon actually having a conversation with Eric, I found him much more interesting that blushing, mumbling boy.
6) On the second night in question, I approached Tristan and said we used to be friends, why was he so angry at me all of the sudden?
He just shrugged. He said, “Dana’s pissed at me; do you want to get out of here?”
I said, “You’re just trying to break up me and Eric, and after the way you’ve treated me, no way.”
He laughed. He said, “I was right. You are pretty smart.”
That’s it, that’s all. That’s the way I see it. The whole truth. If that makes you guys hate me, then fine. Hate me. But hate me because of what I really did, not because of what Tristan says I did.
sarah
From: Dana
To: Sarah
Date: Sun 9 Mar 2003 2:36:04
Subject: get over it!!
i don’t hate u, we have just grown apart. face it, sarah this isn’t grade school anymore. u don’t have to share everything with ur best friend.
ever since eric wrote that stuff about me and u didn’t say anything, i have been hurt. i just can’t deal with the fact that my best friend thinks i am dumb. because no matter what u say, u do.
i’m sorry u feel the need to try and make stuff so u look good, because honestly sarah, i really just don’t want to talk to u anymore. just leave me alone. don’t write, don’t call, don’t try and talk to me at lunch. get over it.
sometimes people just grow apart. that’s all.
goodbye,
dana
From: Tristan
To: Sarah
Date: Sun 9 Mar 2003 4:28:46
Subject: ha ha
back the fuck out, chica.
out,
tri$t@n
From: Eric
To: Sarah
Date: Sun 9 Mar 2003 6:37:28
Subject: nothing’s changed
your email didn’t change anything. I still don’t feel like i can trust you, and frankly, your little attempt to make it sound like you didn’t do anything wrong kind of disgusts me. just admit you fucked up and suck it up.
i wish things could have been different sarah. there was a time in life when i adored you. you were probably the sweetest and prettiest and smartest thing on earth to me. i was dumb and stupid. i wish i’d seen it sooner.
to save us both grief, please don’t try and contact me again. you betrayed me.
eric
From: Dana
To: Sarah
Date: Sun 1 Feb 2004 4:55:09
Subject: It’s been a long time.
Hey Sarah!
look, I know it’s been a long time since we talked. I realize that we were never going to speak again or whatever. anyway, I know that there’s some stuff that I need to get off my chest. I hate the way the rest of the year went. I hate that you ended up hanging out with the band kids and not going to the graduation party. I hate that you ended up coming to prom alone. I hate that over a boy, I totally stopped believing you, my best friend.
after graduation, as you know, tristan and I moved into together. he turned out to be a cheating dumbass, who later admitted to me he made the whole you hitting on him thing up just because he got a kick out of watching everybody do what he wanted them to do. i guess you heard about odin getting lost in on his road trip after graduation for ten months? yeah, that was kind of funny. he swears he fought a dude with one eye, and had sex with goddesses. penelope waited for him; can you believe it? Adam’s stepped on a hypodermic needle at the beach and got infected with HIV. Yeah, he’s going to die just cause of a little wound on his heel. mick went to college away. So did eric. I guess what I’m saying is that everybody who hurt you got their due or whatever. karma, maybe?
so, after all of that, and now that it’s a year later, I just wish that you and I could patch stuff up? I miss you is all. you were my best friend for years. i don’t have that kind of t
hing now.
From: Sarah
To: Dana
Date: Sat 2 Feb 2004 7:36:24
Subject: dana!!!!
ohmigod!! I can’t believe it! I haven’t heard from you in ages... gosh, dana, stuff sounds fucked where you are. I can’t believe that about adam. Is he going to be okay? what am I saying? Of course not. He has HIV.
Jesus, Dana, do not wish that on my karma. Nothing bad enough happened to me to wish dead on somebody. Especially through their heel.
look, I never think about that junk in high school anymore. High school’s like that. It’s intense and then it’s over. and when stuff’s over it feels like you died. like whatever happens is the death of everything and only this moment is important. All that high school’s good for is tragedy. It primes itself for it. to feel that much intensity about so much silliness means everything’s tragic. (Sorry—I’m writing this paper about Romeo and Juliet for my 101 class—Oh, I’m an English major. you knew that right? Anyway, that’s like my thesis.) And with all that intensity comes all this fear. Like if I don’t do it right, everyone will hate me and then you hate people because other people hate them and you don’t want to lose them...ugg.
i’ve loosened up a lot since then. I met this way cool guy at Sarah Lawrence (girl, the pickings here are so slim. There are WAY more girls than guys and half the guys are gay...). Anyway, so I met Willoughby Churchill. He seems really charming, and he’s really laid back about stuff. I’ve learned a lot from him.
so, dana, don’t sweat the dumb stuff from a year ago. E-mail me back. What’s up in your world, chick?
tootles,
sarah
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