2001-10-11 - 12:02 p.m.

Sorry about the lull in writing, I've been working on another entry since Monday, but I'm going to write this one for now, then I'll put up the other one when I finally finish it. Oh, and instead of the song of the day I used to have, I'm thinking from now on, I may just occasionally choose a soundtrack or theme song or something for my entries if I think of something that fits.

Theme Song for this entry: "What a Good Boy," –Barenaked Ladies

"We exacerbate each other, don't we?"

Sarah said this to me on Monday, less than an hour before she had to leave on the first leg of her trip from my house back to New York. And you know, she's right. We do. People have asked me what it is about Sarah that makes me feel the way I do. I don't think any statement explains it better than that very one that she said to me.

I mean, generally the word "exacerbate" has negative connotations to it. What with all of those angry fricative and plosive sounds to it, it's hard not to find the word negative. But it doesn't have to be. It can be used interchangeably with irritate, annoy, etc. But in this case, I think it means its most simple meaning, to intensify.

We intensify each other's personalities, feelings, thoughts. Another point she made was that we're too similar to not do that. I knew she was right then, but I didn't really know how.

I started thinking, as I biked home the other night, about major differences between Sarah and I, and the most major one I could think of actually came from how similar we are.

All of my life people have been expecting me to be the best. I never really knew why. Hell, I still don't know why. But it's what happened. And for a while, I made a point to live up to that. When I say "a while," I mean a few years. Around fourth grade I kind of gave up on it for a while. I think what killed it was spending so much of my life staying off the honor roll because I kept getting frighteningly low grades in Penmanship. Imagine it. Spending your whole life having all of these expectations put on you, living up to all of them to the best of your abilities, and then not getting the recognition for it because of something as unimportant as your handwriting. That's like someone saying to someone who'd been training to be an astronaut, "Well, you passed every test better than anyone here, but you haven't kept your fingernails trimmed right, I'm afraid we're going to have to give the spot to one of the other candidates. A Mr…. Armstrong. Do you know him?"

So after a while of working as hard as I was supposed to and getting no recognition for it, I gave up. And at about fourth grade started just not doing my work. After a while, my teacher decided that if I didn't have my work done each day, then she was going to make me stay there after school and finish the work that I was supposed to have turned in that day. So after school I'd sit there and do my homework for that day, and the work that was due the next day, putting the latter into my backpack next to my pink Trapper Keeper with the pandas, and go home.

That's the generally lackadaisical attitude I developed toward school from that point on. Do what I have to to pass and know if they wanted to see me really try, I'd be better than anyone around me. It frustrated my teachers to no end, because they would ask me day after day if I did my homework, and I, of course, wouldn't have. And they'd try to make enough of a scene about it that I'd be embarrassed and hopefully start doing it. They'd tell me things like that I wouldn't understand it well enough to pass the tests if I didn't do the homework, and especially if I spent all my time drawing animations on my TI-82, which I was also known to do a lot. Then, after being told time and time again that I wasn't going to be able to pass the test, I'd go in and ace it, frustrating my teachers even more.

So for the majority of my life, that was the attitude I took. Do a good enough job that I look better than average, but don't put forth any effort that might get in the way of my television-watching time.

Sarah, I realized after I thought about it, was given the same thing to start with. Treated as the best all her life, expected to do everything right. Unfortunately for her, she lived up to it. I say "unfortunately" because I don't know how a person can live like that all their life. Because if you are expected to be the best, and you actually *are* the best for most of your life, failure is going to be a crushing blow. I know, it comes up and slams me in the side of the head every once in a while, and I'm used to it. I can't imagine how bad it would be if I'd actually been what I was expected to be all my life and then failed at something important.

The problem is, it's a given in life. You can't do *everything* well, even everything you're supposed to be good at. Occasionally, for whatever reason, there will be things that just don't work. If there is anyone who knows this well, it's me. My life is full of failures caused by my thinking I was better at something than I actually was. I said I can't imagine how bad it would be to fail at something important, but the truth is, I really can imagine it, and that's what hurts the most. That I know what she's feeling when something just doesn't go right, no matter what the cause. I feel that frustrated, jabbing pain at the base of my skull every time it hits her. Because I've dealt with it myself. She's like the emotional half of all of the logical things I've felt for most of my life.

A couple of weekends ago, as I laid my head on the bed, staring at the AIM stock ticker roll by over and over, showing me the DJIA scrolling by at about 8800, breaking down because of the growing chance of failure for my one chance at getting myself out of debt, with the phone resting against my ear, I tried to explain it to her. I don't know if what I was saying actually made any sense to her, I didn't explain it very well, but what I got from her was that she Understood. Like, even if the reason for my impending failure wasn't totally understood, she understood what I was going through, as I knew she would.

And I think that's kind of the idea here. She understands me, as I understand her. I can sit and listen to her tell me about things that right now make no sense to me, and hope that some day they will, because I do find them interesting, even if I don't understand them. She listens to me, too, and actually almost always has a real response for them. Like she's actually responding to me, not just waiting for her turn to speak like many other people in life do.

And when I happily bounce in a movie theater after watching a sufficiently sappy John Cusack movie (go watch "Serendipity," fall in love with John Cusack if you haven't already), and she smiles, ruffles my hair, and kisses me on the cheek, it feels really good. Instead of just rolling her eyes and accepting these things as just another one of my boring obsessions, she seems happy enough allowing me to indulge in them, if anything because I happily let her indulge in hers. At least, that's what I'm thinking, I can't say for certain what she thinks.

But either way, if anyone really wants to know what I see in Sarah, I think that's what I'd have to tell them. We exacerbate each other. Good or bad, easy or hard, there is just more to the world when she's around. And once again, I've begun to really pay attention to what's going on in my life. Because now there's something worth paying attention to.