HALLOWEEN IN 2012 was weird.
For one thing, I was disappointed when I got up that morning of the 31st and saw that nobody was wearing costumes to class. The exception was one girl in my sociology course who was wearing a black robe, though I forget what the costume was.
For another, I had to spent my evening learning. I had my Religion in America class that night. So I sucked it up and put on my Minnie Mouse dress for class. Not the ears. Instead of feeling festive, I mostly just felt strange and awkward.
Not that we hadn't celebrated Halloween. Local kids had come to trick or treat in the dorm halls, and that had been a blast. My favorite part of Halloween has always been the costumes and trick-or-treating.
But something else was happening that was appropriately scary, and usurped the holiday that year. I may have been dressed as Minnie Mouse, but in reality, I had accidentally pretended to be someone else just days ago. And it paid off. In fact, I was beginning to think I'd taken on someone else's life.
***
I had emailed Ben throughout my high school career after Ty passed me his email address. When you're in an environment with all girls, and when nobody from visiting boys' schools wants to talk to you, you don't have many options, or distractions. Besides, I missed them. I wanted to be friends. I might not have been able to say that stuff to his face, but I could do it over emails.
Facebook was just taking off as I entered high school, and I even got an account myself. Kennedy, a campmate at social camp that year, had convinced me to join. He didn't have Facebook though, and I resorted to looking up his friends' profiles to get some more information, as well as his school's website.
Apparently playing the lead in Seussical inspired them to do more acting. They were on the staff of a play called Rumors and acted in productions of Grease, West Side Story, and Pippin (where they dressed in heavy, colorful clown makeup...those photos haunted my dreams for months). Every time they acted in something I deemed interesting, I would buy the movie. If it weren't for them, I probably still wouldn't have seen Grease, so I owe that to them at least.
Sometimes their school, or mother, uploaded videos of him performing. She was my first favorite YouTuber. Hearing his voice again made me both excited and super-anxious to see him again...especially after a particular Grease video, in which he sang a duet with who I thought was an ugly actress with large spectacles, braids, and plaid pants. They sang about how much they loved each other and even hugged in the end. I wanted to throw up.
But checking the Internet for news about them was addicting. I was pissed I couldn't get to him or see him in a play--- curse you, boarding school. All I could do was send him trillions of emails which he ignored. And watch the videos. And save pictures of him to my computer, which I made into my screensaver. This I did for four years of high school.
But perhaps the most real threat was Serena, who inspired me to do the worst thing I've ever done as a human being. She was a thespian friend that clearly hung out in his social group (and once was in a play with Roger), and once had the nerve to put his arm around her in a picture of them. That simply could not be done.
So one night, in a 1AM fit of rage, I emailed Serena, saying all sorts of nasty things about how Ben wasn't hers and she had no right to take him. Of course I was too cowardly to read them. The drama ended on an anticlimactic note, because I am just not cut out for that sort of thing. Even after I apologized, I had Danielle log in to my account and read Serena's response, which was short and friendly and very accepting of the apology that my 1AM fit of rage did not deserve. I must have been the talk of that graduating class for a while.
Then the Pippin play triggered my attention in the fall of 2012.
I didn't actually watch much of his school's performance videos from that show, but I did catch snippets of a 1982 production online during my freshman year of college. There was a character named Catherine who, at one point, seemed to be apologizing for her mistakes. It reminded me of how I might behave had I seen Ben again. I mean, hello; I made a lot of mistakes, too. Unfortunately, I didn't watch the whole show and took her part woefully out of context. But I didn't think of that when I send an email with the subject line, "This is Pippin's Catherine speaking!"
In what I thought was a Catherine-like manner, I apologized for my own mistakes and referenced the show, which I had barely seen. I sent the email on its merry way and didn't expect anything more.
The next day was a brilliantly clear Sunday. I got up, went to my desk, and lay back, wondering what I was going to do with my last relaxing day before classes started for the week. I checked my email and instantly received my answer.
Ben had responded.
After four years, my wishes came true. Fortunately, Stephanie was out and I was free to whoop and cheer and dance around the room. I texted Danielle with violently trembling fingers about what happened. To her dismay, she was at lunch with her dad and I had to wait to tell her the story. The most riveting event of my life just happened, and she wasn't even home to hear about it??? We always texted each other with breaking developments so we could dissect them! I felt like I was going to explode. I went outside and took in the fresh air, pacing around outside of the dorm. The Hilary Duff song titled, "Where Did I Go Right?" played on repeat in my very light head.
Half an hour later, I went back and looked at the email. I still had to open it.
It was anticipation at its finest. What would happen? Would he yell at me? Would he happily agree to be friends? Did I even want to find out? Now was the time I would actually have to face what he had to say to me back. If I wanted to reply, I would have to face whatever the words said.
I knew I had to open it, and that's what I did.
They did none of those things.
I was surprised that the email greeting was addressed to a girl named Hae-Jin. I recognized that name from the school website; she had played Catherine in the school's production:
Hey there Hae-Jin!
It's good to hear from you. I'm a bit confused, though. I have no ill feelings toward you, nor do I have some sort of grudge.
How's college going? Can you remind me where you're attending?
Fondly,
Ben
Uh-oh.
I was mortified, but happy nonetheless. I didn't consider that a case of mistaken identity might happen, which seemed stupid in hindsight. Hae-Jin must have been the girl who played Catherine in the school production. But he thought I was someone else, so would be reading my next email no matter what. I quickly jotted down an explanation and an apology, then sent it off with crossed fingers.
I had another anxious wait ahead. I went outside and paced some more. I finally told Danielle the story, but all we could do was wait. But there was another distraction, too: Halloween in the Halls. We invited kids from the local community to come trick or treat in the dorm halls. This was a beloved event. Many students would dress up, me as a colorful witch, and we'd pass out candy to them. I ran out of candy in 40 minutes that first year because it was so popular. I put Ben aside and had some fun with Stephanie, standing inside our doorframe and handing out candy we'd bought at Walmart the previous weekend.
He HAD to respond now. Right?
At 10:30 that night, the answer arrived in my inbox. Ben had actually taken the time to write out several paragraphs. He was not happy with my flood of emails, or what I had done to Serena (who would be?). He made some insinuations about my mental health and told me I was creepy for discovering where he went to school (this was actually not creepy...a middle school teacher of ours had messaged all of us with the information).
But he also told me, despite all this, that he was willing to be friends. He did have some "conditions," like not harassing his friends, sending him a jillion emails, and things like that. Quite frankly, it was a miracle.
I wanted desperately to talk to him, but I had a large amount of trouble figuring out what to say. I reread the words over and over, hardly daring to believe they were really there. But they were, and he was mad at me at the same time, and I was overwhelmed. My face was hot to the touch and flaming red, perhaps because of the surrealness of it all.
Eventually I was able to string sentences together again, and I got back to him the following day saying that I agreed with him and thanking me for potential forgiveness that I wasn't sure he was giving me. But it was a victory. We were already talking more than we ever did at Quaker school.
Still, life went on.
Hurricane Sandy blew in that night. Everyone was instructed to stay in their dorms, and to not use the microwaves so we didn't set off the smoke detectors. Eventually, the power would go out and wouldn't return for 12 hours. We were stuck and had to find things to do.
I have had several weird things happen to me after hurricanes before---maybe the weather had a weird effect on fate and twisted things so the opposite of what was supposed to happen ended up taking place. Either way, I had another hurricane bombshell dropped on me that evening. Ben emailed me the second before the power went out. It was short and sweet. It read something like,
Hey Morgan, I went about this wrong as well. I assumed that it would be best for you if I never responded. I was wrong to assume this and for that, I am sorry. So what say we try this whole thing again...how's life?
I reread it over and over, hardly daring to believe my luck. Surely this was a mirage.
By the powers that be that could clearly only be attributed to the weather, Ben forgave me entirely. I was cleared of all charges. I was tempted to start shouting with the rest of my dorm. The power had just gone out, and everyone was hanging out in the halls in excitement that only a power outage can bring.
After six long years of trying, we were friends. Ben and I were actually friends. I shivered in goosebumps again. Oh, if only Christine and I were still in touch! Meanwhile in the dorm, the hall was noisy because everyone had gone there to congregate after the power went out. But instead of getting mad as I was apt to do, I felt like celebrating. Life had finally turned. They say that if it's meant to be with someone, it will happen. And this was it. This must be it.
Ben and I emailed fairly frequently. He was busy with friends and school so sometimes I wouldn't hear from him for two weeks. I would see that "1890s problems" meme going around with the caption about how the girl wrote to her boyfriend and didn't get a reply for two full weeks, and groan.
Sometimes I would urge him to respond, which he was surprisingly cool with. I even asked him if I was sending too many emails, and he told me not to worry about it. He wrote decent-length emails about what he was doing, taking classes that sounded very difficult.
I missed him, but even though he never said anything outright, it was clear that he wanted to stay friends from a distance. I was determined to work something out and maybe even get something together over the summer. As life had told me, giving up was not worth it at all. Just look where persistence got me.
The real thrill came when he got a Facebook account. Or, rather, I remembered it. He had gotten an account last year and had presumably blocked me I emailed him asking if it was okay to send him a friend request, and he was actually cool with it. Not only could we email, but we could instant message as well.
But as with the email, I was hesitant to make the first move. The pressure of a live conversation was too much--- I'd never done that with a guy before! Eventually, over winter break I asked him how vacation was going and walked away, thinking he wasn't online. He then replied in seconds, asking, "Not bad. Yours?"
I am happy to report that we had a great conversation spread over the following two hours. I asked him how much snow he was getting (maybe it was different half an hour away from home?), about his pets (he even sent me pictures of his Maltese named Teddy; I sent him some of Cooper and Ginger), and his classes (all sorts of techy stuff that sounded miserable. Things like Data Structures, Calculus II, and Intro to Computer Science).
It was amazing. I actually got what I wanted! The feeling of actually *talking* to a crush was foreign to me.
At the same time, I was anxious. He had no interest in seeing me in person. Sometimes he didn't always feel like talking to me, evident by his one-word responses. Sometimes I felt like I was interviewing him, asking questions to keep the conversation moving based off of things he'd told me earlier ("You said that you enjoyed your classes...which one is the most difficult?")
But I was super happy. Right?
Soon spring finals rolled around. As everyone knows, life gets busy then, especially for college freshmen. Especially college freshmen with difficult majors like Ben. But soon, three weeks went by without communication, the longest ever. So I decided to check his Facebook account and see what was going on.
Something was seriously wrong. He wasn't on my friend list. I double and triple-checked all the names of my very few Facebook friends. Nope. I clicked a link to his profile in my messages. Instead of "Unfriend," the button said, "Add Friend."
My heart caught in my chest. After all this time, he deleted me? And for what reason? There HAD to be an explanation. He couldn't just leave me hanging and call things off as quickly as it had begun. I noticed he'd also deleted a lot of our mutual classmates. Only our English teacher and Duct Tape Rick were listed as mutuals. Okay, so maybe there was a reason for this. Maybe, like one other classmate, he decided to cut off communication with us all after graduation?
I messaged him to figure out what in the heck was happening. I said that I was getting concerned and was everything okay on his end?
He simply wrote back, Morgan, I simply do not have time for this.
Simply don't have time
don't have it
don't have it
don't have it
The words reverberated in my head slowly and repeatedly as my mouth turned dry. I was stunned; couldn't move; couldn't cry; couldn't text Danielle my plight, couldn't do anything that be stunned and wonder. There was nothing that suggested our friendship was ending previously. All I could think to do was race onto my AOL account and send him several more emails, as I'd done in freshman year. I made it clear I wasn't going to stop until he gave me an explanation.
Otherwise, it was, in fact, too good to be true. It was back to reality.
A reply came faster than I expected. It was short and to the point. Ben stated, matter-of-factly, that he just wasn't interested in learning more. No apology, no reason, no nothing. Would we finally be friends, after all this time? Never!* I wanted to scream. I didn't, because my roommate was there, but still.
Of course it was too good to be true. But...why?
And so it was over. Just like that. Looking back, maybe it was because of my interviewish-conversation techniques--perhaps learned from the Connecticut school when we did the same thing with the boys' floor? Har dee har har. I sucked at it, and I refused to admit until later that our friendship really wasn't going anywhere at all.
Our friendship ended the exact same way as it started: random and quick. I had always held a beacon of hope in me: I would eventually get something together between us, and we would talk. Somehow and somewhere, it would happen, even if he was pissed at me. But that final email was just that. Final. It was all over. The probability of him randomly changing his mind again was slim to none. My persistent side wanted to keep trying, and I sent him some more emails. Some of them were angry and diva-ish. I ruined any chance I might have had by saying things like, "Well, have fun with your better friends now!!!"
Like, really, self? Real mature.
But deep down I knew. There was no going back again. He would never be mine. I had a greater chance of becoming an astronaut next year than getting them back as a friend. That's when it felt the worst.
Our weird relationship started for no reason and ended for no reason, from October til right before summer vacation. Clearly Ben was in my life to show me something, but I didn't know what. I was angry. I couldn't get what I wanted. It was out of the question. I cried and shook and texted Danielle with the same trembling fingers that I texted her with about that very first Catherine email. She sympathized and sent virtual hugs, but they just weren't enough. Nothing was.
But as I would learn next semester, maybe it wasn't him that would show me the reason. Maybe it was something...or someone...else.
****
I never really liked Shakespeare when I was younger. In high school, I took a sophomore English class where our teacher gave us pop quizzes. I tried as hard as I could, but when I got one of them back, the comment read, It sounds like you either struggled with this chapter or you didn't read. Furious and with my face firing up, I wondered, I'm an English person! How dare she suggest I didn't read? Naturally, this didn't help my interest in the author. Or the teacher.
But then we read Much Ado About Nothing. In the play, a guy is set to marry this shy, soft-spoken girl until a devilish acquaintance pulls a mean trick on them and suggests that the girl he was about to marry had been cheating. But the guy never really does anything to confirm this. He basically just believes that his innocent fiancee cheated. After a series of events, it is revealed that she didn't cheat, the acquaintance gets his comeuppance, and the two get married and live happily ever after. It's an underrated play. I think it suits high school and college very well.
What should any well-meaning reader get from this? Well, that it's not good to make assumptions, of course! So now, dear reader, I bring you back to a line of Ben's third email: I assumed that it would be best for you if I never responded. I was wrong to assume this and for that, I am sorry.
He learned not to make assumptions.
Sometimes I wonder where I'd be without Shakespeare, and then it strikes me: probably in the exact same place I am now. Yet, without his writing, who knows what would have happened in freshman year? What if Ben was cast in A Midsummer Night's Dream and played a character who didn't make awful assumptions about their lover? Who knew, back in the 1500s, that his writing would actually influence how two former classmates got back together? Before now, I'd always prefer to compare our story to Romeo and Juliet because of the whole guy-and-girl-meet-behind-parents'-backs thing, minus the deaths. Still, it pleases me that Shakespeare may have literally influenced our relationship.
The reason for the R&J comparison was this: his parents didn't like me. We got off on the wrong foot the summer after our eighth-grade graduation. Desperate to talk to him, I called his house multiple times but never followed through and would hang up. The closest I'd come was a "Hello" from him back at my school in Connecticut. Before hanging up, naturally. I'd tried to go to his high school graduation years later, but my parents said no at the last minute, afraid of a confrontation. Maybe. All I remember was leaving school the day they vetoed it when the rest of my senior class was preparing for senior trip, and going to the awards ceremony with Alexa that morning, super excited for my weekend. The timing never worked, but we were able to overcome the grudge that our parents couldn't. They just never understood the wonders that were Facebook and email. Ah, to be a millennial. It worked for us, too. I got to know quite a bit about him.
I eventually got over Ben once sophomore year began, but that is a new story for another day. It took time and eventually finding other interests.
Once time I even tried to get back at him, for the heck of it. I hijacked his college campus' "anonymous compliments" page with a fake profile in which I submitted a fake story about how I saw him in his most recent play and wanted to meet with him. I even specified the building, thanks to an online campus map. I also invited readers of the page to get the word out to him, knowing that he wouldn't follow those type of pages. (I knew him well from our time chatting...it worked.) He took the bait. Sadly though, summer vacation had arrived by then and I eventually lost motivation for what might have been one of the finest rickrolls of all time.
But hey, I got a Shakespearean love story out of it. It's always fun to share. To this day, I will never know what inspired him to change his mind about meeting me again, and then change his mind again, but I don't entirely regret it. Now college, and growing up, could truly begin.
I like to believe Shakespeare was responsible, anyway.
***
And you know what? Like some long Shakespearean sagas, it still wasn't totally over. The Facebook blocking feature still allows you to see the blocker's profile picture if they have sent you a message. When I scrolled back through our old message chains, I was able to see a new and updated version of them; their junior year self.
Ben looked different, to say the least. Their hair was getting thicker, and falling in their face. Their lips were nearly as full as mine. And on his chest....was something resembling.... breasts?
Could it be...nah. No way. I was overthinking things.
Either way, I had found a new interest by then, who was even more attractive to me.
The old adage proved true. Life did, in fact, go on.