The Journal

My sophomore year of high school, I started keeping a journal. By that summer, it was up to two-hundred pages or so, and I was about to turn sixteen. I didn’t have a job or much else to do that summer, so I spent a lot of time hanging out at the pool, where my secret crush, Lily, was a lifeguard. A lot of times there was no one else around, so I’d just sit with her trying not to gawk at her body in her red one-piece swimsuit and hoping that she wasn’t gawking at mine (pale, acne-stricken, somehow both scrawny and fleshy at once).

I’d had a bunch of crushes on random unavailable girls up to that point, but Lily was the first girl I liked and was actually friends with. She was extraordinarily good at making you feel special — sharing private jokes and intimacies and judgments — and every time I spent time alone with her, I came away giddy with a feeling of grown-up love. The shared moments I recorded in my journal, which made them seem even more important.

In retrospect, she must’ve needed to create that sense of intimacy as much as I needed to feel it. I think she needed to be adored, wanted the validation of having others reveal themselves to her in trust. (Which I’m making sound sinister and manipulative, but really, she was just a sixteen-year old too.) Anyway, that’s probably why she kept asking to see my journal, even though I doubt she had any conscious idea how much exposure she was really asking for.

I didn’t either, but I had enough adolescent narcissism to believe that no one who saw me in totality could fail to love me. The last time she asked, I trotted from the pool over to the high-school computer center, where I burned out an ink cartridge printing out all 200 pages in the tiniest font, then brought it back to her all but in a bow. I knew that towards the end, she'd discover my true, more-than-friendly feelings about her, and I eagerly awaited her response.

For weeks after that, as she read through, she’d call me to tell me about little things I’d written that made her laugh or cry. (Very heightened times, these.) Finally, I couldn't wait any more, and when she was hanging out at my house one day, I just pointed to the right page and made her read it. By that point I was quivering and having trouble talking. She looked, and said, slowly, "Oh... I didn't know," and then, looking apologetic, "...and now I have to leave." And after that, we weren't really friends anymore. — Jason Carp

Have you ever done something totally crazy in the aftermath of a breakup? Experienced temporary post-relationship insanity? Tell us about it! Submit your 300-500 word true story to submissions@nerve.com or click here for more information.