A change in perspective – 335

Although I had once considered that going to U of O would be a point of connection between Aaron and I, we were rarely there at the same time. He had his first year there while I was finishing up high school, and then he left on his mission while I had my first two years there. When he came back, I was getting ready for my own mission, and then on it, and then trying to earn enough money to go back to school, so I think we had all of one quarter where we were both in school.

While he was gone, we wrote, and I kind of did a lot of things for him. They were things I would have done for anyone, but he was the one who asked. Sending along a class schedule as he was getting ready to return was easy enough, and when he asked for cookies it was not at all unusual for any missionary, but having me look at apartments for him may have been pushing it. Maybe I just did it too well, but that was really time-consuming. After that last basketball game we went to his apartment, and there was a girl there whom I think he married. I was sure he would marry her anyway. The girl didn’t bother me at all, but I was a little annoyed that it wasn’t even one of the apartments I had looked at. What was all of my work for? At least after several hints he had finally started spelling my name right. Jenia? Really? Okay, he was not a particularly good speller anyway, but we’d known each other for four years by that point.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I had been pretty helpful to him, and I wasn’t really expecting to need anything from him while I was gone, but surely I had built up some credit.

Being a missionary (if you are doing it right), you are completely removed from the world of dating. I mean, I could still see whether a guy was good-looking or nice or not, but you’re just not thinking about them that way, and if you do it distracts you and you need to try and get over it. I did notice though, that my eyes were immediately drawn to anyone who looked like Mitch. Thick dark hair, light complexion, and although his eyes were hazel, blue worked too. I noticed anyone who looked like that, and he had essentially changed my idea of good-looking. I had completely switched from liking baby-faced basketball players to liking sturdier guys with strong chins and a sense of purpose to them. Still, even if I did see guys that looked like him, they were just the copies, and not him.

What happens next is a little weird, and may sound stupid, but I could pretty much make that a permanent disclaimer and be fine.

I have always had vivid dreams. Usually, I feel like it is just the brain filing away the day’s thoughts and images, and I can often piece together where things come from, but some dreams are different. Sometimes they are symbolically meaningful, or emotionally important as your true feelings come out, and sometimes they even seem to be messages. I have had dreams that I believe were inspired, but sometimes it seems more psychic than spiritual. I do have good intuition in general.

Prior to this, I do not remember having many meaningful dreams. Some would become story ideas, but the only ones that seemed at all precognitive were that sometimes I would dream about a person and then run into them the next day (which I think is actually pretty common), and one time I dreamed about an injury happening to drug-dealer Aaron (not this Aaron) that did end up happening.

Anyway, as I was still in the training center, but getting close to entering the field, one night I dreamt that Mitch had died. It was in a plane crash, and people were trying to tell me, and there was a newspaper article, but I just did not believe it. Then, Coach Brooks started talking to me about how he was at a really good place in his life, and it was good that he had been able to get there, and it was okay to let him go. I finally started to believe he was gone, and then I woke up.

I woke up believing he was dead, but gradually began to realize that I had been dreaming, so it did not necessarily have to be true. I was glad to have some hope, but I needed to know that he was okay and I wasn’t sure how. It occurred to me that I could write to Aaron. He was right there in Eugene, in the athletics program, of course he could find out. So I wrote him a desperate letter, explaining what had happened and giving him Mitch’s address and phone number, and just asking for him to get back to me. I was so close to shipping out to California that I asked him to send it there instead, so I would not have to miss it and wait for forwarding, but that meant it would be at least a week and a half before I could hear. It was hard, but I felt like I had a solution, and I would know, and I clung to that.

Aaron never wrote back. I waited, and waited, and I started to despair that Mitch was truly gone, but that I could not get any closure on it, and then I finally just decided to ask my mother to call Mitch. I figured she would hate doing it and find it embarrassing, but that she would do it. She did do it, and write back, and he was fine, and very nice to her, and it was just a huge relief for me initially. Then, I started to get mad.

How could Aaron have left me hanging like that? Even if we had been sworn enemies I wouldn’t do that to someone. Instead we were technically supposed to be friends, and I was the friend who had answered every request he’d made, whether it was reasonable or not, while he was gone. I wrote him one more letter, and this time I told him off.

He did not write back, which was not surprising, but apparently it had upset him a lot because he showed it to his parents and his mother wrote to me. She was pretty nice, and admitted that a lot of the things that I said were true, and that I was probably the only person who could have said those things to him. However, she also tried to get me to see his position, and how hard it was when any time he tried to be a little nice to me it was like he was giving me ideas and leading me on.

My first thought was, that’s being nice to me? Asking me for stuff? The other realization was that right there it was clear that all three of them thought I was hung up on Aaron. I guess the fact that my emotional crisis was about another guy was not enough of a tip-off. Yes, I admit there had been a time when I had thought Aaron was the one, but it lasted from about June or July of 1991, when I foolishly substituted him for Mike, to January of 1992 when I fell for Mitch. Bobby had more staying power! And Mike and Mitch, whom I truly loved, and whom I believe did not reciprocate, were much better at being kind to me without leading me on or exploiting me—which kind of makes me feel like maybe they are just better people.

So, I wrote back a fairly nice letter to her. I didn’t do a lot of correcting, because that would have involved dumping on their son, and I don’t think they would have appreciated that, and I certainly didn’t write to Aaron again. Mainly, it just kind of messed things up with the Johnsons because then I never really felt comfortable around them again, after feeling like that was the image they had of me.

The strange thing was that I wasn’t worried about Mitch anymore. It occurred to me that it might be something that would happen later. Like, when the other Aaron did have the guy attack him with the hammer, it was three or four years after I’d had the dream. However, this time I was not worried. What I started to feel was that the dream was a catalyst to force me to understand these relationships.

My emotions had moved on, but I hadn’t really done the analysis for my thoughts to catch up with them. I needed to intellectually understand, oh, what it looks like when a boy doesn’t respect you, or is not kind-hearted, and why those are things you don’t really want.

This all sounds like a lot of Aaron-bashing, and that is not really fair. I don’t think he is exactly a bad person. I just think he conceived an early prejudice against me, that I think was at least partially based on my weight, and he stuck with that so that he was always tolerating me instead of enjoying me, and he lost more out of that than I did.

I did get one last special case of grace concerning him. When I finally made it back to Eugene it occurred to me that I might run into him, and I wasn’t sure how that would be. I wasn’t obsessing over it, but I wasn’t looking forward to it either.

One day I was at the Institute, and someone called hello, and I couldn’t quite place the person, but I knew it was someone I knew, so I made small talk while I tried to remember, and then I realized it was Aaron. Since by then he was 6’8” or 6’9”, not recognizing him was kind of a trick.

So there we are, and we have just asked each other how we are, and what’s new, and at that point it would be silly to say, “By the way, you’re really a jerk!”, so I let it go. I haven’t seen him since, and I don’t need to.

The difference is, with Mitch and Mike and Grant, that I still have a lot of affection for them, and I really hope they are happy with jobs and families that they like, and that things are just good for them. I don’t actively wish Aaron ill, but there’s no fondness there.

I did eventually write an explanation of things to Mitch as well. He did not write back, but then Mike did not write back to his letter, and I still found out later that it meant a lot to him. Aaron did not write back to his letter, but it still made an impact, which I found out about through other sources. It is much easier to get replies to e-mail, even if they are often not as deep.

And there will be more on Mitch later.