Outside our small safe place flies Mystery... A snake beneath the forest floor, a whisper: Melusine

I always look forward to seeing old friends and acquaintances but every now and then I worry whenever they come around.  It's always at random, I'm usually not looking my best, and most of the time it's in public so there's no temptation to discuss anything in private.  I wonder if they sense my anxiety when I see them -- I become absorbed with the desire to share with them everything that's happened to me without them , or just bug them to find out what's been going on in their lives without me, and somehow finally put any nastiness from the past behind us -- or maybe the past is still too fresh in their minds and that they can only think of me as who I used to be, or prefer to think of me as the crazy so-and-so they used to know?  What if they never did like me, or perhaps they don't want me to know who they are now?  There's a pressure to be almost perfect, have a clean slate, and be as positive as hell.  Reunion -- if you want to call it that -- is not a perfect thing, it can be a very distressing thing, and I think maybe for my best friends from a decade ago seeing me now may not be something they would have wished for today.  Thing is, I don't know, will never know, until they say something to me to ease my anxiety.

I just saw Joey Hetzel this morning.  She's a brilliant cartoonist, quiet but not shy, statuesque but not snobbish, funny and pretty in that not-in-your-face way, and one of those young women I can describe in one word: strong (and that's not me kissing her ass).  To call her cute would be an insult, and yet, she is!  The sort of cute that hits you over the head with a mallet, a cartoon mallet (of course).  I've never entertained a bad thought about her.  I know she is talented and, like every other member of the Comic Art Society I was a part of when I attended UWSP, I fought for her to be published in the college's newspaper when said newspaper wanted to stop running ALL the student comic strips published weekly in the paper. 

I don't think any of my old pals ever really appreciated the pain I went through to convince a bunch of hacks that the student cartoonists had every right to be in the college newspaper as every other contributor had.  A decade ago, and even now, the comic strips were seen as junk or, at best, filler for newspapers.  But the beauty of publishing a college newspaper is that students are free to publish as they see fit and are allowed to experiment with many forms of media to express themselves.  For the most part, our experiment went rather well, yet at some point I fell out of my comic strip compatriots' favor when I became their editor.  When I was not just another member of the group, I became one with the managerial staff, and this must've stung them as badly as it did me (think of me as the Hurley in their version of the LOST castaways and you'll get a lot of insight into my character).  It was hard to one day be everyone's pal and then pariah the next all because I took the job Andy Berkvam offered me; Arts & Review Editor (fancy name for the comic strip editor).  To make a long story short, I lost my friendship with the Comic Art Society -- BJ Hiorns (later Joey Hetzel's boyfriend) and Becky Grutzik (Joey's friend who was to next become president of the group after me) just stopped talking to me and, at times, flat out ignored me.  Despite their spite of me, I still published their work and bragged about them every chance I got.  No matter what happened between us as friends, my duty as their editor was one of loyalty and goodwill that I thought, went beyond friendship.

I have to admit, that by the end of doing my tour of duty with UWSP's paper, The Pointer, I had a nervous breakdown.  Not because of their changed attitude towards me, but due to a serious change of life circumstances for me.  I didn't go on to finish earning my degree, instead I battled with a mental illness for the next six years, and for the most part, have won my sanity and stability back.  A victory harder to attain than a college degree, yes, but since the details of my life before I left college are still fresh, I still worry that perhaps there were things I said and did that I don't remember.  I still feel like I could've been a better friend, but I just didn't know how.  The one thing that kept me going in the winter of 1997 was publishing those silly comic strips.  I even stopped publishing my strip, Dave Davis, in 1998 so that there could be more room for my friends to do something new or different.

I like to think I left my job at a good time and that I had done well.  When I left Stevens Point in 2000, I hoped to leave behind all my bad memories and start anew in Milwaukee, but here I am, back in Point, and confronted with all those memories, as well as the negative commentary about my stint at The Pointer.  Joey and BJ weren't the only ones disgruntled with the ol' local college newspaper.  My other Pointer pal, Patrick Rothfuss (who is now a bestselling fantasy novelist) has stated in the opening time line in his Your College Survival Guide (illustrated by BJ Hiorns) that he, too, quit The Pointer because he was convinced it was being run by a bunch of hacks.  I do hope he didn't include me in on that category.  I was one of his most loyal supporters, forced to wait on him until the wee hours of the night and day (I had to quit two morning classes because of his lateness) to get his horoscope parodies in on time for the printer.  I complained about it, but there wasn't much I could do to help him or anyone else because the other editors were dicks.  It meant we had limited freedom and any further experimentation or ideas were usually met with scowls.  We were like the kids in the back of the bus -- we could make all the noise and protest we wanted to, but it didn't make much of a difference.  The other editors were there just to keep the status quo.

Despite all the crap I put up with just to help publish a college newspaper comic art section, I do consider those days a time in my life when I really could collaborate with my favorite artists and writers freely without fear of ridicule -- AND they were a far better bunch of folks to bounce ideas off of than trying to get a job working with professionals I long admired since high school.  I was unsuccessful in keeping the friends I loved in college, but at least I can say I worked with the best friends I ever had.  They mean the world to me, and always will, no matter what.

And yet, when I catch sight of them on accident in public, I can't help but get the feeling that they still don't like me very much and that I'll always be the ugly duckling in their social circle.  There's a big part of me that wants to make up for that, but how can I when all I know how is to be myself?  There's nothing I can do to change the past, I can only be the person I am now and make the best of the life I have.  I just want them to know, in some small way, that I cared about them.  I still feel a little hurt by them, but it's only a little thing that is easily replaced by joy whenever I see their work published somewhere, so it's not that bad.  I might be reading too much into things, but I also want to apologise for the way I talk too much when I run into them.  I'm self conscious around them for a reason -- I never knew how to react to them in a way that wasn't brutally honest and I think that often made me very unpopular.  I would just say and do things out loud with the least amount of tact because, at one time, I felt completely safe around them.  I often ask myself: "Why did I get rejected by them when they stayed friends with Pat who was equally brutal with his honesty?"  It's the only thing I'm jealous of about him.  The fact that his friends kept him but mine didn't.  Or maybe I'm being too brutal with myself over this.  Over analyzing is a fault of mine as well.

In any case, the thing that provoked such thoughts out of me today was seeing Joey again.  She came into the store and then almost immediately walked out and gave me such a cold reception you'd think I ran over her hamster.  Now, I could be wrong, but she did say that she was there to buy some incense for a friend and she didn't know what kind to get her, but again... that dirty old feeling creeps in my stomach: maybe she left because she hates me.  Maybe she ran away because they all hate me.  Maybe I'm one of those people that she knew in the past who makes for a great "I knew this woman in college who was a big pain in the neck..." story at social gatherings?

Or maybe I'm just being a nervous Nelly and better get back to my own drawing board before more old friends come pouring back...