31/12/2002 - 6:50 p.m.

Oh, it does seem so. . .so. . .so hopelessly grown up.

Am I just terribly oblivious to everything, or what? Is it entirely impossible to just be friends with people?

Before I left for the holidays, I got a couple of calls from Teri Ann and Nathan, whom I know from the shop. I know Teri Ann fairly well, she's a writer and a junior and fun, and Nathan I've spoken to a bit, he's 22 and I think he looks uncannily like one of my uncles. They wanted to know if I was going to be around, and well, then I wasn't because I was leaving that day. They were the ones inviting me to the New Year's party I can't go to tonight.

Today, I received a phone call from Nathan. He wondered if I was free, which I can't be until school starts again, and he basically said that that was too bad because because he liked me, and Teri Ann had been helping him out because he hated talking to people over the phone.

Ten minutes after I hang up, the "he really likes me" phrase pops back into my head. I have decided once and for all that I hate the word like. It doesn't mean a damn thing. At the time of the utterance, I had taken it as a friendly thing, but then I suddenly remembered all the middle school jargon I have not bothered with for years wherein like means so much more than like. I certainly hope this was not the expected connotation.

However, it could happen that I am not wrong. Why does all of this happen to me now? Where were these people when I was in high school? Everybody there hated me, why now do feelings seem to be exactly opposite just when I don't want them to be? I've no problems being friends with people, but the problem is that I don't see these other things coming, and then out of the blue, WHAM, intentions I was not expecting, nor encouraging.

I don't know what it is that brings this on. I know that I'm not encouraging it, that's for certain. I wouldn't know how to, first of all. And second of all, I have one very good reason not to. Very, very, good reason.