Cry Me An Imagination

When I was a freshman at college there was a guy I chatted with a bunch on Facebook. I’d met him earlier in the summer at a get-together/orientation thing for incoming freshmen. He seemed cool so we chatted a bunch over Facebook walls and messages. I never went on a date with him, so it’s not quite a date story, but he did come out for several group activities a few times at the beginning of the semester.

It became clear that he was more interested in spending time with me than in making any other friends, and he was difficult to be out with. He would always try to accompany me when I went out, even if it was to meet friends of mine at other schools in Boston – I would basically have to trick him into staying behind. He was mopey and seemed like he always needed attention (if a friend was sharing a hard time they’d had in the past, this guy would try to outdo the friend, even if it was clearly not true).

At the time, I had a boyfriend of three years who I was very happy with and which he was very aware of, which made it feel like I should not have had to be so obvious that I was not interested. Instead of saying, “sorry, I don’t like you,” I would reference my boyfriend and how happy we were. When hanging out with him became too much for me, I started putting a lot of distance between us. It seemed like it wasn’t too much of a problem, and he seemed to be getting the point.

One day I came back to my room and chatted with my roommate for a bit. We decided we both wanted a nap, so we lay down our beds and both fell asleep. Suddenly, someone started knocking on the door, harder and harder. Finally my roommate got up and answered the door. Outside was the guy and he asked my roommate, “Is she ok?” My roommate looked at him like he was crazy. He said, “I was sitting in my room and I thought I heard her crying.” He was talking about me. Our door had been closed for a long time, and no one had been making a sound, not to mention he lived so far away that there was absolutely no way that he could hear me cry. She said to him, “No, we are both sleeping right now and you woke us up.” She is much more confrontational than I am, so I think he picked up on her aggression. After that he left me alone.