“In the end it took me a dictionary to find out the meaning of unrequited”
Billy Bragg – The Saturday Boy
My heart was broken at seventeen by a girl who refused to fit in with my plans. We started going out a few months before her debs ball. Looking back, I suspect her desire to have somebody to take to this event was a big part of her motivation in dating me. I had big ideas for our future together, but we were moving in opposite directions. She was about to go to university. I had been kicked out of school at fifteen and my main hobby was getting drunk.
Her rejection the day after the debs ball felt devastating. It was like my world had imploded, and for a few weeks I was inconsolable. How could she be so cruel? How could the world be so cruel?
The philosopher Fichte talks about a division in perception between the “I” and the “not-I”. The “I” in this case was busy planning a future with this girl, while the “not I” was getting ready for an exciting life at university. The conflict was between what I thought should be happening, and what appeared to be going on.
Of course, there is no fixed “what should be happening”. There is only the “I” trying to impose itself onto reality. The problem is our sense of “I” can only exist by being in opposition to the “Not I”. Without this division, there is only what is. In my case, I identified with being rejected because my “I” was centered around belief that we should be together.
I say what “appeared to be going on” because I was interpreting this based on my ideas about what should be happening. My feelings of being rejected weren’t due to her actions, but due to the my (the I) failure to make the world fit my plans.
It is kind of absurd when I think back to how devastated I felt. How huge it all felt. All the drama it created. Now, I can’t even remember what she looked like.