Novel Beginning, Take 1

She was the best for me, and she was the worst for me.

It's funny, I always thought myself naive in hindsight, optimistic in foresight and never realized how to live in the now. I wasted day upon day trying to figure out the upper and lower limits of what I could handle. Extremes became my friends as I wondered if I could care any more about her, if I could take another shot and depress my motor function any less than last weekend.

I'm getting a little bit ahead of myself. Being an English major, I never took college chemistry. At the same time, life at the university felt like the biggest experiment of them all. Cliche, I know. Four years of determining what kind of adult I would later become. I didn't know it at the time, but it would lead to my eventual lonely existence as an aspiring author. Not that there hadn't been a lack of lying to myself to reach that conclusion. I began with aspirations of business school, only so I could become an entrepreneur. That failed miserably when I couldn't pass Calculus I. Had it not been for my ability to charm my grad student instructor, I wouldn't have received the mandatory credit for the class.

My next stint was a brief encounter with economics. As though I hadn't already learned my lesson about my incompatibility with numbers, I gave it a go. It was kind of like the dog who repeatedly runs through the invisible shock fence, knowing that they're surely going to be harmed in the process, though intrigued by what lay outside its bounds. That lasted all of two weeks before I knew I had to seek out another path.

My academic life was in desperate need of a GPA boost. That, in conjunction with my consistant love of the written word led me to English. I'd pissed away my tuition money freshman year bombing classes in favor of frat parties and watered-down beer. It wasn't until I sank to that lowest of lows, once again a moment of testing my limitations, that I realized I wasn't in college to make the most money. I was there to get my shit together and do what I wanted to do. It didn't win me any fans. My parents were skeptical, but steadfastly supportive. Especially my mom.

My mom was through-and-through my biggest fan. She had her moments of wondering where she went wrong, but let's be real--I'm sure I gave her good reason to question her parental tactics. I was no model child. I excelled under their watchful eye, but the constraint of strict parenting only fueled my desire to do wrong. Funny enough, life always has a tendency to seek out a sort of harmony; an equilibrium of experiences. For all the wrong in the world that I got away with, and some that I didn't, I eventually mellowed out and began to live in a much healthier manner.

After barely surviving a brutal freshman year, I had a heart-to-heart with myself. I knew what I wanted to study and began the strenuous process of bandaging my wounded academic record. That was pretty much the only aspect of my life I began revitalizing though. The partying remained, I discovered the rave scene, and girls were still just girls. Nothing special, and while I enjoyed their company, it didn't really have a dimension of depth to me. Not at that time anyways.

I was the annoying guy in class. Reasons for this conclusion varied, but usually it was a combination of my don't-give-a-fuck mentality as to how cocky I came across. I kicked my feet up on chairs, wore sunglasses in class and created a generic air of conceit. This was further powered by my desire to be smarter than my extremely brilliant classmates. I compensated for their laziness by driving the discussion. This meant a degree of favoritism from the instructor, as days of my absence usually resulted in many an awkward silence.

Enough about me though, if I were writing a book about myself, I could go on for far longer than you'd be able to keep interest. It's time I get discussing how it came to be that my paths crossed with her.