Me.

Today in my teenage angst, I was startlingly self-oriented.

A couple of my friends told me today that they've started dating. My response was pretty typical. I was thrilled. Well first I was surprised, and then I was thrilled, and then I got sad.

Not for the gross and obvious reason that I'm not in a relationship myself and must therefore be sad that I now have even less single friends. No. Though I really have very, very few single friends left, I was sad, because I so didn't see this coming.

I pride myself on having attained a certain level of social perception. I don't know how or when this happened, but I've come to be able to read people, pretty well. I'm hyper aware of their emotions and keep stupid track of their life events, so as to be able to correlate their emotions with those events. This is weird and it might seem a little invasive, but if you know me, you know that it's just the way that I care. And I really do care. A lot.

Part of this, though, has resulted in a tendency to see people's romantic relationships develop before they do. Once, I encouraged this guy to go for a girl I thought he probably liked, before he was even aware that he liked her. They're married now. But because I'm not actively a part of a romantic relationship, I think I've taken to foreseeing these relationships as a way to invest in them and impose myself upon them. If I saw it coming, I probably had a part in making it happen, right? Wrong; but it's where my mind goes.

These friends of mine, are two of my favorite people. I mean, I have a lot of favorites, but these ones really take the cake. I'm happy. I really am. And I don't know what led me to make this exciting proclamation - though it was really more of a whisper because he told me in church - all about me. My selfishness is coming out and it's not pretty. But it brings me back to the reality that being aware of my inherent selfishness  doesn't make it good.

I'm sorry guys. You two really are the best. Let's talk about how this happened, sometime. I promise I won't be jealous that I wasn't there to see it.