| Sloppy Pictures and Unspoken Love by Chelsea Rickert You may come upon a time in your life--or perhaps you have already experienced it--when you look back and are disappointed because of a lack of something. Whether that something is a word, ana ction, or even a look, you know that it's a great loss that the something never happened. Steve Tesich is very well versed when it comes to contrasting relationships between men and women. In his essay, "Focusing on Friends," he describes his easy-love for women and how the easy-love dies as soon as it is quickly spoken. But he mostly describes his love for his male friends, the difficulty to say those three words, and the intensity of emotions that he keep ssilent. I believe that he is trying to suggest to his audience that the stronger the relationship, the less the need for spoken I-Love-You's. I would like to point out the fact that the stronger he yearmed to tell his friend sof his love for them, the stronger he actually felt. I think that this lesson holds true in many aspects of life. Relationships define who you are as a person; the more you understand your relationships, the better you understand yourself. A man needs to be in thouch with himself before going out into the wide world in order to succeed as an individual, otherwise he would find himself fallen farther behind than when he started. What I am basically trying to say is that understanding how to love is most important--more so than simply saying it. Words are words and easily forgotten, but the memory of the emotion fades less willingly. Before I moved from Michigan, my ch ildhood home of almost ten years, there was one girl whom I considered my best friend. We grew up together, got into mischief and paid the consequences together...it was the type of relationship that children have that defines who they are. I know now that our relationship was doomed as our paths slowly divided, but as the end of our eighth grade year and the threat of my leaving slowly aproached, it became clear to me that my best friend meant a great deal to me and that I did not want to say goodbye. I spent the remaining time that I had with her--I even moved in with her for the last nine weeks. In the end, though, when the nine weeks were up and it was time for me to come to Wisconsin, I felt that I hadm issed something,a nd that all-too familiar feeling of regret soon worked its way into my brain. I was overcome with grief--not because I missed my best friend, but because I wasn't sure if she missed me; we hadn't estabished our true feelings vocally, and being so young, 14 years of age, we were deaf to each other's unspoken love. I spent my days mulling over my loss and self-pity, and became so self involved with my depression that the world flew on without me. Amanda moved on and made new friends, while I became more convinced that she had decided to replace me. Over the months, I somehow began to mature and healed from my own self-inflicted wounds. I forced myself to forget my best friend and tried to rebuild my life by doing as she did--finding replacements. Soon I found out, however, that I had never been replaced. I contacted Amanda and it was as if I had never left--she and I were as close as ever, and what to my wonderment did I find? She still missed me! I realized then that all of my months of torture had been for naught--and it could have been avoided so very easily. Still further down the road, I find myself amazed--even disgusted--at myself. I never needed to hear "I love you," even though I was convinced that it was necessary. The emotion had always been there, and that realization had changed my perspective on life. I would have been a very poor person if I had never made that phone call. In Steve Tesich's essay, he compares his relationships to snapshots. With his girlfriends, the photos would always be closeups, intense--and always indoors. Pictures of his best friends, however, always showed the character of the person. They were always doing some out-door activity, and the quality of the snapshot itself was never really "picturesque". "It's a much sloppier film...a memory of real friends." When putting these two types of pictures side-by-side, one could compare them and notice the personal effect of the sloppier picture and the intensity of the other. One could say, "Oh, this is Stacy," and nothing else about the intense picture, but have a thousand words for the sloppy snapshot. Memories are all yuo have sometimes--memories of sloppy pictures and unspoken love. |