Morals and My Conscience

For the first time in my recollection, I've found a girl thats interested in me.

The problem is, the feeling is not mutual.

Now, I'm an angsty 18 year old male, who doesn't quite know what he wants. I'd like a meaningful relationship with a girl that I feel connected to, someone smart and attractive. The next moment, my hormones take over and say I want a pure hookup with the first nice tail that comes my way. That type of action would have to be all in the moment, I couldn't go through with it as a ' use em and lose em' type of guy.

The girl that is interested in me is named Jessica. I've met her through a mutual friend at his place, where I tend to spend an amount of my freetime in a place where I can get away from home, be around some fun, good friends, and have no pressures. Now Jessica comes over to his place a lot as well with her friends, so we get to talking... and she isn't very intriguing. She is very attractive to look at, but I don't think I'd be able to carry on an interesting conversation with her. I personally finding out things and interesting facts for the sake of knowledge; While on the other hand, I think she gets by with what she needs to know, not what can be known.

I've met her several times now, she has my number, and text messages me often. I don't reply often because I just don't have anything interesting to say. I've never had a girl interested in me before. Now, I'm not intimidated by her, but I don't want to hurt her feelings by making her feel dumb and talking down to her. Me and my buddies hold conversations on things we've heard about in recent events, or some stuff back in school and laughing. When we discuss things like this around Jessica and her friends, I've more often heard these two words than anything else "I'm confused" .

I Think I have the potential to like her, but from what I've heard from my other friends house-mates and good friends... whom she has dated two of them... they tell me she is the kind of girl that gets to a serious point, and then up and leaves the relationship. Now the part of me that is yelling 'gimme sex' is saying this is great, a no holds relationship that may not have ties after an amount of time.

The other part of me is yelling at the other half. Time for some background info... About 4 years back I met this girl Karen. I had known about her for 6 years, so lets ponder that one. She was very cute, very kind, and very sick. I met her in the 8th grade, when on the first day of school, I decided I was going to sit in the back of the bus, I didn't care. Well, soon came the fact that her stop came, and she sat next to me. "Hi, I'm Karen," she had said, and I had introduced myself as well. This girl was the one that was incredibly out of my league, that I had a crush on for two years prior. Very pretty blonde hair, brilliant blue eyes, and an unbelievable smile. We were bus buddies for the rest of the year, It was the two of us in those seats, around with our friends in the back and just being the middle school kids we were.

As the year progressed, my secret crush developed further, and I still believed myself not to be worthy of such an angel. We went to a school in the next town over, so the bus ride was often a half hour long or so, and being it was early morning, she had fallen asleep on my shoulder a couple times, and all I did was enjoy the attention of a sleeping girl resting against my arm. When that year was over, and it was time to say goodbye on the last day, I got a hug from her, I didn't expect it, and I recollect it as the first hug from a girl I had grown to care for.

I didn't see much of her in 9th grade, she got a ride from her older brother to school, and I was bus ridden. 10th grade came along, and to my surprise, we're in the same geometry class, and sitting next to each other again mind you. I remembe in class one time,she showed me this nasty 5 inch scar on her lower back where she had an operation. Operation? I wanted to ask, but didn't, and left it at that. She was absent a lot in those times. And I missed her when she was gone, she was the bright side of coming to school everyday... at least for that quarter. I heard from one of her friends after a while, and she said to me and another friend of hers that we couldn't tell anyone... but she had a tumor in her lower back and it kept coming back through some of her surgeries. A cancerous tumor.

Flash ahead to my senior year, she was on my mind a lot, even though I had one other particular girl in mind a lot, and joy knows this and who, so she can vouch, but I hardly talked of Karen to her. At a particularily cold football game one friday night, I saw her there. She had come with a friend and she was so... small. She had a pink bandana over her head, where her beautiful blonde hair had been, and she looked so pale. I gave her a hug and had my mind on her most of the night. She had to leave early because she wasn't feeling well. I regret I hadn't said anything meaningful to her. And thats the last I've seen from her. I have her phone number, I got it quite some time ago, but I'm frightened. It's safe to say that I love this girl. I never was more than a friend, but I valued being that friend more than anything else. I've only truly loved that one girl... and I know this because I still think about her.

Jessica is nothing like that girl. She seems ditsy, but she tries. It has the possibility of an easy hookup, but I'd feel terrible about that. And she isn't exactly long term material if I may put it so bluntly. I'm at loss as to what to do. She knows I don't have a girlfriend, and she is interested, but I'm not particularily. The right thing to do is tell her so, instead of leading her on. But that would most likely end hardly.

Sometimes I wish I had the right answers.