The headmistress looked at me with pity.

‘You’re so cynical you know. So… jaded. For a girl your age, you behave like your 30, like you’ve been through it all.’ She said to me, as if telling me would change anything. After all, if I’ve grown up, I can hardly recede back into the juvenile mindset she expected all girls my age to have.

‘Then how should I be behaving?’ I asked.

‘Like the rest of the students! They date one another, or at least people their age, with our values, and they are enjoying it!’

I felt punched in the head. Did she think I was stupid? Or was she the one that didn’t have any clue. That the other students dated one another didn’t mean that they were less ‘jaded’ then I was; did she really think all of them believed they were going to get married to their current flavour of the year? There were people cheating on one another as it were already, and I wasn’t the only one that was shagging around town anyway. And I wasn’t the only one that was had varied sexual preferences (i.e. gay).

‘The frame of mine you are referring to, the ‘un-jaded’ state of mind is stupid, useless and a liability. It gets you hurt when things don’t work out, because you don’t know that there will always be other people that are just as good who would want you just as much. It’s like believing in The One, it makes no sense for your well-being. Emotional or otherwise.’ I told her as a matter of fact-ly. Otherwise of course referring to the fact that fucking a few people in your life time, I believe, is good for you physically. That way, you know what to level of competency to expect in bed.

‘That’s exactly what I mean! You’re cynical!’

‘I don’t think so. But it’s better to be cynical then naïve.’ I said. ‘I’d rather expect disappointment and be pleasantly surprised, then expect good things and be knackered over by life. You’re wrong, I am not jaded, and I have no reason to be. I don’t believe in the things 14 year old girls that read Sweet Valley on a regular basis believe in, but I have faith in the goodness of people. And you know what? I’ve never been disappointed.
‘Jaded people do not bother with the subject of their faithlessness. I’m still a romance junkie.’

‘Ah, everyone wants romance, but it isn’t just like that. It’s not so easy, and if you want it, why are you living the way you live your life. You’re never going to find romance this way. And you’re doing it all wrong. Sleeping around is not going to find you romance.’

‘I live the way I live because I like it. And it does find me romance it would seem.’ And if not with people, at least with the act of romancing itself, but I didn’t add that in, it would have hardly been possible to explain it to her.

‘People like you, my dear head mistress,’ I had wanted to say, ‘are the sort that never really live.’ I bet you’re husband’s cheated on you before, but you just don’t know it. Why should you be sad that I know better then the dim-wit still thinking a kiss to a perfect stranger should mean something? And why should I be frowned upon with pity when I kiss someone new I really like, even though I’ve already lost count of the people I’ve kissed?

I’m not able to feel less, I’m just incapable of feeling wrongly.

***

And by the way, my mom asked if there was any possibilty that I may marry Ethan in the near future. Apparently she thinks he's a really nice boy, and rather good looking too. And she's dying for pretty grandchildren.

Uh, yeah mom. Of course that's possible. How should I know better in order to say otherwise?

xoxox