Ryan

A few years ago during high school, I once knew a guy, his name was Ryan. And he was a really quiet guy, very reserved, didn't make many jokes, didn't really laugh much. He was monotonous.

Some of my friends would hang out with him and his friends during lunch every now and then and it was really nice. Sitting at lunch, talk about nothing, laugh about nothing.
I like to think I was a very happy person during high school.

Most of us in that group would be involved in music in some way. My friend plays the clarinet, another on the cello and I was in choir. His friends played music and some were part of choir too. It was fun having our own special thing going on.

But Ryan would always sit quietly, eat his lunch and keep to himself.
Me and a friend noticed this and we would try to open him up a little and talk to him during home room and visit his locker after school.

But he was a nice guy, he probably didn't like large groups of people and liked to keep to himself.

At some point I decided to invite him out to see a movie with some of my friends. We saw High School Musical 2, it was ..interesting.

But after that I never really spoke to him much. Until one day, he sent me a message via msn chat. It was a casual conversation, but I was especially excited and happy that day. I don't remember my reasons why, but I was happy and he didn't really enjoy my company at the time.

He asked a lot of questions. Questioning my happiness, how I didn't deserve to be happy all the time, how I shouldn't push my attitude onto other people.

I don't remember everything that happened, but I remember the conversation we had was perfectly normal until he snapped.
He told me off for being happy. I didn't mean to push my attitude onto him, but as far as I knew being happy wasn't illegal.

I do deserve to be happy, and he should too. It seems that Ryan won't let himself be happy. I don't know what he's been through or what his life is like, but I think he can be happy if he chooses to be.

I haven't kept contact with Ryan for about four years now. I wonder what he's doing now and if he remembers me. I wonder if he still dislikes me for being able to be happy. If he does, it'll be his problem because being happy is who I want to be :)