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Whenever I get into a conversation about relationships with friends I’ll throw around the time frame of four years. It’s not the number of years I’ve been single nor the number of years I’ve been in a relationship. It’s the number of years I’ve been actively in the world of love and heart break and jealousy and hurt and obsession and co dependence. It’s the number of years I’ve had my faith in love slowly but surely chipped away.
2007
I realized I wasn’t in love with my boyfriend anymore. We had been together since late August of 2006. Those first six honeymoon months were pure bliss. We didn’t notice any other living soul. We were in our own happy bubble. Problem is, when the bubble burst it only burst for me. I saw how co dependent we were and it terrified me. I was no longer sexually attracted to him yet I couldn’t spend a day apart from him. I couldn’t function without him. When the bubble burst, I realized that my freshman year of college had come and gone without a single new friend, without attending a single party. My summer was spent missing him and yet feeling frustrated when he came to visit. Wanting to see him again as he was leaving but wanting him to go away when he drove up to my house. We had promised to work on things no matter how bad and that’s what I started trying to do. I even tried to work on my lack of sexual desire for him but to no avail.
2008
I broke up with my boyfriend of two years. My first long term relationship. My first experience in love, romance, intimacy. I tried breaking up with him in May and he got on his knees begging me not to do it. In June I again considered ending the relationship. In July I broke up with him but felt so guilty and he was so hurt that I took it back. A week later I broke up with him for good. The next day I received flowers and a CD of our songs with a love letter in the mail. Something he had sent me a week prior in an attempt to change my mind. I stayed strong. For a month I was still in Houston and he still in Austin. I avoided picking up his phone calls. G-chatting him. Responding to his emails. I told him that it’d be easier if we didn’t talk. I missed my best friend. But the morning after I broke up with him I felt a weight was lifted from my shoulders. I knew I had done the right thing. I worried for his well being. I wanted to know that he was doing okay but it was no longer my place. I went back to Austin for school and on one day like any other I decided to pick up one of his phone calls. And for a month I kept picking up his phone calls everyday. Re explaining why I had ended things. Hearing him call me a slut. Telling me I only broke up with him so I could sleep with other guys. Telling me I never really loved him. It was the worst month of my life. I lost weight. Was a size zero for the first and only time in my life. I was a wreck. Finally a new friend helped me cut myself off from him. From September on, the year was spent in solitude. Exercising obsessively. Alone. I had no excitement for life. I had no desire to meet men, date men, sleep with men. The turn in his personality startled me. I knew he was hurt and trying to hurt me and he succeeded. He never understood that. He never understood that I was hurting too. Hurting for the loss, hurting for his loss. I broke my heart breaking his heart. And he chipped away a little bit of my faith in love. His malice and anger, even if from a place of hurt, was disheartening.
2009
I came out of my slump and reconnected with old friends and my sister. As my friend group slowly increased so did my size. At first I was panicked but then I knew it was okay. I started going to parties, drinking, eating. I also started having one night stands. My mind set was still that of a relationship. I thought that if a guy kissed you on the forehead it meant he liked you. I had never heard of the term “playing house”. I had no idea the real world of college men could be so brutal. I would go to parties with friends, drink, meet a guy who treated me nicely. Kissed my forehead and fed me pancakes. I confused the signals. Eventually I learned but it took me quite a few mistakes. I kept trying to turn my one night stands into relationships. I thought I could until I realized I couldn’t. They were one night stands and that’s all. Nothing more. Cynicism started settling in where my faith in love was being chipped away. I started meeting friends who had been in the dating game for a while. I adapted to their ways. To their games. I learned to play hard to get, to play coy. I had experiences as a sophomore/junior most people have as freshman. I felt alive again after feeling dead inside for so long. I had friends. I had men. I had drama. I had texts to respond to. I had fun games to play. But the fun quickly became tired. In September I met a guy who I hung out and slept with for the next two months. A fuck buddy type situation is how I would describe it in retrospect. At the time I thought we could be in a relationship. I thought I could make him fall in love with me. I really thought I liked him. And then he cut and run. We never had any true connection, friendship, respect, intimacy. We never had any of the things that even make up a decent, mutual human acquaintance. We fucked, that’s all, but sugar coated it with the occasional dinner and movie. And then I met Eddie. 35, 6’8”, bartender. For a month we saw each other at the bar and flirted. I had never had such an intense intellectual connection with someone. I played the game of hard to get like a pro. And it worked. He pursued me like crazy. Finally he convinced me to go out with him. On paper we weren’t a match at all and in person we looked even weirder together. But I was completely smitten. I couldn’t get enough. For a couple of months we were inseparable. I never met his friends. He never met my friends. It wasn’t a normal, healthy relationship. It was a dysfuntional passionate whirlwind. It was the most exciting thing I’ve ever experienced.
2010
He disappeared off the face of the earth for four months. I would have been distraught had I not met Daniel. The man I thought was the most beautiful thing I’d even seen. I couldn’t believe he’d be into me. He cooked me dinner and introduced me to his friends and was the sweetest thing in the world. But I was in love with Eddie, although I don’t think I knew it at the time. And he didn’t want commitment and wasn’t willing to budge a millimeter for anyone to fit into his life. After a few sweet dates without ever sleeping together, he called it quits. And it was for the best. At another time maybe we would’ve been wonderful together but neither of us was in a place for a relationship and it was better to walk away. I had never been so emotionally unavailable in my life. And then on cinco de mayo I ran into Eddie. He asked me how I was. I faked a smile and then cried all the way home. Cried and screamed and hit my steering wheel so hard I bruised my hand. And then I had the fantastic idea to text him, “I miss you”. And he texted back. And he came over and saw me. And there we went all over again. Except this time there was none of the passion or excitement. Only bitterness and hurt and distrust on my part and aloofness on his. I was angry, bitter in love with him but wasn’t open about my feelings at all. I was spiteful. I went to Rio in August to visit family and my best friend Paula helped me get through to the other side. The space away from the bubble of Austin helped me see my ways and I went back to Texas with a new strength. Still, every time I drank I texted him. Every single time. And he would respond. When he stopped responding, I stopped texting. I hadn’t seen him since June or July and I never saw him again. In the fall I enrolled in a wine class and met new friends and learned more about a new passion of mine. I was starting to earn back my self respect. I liked myself again. I recognized myself. I was thankful.
2011
Started off the year unemployed and going to therapy. Every time I got tipsy or drunk the only thing I could think about was Eddie. I had an irrational anger rise up in me. A scary anger. An anger that I had never seen in myself and barely recognized. I was so angry at myself. For going back to him, for being naive. For not knowing any better. Therapy helped me let go of the anger and forgive myself. I started dating Daniel, again. About a month into it I realized he was in the exact same place he was a year ago. And so was I. I couldn’t believe it. We parted amicably. And then I started a new job and my life was over taken with work. 10 hour days in the hospitality industry will wear you out. From spring break through the end of the summer I slept, ate, breathed and talked work. And then, also at work, I met Tim. We went out for the first time early September and slept together that same night. I didn’t care. He wasn’t someone I could see myself dating. I thought he’d be a good distraction for someone who had been sexless for so long. For the next few months we’d go to parties with his friends, hang out at my place and watch movies. And we’d have sex. Several times I thought about ending things because I was worried he’d start to like me and then I’d hurt him. I wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially with him. He smoked a lot of pot and cigarettes, drank a lot of alcohol and lived like a college hobo. He wasn’t who I was looking for at all. I couldn’t fathom introducing him to my parents or taking him out to an elegant restaurant for dinner. But sure enough he started growing on me. Slowly, we started seeing each other more and more until I realized that I actually liked the guy, as crazy and improbable as it had seemed to me at the beginning. He was nice. Truly, deeply, genuinely just plain nice. My feelings for him didn’t explode in my chest as they had with Eddie. It wasn’t instant butterflies in my stomach. It was a very natural and easy progression. I never questioned or doubted him. My trust in him was effortless. There were no games. That was something I had to adjust to because my mind was still in the dating world. And then he asked me to be his girlfriend. And for a week it was the weirdest feeling in the world. And in a way it still feels strange. He doesn’t make me doubt or question anything but sometimes, just because of what I’ve been through in the past, I want that extra reassurance. But then I remind myself that I don’t need it. I’m emotional because of that. I know that so many of my friends tell me that he’s lucky to be with me. And I’m great, I know that. But for so long I’ve wanted someone to like me, really like me. All I wanted was for Eddie or Daniel to like me as much as I liked them. And Tim does. Maybe even more than I like him. And it seriously makes me want to cry because… I’m happy. I think. I don’t know. But he likes me. A lot. He wants to be with me. He wants to meet my friends. He’s told his mother about me. He’s told all his friends about me. And I just can’t believe it. I can’t believe that after all of the past four years that I’ve found someone who I trust and believe and don’t doubt. I’m emotional because I’m thankful that I’ve found someone who reminds me that I’m worthy of being liked and being with.
I don’t know what the future holds for us. We have about a million things between us that are incompatible and yet right now somehow it’s working out. I try to light a fire under his ass and he mellows me out. I think that regardless of whether he and I last for a month or for years, he has already healed me. And that makes me cry.
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