The day we met again was one of the most promising days of my life.
I didn't used to understand why adults would talk about having a fling of passion and amazing feelings that faded out, but I knew that I wanted to one day experience the strong feelings that love songs and poems are written about.
I remember telling my ex-boyfriend, the one I dated for two years (writing furiously lukewarm and frustratingly unsure blog posts about for the duration of the relationship-despite having affection for him in a tryingly romantic way), that I desired to feel passion with the person I date. Upon asking him if he felt passion for me, he first rejected the fundamentals of the idea because as I have come to realize, not everybody wants a "strong, big burning flame" as he would describe it. He felt as a core value to himself which conflicted with my own that this kind of flame would of course burn out quickly and that what he was looking for was the small flame which burns perhaps eternally. I remember that this conversation made me very sad, as a I realized that no matter how long it would take for the two of us would exhaust the possibilities of making our relationship work (and we did definitely exhaust it...) we would come to the hard, unfortunate truth that we wanted different things emotionally from each other. The big flame that makes me trip over myself and want to cling onto another, even for a short time, is what I desired. However, I didn't have the expectations for intense feelings to last forever and that's where my ex-nice guy was mistaken. Of course passion is not a one-and-done additive to a romantic relationship, but having it as a stepping stone for a long lasting interaction between myself and the person I LOVE is something much to be desired! I want to look back at the relationship I have with someone and remember the moments that made me fall into a whirlwind of new feelings that not just anybody could give me. I wanted to connect with somebody who sees me as I am, instead of imagining what they want me to be and falling in love with that image; I want to never have to try to act any way at all that isn't completely honest/reflective of myself around the person who's supposed to learn to understand me the most. I want to act in a way, and I mean this in the least selfish way possible in relation to love, that makes me happy! Wouldn't it be amazing, I would think, to say what I really feel about everything without it acting as a negative reflection upon myself or seeming like "out of my character" (aka a -cringe for me- nice girl.)?
My sense of humor can go up and down the range of sarcastic, full of satire, quirky, purposely dumb, friendly, adorable, or whatever else the hell I feel like and nobody should date somebody who cannot at least appreciate their jokes; this is seriously very important!! If you bump heads or make a distasteful sour face every time your "love" tells a funny, you've got a problem.
I wanted to be with somebody who felt the need to dig around my mind to learn my quirks, desires, fears, insecurities, social self, individual self...not just what my favorite hobbies, places to eat, and movies to watch are. I wanted someone to look at my favorite whatevers and understand why I would gravitate to those things. Needless to say, my 2-year relationship ultimately, actually very difficultly, ended in tears, apologies, and still frustration. I understand why some people cannot be friends with somebody they've dated to the point where their two lives intertwined...it's hard to say the least.
To ease off the facts and to the important point of this, my ex-nice guy thought that my head was mixed up when it comes to love and had no problem stating that it was because
I watched too many movies that showed unrealistic love stories + my parents at home were divorced = (to him) I didn't understand what it would feel like to be in a long-lasting, real, healthy relationship. He also told me that "love isn't enough to keep a relationship" and by now I understand what he means by this in application, but still, I needed to have at least love to keep a relationship and be happy with it.
Dammit, I wanted to feel myself gravitating to another person for some completely natural, ubiquitous reasons that can't be created or destroyed. (This is a reference to my physics class, if you haven't figured it out; feel free to leave a nod to this concept in the comments sections if you will. This is also a reference to Orange is the New Black, which gave me the feels all over.)
But-that "I just like you" feeling!
The day we met again made me feel again that what I want and who I want to be actually matters. The funniest thing of it all is that I almost turned down seeing him again to stay home and mope about my failed relationship for a while.
But neither of us expected what was going to happen when we did meet- FIREWORKS I tell you! Another funny thing is how involved music has been in our changing relationship, an element that I surprisingly have grown very fond of. Originally it was classical, orchestra style music and piano sets that gave me strong feels (And it still does bring back a lot of feelings to be honest and even if not all of the memories were good, there were still emotions attached that seem important to my development of understanding romantic relationships). This time, it was the faster paced and more vocal electric dance music that got us bonded to one another. In particular, K*****.
I wish that I made a blog post immediately after out first month of being together so that I could gather the details fresh off the top of my head, but almost 4 months later and I can recall the important parts. For reasons of continued anonymity as tradition of this blog, I will not disclose the actual name of artist.
He picked me up at my house with his two friends, a music festival couple without the title who were uncertain about the future of their own relationship, though neither of us were expecting this to be a pseudo-double/friend date in the first place. As I got ready for the night, sighing in the mirror, I slapped on some of my favorite blush and eyeshadow as a way to pick myself up for the night. I hadn't ever been a fan of raves in the past, going to two prior with my group of girlfriend along with my ex-nice guy. Nonetheless, I hadn't been expecting a fun night additionally because of recent terrible relationship issues that resulted in me crying for two days in a row/having a panic attack for a few house while fighting with ex-nice guy. I thought that I should've gone out on this particular night because, well, I needed it.
When we arrived to the event center, the couple who were driving dropped the two of us off first so that they could find parking and I was to look for somebody to buy a last-minute ticket from.
Maybe I should say now who this mystery guy is that my entire story is centered on.... he's not new here. He's...the guy I used to refer to as my ex-friend-with-benefits. But of course, if you've followed me up to now you'd now that our old story was far more complicated and dark than the nickname gives the impression of. Our old story, however, is gone. I believe that people change, they must to me, so as long as they grow up seeing new things, people, events which happen and leave. He's not who he once was at ridiculous age of 17 or 18 and neither am I. This is our new story. I'll call him A.
We spend the beginning of the night trying to contact his friends, though it took a while and for the most part we had time to walk around the area to catch up. It was our first time seeing each other again as friends and also one-on-one. The amazing part was how comfortable I felt around him. But his entire disposition was different than it was in the past. Rather than aggressive in his approach to talking to me, he was gentle and considerate. He had also been going through a recent breakup, which I could tell effected him very much, We talked about our relationships lightly, then onto our personal lives at the moment. He hadn't been doing very good in school during the two years in which we didn't speak to one another; I had been at my peak of academic excellence.
I told him that I felt badly that I couldn't be there to help him through whatever life was throwing his way during that time, we had been friends in the first place after all. Then he did something completely uncharacteristic to the him I used to know, he looked at me, apologized and started to well up with tears. For all of it that happened before, he finally understood by this piece in time how much it all hurt me. And it was, now that I think of it, a crucial event that I needed to happen to help me resolve my trust issues from the past. It was also that hearing him apologize sincerely that I could start to let go.
He said to me, "That Girl, I just want to tell you that I am really sorry about what happened in the past", "Oh, it's okay..." I started to interrupt him, but he continues, "No, really I didn't realize how much everything effected you until S (my ex-nice guy who was once A's best friend) told me."
I tried to interrupt him ago with an, "It's okay", but he goes on to say, "You are one of the nicest people that I've ever known and didn't deserve any of what happened to you. I want you to know that it really did effect who I am as a person and it's helped to become better. I try to be more caring, more empathetic, more aware of how my actions effect people around me." It was sweet and unexpected. In the middle of his speech, he started crying and I looked at him and tried to tell him that I forgive him. He asked to hug it out and we happily did. It was such a good feeling to think that would were going to be back in each other's lives. I told him that I wanted to help him in the future and he readily accepted wanting my help. I tried to apologize for my part in our past troubles, but he denied it being my fault and that I should hold guilt for it. He thanked me for forgiving him and he told me that he thought a lot of me for being able to forgive him and move on.
We also talked about our past feelings for each other, something that I feel a lot of missed loves don't get to experience. He told me, "I really did like you, but you were hanging out with that random guy and so I was like wow okay, you must not really like me. So I went out with that other girl, in a way, to spite you." I looked up at him, an older face and topped off with shorter hair than before, saying, "I only hung out with that guy to make you jealous." We smiled at each other and he said, "It worked." We laughed it off. He tells me, "By the way, I think you've gotten a lot more attractive." I thank him and we smile. It had been two years and what can I say, I have quite gotten my shit together!
We went into the crowd of people, up to the mid-front, and danced next to each other and his two friends for a while before they leave us again.
Another funny thing is that the two of us really are no good at dancing, looking quite dorky and silly the whole time, but at least I think we're on par with our level of physical body-shaking abilities. And we look happy. I had never taken ecstasy, but about 2 hours into the night after we had time to do our important catching up, we popped a pill each. What I took caused me to become floored and he needed to hold me up a little because the feeling was very new and strong. I'm glad I experienced it with him for the first time; I felt safe that he wouldn't take advantage of me or leave me alone for too long and we had a great time meeting new people together. Early in the night he asked if holding my shoulder would be an appropriate and of course it was fine with me, but later on I could see why he asked, as the e could make a person a little more touchy. I was glad he asked, just to be conscious of how we were around each other.
I loved how socially aware he was, wanting to talk to new people, be friendly and spontaneous, open to new experiences, able to be serious when needed and so much fun at other times. For the most part, however, I was just experiencing the new sensations I had for the first time. The lights I joked about the whole night for really not "getting", after all they're just moving lights, I was definitely intrigued by once the sensations kicked in. I told him, "I know what people mean when they talk about the lights" and he nodded his head next to me, still standing by close. He kept a small vest in his back pocket and covered it with me later on so that I would keep warm.
As the night went on, he started to hold me tight in his arms and we slowly started to dance together. I looked at him and told him, "I think you're one of the only people in the world who understands me. Do you know what I mean?" He nodded. We spent a lot of time just looking at each other. He says that I kept giving him a look that said it all...that I wanted to be with him, even if I wasn't sure I could. He looked back at me a lot and we smiled at each other. I was so happy we were able to be close again after all this time had past. I asked him, "Are we going to be friends forever?" and he nodded at me. Though we were smiling, we were swaying together still and there were time when we looked at each other with a serious look in our eyes. It was a shared glance that said...this was more than the connection of friends. He says later on that it was the only music even that he's ever gone to and not paid attention to the music, mostly because we were so involved in talking to each other and sharing looks. The swaying of our dancing turned from simply moving to a slow grind and it was the first time either one of us had felt romantic feelings while dancing like that with another person. We knew that whatever this was, it was special. I knew that even if we were to never be together in the future, this was the standard for how strongly I should feel for the person I want to be with.
After the last show of the night, we walked outside together while still holding each other and talked around the area for about an hour before his friends came to pick us up. We had soup together at a nearby restaurant and A asked to hold my hand and I said that of course it would be okay. We held hands tightly under the table, smiling at each other. We sat talking for a little and his friend asked me what kind of music I like. I paused, since I like a lot of different types of music. A said while I "Umm"-ed, "She likes soundtracks from movies, kind of like me." I was surprised that he remembered that I like movies and would probably be into music from my favorite films; more than that, however, I really liked that he described my music taste the way that he did. I thought that if my ex-nice guy was describing my taste in music, he would drop in the names of a band or two that of songs that I like, which wouldn't quite be a good description of who I am. I thought in that moment, that A did understand how I like to be presented as a reflection of my personality and interests and that made me happy. After hopping back in the car, A's friend says that we'll all be heading home. She asks me what my address is again, since I lived furthest from the rest of them. Me and A look at each other and he says, "She can come to my house" He asks if I want to as we drive along and says that we can have more time to talk. In my mind, I knew that I didn't want the night to end.
We go back to his place, where I hadn't been in years, and where he was actually about to move away from a month from that night. We had a lot of memories in that room, but not all good. The new memories we made were much better. We washed up separately and laid next to each other in bed to talk. Some people might find this strange, but we had been friends for years and often shared a bed together, so it was not at all a strange situation. We decided to watch "American Horror Story", but ended up talking through it all and didn't pay attention to it at all. I told him a lot about my relationship with S, including how numb I began to feel at the end of it. He looks at me sadly and says that he feels so badly that right after being involved with him in such a negative way before, my next relationship was no good either. He told me that I deserved more and I told him that I knew it was over a while ago and it was just so damn hard to end.
Neither of us are exactly sure how it physically escalated throughout the early morning, but it continued for the next month to be the best physical connection of my life. It just kept getting better. I wouldn't even call it sex, it was something else and still is absolutely amazing because I like him so much. One day I looked at him when he come back from the bathroom and kissed me, and I said, "Passion!" He smiled and kept kissing me, "Fucking passion!" I told him happily as we made out. He said later on that it was the first time hearing that there was passion between himself and the person he was with. I was so happy to tell him that I was feeling passion because it was something I longed for in my last relationship so badly! I asked my ex not too long ago prior if he thought about me passionately and said that he didn't want to have a relationship where he felt so strongly and he said that he didn't lust after me, but loved me and thought that passion was only something that was short-lived, therefore not important. This was the passion I had been looking for! It wasn't just a physical thing, but a mental and emotional thing too. A told me he thought I was hot and sexy and that he wanted to touch me everywhere, things I hadn't heard in, well, ever. While in the heats of passion, we told each other some of the following things (these are just certain lines that I'm listing here for my own memory :) )
"I really like you." and "I really like you too."
"I like you way more than I used to" he said to me. And I told him, "I never liked kissing you this much. I see you as a completely different person and I really like this person."
"This is more than a rebound." and "This is way more than a rebound."
I told him once, "This has been an amazing month, so I'll be okay with it if you want to end it here..." and he said that ""I'm here for you, no matter what you choose, but I 120% want to be with you."
When I was feeling bad about my ex, he said to me, "I'll be next to you and I'll wait for you to decide him, me, or yourself." and I with a smile I told him that I seemed to have already made my decision.
"I wouldn't have tried for this if I didn't think it could work. I think it could work between us."
"What are we?" "What if I asked you out?" "Is this a hypothetical question?""Will you be my hypothetical girlfriend?" "Yes."
"Will you be my girlfriend?" "Yes."
The highlights -
"You look like you're in love."
"I can tell he loves/cares about you by the way that he holds you, like he is careful to respect you."
"Isn't it nice to dance with somebody you like a lot?"
"You're very pretty and he's lucky to have you." "I agree." "He told me that he's so happy for me."
"Some of my favorite moments of my life have been with you." "Mine too"
I wrote this post several, several months ago. The relationship since has been...well, let's just say that the big fire burned me pretty badly. But not because love sucks. I don't want to live my life cynical. That being said...I always wanted that friendship on fire that I read about in blog posts and read stories about. I wanted to feel completely enveloped in a love story of my own. I felt that love. It was amazing to completely trust someone and feel confident in our connection. While I wrote about a memoir of my own relationship in the past, I now know that it wasn't love per-se that I felt before. That was more of an infatuation with the idea of being in love that I had in high school. What can I say, I've always loved...love.
This relationship was different, I put all my cards in and defended my love as far as possible. Even when it started crumbling at the seams when I realized that somehow I switched roles from my past relationship, where instead of my so loving me to the depth that he could reach, I was the one killing myself to keep float what we had - because I loved the love we formed more than almost anything I felt in the past. I felt alive again and the old me that faded away in my past relationship due to feeling trapped in comfort and mediocracy burst through my heart and let me want to experience a new kind of love. I started laughing again. Hard. The kind of laughter that makes you silent or hold your stomach because it hurts. But you know, in the best way possible. I felt like I hadn't laughed hard in years. He relieved my pressures to be better than I was, nicer and smarter and more put together. It went a little too far with that and while my previous ex made me better because of the wonderful person he thought I was and encouraged me to be, my new love accepted me as whatever lazy shit I felt like being on any particular day. He loved me in a different way, probably because in many regards he could see right through what I was doing for show and my real attitudes towards things that I'm actually interested in. Ie., he could detect my bullshit. Unfortunately, he went so far as to call bullshit on things that I did actually want to put myself towards that were out of my comfort zone and seemed out of place given the person he came to know so well as we were besties in high school. He knew the me that was more socially impressionable, timid and insecure to the point of passivity but wanting to fit in. College changes you, and it took a while for him to realize that enough time has passed that while I am still who I was before - as we all are LITERALLY who we were in the past, even though I know for certain that many people don't want to accept this as fact and interject that "no That Girl, I've changed", there is still something consistent that is undergoing that change - I don't associate myself with having the same personality type as I did previously. It's always changing, ya'know, that personality type. Especially since I knowww that I'm still trying to figure out exactly what kind of person I want to be in this world. I know what traits I like and want to have, but it's not exactly easy to hold towards just one kind of persona when there are good traits in all different types. I still need to figure out the life that I want to live for myself. Anyway. I digress.
What happened with this real first love, the one that will never be able to be re-experienced in exactly the same way due to the "new-ness" of feeling these things for the first time without biased unfortunately learned experiences that I know will inevitably taint, even if only in the slightest, the love that I hope to find in the future. It's scary to think about not falling in love again, but I'm grateful as hell that I found the unconditional love that I could feel for someone in this life at all. Even if it didn't end well, once you recover from the pain of losing it - and lol it really does almost kill you if not from sleepless nights and sore heart that beats when reminded of lol anything at all related to the person you loved, then the hot cheetos and chocolate that I literally ate for 2 days straight while staying in bed depressed - it's really a nice thing to have had the opportunity to feel close enough to someone and connect to them in a way that is so irreplaceable by any other feeling in the world. Like, I always wanted to die having had a great love for someone. And I did.
...
Don't worry I'm not suicidal, just reflective ( ha ha ). What really happened is that as everything went downhill and communication went to shit and so did effort and confidence and respect and it just all fucking sucked, he cheated on me while we were on a break. Just danced with a girl at a club, but grinded. And I read the messages he sent to his friend describing how great her body felt. That's how I found out. I felt the sky fall and my lungs felt like they didn't want to believe what they just read - cuz I couldn't breathe and didn't want to be awake anymore. I slept and slept and woke up feeling fine until I realized he broke our connection that I loved so much, and forced myself to go back to sleep so I wouldn't have to feel the pain anymore. He was...a scumbag. And then begged for me to get back together with him after spending a month apart. He said he realized just after it all ended that he loved me and that there was nobody else for him. It was a shitty thing for him to do. It would be a slightly different story if he told me what he did in the first place. But he enjoyed cheating on me and bragged about it. When I confronted him, he denied it and tried to guilt to for accusing him of being unfaithful. I told him I knew for sure then, so he retracted previous things said and apologized profusely, saying that he "betrayed me" and could never make it up. Yeah, so he was...a scumbag. Just the scum of the earth. His friend egged him on saying "well you're not with her right now! did you touch this new girl at all?" and the guy who I thought was my great love said that he touched her hips and that her ass felt nice and that when they grinded he should have "went lower." It. killed me. I actually feel like a part of my died the day that I read those messages. He proceeded to say that he wondered how far he could have gone with her but stopped because he still was in a relationship.
It killed me. The part of me that was in love with love probably died that day. I don't love love.
I haven't written in a long time, partially because I think that I really didn't want to admit to myself that I was wronged by the person I thought I connected with so well. Thinking back at it, he really didn't appreciate me until it ended. I let him try to redeem himself and we have been pseudo-together since he realized that he fucked up and broke down without me, realizing that I was the one who has always cared the most. More than his closest friends and family, I was the one who had always been there for him. And he treated me like nothing, for months. My ego was bruised badly, dented and fucked up and shrunk. It's been recovering, but life has been a lot less lovely. He knew that we had a connection the whole time, but took me for granted and thought that I was less of value in every way than he should have. It is upsetting. It has been wrong. And though I still see him now and we still laugh as hard as I did when we got together because we still connect, and he has tried to make it right, I know in the back of my heart that I am not all in. Because I never want to feel like death again.
I don't think I'll ever re-read this post, because it hurts. But it's true and honest and real. And I think it's important that I let myself become more connected with my thoughts by writing it down for the record. It's the truth, That Girl. This is real life, not a story in a wonderfully written novel.
Hopefully, the next pages of my life can be of news that I want to re-read again, and that I no longer feel connected to the feeling of a small empty space in the back of my heart.
To live at all, is to laugh and fuck and love deeply and undeniably. But hey, Love with your smarts too !! Don't get fucked over lol
-That Girl, I wonder why I the gods (ooh spiritual) decided to give me this life
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