I nearly buried the beginnings of my relationship in the graveyard of forgotten memories. Nearly. But today they came back.
I didn’t know how incredibly lucky was at the time. Having spent all of high school going in and out of unhealthy relationships, I don’t think I quite knew how to handle the strength of emotion that came from a good one – so I did what I did best. I left. … Or I tried.
I ended things a little over a month in, and proceeded to download and use Tinder. One week and two repulsive dates later I requested to spend my birthday with the boy I had just rejected. Because we were still friends. Now, I’m not saying “friends” can’t be normal and work out, but most people don’t want solo time with someone they just broke things off with on their 18th birthday. Needless to say, somewhere between thinking about him on my repulsive dates and my birthday “non date”, we ended up back as a thing.
Or so I thought, until it still wasn’t working about a week or two later. If that isn’t bad enough, I broke it off (unknowingly) about 10 minutes before he left for a funeral.
I waited around for 3 hours for him get back so I could make sure he was okay.
I mean, I’m not saying I was blind or anything. BUT REALLY, how blind can a girl be? How do you tell someone it won’t work, just to turn around and wait for them in an unfamiliar area for several hours. Until I was pretty sure that this funeral wasn’t ending any time soon and I really needed to be home (long story short, events went over time and phones died and we didn’t meet again that day).
There was never a point where we didn’t text daily. And between the loss of a close family friend, my mixed signals and some other unfortunate drama, he wasn’t in the happiest place. Guess who left in the middle of the night to go up to his area and check on him? If you guessed me, you’re right. If you didn’t, I don’t think you see where this story is going. I was there past when the subway runs, and taxi’d home in the middle of the night (RIP to about $30).
I’d imagine by this point he was pretty confused, and I still thought I was totally sane and this was all normal. To make things weirder, I at one point said “I can’t walk down the street and not hold your hand. It feels weird.”
I also got him to come give me tummy rubs one night. He biked about 45 mins from his house, arriving after 11pm. I think it’s about time just friends becomes “just friends”.
By this point we were just about off to university and that was the last we saw of each other till we got there. On the first day, I saw him briefly during the day. I was with friends, he was with friends. And I sorta figured that is how life was going to be. I was a bit delusional.
If you haven’t figured it out yet, I kind of reject emotions. And so I refused to let myself feel anything about university, minus crying when I saw my dog in the morning and realized I had to leave him finally. That chokes me up to write even now. When night time came, I shut my door for all of 2 minutes before realizing I was swamped with emotions. This was the rest of my life. I wasn’t living at home anymore, I had to build new friendships in this place without the slightest idea of who people were and how we would mesh. There was 1 person I wanted to see. After 20 confused and panicked minutes of navigating campus, I was in his room. He was the only one I wanted to see. As a friend. It sorta seems normal still, I guess. Sort of. He was familiar.
But I did it the next night too. And that night he went to kiss my nose, and I didn’t catch on and we ended up actually kissing. This was probably the most confusing point in the entire thing, and for the next few days we became the secretly kissing “friends”.Until I had to be all stupid and dramatic and say no, it won’t work, it doesn’t work, it has to stop.
But before that, we had two sleepovers in a row. I caught on to the idea that things weren’t okay and refused to leave his side. Not even at night. It was the morning after the second night that I finally decided things wouldn’t work. He told me he couldn’t just be friends, which led to me bursting out in tears that went on for well over an hour until he promised he’d stay in my life. This day is also our anniversary. At some point that night I realized nothing ever changed. Whatever we said we were or weren’t, we always acted like a couple. I was long past being in love before I could even recognize it. And so the happily ever after began.
Now, I can see that a lot of people might think I was being selfish, or leading him on. Perhaps I was, although not intentionally. It was a very confusing time. One thing I know, is if someone still thinks you’re worth it after all that – hold. on. to. them. The other sort of point in this is to not judge people’s relationships. I used to think it was ridiculous to break up and get back together with someone, and if any friend of mine in this situation had asked for advice, I would have said to end it and cut all communication. But sometimes it doesn’t work out as smoothly as you’d like. And that’s okay.