To the ex-love-interests that have already walked through my life, this one’s for you (and all the trauma you caused).
I’m only 19 and I feel like I want to be done with men. They always start out so well and I don’t know what happens. I have encountered some of the most interesting people trying to find love so here are a few of the ones who impacted me the most.
Baseball boy:
Context: We met in my Driver’s Ed class freshman year. I didn’t think he was cute at first (all the ones that I actually like tend not to catch my eye in the beginning – unpack that how you want to) but he was so funny, his laugh made me laugh. He was the first boy who I really liked and man, did I act CRAZY because of that. Sometimes I still think about him and imagine what would have happened if I just kept my mind in my head. But he wasn’t perfect – he drank and smoked and his belief system was… different than mine. But you never truly get over the first guy you fall that hard for.
So: Dear (redacted), I think we found each other at a good point in our lives: young enough so all of the dumb shit we did to each other was only fleeting, to be forgotten when the next high school boy with dimples flashed a smile, but you left an impression on me. One that burned lessons in my head about the bullshit I wasn’t going to stand for. I just hate that I feel like you would’ve been good in my life if I had just met you a little later. I hope life is treating you better than it was and I hope you’re still using that charm to catch any pretty girl you want.
Break Up #873:
Context: I need to start by telling you guys that I did not have any interest in this man when we met. Not even a sliver of, “oh he has nice hair.” Nothing. I think it’s mostly because I refused to meet him in person at first (we met over Snapchat, isn’t 21st century romance so wonderful?) because when I saw him for the first time (in real life) he had these really cute deep-set dimples that I really liked. The only reason we actually met was because I crashed my car and got stuck at school one afternoon waiting for my mom. He saw me, cornered me, and ignited a conversation. Kind of hard to run away at that point. We started dating a few months later and it was actually really nice (for a while, that is). He bought me so many bouquets of flowers that my room felt like a garden and he wrote all of these beautiful letters to me. But, the ending of the honeymoon phase is inevitable and when our little sanctuary for happiness ended, it truly broke my heart.
So: Dear (redacted), you are the only person on this list that I think I truly loved. Or, loved as much as I knew how when I was a 16 year old. However, even in novels and in movies, I have seen few romances that were quite as toxic as ours. On and off in a hurricane of raindrops, some icy cold and some warm summer showers. For two and a half years, I lied to my parents and my best friends (almost completely losing a few) for you because you always promised to change. You never did. You made it so hard for me to believe that I’ll ever be loved properly and I resent you for it. But, you had shit to work through and I just happened to come in at a time where you thought you could throw it all on me. I could easily say it’s all your fault but I won’t. You were deceitful and made me hate who I was sometimes but you did love me at one point, I know you loved me so much. Even to this day, you still try for me. For a while, I would give in, sneak out for late now-confessions of inability to move on, but I gave up. You wouldn’t change no matter how hard I willed the universe to let you. I just want you to love your life with no strings attached. Thank you for making me understand how much more I deserved.
Mr. Universe
Context: I come from a town where the most fun thing to do on a Saturday night is to get Sonic and hang out in someone’s car. My best friend and I were in my car at one of the dozens of parks in my hometown when a really tall guy and his friend approached my car. They just wanted to know if we had left a backpack outside because there was one on a picnic table (we did not) but my friend immediately decided the tall boy was the hottest man she’d ever seen. With a broken pen and an old envelope from a pay stub, I wrote a little letter for her to put in his car. Something along the lines of, “She thinks you’re pretty fine… She’s 5’10, something to consider… Here’s her snap…” The next day, she added him and she fell so fast for him. A week later, he wanted to hang out but my friend is a baby and so she insisted I came. I show up, she decides she actually doesn’t like him that much after about 30 minutes of talking, but now we’re stuck for another few hours with him. Finally, when it becomes almost unbearably awkward, he asks us to meet him at a DIFFERENT park (crazy, I know) after he picks up one of his friends. We showed up and I took one look at his friend and remembered thinking, “…damn”. We started hanging out frequently, he liked to go to lookout spots or abandoned parking lots and open my sunroof and talk for hours about space. Supernovas, constellations, planet orbits. We would share songs with one another while we looked. I decided a few months later that I just wasn’t as interested as I wanted to be and cut it off (in a bad way, I was a bitch and I regret it more than anything), but I will think about him when I look at the stars for the rest of my life.
So, dear (redacted), I was pretty awful to you at the end. I am so sorry for the way I treated you. I got overwhelmed and needed it to end and I went about it stupidly. You were funny and kind and paid attention to details that I barely remembered about myself but I just knew you weren’t the one. I wished you were, for a very long time, but I knew better. You weren’t perfect but you tried so hard for me and my appreciation of that is more than you could ever imagine. I’m sorry I couldn’t do for you what you did for me. You have a girlfriend now and I hope she’s what you see in the stars plus everything more.
The One I Can Count On:
And finally.. dear me, I’ve seen some of my closest friends get into relationships and put up with shit that they never deserved (cause they are perfect and too forgiving, fairies with pixie dust that help a heart feel like it belongs) but you never let a boy walk all over you. If you had something to say, you said it. If a boy was disrespectful, you were right back to them. I know how badly these boys destroyed your heart and confidence and made you wary of the way any person looked at you, but you kept me safe and healthy and didn’t give in to bad things even though there were hundreds of slippery slopes to slide down. Even though I still don’t approve of many of the choices you made, I’m still grateful for the fighter our heart (and my mom, of course) shaped for me. I’ll always have your back, thank you for (mostly) having mine.
Maybe another day, another time, I’ll be my own first choice. What a day that will be.