I sat on the floor of my sister’s bedroom while he sat on her bed. My sister was between us, as if she was a barrier in case emotions got the better of us. After the laughter of a story I can’t remember, he becomes silent. With a clearing of his throat, he lets it out.
“Have you seen my Twitter lately?” He asked me. I looked at him, only to see something cloud his eyes. When I go back to this I realize that it was fear.
“To be honest, your Twitter isn’t the first thing on my mind.” I said. It was true, I hadn’t looked at his profile in a long time. Not because I didn’t care, but because I wanted to avoid it and him.
He didn’t hesitate the next sentence.
“I’m bisexual.”
In the movies, and books, they say that the wind was knocked out of them when they experience something extreme. In that moment, I believed it to be true. Those two words resonated in my ears and the air in my lungs began to feel like nothing. My surroundings blurred in the background, and I suddenly felt the piercing shock of his statement.
“Wow.” I said. It was all I could muster out.
“Are you okay?” He asked.
“Yeah. It’s just I’ve known you my whole life.” I said. The rest of the night I was silent, but my mind was loud with his voice saying “bisexual”. I wanted to leave the room and keep walking until we were both miles apart. I just needed to breathe.
At one point, while we were watching some pointless television show, I was laying on my side against the wooden floor. He was sitting next to me. In a split second, he laughed and I tried to hold onto that sound for my dear life. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I knew that things would never be the same. Or maybe it was because his laugh felt like the warm sunshine hitting my skin. I missed it. Still do.
To understand this situation, we should go to the beginning. Andrew (this isn’t his name, but out of respect) and I are family friends. His father his best friends with my uncle. I have seen Andrew through his phases of the Justin Bieber hairstyle, and the various graphic t-shirts that showed off his love for Pokémon. He has seen me through my phases as well. From glasses in middle school, all the way to the moment when I needed a friend after my great-grandmother died.
In the many years that followed our childhood into adolescence, something clicked into place. The beginning of my freshman year of high school was met with Friday nights in his presence. I laughed in a way I didn’t before, and that happiness was a feeling I wanted to keep. Soon enough, butterflies overtook my stomach.
Even today, I can’t wrap around the day he asked me to be his girlfriend because it felt like something out of a movie. Our families were both celebrating Mother’s Day at Mickey’s Club Resort. Him and I both accompanied my little cousin to the playground. It was naïve really. The thrill of him asking me if I liked him and vice versa. The climatic moment was when we were both sitting on the swing set and he asked me the question.
“Will you be my girlfriend?” He asked.
“Yes.” I said as my cheeks burned.
Granted, this was my first relationship and I had no idea what I was doing. It was a situation I was going in blind for. For me, it was weird to have someone enter my life that I normally don’t talk about. I was scared that he was going to figure out the dark side of my temper, or the fact that happiness in a relationship was a rare thing for me to see.
When I look back at the time we spent together, the moment that has stained itself in my brain was the night we watched Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Slayer. It was the night before my 15th birthday party and I had just shown him the dress that I was going to wear. While the movie played the grotesque scenes, I laid my head on his chest. Underneath his shirt, and skin, I heard his heartbeat. The sound of his heart was like hammer on a piece of cloth. It kept going and going, reminding me that he was good and the moment was infinite.
I ended it. I claimed that I needed to focus on school, but the truth was that I wanted him to find someone that wasn’t me. I didn’t think I deserved his good heart, his understanding character. I was the opposite of Andrew.
After failed attempts in both parties, we decided to remain friends. High school was divided into two parts for me; getting my IB Diploma and think about Andrew as little as possible. The first one came true, but the second one didn’t. We went to the same school, saw each other at the same family gatherings. His family talked with my family. His brother was friends with my sister and I. Even when I didn’t want to, I managed to see him most of the time.
I noticed that he changed as well. He began to hang out with the people in the Drama Club at school. He left the IB program as well, declaring that it was too difficult. I also found out that he was smoking weed and getting drunk at parties.
As the years went by, I wanted to understand the new person he was. My sister would say that he was hanging out with his friends and doing normal things that teenagers do. I agreed but in the back of my head, I feared the person he was becoming. It was selfish to think this way, but the boy that I had grown up with was different than the one that I talked to at my cousin’s birthday parties.
Andrew didn’t talk to me as often as he used to. I attributed it to the fact that he had his new friends, so why did he need me? It stung, to be honest. I began to notice that our “friendship” formed into a loose acquaintance. He talked to me with careful subjects and steered clear from the topic of relationships. Especially ours. This took me a long time to realize, but I lost a friend which pained me more than losing him as a boyfriend.
The time after he told me of his bisexuality, I was angry. Angry and confused. I wondered if I was an experiment to him, since he had known of his sexual orientation his whole life. If this is who he is, then why couldn’t he be that with me?
These questions, and anger, stopped me from moving on. I lost my attention to almost everything, making my thoughts revolve around that night. I wanted answers on how to let go of him. I would’ve done anything but I learned that things aren’t as simple.
If you want to know the reality of it all, I still have days where I miss him. The longing comes suddenly, whether I’m listening to Jon Bellion or sitting in my room. I feel my heart scrunch up while the pain warms my body. Then, as if it’s an instant reaction, my mind jumps back to him and I wonder if he’s okay.
People say that if you love something, you should let it go. It sounds corny but it is true. It has taken me years to understand that if we hadn’t broken up and if he hadn’t found a bit of himself in high school, then he wouldn’t have come to terms with who he is. I know that I made a mistake to end things the way I did years ago, but he seems happier in the photos on his Instagram.
Andrew is in school in New York City while I’m at UCF. This distance is weird at times and I constantly fight the urge to call. But, even with all the words we said to each other and the things we have done, I know that the second I dial his phone number he will answer it without resentment.
I have an ex-boyfriend who is bisexual, and although that hurt me, I wouldn’t change it for the world.