A long, long response to a meme.
So raincollector followed some meme listing the men (or women) you have dated or had a crush on. Never one to argue with expouding my marvellous dramas through life, I figure this might be a fun exercise.
I'm going to break this up into cuts! Woo!
Those who have known me long enough have probably figure out that I fall fast and furiously in love with single people for months at a time. High school was all about the crushes that never amounted to anything much but harmless crush, so without mentioning a particular one (that we shall save for later), I will try to list as many as I can from my teens:
Cheryl, Meghan, Sharlah, Dana, Karen, Hillary, Heather, Evi. Most of these people were lovely ladies, smart and intelligent, and I would probably have driven most of the into insanity with how desperate for girls I was in high school.
The last two were exclusively post-university. I was working for a video store when a girl by the name of Heather began to work there. She was gorgeous, and intelligent, and very introspective. She intimidated the fuck out of me in that way that I just swooned over her relentlessly.
We hung out a few times, instances that, ultimately, I think in retrospects were dates. We went to a few movies and hung out a lot, and I really do regret that it was a muck up. I sought her out on Facebook. I didn't add her, but she has since moved to France, gotten married and recently had a baby. This makes me very happy, because she was a lovely, lovely girl.
Evi was a customer at that video store. She also worked at a coffee shop down the street. I became a regular of there, but I never got a chance to ask her out. And then I went to University.
At university, I was one of seven guys on a floor of fifty-five people. Needless, that's a very off-balanced number, so there were many women I could fall for.
Let's ignore most of them. They weren't really notable enough.
But there was totally The Small-Towner. I give nicknames now since they get more notable to my life, because I start actually discovering success with the ladies.
Oh, the Small-Towner. A lovely, wonderful woman. Smart, pretty, funny, mature, (erk... Christian) friend. I mooned over her for a long, long while. Near the end of the year, I made a move. We spent a night together, just kind of hugging. I probably should have kissed it. I KNOW I should have kissed her. I know she wanted me to.
If I kissed her, maybe she wouldn't have turned me down the next day. She did it face to face and respectfully, and so I always admired her after that, when we became pretty good friends. Later, she'd admit that she really was interested, but that she apparently was going through a romantically destructive period and would rather not have put me through that. In the spacious place in my heart for special ladies, she has a prominent one.
There was The Vanity, who I became fast friends with. Raised in a wealthy circle, full of shallowness and "What car does he drive?" she broke up with a boyfriend she was convinced she was going to marry. Ultimately, it turned into one night of cheap topless fooling around. But she wouldn't let me kiss her.
Hey! Take score! That's two girls, and no kissing. I had BEEN WITH A TOPLESS LADY but I hadn't kissed one.
That first year at university ended, and I moved into a half a house with some friends. We stayed for the summer, and for those three months had another guest staying with us. This was The Biologist, and things zapped with us initially. She was my first kiss, because she kissed me first. I really enjoyed the time with her, and enjoyed all things except for two: she was rebounding pretty hardcore and I was her rebound; she developed a huge crush on our roommate's best friend.
People, getting involved with your roommate is a bad idea. Especially in a non-official, "open relationship" sense. Especially if her room is directly above yours. When she hooks up with him. And says that your not taking it well (because, you will finally accept years later, you're a monogamist) is you trying to control her. I ran away that night. Went home to Toronto. And cried a shit-tonne.
Five years later, I went to our roommate's wedding. She had dated the guy she hooked up with for over a year. That had ended, but he, she, her new boyfriend and myself all sat around at the wedding and chatted like old friends.
Later that year game the Fake Goth, the first to actually be referred to as a "girlfriend." We dated for three weeks. In that time, she scared the living crap out of me with her driving, as we drove from Peterborough to Toronto in just over and hour. She wanted me to skip Rocky Horror (this was when Rocky was one of the most important parts of my life) to go to a fet party with her friends dressed in a dog collar. I turned her down. Three weeks after we got together, she worked me into breaking up with her. To be fair, I was still hurting pretty bad over The Biologist, and didn't understand how to be in a relationship. I don't know what became of her. Can't say I care.
The drought happened then. Didn't pick up until Germany, a year later.
There was The Veterinarian, a girl in my German residence who, by all accounts, was my TYPE. See, I go for what some might say are "the plain girls," but I like to say that it's because their standards of beauty are far too narrow. I like smart girls, bright girls, with far too much independence. I like lovely girls, and the Vet was all of those things. Oh how I crushed on her. I think she liked me back, too. I'm almost CERTAIN she loved me back, but my naivete and inexperience didn't let me do anything. I flipflopped between caring and trying not to care that I totally missed my chance.
However, along came punkybee, who in many ways is the standard by which the others are held up to. We only had two months together (almost to the day) but immediately I knew she was something pretty remarkable as a person and as a romantic companion. She proved to me that healthy relationships aren't a chore or a task. That they're fun and happy and you WANT to spend time together. We broke up not out of a desire to end things, but because we were leaving Europe and going back to our respective homes. This helped us stay friends, but so did a mutual respect and true caring for each other. She's getting married this summer and I'm so excited to bring my current girlfriend with me to celebrate it. Nothing will stop me from going.
The year following Europe was a very difficult time. I had dropped out of university and was struggling to figure out what I was doing. It was then when the Actress came along for a two month stretch. Strange, physically confused, and more concerned with how glamourous her actions through life made her, I didn't understand. She had broken up with her boyfriend a few months earlier and when she confronted me about where our relationship was going over instant message and I turned her down, she went back to him. I don't even try to understand her brain.
The next little while is a bit of a haze. There was the Singer, and the Week of Glory, the Summer of Shaggy that ultimately ended with ophelia_feigns and I being in a relationship that lasted six months. She and I were an odd couple. I mean, our getting together was dramatic and weird, as would happen when you date through your social circle, but ultimately there was just way too much that we didn't understand about each other properly be together. I see very clearly what drew me to her, and all of those reasons are still there, but I think she can agree with me that we just didn't see eye to eye on fundamental wavelengths to make it work.
Somewhere in there I met The Literary Geek on a dating site. This girl somehow avoided meeting me for over a year despite initially agreeing to go to a movie together. When we finally met, she brought her friends. They were mean and belligerrent and seemed painfully unaware that I was on my own in their group. When it finished, I went and got drunk with my friend and was miserable. But strangely, we stayed friends. We're still friends to this day. For a LOT of that I have harboured a secret fascination for her that never seems to go away, but I also have realized that there was far too much that would keep us from actually working (including the fact that she avoids physical contact like the plague and I'm a PDA fiend). I'm quite pleased that our nefarious scheming online invariably leads to good ideas, and she's a good fellow collaborator.
After I headed back to university, I embroiled myself in the swing dance community that was burgeoning there. One of them was a ridiculously adorable brunette girl, and I admired her from afar. At least, until a party I threw. When we ended up on the couch. Making out. For hours. The Swing Dancer and I went out on one date, and then she ignored me for a week when I went to Mexico. She didn't bother answering any of my attempts to contact her until I got back, effectively making my vacation to Mexico a miserable time of moping about instead of playing the field of hot girls there. That was not all that cool. I totally lusted after her and really liked who she was. We are still friends, more or less, up and down, close and not, but I can never understand where she is in her head.
When that fell apart, though, another came out of the woodwork. I'll call her the Treehugger because this vegetarian conservationist environmental science student wore jackets made out of hemp. She was my first in some pretty excellent things, and our six month relationship was one of happiness and a great time. We broke up earlier than we should have, purely by accident, even though I was figuring it wasn't going to last after she went away for the summer. In many ways I broke my own heart with that, but I see in retrospect that we really weren't all that similar. She's a lovely girl and we're still good friends. In fact, she messaged me yesterday from Guayana where she was studying new species of fish in the rainforest.
We rapidly approach my present. We rapidly approach some very difficult situations to describe. Enter my rebound for the Treehugger, the Doctor's Companion. By all accounts my perfect woman. A scientist, fucking hot as all hell. Bizarre. Geeky. A dancer. And rebounding too. She had broken up with someone after two years and we hooked up out of our palatable mutual attraction and shared interests. I'm still amazed that I got to sleep with someone as hot as she was. But the truth is that, as with The Biologist and the Actress, I was the placeholder. Girls who had approached me in the past whom I turned down I did so because they'd admit to rebounding and wanting me. And the girls I'd been with, the same thing. This is not an undeniable pattern.
After eight months of fun and me falling pretty terribly in love with her, she dumped me. Over the phone. Mostly unexpectedly. Had had a nice night of breakup sex (a situation which cost me another friend... long story) and I spent two months mooning over her and hoping we'd get back together (she was off to the south for a month with her mother). Finally, very defensively and accusatorily, she announced that she had gotten back together with her ex, who she had never actually stopped talking to, had never stopped feeling things for, had never told about me (though Facebook tipped him off pretty well), and despite telling me over and over again how she just wanted him out of his life, now suddenly admitted to previously hoping they'd get back together despite her breaking up with him. Now told me that she proved she could spend a year without him.
It broke my goddamn heart. I felt exploited, and stabbed in the chest, and used, and absolutely crushed. I spent a few months wandering around aimlessly in life, grasping for anything that was emotionally pertinent and happy for me, and couldn't find it.
I was desperate for some sort of closure or resolution in my life. So I made both the biggest mistake and greatest move in my romantic life: I recontacted Cherry. It is for her that I almost locked this particular entry until I realized that I don't have to hide this fact of my life from her possibly prying eyes, and frankly, if she's reading this then maybe she'll learn something.
Readers of my blog know this name over the past year and a half or so. Followers of my life will most definitely know. She was there in high school, where we fawned over each other, completely unrequited and never at the same time. Repeatedly, back and forth, in that angsty teenaged way. I went to university, and she was three years younger so stayed in high school, and before I left we went to a movie and had a moment. An "Almost but not quite" moment. It was that moment that I'd spend the next six years regretting. She ended up with another guy who she wanted to marry, and I cried in my heart. This, my friends, was The One Who Got Away.
A few years later, we got into a fight about something stupid. It was blown way out of proportion for some reason that I still can't figure out, but it would cause us not to talk for nearly four years. And in a moment of emotional desperation over The Doctor's Companion, I reached out in hopes that she had grown. I hope that maybe she, like I, realized how our argument was something silly and both of us misunderstanding each other. That maybe we could ask forgiveness of each other and let it go.
We did, or so I thought. That whole "asking forgiveness" thing? Yeah, I did that, but didn't realize until much later that she didn't. In fact, she still held me largely accountable.
God, I was so happy. So frigging joyful about it, like if Angel and Buffy got back together after years of being apart. Who'd have thought, then, that four months later it would have imploded as bad as it did, with root causes exactly like the fight four years earlier. That nothing had changed except that I understood life better.
She was hurting over an ex. I understood that but she didn't understand that I did. She held me emotionally accountable to his mistakes. She was abusive and irrational and demanding. And ultimately, callous, manipulative, and would blame me for being sympathetic to her and, y'know, caring about her. She treated love like some bastard child of hate, that in order to love each other we had to fight and cause pain for one another. She taught me the exact opposite of what relationships should have been in my eyes.
Even when it got particularly horrible, I stuck through it. She was The One Who Got Away. She was IMPORTANT. I even put my friendship with some people (like raincollector, who kept me so sane as it all went to hell) on the line in order to fight for something she just didn't think deserved fighting for. I thought that tenderness and patience would win her over, and that the pain she felt would go away. I hadn't noticed that this wasn't a Breakup Bitterness. I hadn't recognized that this misery was deeply engrained in the person she was. So far deep and she would lash out viciously whenever someone even tried to point it out. She didn't want help. She wanted to hate, and my rope was thinning.
When she callously told me she made out with someone and how that was a good thing, I freaked out and didn't talk to her for a day. I asked her for three days to work it out. In that time, in that three days, she started dating someone else.
We tried to be friends, but it didn't happen. The rest of my life was so disgusting at the time that I just couldn't hold on to the resentment that was building up.
I left.
For four straight years I pined for her. I missed her and yearned to be back in touch. I wrote a dozen emails to her that I never sent. I hoped that she was going okay, and I waited in vain for her to write me that she was sorry to have flipped out on me the way she did.
Every time, I regretted not going for her in high school, and I always wished I had gone for it in That Moment That Never Was, that day by my car outside her apartment. But you know what? I wouldn't trade it any more. Not for anything. Going through all of that was vitally important to who I am now, to properly understanding some very important, fundamental truths about what it means to be a person, a lover, and a companion.
Without that horrible, messed up experience, I don't think I'd have appreciated the one who came, and still comes, next.
Audrey is simply a pleasure. To say I "rescued" her wouldn't be a stretch, which is a shame. She had been locked in a terrible situation for longer than she'd rather have been, and if I didn't come in when I did, I bet she'd still be there. I won't expand on it, but people, it was just not cool.
Getting her out of it was not easy. It was trying and difficult and it's still sometimes bothersome. But it was worth it. People stressed when she moved in with me for a month, scared that this was moving way too fast. I think we surprised them when she moved right back out and in to her own apartment. I'm proud to say that we took it slow and easy and steady, and when I finally told her I loved her months later (the first time I said it and meant it truthfully), it felt great.
Despite what came before, she has been immensely strong-willed, has seen her own life improve tenfold through her own desire to acheive it. I am so proud of her. I realize what relationships are supposed to be now. They're trust, mutual respect, that content feeling when cuddling in the afternoon. Where you don't care how long you do so, that you can just lie there for three hours and it doesn't matter.
Her birthday was last week, and now that I am gainfully employed once again, I can spend money. And I happily, without flinching spent money on her, and it felt like no object.
We're only eight months in, but this has been the best my love life has been ever. We have talks about the near future and it feels great.
My lovelife started slow, kicked in with a bang and then dipped into self-pity. There are things I regret, things I've forgotten about, things I wish I did. It's still early to know if Audrey is the end of that saga, but to have her now makes it all worthwhile.
So worthwhile.
I'm going to break this up into cuts! Woo!
Those who have known me long enough have probably figure out that I fall fast and furiously in love with single people for months at a time. High school was all about the crushes that never amounted to anything much but harmless crush, so without mentioning a particular one (that we shall save for later), I will try to list as many as I can from my teens:
Cheryl, Meghan, Sharlah, Dana, Karen, Hillary, Heather, Evi. Most of these people were lovely ladies, smart and intelligent, and I would probably have driven most of the into insanity with how desperate for girls I was in high school.
The last two were exclusively post-university. I was working for a video store when a girl by the name of Heather began to work there. She was gorgeous, and intelligent, and very introspective. She intimidated the fuck out of me in that way that I just swooned over her relentlessly.
We hung out a few times, instances that, ultimately, I think in retrospects were dates. We went to a few movies and hung out a lot, and I really do regret that it was a muck up. I sought her out on Facebook. I didn't add her, but she has since moved to France, gotten married and recently had a baby. This makes me very happy, because she was a lovely, lovely girl.
Evi was a customer at that video store. She also worked at a coffee shop down the street. I became a regular of there, but I never got a chance to ask her out. And then I went to University.
At university, I was one of seven guys on a floor of fifty-five people. Needless, that's a very off-balanced number, so there were many women I could fall for.
Let's ignore most of them. They weren't really notable enough.
But there was totally The Small-Towner. I give nicknames now since they get more notable to my life, because I start actually discovering success with the ladies.
Oh, the Small-Towner. A lovely, wonderful woman. Smart, pretty, funny, mature, (erk... Christian) friend. I mooned over her for a long, long while. Near the end of the year, I made a move. We spent a night together, just kind of hugging. I probably should have kissed it. I KNOW I should have kissed her. I know she wanted me to.
If I kissed her, maybe she wouldn't have turned me down the next day. She did it face to face and respectfully, and so I always admired her after that, when we became pretty good friends. Later, she'd admit that she really was interested, but that she apparently was going through a romantically destructive period and would rather not have put me through that. In the spacious place in my heart for special ladies, she has a prominent one.
There was The Vanity, who I became fast friends with. Raised in a wealthy circle, full of shallowness and "What car does he drive?" she broke up with a boyfriend she was convinced she was going to marry. Ultimately, it turned into one night of cheap topless fooling around. But she wouldn't let me kiss her.
Hey! Take score! That's two girls, and no kissing. I had BEEN WITH A TOPLESS LADY but I hadn't kissed one.
That first year at university ended, and I moved into a half a house with some friends. We stayed for the summer, and for those three months had another guest staying with us. This was The Biologist, and things zapped with us initially. She was my first kiss, because she kissed me first. I really enjoyed the time with her, and enjoyed all things except for two: she was rebounding pretty hardcore and I was her rebound; she developed a huge crush on our roommate's best friend.
People, getting involved with your roommate is a bad idea. Especially in a non-official, "open relationship" sense. Especially if her room is directly above yours. When she hooks up with him. And says that your not taking it well (because, you will finally accept years later, you're a monogamist) is you trying to control her. I ran away that night. Went home to Toronto. And cried a shit-tonne.
Five years later, I went to our roommate's wedding. She had dated the guy she hooked up with for over a year. That had ended, but he, she, her new boyfriend and myself all sat around at the wedding and chatted like old friends.
Later that year game the Fake Goth, the first to actually be referred to as a "girlfriend." We dated for three weeks. In that time, she scared the living crap out of me with her driving, as we drove from Peterborough to Toronto in just over and hour. She wanted me to skip Rocky Horror (this was when Rocky was one of the most important parts of my life) to go to a fet party with her friends dressed in a dog collar. I turned her down. Three weeks after we got together, she worked me into breaking up with her. To be fair, I was still hurting pretty bad over The Biologist, and didn't understand how to be in a relationship. I don't know what became of her. Can't say I care.
The drought happened then. Didn't pick up until Germany, a year later.
There was The Veterinarian, a girl in my German residence who, by all accounts, was my TYPE. See, I go for what some might say are "the plain girls," but I like to say that it's because their standards of beauty are far too narrow. I like smart girls, bright girls, with far too much independence. I like lovely girls, and the Vet was all of those things. Oh how I crushed on her. I think she liked me back, too. I'm almost CERTAIN she loved me back, but my naivete and inexperience didn't let me do anything. I flipflopped between caring and trying not to care that I totally missed my chance.
However, along came punkybee, who in many ways is the standard by which the others are held up to. We only had two months together (almost to the day) but immediately I knew she was something pretty remarkable as a person and as a romantic companion. She proved to me that healthy relationships aren't a chore or a task. That they're fun and happy and you WANT to spend time together. We broke up not out of a desire to end things, but because we were leaving Europe and going back to our respective homes. This helped us stay friends, but so did a mutual respect and true caring for each other. She's getting married this summer and I'm so excited to bring my current girlfriend with me to celebrate it. Nothing will stop me from going.
The year following Europe was a very difficult time. I had dropped out of university and was struggling to figure out what I was doing. It was then when the Actress came along for a two month stretch. Strange, physically confused, and more concerned with how glamourous her actions through life made her, I didn't understand. She had broken up with her boyfriend a few months earlier and when she confronted me about where our relationship was going over instant message and I turned her down, she went back to him. I don't even try to understand her brain.
The next little while is a bit of a haze. There was the Singer, and the Week of Glory, the Summer of Shaggy that ultimately ended with ophelia_feigns and I being in a relationship that lasted six months. She and I were an odd couple. I mean, our getting together was dramatic and weird, as would happen when you date through your social circle, but ultimately there was just way too much that we didn't understand about each other properly be together. I see very clearly what drew me to her, and all of those reasons are still there, but I think she can agree with me that we just didn't see eye to eye on fundamental wavelengths to make it work.
Somewhere in there I met The Literary Geek on a dating site. This girl somehow avoided meeting me for over a year despite initially agreeing to go to a movie together. When we finally met, she brought her friends. They were mean and belligerrent and seemed painfully unaware that I was on my own in their group. When it finished, I went and got drunk with my friend and was miserable. But strangely, we stayed friends. We're still friends to this day. For a LOT of that I have harboured a secret fascination for her that never seems to go away, but I also have realized that there was far too much that would keep us from actually working (including the fact that she avoids physical contact like the plague and I'm a PDA fiend). I'm quite pleased that our nefarious scheming online invariably leads to good ideas, and she's a good fellow collaborator.
After I headed back to university, I embroiled myself in the swing dance community that was burgeoning there. One of them was a ridiculously adorable brunette girl, and I admired her from afar. At least, until a party I threw. When we ended up on the couch. Making out. For hours. The Swing Dancer and I went out on one date, and then she ignored me for a week when I went to Mexico. She didn't bother answering any of my attempts to contact her until I got back, effectively making my vacation to Mexico a miserable time of moping about instead of playing the field of hot girls there. That was not all that cool. I totally lusted after her and really liked who she was. We are still friends, more or less, up and down, close and not, but I can never understand where she is in her head.
When that fell apart, though, another came out of the woodwork. I'll call her the Treehugger because this vegetarian conservationist environmental science student wore jackets made out of hemp. She was my first in some pretty excellent things, and our six month relationship was one of happiness and a great time. We broke up earlier than we should have, purely by accident, even though I was figuring it wasn't going to last after she went away for the summer. In many ways I broke my own heart with that, but I see in retrospect that we really weren't all that similar. She's a lovely girl and we're still good friends. In fact, she messaged me yesterday from Guayana where she was studying new species of fish in the rainforest.
We rapidly approach my present. We rapidly approach some very difficult situations to describe. Enter my rebound for the Treehugger, the Doctor's Companion. By all accounts my perfect woman. A scientist, fucking hot as all hell. Bizarre. Geeky. A dancer. And rebounding too. She had broken up with someone after two years and we hooked up out of our palatable mutual attraction and shared interests. I'm still amazed that I got to sleep with someone as hot as she was. But the truth is that, as with The Biologist and the Actress, I was the placeholder. Girls who had approached me in the past whom I turned down I did so because they'd admit to rebounding and wanting me. And the girls I'd been with, the same thing. This is not an undeniable pattern.
After eight months of fun and me falling pretty terribly in love with her, she dumped me. Over the phone. Mostly unexpectedly. Had had a nice night of breakup sex (a situation which cost me another friend... long story) and I spent two months mooning over her and hoping we'd get back together (she was off to the south for a month with her mother). Finally, very defensively and accusatorily, she announced that she had gotten back together with her ex, who she had never actually stopped talking to, had never stopped feeling things for, had never told about me (though Facebook tipped him off pretty well), and despite telling me over and over again how she just wanted him out of his life, now suddenly admitted to previously hoping they'd get back together despite her breaking up with him. Now told me that she proved she could spend a year without him.
It broke my goddamn heart. I felt exploited, and stabbed in the chest, and used, and absolutely crushed. I spent a few months wandering around aimlessly in life, grasping for anything that was emotionally pertinent and happy for me, and couldn't find it.
I was desperate for some sort of closure or resolution in my life. So I made both the biggest mistake and greatest move in my romantic life: I recontacted Cherry. It is for her that I almost locked this particular entry until I realized that I don't have to hide this fact of my life from her possibly prying eyes, and frankly, if she's reading this then maybe she'll learn something.
Readers of my blog know this name over the past year and a half or so. Followers of my life will most definitely know. She was there in high school, where we fawned over each other, completely unrequited and never at the same time. Repeatedly, back and forth, in that angsty teenaged way. I went to university, and she was three years younger so stayed in high school, and before I left we went to a movie and had a moment. An "Almost but not quite" moment. It was that moment that I'd spend the next six years regretting. She ended up with another guy who she wanted to marry, and I cried in my heart. This, my friends, was The One Who Got Away.
A few years later, we got into a fight about something stupid. It was blown way out of proportion for some reason that I still can't figure out, but it would cause us not to talk for nearly four years. And in a moment of emotional desperation over The Doctor's Companion, I reached out in hopes that she had grown. I hope that maybe she, like I, realized how our argument was something silly and both of us misunderstanding each other. That maybe we could ask forgiveness of each other and let it go.
We did, or so I thought. That whole "asking forgiveness" thing? Yeah, I did that, but didn't realize until much later that she didn't. In fact, she still held me largely accountable.
God, I was so happy. So frigging joyful about it, like if Angel and Buffy got back together after years of being apart. Who'd have thought, then, that four months later it would have imploded as bad as it did, with root causes exactly like the fight four years earlier. That nothing had changed except that I understood life better.
She was hurting over an ex. I understood that but she didn't understand that I did. She held me emotionally accountable to his mistakes. She was abusive and irrational and demanding. And ultimately, callous, manipulative, and would blame me for being sympathetic to her and, y'know, caring about her. She treated love like some bastard child of hate, that in order to love each other we had to fight and cause pain for one another. She taught me the exact opposite of what relationships should have been in my eyes.
Even when it got particularly horrible, I stuck through it. She was The One Who Got Away. She was IMPORTANT. I even put my friendship with some people (like raincollector, who kept me so sane as it all went to hell) on the line in order to fight for something she just didn't think deserved fighting for. I thought that tenderness and patience would win her over, and that the pain she felt would go away. I hadn't noticed that this wasn't a Breakup Bitterness. I hadn't recognized that this misery was deeply engrained in the person she was. So far deep and she would lash out viciously whenever someone even tried to point it out. She didn't want help. She wanted to hate, and my rope was thinning.
When she callously told me she made out with someone and how that was a good thing, I freaked out and didn't talk to her for a day. I asked her for three days to work it out. In that time, in that three days, she started dating someone else.
We tried to be friends, but it didn't happen. The rest of my life was so disgusting at the time that I just couldn't hold on to the resentment that was building up.
I left.
For four straight years I pined for her. I missed her and yearned to be back in touch. I wrote a dozen emails to her that I never sent. I hoped that she was going okay, and I waited in vain for her to write me that she was sorry to have flipped out on me the way she did.
Every time, I regretted not going for her in high school, and I always wished I had gone for it in That Moment That Never Was, that day by my car outside her apartment. But you know what? I wouldn't trade it any more. Not for anything. Going through all of that was vitally important to who I am now, to properly understanding some very important, fundamental truths about what it means to be a person, a lover, and a companion.
Without that horrible, messed up experience, I don't think I'd have appreciated the one who came, and still comes, next.
Audrey is simply a pleasure. To say I "rescued" her wouldn't be a stretch, which is a shame. She had been locked in a terrible situation for longer than she'd rather have been, and if I didn't come in when I did, I bet she'd still be there. I won't expand on it, but people, it was just not cool.
Getting her out of it was not easy. It was trying and difficult and it's still sometimes bothersome. But it was worth it. People stressed when she moved in with me for a month, scared that this was moving way too fast. I think we surprised them when she moved right back out and in to her own apartment. I'm proud to say that we took it slow and easy and steady, and when I finally told her I loved her months later (the first time I said it and meant it truthfully), it felt great.
Despite what came before, she has been immensely strong-willed, has seen her own life improve tenfold through her own desire to acheive it. I am so proud of her. I realize what relationships are supposed to be now. They're trust, mutual respect, that content feeling when cuddling in the afternoon. Where you don't care how long you do so, that you can just lie there for three hours and it doesn't matter.
Her birthday was last week, and now that I am gainfully employed once again, I can spend money. And I happily, without flinching spent money on her, and it felt like no object.
We're only eight months in, but this has been the best my love life has been ever. We have talks about the near future and it feels great.
My lovelife started slow, kicked in with a bang and then dipped into self-pity. There are things I regret, things I've forgotten about, things I wish I did. It's still early to know if Audrey is the end of that saga, but to have her now makes it all worthwhile.
So worthwhile.