26th
The guy who made me unable to love.
Yesterday, while looking for a book, I found my high school diary. This raggedy old green notebook, held closed by a leather string, holds the memories of my sophomore and junior years of high school, and the amazing summer before senior year. I started reading it, and it took me back to a lot of things I had forgotten about, mostly because remembering them wasn’t so nice.
The bulk of what I wrote in this journal deals with my weird, pseudo-relationship with this one guy, who I’ll just call F. I met him through a mutual friend during the summer between sophomore and junior year of high school. He was cute, athletic, and a musician. He had a girlfriend who was doing a summer abroad, so our relationship was purely friendship at this point. But soon enough, they broke up. He was still in love with her, though, and I would comfort him and just give him a shoulder to cry on.
At some point, he started getting over her and into me. I wasn’t feeling it at first, but he slowly won me over. We would talk on the phone for hours about anything and everything, but we had never seen each other face-to-face because he lived an hour away and neither of us could drive.
One day, I convinced a friend to drive me over to his town to see him. During the drive there, I couldn’t think straight and I was really nervous. When I finally met him, I was so happy that I couldn’t stop smiling, and we really got along very well. I met his parents, and they were very impressed by me, and I really liked them. When I got back home and spoke to him, he said he didn’t know what to expect, but that he really liked me and he’d like to see me again. We made plans to go to a concert together.
So we go to the concert, and 15-year-old me gets the courage to grab his hand after two beers. We just sat there, enjoying the music and talking, and he gave me one of his bracelets. We didn’t kiss, since I was very awkward at this stage of my life, and kissing someone was the equivalent of sucking dick to 15-year-old me. But it was seriously one of the best nights of my life, and one that I treasure very dearly.
After this, we hung out a couple more times. He would write me songs and poems, and I’d swoon when I heard them. I fell really hard for him, and that’s when things started falling apart.
One day, I was talking to him, and he was being very passive-aggressive, saying mean things to me. He was saying that I was too involved in his life, and that he didn’t like me talking to the friends that he introduced to me. I told him that I’d get out of his life for good. I threw my phone against the wall in rage, and started crying. He tried to apologize a couple of times, but I knew that our little romance was over, so I refused to talk to him.
It took me months to get over him, even though we were never officially together. I was angry that I wasn’t into him at first and he managed to make me fall for him, just to walk all over me in the end. I swore to myself I’d never fall that hard for someone ever again.
Of course, now that three years have passed, I have gained a lot of perspective. The guy was an egotistical asshole who was way into himself to ever really open up to me, and I was merely a mirror that he used to reflect his awesomeness onto himself. I was his daily ego boost, his source of constant attention and praise. I put him on a pedestal and failed to see him realistically, and he failed to see me at all. But I was naive, and completely blinded by his seeming perfection to realize this and get out of it before getting hurt.
I saw him the other day, and it was a very weird encounter. After reading all of the things I wrote in my diary, and comparing them to how I feel about him now, the contrast is very sharp. I idolized him three years ago, and now I am scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find something good to say about him. The former altar boy is now doing lines of coke on the steps of the church.
But of course, even though he is nothing worth remembering, there are traces of him everywhere around me. I still keep the bracelet he gave me in a box that I haven’t opened in two years. I still listen to the bands he introduced me to.
But he taught me a couple of lessons. I learned to not put anyone up on a pedestal, because I don’t believe anyone can truly be that perfect. Finding flaws in people gives me a weird sense of security, like they’re more real or human. I don’t easily embrace that seeming perfection that I once sought.
After this, many boys and men have walked through my life. I’ve kissed many guys, slept with a few, held some guys’ hand. But I haven’t fallen for anyone. I’ve made a conscious effort to not get attached, to remain distant and aloof, because a second of vulnerability could hurt me forever. I don’t take guys seriously anymore. And while I shouldn’t be holding up twenty-something men to this 17-year-old prick, I keep on doing it anyway. As cliché as it sounds, I know someday I will open up and let my guard down long enough to fall for the right someone.
