I’m writing this blog in the middle of a very bad habit I’m trying to break. It happens in two phases and it is completely mentally exhausting. To give you guys a bit of background story, there was a girl that I met last year and…this was a difficult one. I normally have trouble being very open when it comes to my own personal feelings. But not with her. With her I…I felt like I could tell her anything, anything and somehow I knew that she would never judge me for it. I told her that I was scared of being this open, that this kind of vulnerability did not come easy for me, but she always encouraged me to be open with her without ever pressuring me. So I trusted her. It should also be noted that she had admitted that she had feelings for me that were not platonic, even though she had a boyfriend. This happened right around the end of May.
Now even though I knew she had a boyfriend I want to make it clear that I never EVER tried to cross a line that messed with her relationship. Yes, I fully admit we probably skirted it a bit, because I understand that good morning/good night/sweet dreams texts and messages throughout the day may not exactly be purely platonic. However, it was never sexual. When I first met her, I didn’t know she had a boyfriend and when I found out she did, I really did try to stay away from her. I went a full week without talking to her, and I was miserable. I couldn’t be away from her, which was a feeling I had never encountered. The actual emotional need to feel connected to her was so incredibly strong it was like…gravity. At the same time, it wasn’t like an insane, hot n heavy, purely physical need. I mean, sure there was some moments of tension and flirting but the main reason why I truly fell for her was because being open and vulnerable with her didn’t just feel natural and so very easy, it was peaceful. It was like the parts of my soul that were scared, hesitant, or angry were finally calm with her.
Imagine all your life in every relationship you’ve ever had you feel this…thing that prevents you from really connecting with your person, no matter how hard you try it’s always there. Then all of a sudden you meet someone and talking to them, and opening up to them, and showing them parts of yourself that terrified you to show to other people just seemed easy. It was always just talking though, despite how easy it was I never tried to push anything further with her. I never tried to sext her or cyber her. It was always messages or sometimes calls and telling each other stories or coming up with funny scenarios or just normal friend stuff. Like expressing support for one another when we were having a rough time or just completely dumb subjects discussed with an ironic sense of severity which made them ridiculous and awesome at the same time. Like who would win in a fight? Stuart Little or Ratatouille? Or Mercy or Ana? She picked Ratatouille btw, I picked Stuart Little.
Additionally, I never wanted it to be awkward when she told me she had feelings so I let her know that it was natural to have feelings with someone, but it was how you act upon them that makes the difference. And we both agreed that we would never act on any of the feelings we had. In my heart I remember this moment because it was all I could do to not express how much I truly cared for this person. That I, through the course of us talking every day over the past several months, had very likely fallen in love with her. I never wanted to pressure her. I knew her boyfriend and no, I didn’t like him and it wasn’t because I was bitter or jealous. Over the course of this person and I talking I had witnessed how he treated her and without any bias, I can say that it was unkind at the very least. At most it felt like gaslighting and manipulative behavior. I mean sure, he had moments where it seemed like he cared but the times where he didn’t seemed a lot more frequent in my opinion. For example, there was one instance where she had gone to him to try and express that she had felt hurt because he had forgotten about her for several hours on his birthday. Yes, you read that right he ghosted her on his birthday for several hours despite the fact she had woken up early for him. And when she tried to express her hurt his response was that she should know better, and that of course he loved her and if she thought anything different then it was her own mental illness attacking her. When she told me this, I cannot explain to you how much effort it took for me not to jump on a plane to where he lived and punch him in the face. How fucking dare you take your shitty behavior and make it about her mental illness. Fuck outta here with that shit man.
Yeah well. You get the point. Fast forward a couple months and when I was going through the absolute worst depression of my life…she ghosted me. To say that her ghosting me broke my heart would be the understatement of the millennium.
Now that you know the backstory, here’s what I’m struggling with currently. There are days sometimes even a week will go by and I don’t think about her. And I mean at length, I still think about her everyday but its more like in very small things that flit through my brain like her favorite ice cream when I’m at the store or when I see a black leather jacket because black was her favorite color, and she loved leather jackets. But as quickly as the thoughts come, I try to push them out of my head. I focus on the now and being present because that’s what I’m supposed to do right? Despite the fact that I still miss her terribly to this day and when she stopped talking to me it actually felt like my soul was being ripped in half. But now? Now I shake my head and try to think of something else. Anything else. But then it happens…I hear that she was in a channel alone with some person in discord or that she was hanging out in a game with another person, even if these things were done purely as friends and it’s like this wall of anxiety just hits me in the face.
For days I’ll be shaking, and I won’t want to eat, or even though I try on a daily basis not to pay any attention to her whereabouts, now out of the blue it’s like when I see her little light on discord I get like this wave of emotion where I simultaneously want to yell at her, “How could you do that to me? How? When you knew how much I truly cared and trusted you?”. At the same time I want hug her, and hold her, and comfort her because I remember that this was the same person who cried when I got home from the hospital because she had been so worried about me. Then I’ll swing to the complete opposite direction and I get so angry at myself for thinking about her at all. I get frustrated because all it took was the mere thought of her having the same kind of relationship with another person and all of a sudden I become hyper aware of where she is, what game she’s playing, who gets on and off at the same time her and then I’ll start seeing everyone, even my friends, as a possible suspect like, “OMG you got on the same game at the same time!! Before you know it, I feel like Jim Carey in that movie, 23 or Russell Crowe in, A Beautiful Mind. Not that I have, nor ever will, go anywhere near the depths of craziness those characters experienced, but the point is that I feel that way. I really do start to feel crazy. Me, a physically healthy college student is literally feeling like I should have one of those stupid boards with all the strings attached to it trying to decipher who she has been hanging out with the most in some basement I call, “The War Room”. Again, not that I ever have nor ever will, but being this emotional when I normally am not emotional at all is just fucking aggravating and like I mentioned at the beginning of this story, it’s completely mentally exhausting. Especially when I typically just have trouble connecting on a romantic level with anyone. Any time I start “seeing” or even “talking” with other people, not even dating because I can’t fathom being that close to someone emotionally, the thing I typically hear is that they want me to open up more to them. But with this person, all that has to happen is for me to hear she might be getting close to another person, even if it’s purely platonic and all of a sudden I feel ALL THE EMOTIONS. Anxiety, fear, hurt, anger, sadness, pain, loneliness but most of all I feel a sense of loss. It’s like…I’m grieving.
And I’m terrified of that feeling. Because to me, loss is permanent. Loss means that I may never talk to this person again. Loss means that I won’t get a chance to try and fix things with her, or maybe even in the future have something that was not possible because of timing. And I can’t bear that. I can’t bring myself to be ok with the thought or the possibility that I will never see or talk with her again. That thought is enough to feel a sadness so completely enveloping, it is something I have only experienced in the worst parts of my depression. And I…I can’t do that. I do not know how to process that amount of pain. Yes, I know in other posts I talk about the amount of crazy that happens to me with new friends or while I’m getting to know someone and that is all very real. Yet, for me it’s like apples and watermelons. One feeling is borne out of anxiety through not being liked, bullied, abused, picked on, and all these emotions that are based solely on my past experiences, which means I can work on them. With the help of my therapist I’m learning new ways to give myself credit for the things I’ve endured and realize that I’m a person that is both worthy and capable of making friends.
But this. This is…something that has, quite literally, never happened to me. In fact there was a scene in, WondaVision I saw recently that nearly brought me to tears. It’s when Vision says, “I’ve always been alone, so I don’t feel the lack. It’s all I’ve ever known. I’ve never experienced loss because I’ve had no one to lose.” That is my situation in a nutshell.
I want more than anything to understand what happened. I want to understand how she could seem like such a kind and compassionate person, which is why I cared so deeply for her, then leave someone at their worst moment and not seem to care? And I know, I KNOW people will say that the whys or the hows don’t matter, that I just have to move on. And I can’t explain it but in the quiet, most loving depths of my soul, I just feel that somehow we aren’t finished yet. I can’t express it any better.
Sometimes however, that feeling is so frustrating because I have so many unanswered questions. And I do want to be clear that I’m not pining away for her. I’m not huddled up in some hovel hoping she’ll talk to me. I have been with other girls since this happened and even though the thought kills me, I understand she is with someone else. I just have this feeling in my heart, and in the back of my mind no matter how much I’ve tried to get rid of it, that we’ll get our chance several years in the future. And I’m ok with that. So I don’t think about it. Except when someone says some offhanded remark. Then the above mentioned problem happens. But even though it saddens me to think of us not talking for years, that is still better than never. Because even now, almost a year after this happened…the thought of moving on and never having her in my life again…well let’s just say that if it took a city for Wanda Maximoff to grieve and process her loss, I’d probably have my own island somewhere.