so, obviously i’ve been incredibly inspired by the movie “to all the boys i’ve loved before” if it’s not obvious by the title of this post. but, sadly, this isn’t about writing love letters to boys i had crushes on in the past. it’s a memorial to wasted time and my broken heart, because honestly, i don’t give myself enough credit when it comes to how many times i will let someone i care about run me over.
this post is going to also make me look like a bad person just a little bit, and i fully accept the responsibility and burden of doing toxic and bad things in my past. i would like to note, however, that i’ve grown up and learned a lot since these actions were made, discussed or even thought about.
so, in order to reduce the stress and high blood pressure that all of this has caused me (and will probably cause some of you), i will be inserting humorous gifs and pictures into my post to help me feel better.
here. we. go.
it starts to feel like every relationship…or almost relationship, i’ve ever had was born out of small ethical dilemmas on my part, skeevy boys doing skeevy things, or just all around unhealthy behaviors caused my unsatisfactory coping mechanisms for loneliness. or all three, when specifically thinking about peter pan and his–deal? honestly, there’s not really a word for that debacle.
my first boyfriend, if we can call a couple who were barely able to speak to one another due to shyness (let alone do actual couple-y things) a couple, was an innocent lamb. he was used against me by mean girls a couple years later… but that’s not for this post. if he ever happens to read this, though i sincerely doubt that will happen, i’m gonna speak directly to him for a second. just know that you were good and kind, and you are, in no way, shape or form, to be included or lumped into the rest of this post. though it would have been nice to say that you were my first kiss… you’ll see why.
so, i’d like to pretend that my first kiss was with peter pan, but sadly, it wasn’t and my retelling of the kiss story with him isn’t a straight lie, but I do embellish some of the details. i think its time for me to tell the truth about how it actually went down here. you’ll just have to be patient.
my real first kiss was with a boy i wasn’t even interested in, let alone dating. it was at my friend’s birthday party at our neighborhood pool. you know, back when pool parties were hella in style. later in the night, the boy jumped on my back in the deep end, whipped my face around and kissed me (#toxicmasculinity). i got out of the pool as fast as i could and into the girls bathroom to get away from him and to cry. my friend throwing the birthday party was upset with me being dramatic at his party. after all, it was just a kiss, right?
well, what i remember is being unable to touch the bottom of the pool with someone bigger than me on my back and being forced to give my first kiss to someone i didn’t even like. thinking about the future boyfriend i would be able to share my first kiss with was something i’d treasured, and he took that away from me. it was scarring and i still can’t really stand to see that boy to this day.
my second boyfriend ever (still in middle school, so I don’t think it really counts in the grand scheme of boyfriends), had met me in my confirmation class. he was cute, funny, and my mom really didn’t like him, so he basically became irresistible to me. here are a few things in a list i remember about him, mostly because he’s not really worthy of a full story, but also because this is old news:
- he and his roommate serenaded me and my roommate on a group retreat we went on, much to our chaperone’s chagrin on the other side of my bedroom wall
- my first kiss with him was at a day camp where we were supposed to be watching after toddlers and young kids, and we also happened to have one sitting right between us when it happened, too
- he used tongue… ON THE FIRST KISS
- he cheated on me with a friend from my class who had no idea that we were dating
during this time in middle school, i’d been friends with a boy my friend knew and had introduced me to (he lived several states away), and we talked and texted every day. i’d had a rough couple of years in middle school and needed someone to listen to me, and he did that very well. we shared everything with one another, and it was the first time i’d grown to like a guy over a period of time, rather than just…instantaneously deciding to like them. granted, nothing could ever come from it, so we just continued to like one another from afar but date other people (stupid, stupid idea ladies and gents). he and i kept in and out of contact until i was a junior in college, and despite having many girlfriends, he would tell me that he was in love with me. And i, knowing so much about what love meant, believed him and came to believe that i was in love with him too.
i’m a pretty loyal person, so when i started dating my high school boyfriend, i didn’t want to talk with the out-of-state boy about love, or how we liked each other. i wanted to be friends, like we’d always said we were. so, i asked him to be just friends with me and long story short–he called me a bitch. i didn’t learn my lesson then with him, but i definitely learned it later on, because for years, this boy tried to pressure me into seeing him, to prove to him that i loved him, and many other manipulative things. not to say that i have no blame in the situation, because i was stupid enough to grow close with someone who was basically a stranger and think that you can really be in love with someone who you’ve never met, but the pressure to preform or do something you don’t want to do is coercion, and no one deserves to be disrespected like that. case closed. i cut him off about a year and a half ago and i’ve been a lot mentally healthier since then.
my other long-term boy problem struggle just so happens to be my peter pan. our “will they or won’t they” struggles began the first day of band camp freshman year and continued up until the night of my 21st birthday.
because this shit still makes me pretty angry, i will solely list out a gist of the facts from my point of view:
- he was a senior in high school and i was a freshman in high school when we first met
- he had a girlfriend, who was my friend and section mate, and she said she was “okay with it” that he and i would text…every single day, and probably more than they did (she really wasn’t okay, but she would never say that)
- he also flirted with his neighbor/one of my best friends at the time (who was also a freshman). she also supposedly made out with him in his car at some point, which is pretty sketchy??? that could have just been for the drama though
- he built up the whole relationship between me and him until we went to disney world for our marching band trip
- this trip happened literal days after he and his girlfriend broke up…though she was on the trip too
- he did tons of romantic stuff with me at disney world after i spent the first day with my friends. it upset him that i wasn’t hanging out with him, so i did for the rest of the trip. this caused a ton of drama. like, losing a friend kind of drama
- i’ve said for years now that he kissed me under the fireworks at epcot–which that mf-er should have and had the chance to–but in all truth and honesty, he kissed me in a musty stairwell at the hotel our band was sleeping at
- after this, like immediately after, he backed off, told me that he didn’t want to hinder me (valid point, i was literally starting high school) and that i wasn’t the type of girl he would just date, but the kind of girl he’d want to be in a relationship with (i held onto that sentiment for literal years and it has probably destroyed my chances of just dating someone successfully)
- but he couldn’t be in a relationship with me because he was leaving for the air force academy that summer
- we kept in contact through letters for a bit while he was in basic training, but he got a girlfriend within the first year, and i wasn’t over him (despite dating my high school boyfriend…oops), so i was pissed off and don’t speak to him
- that lasted until my junior year of high school, where he reaches out to me (i’d deleted him off of facebook for the first time) in order to congratulate me on getting drum major and later suggests a meet up that summer
- while waiting for that, we talk again and feelings are discussed. he vents about his girlfriend and plenty of other things, but he comes to the consensus that he wants to break up with her
- he doesn’t break up with he, but we still meet over the summer. it’s very obvious that neither one of us are over one another, but we don’t talk about it
- cut to my freshman year of college, where we become friends again (why did I keep doing this to myself??) and feelings areĀ still there
- he gets into the pilot program, talks about coming to visit me and relationship stuff (reminder: his girlfriend still exists)
- i accept these musing, because he is going to break up with her, after all, and i have it in my head that after such a long time of these unrequited feelings, we were bound to happen. the timing was just never right. there’s around a year until he gets placed at a base
- in this time, he breaks up with his girlfriend, but then goes over to germany to visit her. it was really a thrilling discovery for me when i saw pictures she took of him pop up on his unblocked facebook
- if only i’d just blocked him again and moved on…
- anyhow, he, of course, is placed at a base that is only an hour away from where i was. i’m, stupidly, exhilarated
- that summer, we meet in our hometown. i’ve dumped a very nice boy i’d been dating because now, now is the time for me and my peter pan
- we spent hours together that first time, and towards the end of the day, he tells me that because he didn’t know where he’d be after a year (his two year post-training contract), he didn’t want to start a relationship with me. i tell myself it doesn’t matter and say that it’s okay with me because in the back of my head, i still remember what he told me the first time this happened
- my first sign that my theory wasn’t true was when my best friend (and girl who will one day be my maid of honor) flew from texas to see me, wanted to meet him, and even though i offered to drive to him to get dinner, he said he didn’t have time
- anyhow, we dated and saw one another and he played some sort of cat and mouse game with me. all in for one second and then distant the next
- this goes on for about 6 months. in that time, i’m introduced to all of his friends, he’s introduced to mine. you know, relationship stuff
- my 21st birthday rolls around and i invited him because it’d been a while since i’d seen him (lots of studying for pilot training). we go to a bar with a group of my friends. he doesn’t dance with me, but also doesn’t let any guy near me to dance. he doesn’t kiss me goodnight before he leaves. so, i know something is up. at this point, i should have waited until the morning, but i texted him and he tells me that he’s taking a step back from me on my birthday
- i’d written a letter to him before that night, telling him everything i felt. this included the fact that i felt like he was using me for short-term entertainment and also, the very obvious fact that i was in love with him and had been for a long time. it said i wanted to be with him, no matter what it took or what it looked like. but it also said that i didn’t want him to contact me anymore if he didn’t feel the same way. i wanted him to shut the door and lock it so i could move on. i had to semi-drunkenly decide to send that letter the night of my birthday
- two weeks after i sent that letter, i received the last text from him that i would ever get. he told me that i had it wrong, and that he hadn’t been using me. i told him he missed the point of my letter
- a month later, he was in a relationship with a girl from a school close to where he was. i cried for weeks and had to block him on all social media to stop myself from obsessing over the fact that he didn’t want me
- as the year came to a close, so did his year-long stint in training, but he ended up staying at the same base for his two-year contract. funny how things work out, right?
if my peter pan ever happens to stumble across this post, he’ll probably say i painted him as a bad guy. which, in reading these bullet points that tightly sum up what was our relationship, is very true. which sucks for me, because for a very long time, i thought that my peter pan was a hero in my story. but sometimes taking a look back at what we thought were our fairy tales makes us realize that they weren’t, no matter how charming the so-called prince was.
okay, this has gone on long enough, but i do have one more ex to (okay, i’ll say it) … bash. this next section is about my high school boyfriend, who was, at best, an average boyfriend for the first year and a half of our three year relationship. most of our time together consisted of us sitting on the floor of his tv room watching him play video games or one of his television shows, unless i asked, pretty relentlessly, to go do something. which was always the same: dinner and a movie i didn’t really want to see.
i’m not gonna bash him for being inconsiderate and self-absorbed. most boys are in high school. instead, let’s move on to when i left for college. i went to his dream school and he was jealous of that for most of our senior year of high school. when i left for college, he didn’t want to come help me move in. and when i got there, our conversations and text messages got shorter and fewer in between, despite me struggling with homesickness and roommate issues. a few months of this behavior–except for the few times that he would come to visit me, which he acted relatively normal–made me decide to end the relationship. i called, crying and trying to explain how i was feeling. He spoke few words, didn’t seem to empathize at all, and then when i said i wanted to break up, said okay and hung up. i haven’t heard a single word from him since (honestly, the best thing he ever did for me). he then dated my best friend (long story short, because it’s hers to tell, but they hated each other in high school, bonded and dated for a year and a half and he began to treat her the same way he treated me for the last part of our relationship) and called me nasty names. despite the fact that she and i weren’t speaking for several years by that point, she stood up for me. the point of bringing this up though, is that he also told her that he’d known that he wanted to break up for several months before it happened, he just didn’t want to be the one to do it.
please mentally insert claps between every word i’m going to write in this next statement: do. not. take. away. a. girl’s. right. to. be. angry. after. a. break-up.
i cried and mourned because i felt like a bad person, when he was the one who stopped putting effort in to the relationship long before i did.
wow, i feel so much better now. i might not get to say these things to any of their faces, but telling my side of the story and letting myself let go of the hurt is better than any sort of revenge i’ve plotted over the years.
i’m not saying that people should write hate-sagas for anyone who’s hurt them in their lives. i’ve tried not to (aside from the gifs, but i did say they were for humorous effect). no, i think it’s more important to recognize that people are going to hurt you, and have hurt you, but that doesn’t inherently make them bad people. and it doesn’t make you stupid for falling for these people. i mean, you can feel a little stupid at the beginning, but then you need to realize that these life lessons are going to take you to where you need to be in this life and are going to push you from your comfort zone and into the real world.
i’m not going to thank my exes and ex-somethings for the hurt they put me through. but i’m going to be a better person and future girlfriend because of it.
so, i guess last things last: shout out to all my exes.