Life: a long love lost story

Disclaimer: This ended up not being the post I meant it to be, but was therapeutic and enjoyable to write so I'll post it anyway. WARNING: it's about my pitiful stance as a boyfriend and past relationships so don't read on if you're not interested. I'll at least post funny pics along the way.

Listening to Radiohead(cue Nude or All I Need[please feel free to read while listening to what I am. oh, and use youtube you lazy bum]). Music always manages to calm me down. First off I'm not dead or anything. I did stop attending BYU last year, but I guess, since I'm (or use to be as I can't motivate myself to do anything) involved with Post-Mo and atheist stuff out here I decided to keep up with the blog. Course, fewer things to talk about since I don't wish to talk about work/Mormon/atheist experiences too much, or to talk much about college outside of BYU. This and the fact that people still contact me ... I guess I'm in it for the long run.

So what to say, been pretty down lately. It's amazing actually, most of my greatest experiences, worst and best, all have happened in Fall. Or, rather, the season of Autumn. My first love started and stopped in Autumn. My mission started in Autumn. Most schools start in Autumn but that's to be expected. My birthday is in Autumn too. My first skydive, my first time driving alone (again, birthday), my second love and consequent breakup three years later, my first drink (which was not related to my bday since I never did that till 23), my first skinny-dipping, my third love and, again (you know it's coming dear reader) consequent breakup.


Now I am left to reevaluate my thoughts and values. I've done this with other things, my views on abortion actually haven't changed much since I left the church, but my views on swearing have dramatically (though my views on what's cordial and polite haven't). I'd like to think I have a good grasp on the world and maybe it's better in the sense of what's actually right or true, but I'm pretty sure I'm more lost than before. I have a habit of not finding out my views or beliefs should change until I come in contact with that perpetual and infinite opposite that makes me desist, retract, and evaluate what my mind and heart tell me now versus what I blindly believed before.

As with love I feel like something should've changed, but hasn't. I loved once in high school, a girl who was already in love, and living with said boyfriend. But I was young, enduring, pretty naive, and her and I hit it off. I have to pat myself on the back for being a sociable and confident person back then. The initial contact lasted four hours, and one revolutionary conversation later I had the biggest "crush" I had ever had and planted those tender little seeds into her mind which gave her a level of interest that would never make her cheat, but made her realize we could've been. A kiss never happened, a couple other things did, a lot of great experiences, but the whole time I knew what were doing would not lead to what I wanted it to be.


So, with that one timing certainly played its part, and of course being young, foolish, and not truly available, though in my mind it was a relationship I wished I could've seen go all the way. Thankfully she and her now husband were good sports, had a lot of patience with me, and we're still in contact.

I apologize for suddenly bringing up the age-old sad love story, but I'd rather put it here than in my journal and then feel like I'm being a complete hermit when some people, and hopefully readers, are wondering what's going on. But returning, needless to say that pseudo-relationship had me emotionally upset and drained in a few horrible ways a few times over a year, but I eventually got over it.

(cue Iris by Goo Goo Dolls, it has sentimental value for me)



Then my deepest relationship started a year later. October 3rd, 9:15 in the evening; I can name the place and which cushions we were sitting on and roughly what was said to make sure we knew it was an official relationship. Followed by an awkwardly started but tender and passionate hug. Sealed with some tears. Two months of flirting had now culminated into a relationship that I have no idea if it ever should have started.

See, I am a hopeless romantic at heart, my fictional writing is usually inspired by good movies and music, while my poems and journals are generally inspired by love. My music is a bit of both. But I've noticed how NOT like myself I am now. I've really lost that aspect of myself. Whether it has been destroyed and must be regained or simply has burrowed deep into me, afraid to come out after being bruised, cut, battered, and abused, which means I need to relearn and heal. Regardless, here I am, but I want to continue as to how I arrived.


Me and girl #2 dated for a long time. I went to college for part of that, and returned, then went on my mission. The year at college was hard, I was cheated on once during that time, and we even broke up for 12 hours. To be honest the girl had brought up a couple times after that year that she might want to date other people at some point. She was in high school, and I, like I always do, said that while I was on my mission we could count it as an open relationship. That way she could date guys, a little, but still love me. Course, now while looking back, I realize that this was a fatal mistake on my part. And if not a mistake, then a misunderstanding on what something like this would do. It also helps me realize what is important in relationships to me, namely, what is most important, but I'll get to that later.

She broke up with me in a Dear John letter, though she wasn't LDS and wouldn't know what that was. Why she didn't come to my mission, rape me, and try to steal me away from the religion, I'll never know (joke) but she left me, and I can't blame her for that. Btw, this happened between August and October, of course. I won't know if she had a guy in her life by then, but a few months later she did.

We did fight sometimes, she was a people pleaser, and because I loved her and would forgive her it also meant I was lower on the totem pole when she felt she had to choose between people, things to do, etc .... But there was a time for us, probably about months 3-9, where we thought we had found that person we would be together with, forever. We shared everything, all our darkest secrets, journal writings, our dreams and aspirations. We both did not have the best lives in high school and helped each other a lot, her most of all. Lost, confused, delirious and self-afflicting, it is hard to sometimes not think that her love for me was based on how much I helped her. Once she got better and more secure then I was no longer as important and enduring.


Regardless the next year of my mission was torment as she would come back, disappear, say we should date when I get back, then say she had a boyfriend. As my mother would say, "she was jerking my chain" and like any puppy in love it left me feeling very confused and hurt. To end this sad tale when I arrived home we met and after one awkwardly started but tender and passionate hug our conversation reached the apex with her saying in not so many words that 'she did not want me in her life anymore and I was not to contact her.'

That was pretty low. I wonder why sometimes, if it was cause what we had was so real and she wouldn't be able to remain faithful to her 'then' boyfriend; if I had really hurt her in some way that I just can't remember; if I never meant as much as I thought I should have and she really didn't want me there anymore. I probably will never know, and I'm sure her memory would suit her present beliefs rather than what she was thinking then.

With that I was crushed, which I'm hoping isn't surprising. And then I was still home for a couple months before college. With barely any friends (my high school buddies are the college types) and one very broken heart I think I festered in that plagued pool of thought till my bones were saturated with a liquid bitterness while my mind was pierced with needles of self-worthlessness. To speak more straight: I was the lowest I've ever been.


(note: i LOVE the meanwhile meme pictures, they make me lolz)
The rest of that story isn't anything new and I have little to add. When I was still having nightmares about her, and us, a year after I got to BYU, and two years after the breakup, or 16 months after she told me I meant nothing to her, I decided I had some major issues and got a therapist to help out. Sure enough I was very depressed and was reacting as if divorced. After a couple months I was released and had no nightmares till recently.

Which, I have to add, I hope those of you who haven't had a relationship end so horribly one-sided will have no understanding of what I mean by nightmares. So let me explain one thing. Regardless of what happens in the dream, the next day is ruined. I'll have the dream, wake up depressed, and be haunted by thoughts and memories regardless of what I do. I could go to work, be so busy I lose track of the time or even what day it is, but I'll be constantly handed depression and bygone years on a mental platter. Not a fun day.

In fact, that's what got me motivated to see a therapist in the first place. After having three consecutive dreams I had three horrible days missing work and classes and decided I had better move along and admit to myself I am broken.


So with the help of being nudged to move along I again was ready to date. Not that I couldn't before or hadn't tried. But now I was ready to start piecing myself together. For anyone who doesn't know my "exit story" and "how I became an atheist story" it was also 2 months after this that I finally admitted I didn't believe and it was okay to move on from the church. It took being happy to do that, or to realize that some of my misery was coming from believing.

After an end of July party I started my blog and then met girl #3. At least from my early journal writings and memory my perception was that it was very one-sided. She liked me, liked my blog, and I thought she was a weirdo and not my type. Upon meeting she ended up being "sophisticated" and a week later we were official. That week was bliss. I had stirrings before, but this time I recognized the feeling, the same feeling I had two weeks after dating #2, and a few months after #1. I loved this girl. And she felt it too, saying she, herself, was a romantic as well, and possibly as hopeless. The quencher with this was that she lived two states away and was just passing through.


(Lightning Rod by Guster is good, but so are the last three songs so cycle as you please or stick with Iris)
So the long-distance relationship started, which was difficult, leading to some fights and arguments on the phone. I grew up as one of the biggest pricks in my class so I always take the credit for saying something rude or inconsiderate, which I'm sure I did. She said I was 'not enough of a feminist' and other things, trying to make me eat better, do more hobbies, and get out and do things. We met a few times and generally those trips were wonderful. Never bad. She came back down here, we lived together for a couple months, then separately for a couple more, then she left for grad school.

I don't know why it went wrong, but it did, and I messed up, and this is why. Like I said, it began with interest on one side, and I grew to love her, but she wasn't "my type" and I was always reserved, and on top of this I'm broken. So anytime a fight happened I'd go do something by myself, or if she was nagging I wouldn't be afraid to fight back, regardless where we were. Some times I felt like, "well, this isn't permanent so if it get's worse you can leave" and this only fed my 'not caring.'


But now I get to the end of the matter and feel completely lost. Betrayed, drowned, and left behind. And I am left to wonder how I got here. It all culminates to this: if I feel this way now then it did matter to me, and it must've mattered a lot, so why didn't I act like it mattered? She will say it was all her; that it was bad timing in her life, she needed to get school going, doing that in Utah wouldn't happen, she was depressed about things. So if love matters on your geographical location then it wasn't meant to be.

But I don't think anyone believes that. Sure it matters, but at some point if a sacrifice needs to be made and someone loves another, then they will favor that person over themselves. If they favor themselves then "media love" has not brainwashed them ... or their atheistic "this life is my only life" mind takes over. They have to look out for number one.

Once it was apparent that we had issues and she may leave then I began that process of letting go, even being the one to say we should break up, much like what happened with girl #2. Of course it was not what I wanted to do, but if I couldn't make her happy then it must not have been fate, destiny, or a convenient truth or cosmological constant.

(I Can Feel a Hot One by Manchester Orchestra would be a good, mellow closer and afterthought)
And then I am left feeling this way, as I do now, as she already falls in love with another while feeling pity for me and my poor sappy self. And from this, all I have learned is that the most important part of the relationship, to me, the one thing that only happens in those rare, passionate, intense and intensive relationships that people call love, that the most important thing is that I'm the person who makes them smile, who makes them laugh. That when I am in the room or on the phone that they feel content, that the world is an outsider, one that they are ready for, that being with me is inspiring, motivating, and all they need in a relationship. That if we were the last two people on earth they wouldn't have to feel lonely.

And most likely this is because that's how I feel once I reach that point, once I truly love someone. And I've told them so; in a cloud and sky bed with girl #1, or a moss-laden clearing in the woods on May 24th with girl #2, or while lying together after an argument with #3, our essences mixing together till we could lose sense of where one began and where the other ended.


Those were happy times, but unlike Calvin, I guess it is true that I do not have to be the one person who is happy all the time. I believe that. I understand that it's not just girls who can coldly and heartlessly move on; that I only date girls who can reach that level of love and interest and then revert to being less than friends while still being cordial. I understand that it is something about me, either in the way that I am, at the core of my person, or that my yearning for that connection is so strong and so deep that it is beyond what others either want, or can give. I can return to my old relationships in a moment, I could kiss any one of them as if we never broke up. For me, once you share something, once you commit, you stay that way whether you want to or not. There's no reverting, those feelings are there to stay, they've moved in, become comfortable, and are asking favors. Best to get along with them, they gave you so much before.

I don't know how to stop loving someone, and after being so viciously treated, watching as loved ones slowly strangle and suffocate their love for me, willingly, for multiple reasons, after this a part of me shattered, hairline fractures like broken glass, hidden away deep inside. The definition of something being broken is that it can no longer function the way it was designed to, or wishes to.

I can neither move on, nor express the love I have inside me. I obviously have cared before, but didn't make it work, because I either put something else first, or I couldn't get the love I had inside out in the open, the words never came to my lips, perpetual lethologica and circumlocutory speech. A synesthesia of thoughts that synthesized and never came out in the pattern I wished to paint. I can see it too, in regular conversation, I catch myself not being open with people, as to how lately I don't really do anything, though I want to, though I try. And of course little interest from others only helps my mind to confirm how little I matter.

My brother says he only hates two things, one being a thought for later but the latter being people who pity themselves. Well, I'm certainly full of pity for my miserable self, but maybe there's hope for me if I can still feel this sort of pain. Maybe I can one day move on, looking back with a new perspective to learn from how my relationship with Kellie hasn't waned, to one day fully move on from Audrey, and to, better sooner than later, realize what Geneva meant to me and what she will have to mean to me now.

This message has my: