I’ve come to realize that he does not matter. He was just a chapter— actually a paragraph of my young adult life. I could sit here relentlessly writing pages and pages all day about boys with slight smiles who leave suddenly with questionable and unfulfilled promises. After all that, however, I still would not have found any sort of reconciliation for all this heartache. They are all over the place and we simply cannot escape the labyrinth of men who walk in and out of our lives. Fortunately, while it may seem as if the entire universe is against you when it comes to concrete and meaningful relationships, that is just not the case. Instead we have to be patient and learn to wait our turn. While we wait we get the luxury of sitting through train rides next to imaginary loves of our lives hoping that he may even say hello. Recently I’ve been through all that and then some and surprise— he meant absolutely nothing in the long run regardless of how often I wished he was worth it. He just filled a quota which eighteen year old me was determined to complete. He came along at the most perfect time— just weeks before my self-determined deadline. So, there you have it I had a goal, I had just watched the movie “Say Anything”, and I had motivators all around me telling me that I had to take the bull by its horns if I wanted anything to happen. What he had was a friendly hint and a detour. Something that I forgot was that I was also very insecure, very anxious, and obviously very clueless. I wanted someone to laugh at and cry over at the same time, but more than anything else I wanted a story that I could tell. And boy, did I do all of that for longer than expected. But it wasn’t because he was himself. I know I probably sound insane but there could have been a million boys just like him or completely different and I would have had the same exact reaction. This was all about me and my timeless expectations. Girls before me and girls after me will have gone through similar situations and I was acting as if the most drastic and unbelievable thing had happened to me. Why did I care so much? I had gotten my story and he had his. But this wasn’t the story that I wanted. Instead, it was the story that I needed. So, who cares about what it looks like or the blushed and embarrassed faces afterwards. I’m here and I’m willing to write about every grueling detail. I’m here so another girl out there can read this and finally let out the deep and exhausted breath she had been holding in for so long. Trust me, you are NOT the only one who is just a little too gullible for this life. We are too good, too innocent, and too trusting and we have to start having confidence because if nothing else, we deserve that. We also deserve a better story. In order to do that though, we must first face the facts. Let them all out, exposed, in the open, and bare for everyone to see. There is nothing to be ashamed of because, well, it happened and there is no turning back at this point. Shit happens and eventually you make it through, that’s just how it goes. And if you’re lucky, the best part of it all, you get to talk about it. You get to look at it from all different angles, non-stop investigation, asking people from a multitude of backgrounds and beliefs about their perspectives on it. And that’s the beauty of it. That’s what makes devastation so incredibly spectacular. You take it, you wallow in it, and then you transform it into something positive and completely yours. Life moves on, life hurts, life sucks, life is magical, it’s terrific, and of course it’s passionate. Some of us are too passionate though, I am one of them and if you’re reading this then that means you are too.
Our broken hearts have undergone surgery from tenuous wear and tear, all stitched up and are too soon heading back out into our dangerous romantic world. This time though, you have an armed guard and a moat surrounding the beating mass that lays in your chest. You take every precaution necessary in order to be protected from the purge of tall and tan and handsome skater boys who respect you enough to say the right thing at the wrong time. Maybe this post-broken heart is not so much more secure but rather more afraid than ever before. These boys, they confuse you and frustrate you and trace your emotions on an imaginary rainbow. Persistently, rather insistently, whispering in your ear that there is a huge pot of gold at the end and that he knows the way to the finish line. So, you swallow your pride, grab his hand, and follow him there. Except when you finally get there, you realize that there is nothing waiting for you—not a pot of gold or anything else. He tells you that he had a lot of fun though, walking the rainbow with you, and that he hopes you both have better luck next time. You ask him, hesitantly, where the gold is and he doesn’t respond. It’s been many long days and exhausting weeks and he still hasn’t responded even though he hears you loud and clear. One time you think you saw him on the rainbow with another girl. I wonder if she’ll ever get her gold. I hope not. Is this type of dating new? You know the kind when everything is teeny tiny but somehow still just as explosive and intense. I mean did boys do this to girls in the 1950s? I don’t think they would have gotten away with it back then. When did this become acceptable and who is to blame, us or them? If you think about it we let these boys in our lives who don’t actually matter affect our entire universe, present and future. That is the big problem today I assume, that all boys are serpents who seduce girls into letting them take a bite, only to spoil their lives and their hearts for the rest of eternity. To put them in a constant and fearful state of mind, always trying to prevent their previous misfortune from happening again. It’s a classic and it is happening every day to girls who are just a little too eager, a little too hopeless, and a little too romantic. We believe it all even when it’s over before it ever really started.
As for me, my feelings still haven’t changed. I’m still numb and full of words that I wished I said. Except this time around I do in fact blame him. He saw my rainbow, big, bright, and full of colorful song and still decided to paint it black. All of a sudden it transformed to be rather dark, extremely humid, and deafeningly quiet. A sour kind of black. He is the winter that stripped all of my trees bare. He is the thrashing waters of a hurricane that devastated my island. He seemed to have washed up ashore very strangely. Consequently, disrupting my calm when I didn’t even know that I was calm in the first place—until I wasn’t anymore. More than that, I let him do all of it to me. I watched it unfold and brushed it off as romantic even though I knew that he saw me as an object—a conquest to seize. An option who was eager and more than available to go on a misguided and unpromised journey with. He knew I had a school aged crush on him—that I liked him more than he liked me. I was naive and, like most boys, he couldn’t wait to use it to his advantage. I just went along for the ride and ended up fooling myself as the curtains blew around the window at dawn. I returned a mere passenger left sulking in his jar of hearts before I realized that he was no Mr. Darcy or even a member of the Kennedy bloodline—that I could deal with. He wasn’t even compatible to the Mr. Big if I was Carrie Bradshaw. But instead he has been and always will be Count Vronsky. And for some reason I’m Kitty, not Anna Karenina. That’s all he’ll ever be. Charming and nice to look at, sometimes he even knew when the right time was to look me dead in the eyes in order to release the gentle red blush from my cheeks. He knew when to dance with me and even taught me how to curl my toes. Heck, he especially had me grinning ear to ear when I showed up to ball in my best dress. Confidently, I turned down countless suitors because I thought I had him. And still, with all of that he looked at me and left with her. There I was, dopey eyed and dusty with a terrific view of his not so balanced suit—yet he left with her. Now I am here, simultaneously moved and unmoved beyond belief and wondering just how much disregard and disrespect; just how little compassion and fairness he must have felt for me in the long run. I instantly knew that everything was a lie. I also knew that I should’ve saw this coming—I should’ve somehow expected this. But I didn’t, because he is Count Vronsky and I’m just Kitty—living and existing in a novel titled the name of the other girl. Just fantastic. I should’ve known, especially since I planned this all along according to my personal deadline, yet somehow he managed to take the wheel.
Like I said, we did this together but he most certainly is responsible for tearing it apart. Unfortunately for him, however, is that he made an enemy out of me. I bet he rue’s the day he kissed a writer in the dark. Now I have him locked in a box and I threw away the key, completely unremorseful. With each breath of mine I will find a way to use him like he used me. I can exploit every ounce of his being by doing what I do best—and you can do that too. Left with unanswered questions, he will finally be the one who is breathless and too far gone, waiting for that little something that is never going to come. Thanks to the countless number of boys like this that we are bound to endure in our lifetime, for once in a blue moon, we finally get it. Those of us who never get the hint actually have them all now. As a result of our unexpected triumph, the narrative becomes ours to tell, ours to morph and joke about, and ours to complete. Quite obviously, we quickly become no easy opponents. Our independent rainbows sit ten times bigger and brighter amidst the blue sky. Even after his hurricane, our rainbow always manages to find its way to break through. Visible to everyone, not just to the simple boys of our past. All the while, we know that he can see it and deep down we wonder why he doesn’t say something— anything really. The difference is that we would definitely answer him if it was the other way around. We would make a point to tell him that it is okay to go our own ways once and for all— and the most important part is that in that case it would be on our terms, not his.
Realizing all of that, however, I will never be the one who says goodbye to my deviant. That has to be him. Though it may be petty, wherever he goes and whatever he does I aim to remind him of what it feels like to be so numb you can barely feel the frightening chill in your bones. I want to play with his happiness and vulnerability like its clay to show not only my regret but also my vengeance. Frankly, he is so malleable he doesn’t even know it. I watched him pretend to be someone who he is not and do messed up things because of it. So, I feel empathy for him. I am sorry for what I let him do to me, but I’m better now. I know that I can grow and that I have a huge threshold of potential ahead of me, but he will always be unable to mature. I let the sun kiss my skin and the ocean wash all of him that still remained within me away. The moonlight sings to me and he becomes a distant memory to laugh at forever with my girlfriends over brunch. I can confidently say that he never broke me, instead he gave me the ability to see past my apparent fog. The same fog that generated such a superficial and silly “deadline” in the first place. So now, instead of being clueless and eager for something that the wrong boy caught on to, I am eager to pursue my passion— eager to become so full of love and liveliness. He made me realize that I could go rebelliously and headstrong into the world and still make it out with minor cuts and bruises on the other side. Now every day I am unafraid in my wildest endeavors because I’ve already been through the ringer. I almost immediately felt an urgent demand to turn the demons that he gave me into a demonstration. I feel strongly that I can show the entire world that in modern relationships shit happens to us all, but it is how we cope with the aftermath that really matters—not the boys that fling us into it. For once I am willingly thrusting my soul into some sort of abyss, void of every reality known to man— and I am so excited about it.
xoxo,
Vanessa M. – finess5
finess5 