Ex-Files

I'm tired and ready to go take a warm bath and sleep, but I haven't written in a while and this has been a post I've been meaning to get around to for a while... Welcome to the Ex-Files.

As I've mentioned before, I have dated two other guys before J., and we'll call them S. and P., in order of who I dated first. When I first started dating S., I was going into the 8th grade and he was going into 9th. Yes, we were young, but we ended up dating for a solid year and a half, and for a while I was really into him. To be honest with myself, I know I thought it was love, but it was more of a petty obsession and happiness to be loved... Coupled with a horrible moodiness that came about whenever I felt "ignored" or under-appreciated. The poor guy was dealing with depression, and I thought I was the emotionally needy one. (Young me, why were you so selfish? Gah!) Anyway, we did have a good relationship by most standards-- we took it slow and we loved each other as best we could and he bought me jewelry and I played with his cats, and yeah. Pretty average. Besides the whole depression thing, but it didn't factor into our relationship as much as I felt it did while I was actually with him. Funny how you notice these things looking back.

Eventually we broke up for a few reasons. One... My mom snooped on my personal journal and didn't like the "sexual level" S. and I were at, seeing as I was in 9th grade at that point and apparently could not give or receive oral sex, and so we were basically forbidden to see each other for a few months. In that time, I had started high school and saw people more frequently in the past... and by people I mean P.. Oh lordie.

I started to fall hard and fast for P., mostly because he was super nice and sensitive and talkative and basically everything I felt deprived of in my relationship with S., and so I started liking him more and more as someone less and less like a friend. Either way, it all happened that I did not do anything "saucy" with P. until I told S. what was going on and we mutually split up. It was time, and we both knew that, and though I technically was the one the leave him, we both feel like this decision was mutual.

And so the era of P. began. Gah. Remember what I was saying about seeing things differently looking back on them? Yikes.

Now before I go into all of the reasons P. and I weren't good for each other, I'll defend him as much as he deserves... When I fell for him, he was everything I needed at the time- kind, willing to listen to me complain and bitch and be the emotional person I always have been. He was also close by, while S. had lived 45 minutes away and I saw him everyday. And while we were together I did indeed feel what I thought was a pretty intense love for him. Knowing now that it wasn't as strong as I thought, however, does not invalidate that at one point I did love him. Now...

P. and I are basically polar opposites. He's very vulnerable and I only show what I'm feeling to some people. He is over-confident, and I second-guess myself constantly. He sets himself up for success and is met with failure... and I do the opposite. He's very sexually oriented and I'm just not, at least not as much as he was. He's way needier than I am, and he loves to guilt-trip people. And, like most relationships, I entered into ours thinking that these differences were cute, not horribly annoying. That quickly changed.

About a year into our relationship, P. and I were part of a marching band trip to Disney World. Both of us in our sophomore year we were past the honeymoon stage, stressed with new busy schedules, and I was internally losing respect for him pretty fast. He almost never told me something good about myself, and only ever beat me down, while always building himself up, and by that Winter, I was getting tired of it. On our first year anniversary, I thought he would finally make an effort to make me feel special, as I was doing for him. Instead, a sour mood of his ruined that night that we spent in Epcot, and I was crying in Italy. Instances after this included a crappy Valentine's Day, a strange season of Science team, and his seemingly obsessive sexual drive. I slowly started to realize in this time who I really was, and what I really needed and wanted in life, and as I began to change, he not only stayed stagnant but resented the woman I was becoming. Our relationship was slipping since that night in Epcot, and I never did anything concrete about it until May this year, when pretending to love him was too difficult to continue.

Our break up was pretty brutal, but I felt so liberated afterward. One good thing came out of my relationship with P.-- I learned who I really am. I learned that I'm a strange blend of independent and needy, and that I need constant reassurance in my life for some things. I also learned that I really loved philosophy, and I developed a need to fill my life with purpose, rather than simply floating on top and ignorantly but blissfully ignoring the churning life below me. Breaking up with P. finally allowed me to become that woman, and I'm so glad I did.

What happened next, though, is a story for another night. ;D

See you when I see you.
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