Confessions of a Heartless Lover

Julie – You’ll always be my first, and I’ll never forgive you for it.

Being robbed of innocence is a terrible thing, but many would also say it’s inevitable. My high school plan three years in the making had its fall from grace and swan-dived into a field of grass. Perhaps that’s how I ended up at my new university. A place where I could start over fresh. Much to my own surprise I had become even more sheltered and reserved than I was in high school, a feat I thought impossible. Yet as all things do, with time I found a few I could call friends that could deal with my constant need to distance myself.

Then you found me.

Like many of my memories of you, how we met is seared into my brain so that I may never have the joy of forgetting, lest I have to learn such a valuable lesson again. I was invited to a party, the only freshman that somehow ‘made the cut’ with the resident assistants. There were few of us, yet my invite couldn’t seem to put enough emphasis that I was to not flirt with any of the females at the party, that they were all happily taken. That didn’t stop you from going to the bathroom eight times in 30 minutes, it didn’t stop you from asking me to walk you the eighth time, or when you aggressively groped and kissed me into the wall during the walk back.

Despite wanting it I pushed you off and told you I wasn’t interested in someone that was taken. You claimed you weren’t, but I had successfully killed the mood. After the party you asked me to escort you back to your room, yet my party invite refused a lone escort, so he tagged along. I’m still not sure what his reasons for everything he did were, but needless to say they all eventually failed and backfired horrendously. Despite our escort we stole another moment and I bid you farewell. Talk next day confirmed that you were single, yet I was told differently as another party-goer was interested and I was asked curtly to back-off. I had every intention of doing so as I valued his friendship more than I did a stolen kiss with you. You however, had no such intentions and made your stance quite clear to everyone.

The next several months felt like years, you flew by the seat of your pants and I was happily along for the ride. Our love was passionate, bold, and satiating. You hold the candle for the greatest moments of intimacy I’ve ever experienced. You reminded me how wonderful the companionship of another person could be and brought life back to my small, sad slice of reality.

Until you slowly rotted it away with your cruelty and selfishness of the likes I’ve never experienced since.

I had finally pieced the future together I had thought lost, with you there to guide me, and like the flick of a switch it all changed when one gloomy day you ended our relationship without so much as a warning. I’m not a deluded man, I know I was a depressed individual and you were my catharsis, but I gave just as much as I took from you. I didn’t want to accept it, but I respected your decision and told you that great things are worth waiting for, if you ever wanted me back I would happily accept you with open arms.

That’s exactly what you wanted to hear isn’t it?

I couldn’t see it for the longest time, my head was so far up my own ass that I was playing the fiddle for you. You never left after breaking up with me, you simply used my earnestness to keep you as an excuse to never have to give in the relationship again, and that’s exactly what you did. I spent six months cheering you up, being your best friend, and heeding your beck and call without so much as a thank you or a passing glance if you didn’t want me. As abusive relationships tend to go, it was quite the opposite. The more I gave, the more you wanted, and you slowly became more hostile and abusive if I couldn’t satisfy. If my attention ever wavered you corrected my inattentiveness with harsh malice. Eventually that was all that was left. All the wonderful fondness you showed me, all of the fun and exciting times we’d had, that I desperately clung to for the sake of our relationship were long gone. They were replaced by the real you, someone who wanted a gullible sap that would always take you back. A security net to fall on.

I never noticed how distant our circle of friends became until I asked for help, my asking quickly became begging, and it was falling on deaf ears. Until one of them broke. The very friend that introduced me to you. He told me you had confessed to your best friend that you had been unfaithful, who then called a meeting with our friend group, and somehow all came to an agreement that I didn’t deserve to know. Flabbergasted is a good word to describe how I’m sure I looked. I asked your best friend to confirm this story and she did just that, by telling me I should hear the truth from you, not her. Any other doubts I did have were quickly resolved when, as if on queue, I contracted Chlamydia shortly after.

Rage. I can’t think of you, or anyone involved without getting worked up. There isn’t anyone I’ve met in this life that I hate so much that I’d willingly let them get subjected to what you and my ‘friends’ let me go through. You never admitted to cheating, despite me getting the truth from two others in the end, and contracting an STD from you that you somehow ‘acquired non-sexually’. No, you didn’t have an STD until I contracted it. No, you didn’t contract it sexually it just magically appeared one day. No, it didn’t magically appear one day, you got raped. You got raped and contracted it and then gave it to me.

How could you stoop so low? You not only embarrassed yourself, but when word started to get out that you cheated on me you hated the backlash so much that you made up a rape story to become the victim. Disgraceful. Shame on you and people like you that take away resources from the real victims of rape and other sexual abuses, people like me, in a selfish attempt to garner pity.

It was a hard lesson that had to beat me over the head for a long time before it sank in, but I realized eventually that I didn’t want you, and you didn’t deserve me. No, it wasn’t because of pride like you claimed, but self-respect. Nobody deserves to go through what I did, and how dare you put me through it. You gave me quite a bit in the end, far more than I ever wanted to chew. But you took just as much, things that I’ll never get back. You took my hope, in the end you were too good to be true. Now everything else is too.

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Confessions of a Heartless Lover

Taylor – You were short-lived, but your impact starts the journey. As all things do.

You didn’t stand out when I first met you. Yet we had much in common in how we met. You were a year my senior, but shared the same high school clic. We strove to be apart of something greater than ourselves. Strange how this trend continued for us both, maybe directly caused by you in the end. My feelings for you grew as we stumbled upon strikingly similar goals and hobbies. I first thought my feelings were mutual when you shared in my awkward silences and giddiness during personal conversation. Then asking me to join you outside of school. You were the only person that saw me outside of school. We were a match right as rain, everyone thought we were dating, assumed, as neither of us ever denied it.

Then you changed.

It began suddenly. You built a wall between our friendship seemingly overnight. You stopped communicating and refused to meet outside of school. Yet you kept up appearances, myself and others became confused; you were carrying on as if nothing was afoul, yet I was clearly distressed. Countless acquaintances asked what happened between us, what went wrong with the relationship. Yet the problem was the biggest of them all. There wasn’t a relationship, never had been. I thought you coy, never denying intimacy between us to others, and always accepting my slow and careful advances. Yet instead, I was played a fool, and everyone witnessed it when you came out publicly; with him.

Pain and humiliation are my final memories with you. I don’t recall high school with much fondness, and you certainly did me no favors. I spent three years of my life with you, more than anyone after you. One spent falling for you, another spent investing in a future with you, and the last spent watching myself get quickly and effortlessly replaced; by you.

We created clubs together, clubs that I was kicked from. We created teams, teams I was no longer welcome to join, we created things better than either of us alone could have achieved. Yet only one of us claimed the spoils.

Much is telling of an individual based on their perceived self-worth. Like many I struggled to find my place in a world I felt I didn’t belong. I thought I had that with you. I’d spent my whole life searching for people I didn’t think existed that could accept me as I am; not out of necessity, but out of want. I was led to believe that was you, I was led astray. It was a mighty blow seeing how easily I was replaced, made all the worse when I accepted that he fit my role better than I. Luckily the one thing he didn’t have was our friends, or rather, my friends. Despite your performance, this did not go unnoticed. The ‘old’ me had returned and you were blamed for it. Did you feel the backlash when some of your closest friends picked me over you? What did you feel when he replaced you, too, after he similarly used you? Many said it was karma, that you thought you could have your cake and eat it too. Yet I felt like I was the only one that got his just desserts.

Despite wanting to hate you, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Instead resenting him, when I should resent you. Why did you return months later? Was it guilt? Pity? It mattered not, you found nothing you left behind. I do not know what waters you were testing, but mine had grown vindictive with time. Did you ever become a Marine Biologist? I got accepted to Duke’s program, but I had a change of heart. I became a Botanist instead. I find it ironically humorous that my passion was so quickly replaced by what I consider its opposite in many respects.

For these reasons you are the founder of what I am today. You were my innocence, and much like my paradise, lost forever.