Chapter 46: The One That Got Away

Okay, so yesterday I took a look into the future I hope to see. I keep thinking about it all. I can only hope that my future winds up even a fraction of how brilliant that future seemed. Given so much of the past, it seems like it would be an earned reward. At the same time, though, I know I haven't been through anything worse than anybody else. Well, that's not entirely true... I've been through some shit that a lot of people can't really say they have. Those are stories for different blogs, though. Tonight, I have a specific period of my past that I want to talk about; the fairly recent past. As I mentioned a couple days ago, love seems to be in the air and it has got me thinking a little bit about it all, as well. Sure, I am witnessing the really good parts taking place around me but I can't help but be reminded of the less good parts that I have experienced. Tonight what is on my mind are the two most significant relationships of my life.

I guess it all starts back in 2006. My previous relationships had all been one huge mess after another and by that point I was just over the whole concept of relationships at all. In fact, it had been about 3 years since I had had any sort of significant feelings for anybody. I just stopped looking at people like that during that time. I referred to all of my previous relationships as the things that were severely wrong with them: Physical abuse was the first one and what a way to make a start in the world of romantic entanglements, right?! Again, that is not something that I care to go into at this point. I try to avoid discussing that one, honestly, and I am going to continue to do so right now. Debt came next, and boy was that fun! That one was actually much worse than debt, in the long run, because that person also made me do things that I never imagined I would do and things that I am still ashamed to say that I have done in my life, and to people who have never done anything but loved and supported me. Then there was the third, drug issues, which I also don't care to go into detail about right now. These are all issues that will surely be discussed at later points in the blog, but we've got 319 more blog posts to cover that stuff. The only reason I bring these up right now is to say this: I didn't exactly have a positive experience as a point of reference for relationships at this point in my life.

So, in September of 2006, after 3 years of shunning the whole concept of relationships or falling in love, I was in a place where I was feeling like there was a major void in my life. In an attempt to fill that void, or just to distract myself from it, I took on a second job at Borders. I was never really clear, at the time, of why I felt so strongly about finding a second job but I really did. When it dawned on me that I should give one of my previous jobs, at Borders, a second go it just seemed like a perfect fit. I was only there a few weeks when I noticed another new hire, who I came to affectionately refer to as "The Puppy," and was immediately taken with him. I don't know what it was exactly, but I just knew there was something about him and he was somebody I needed to get to know. No matter how confident I have been in my life the one place I had never really had a lot of confidence was in dealing with boys, but somehow in my first dealings with him I was completely confident and I immediately started making it a point to get to know him, and show him all the best parts of me. He had recently moved to Sarasota from Alabama, taking a semester off of college there. He loved it here but didn't have any friends here in town, aside from his brother who he was staying with. There was my in. So, we started hanging out. We were never on official dates or anything, but the direction things were going was pretty clear. Then came the night of the Dashboard Confessional concert in the beginning of November, (November 4th, if I remember correctly.) After hanging out for a few weeks, I had already had tickets to this concert and asked him if he would come along. He pretended to be a big fan of the band, even though he only knew a few songs of theirs. In one of those magic moments you never really think can happen in life, during the concert in the midst of one of those beautiful, romantic ballads he turned and kissed me. It was the most perfect first kiss I could ever imagine. Still, we had never really discussed what exactly we were to each other. After the concert, on the drive home, I tried to have this conversation but it wound up getting thrown off track when we got completely lost and couldn't find our way back to the interstate. The same night we shared our first kiss, we also had our first fight and spent much of the trip home in silence. Turns out, this would become a pattern between the two of us: I'd ask for some sort of definition of what we were to each other, and he'd get upset about something unrelated and we would fight about whatever unrelated thing had come up at the moment. This particular night, though, we got over it quickly and from that point on spent pretty much all of our free time together. We had an odd relationship, I think, but odd in a way that I preferred. It was only ever the two of us. We interacted with people at work and such, but outside of work it was only ever the two of us. For the time that we were doing whatever we were doing, it was like he and I had holed up in our own little world with just one another, and I loved it. Despite the many flaws in our relationship, that was one of the happiest times in my life. Those flaws, though, got a lot bigger come Thanksgiving. I had known since very early on that he had planned on heading back to Alabama to go back to school come January. I hated the whole concept, but we often talked about me coming up to visit him in Alabama, and him coming back down for Spring Break and moving back once the semester ended. In November, though, January seemed like ages away. So, he managed to get the weekend after Thanksgiving off by saying that he already had a plane booked to go back to Alabama to spend Thanksgiving with his family. Of course, I knew this was BS and his actual plan was to spend the weekend partying in Miami. I still remember the night that he came back. We worked together that night, and after work we drove down to Taco Bell, one of our favorite spots because one, we had sex there once and liked to laugh about it, and two, it is the only place to get a Mountain Dew Baja Blast. We had spent many a night in that parking lot talking and laughing, amongst other things, but this night was not the same. On this night, he dropped two major bombs on me: He slept with somebody else in Miami, and he had decided he was moving back to Alabama a month earlier than planned. He was leaving on December 15th now. Oddly, and perhaps sadly, I was more disturbed by the second bomb than the first. Sleeping with somebody else was easily forgivable for me, but leaving a whole month earlier than planned was just a terrible thing for him to do to me! The next few weeks, before he left, were probably our most lovey-dovey times together, though, and made him leaving all that much more painful. Then came the week he left. Two days before he left, we went out to a bar on Siesta Key with a friend from work, and he spent the entire night flirting with this friend, and telling me how much he wanted to make out with him. When I got upset about this, he basically told me I was overreacting and, "Duh, it's not like I'm actually gonna do it," was his best defense. After we left from hanging out with this friend, we went to this club in town that was fairly new at the time and was pretty much always empty and spent the rest of the evening on a dancefloor with just the two of us, and fucking in the bathroom, (another recurring theme of our relationship.) Then, the night before he left, he picked me up from my first job and we spent the afternoon together, having this really adorable conversation about if we wound up having children together and again discussing me visiting him in Alabama, and his plans to move back at the end of the semester. It was basically an afternoon of him reassuring me that whatever it was we had, which he still refused to define, was not over. I had to work at Borders that evening, so he dropped me off there and we said our goodbyes in the parking lot. It was awful, and I went into work with tears in my eyes. My manager was kind enough to grant me a few minutes to get myself together before starting my shift. The next night I turned in my two weeks notice to my manager, who quickly talked me out of it. I still wasn't entirely convinced, though, until what happened next.

The night after "The Puppy" left, and left me devastated, there were a couple of other new hires back in the cafe. I didn't really think too much of it, initially, except that both of them was kind of cute. I was working at the registers that night, and it was kind of slow due to the fact that we were open extra late for the holidays and most people just don't decide to go shop for books between 10pm and midnight. I was just kind of standing around at the registers not doing much of anything when one of the new hires came up through the line area and stood there and waited for me to call him over. He was odd, and kind of nerdy, but in a very cute way. He came up with a book and asked me about the book loaning program they have there, (where employees can check out books from the store.) It struck me as odd that he didn't just ask his training manager about that, but made it a point to come up to the registers. It was a simple question that he seemed to already know the answer to, and I was pretty sure that he only came up there to talk to me. I don't know what it was exactly, but this minor transaction between us was enough to fully convince me that I should stick around this job a while longer. This kid, who I wound up affectionately referring to as "Spartacus," and I grew closer and closer over the next few months. Much the opposite of the situation with prior, we spent most of our time together outside of work with mutual friends and co-workers. We had a much more quiet flirtation and were really becoming good friends but I couldn't help but let my feelings get a little out of control. I just knew that nothing was ever going to happen with this guy. I wasn't his type at all, (he was much more into older guys, who all happened to have a good deal of money,) and he just seemed like such a magical little creature next to ordinary me. I was nowhere near as confident with him as I had been with "The Puppy." Still, after a few months of flirtation and bonding, I confessed my feelings to him. He had to think about the whole thing. What came next was a long period of complicated, sometimes awkward and sometimes amazing times between the two of us. A lot of stuff went on, but nothing was ever official and we were never actually together. He made it clear the entire time we were just friends... but that didn't stop all that went on, and it didn't stop my feelings from growing stronger and stronger. I tried everything I could think of to show him that I could be just as good for him as those older guys with money, even though I knew all along I couldn't. Then, after a devastating visit from "The Puppy" over Spring Break that made it clear that whatever we had before was over, I went full force for "Spartacus," and got rejected time and again. Then my best friend came to visit me for a little vacation complete with two Christina Aguilera concerts and a Gwen Stefani concert. The day that my best friend arrived was also the night of the first Christina Aguilera concert, which "Spartacus" wound up being at somehow. We bumped into him at the concert and had a few laughs. We also made plans to meet up with him at a club afterwards, but when we went to the club we never found him. Turns out, he wound up at the concert because tickets were given to him by the latest older guy with money. I had watched him go through a few in the time that we knew each other, and didn't think much of it. Still, he talked about this one differently. He just seemed to have a very different vibe about this one. The next day, Don and I went down to Miami for the second Christina Aguilera concert and I had him on my mind the whole time. We went out to a club after the concert, and let's just say I allowed some stranger in the club to make me feel better for the evening. I came back from Miami feeling very bitter about the whole thing with the stranger and with "Spartacus." The next night he, Don and I all went out to this bar in town, where I had never been before and didn't really know anyone. He, on the other hand, knew everybody there and was the most popular girl at the party. I got very drunk and I don't recall exactly what took place, but he wound up getting a ride from some random person he knew there and leaving very upset with me. I then became a total wreck, cried and made my best friend take me out to a spot on the beach, the last spot where "The Puppy" and I had been together. I cried on my best friend's shoulder and was a wretched, broke down, sloppy mess version of myself. The next morning I made the decision that I was never going to drink so much again, and I have stuck to it thus far. We made up from that drama the very next day, and spent the next few months the way we had spent the prior few months: Him being himself and me desperately pining. I was slowly starting to get over it all, though. The older guy who bought him the Christina Aguilera tickets had stuck around, though, so nothing else happened between the two of us until his birthday. He threw this big birthday party full of his ritzy, downtown friends and me, sitting amongst them all feeling awkward as hell. I hung out for a couple hours but eventually it became a bit much for me and I called for a ride home. He was in his bedroom with just his best friend and I went in to tell him I was leaving. His best friend stepped out of the room and closed the door, and he thanked me for coming then planted a major, if not slightly drunken, kiss on me. As long as it was taking getting over the whole thing, that was all it took to pull me right back in. It was probably a whole year later, and us having fallen out of touch for a few months, for me to finally leave the whole thing behind. In fact, I am probably being overly optimistic about that time frame. It took me a long time to get over him. Despite the fact that I pretty much only told the bad parts here, there was something amazing about him. He made me want to be a better person, as cliched as that may sound, and he shared various tools with me to become that better person. He and I studied Kabbalah together for a while, as well as practicing the Secret together. In fact, that period in 2007 that I have discussed here a few times before when I was using the Secret and having one of the happiest periods of my life was all brought on by our time together. I still think fondly of him from time to time, but mainly I don't think of him all that much anymore.

"The Puppy" is kind of a different story. Up until a few months ago, I would find myself frequently attempting to net stalk him and find out what he is up to these days. I mean, in most ways I am over him, but he still crosses my mind from time to time. Not as often as he used to, for sure, but he is still the subject of many of my songs. He is my point of reference for what being in love feels like. That may be why I have avoided it like the plague for the past couple years. Despite the briefness of it, our time together was an amazing period in my life and the feelings I had during that time are something I kind of hope to find again, on one hand, and hope absolutely never to deal with again on the other hand. It is hard to explain. Still, he is in so many of the songs I write, the songs I sing, and the songs I listen to. He is, most likely, my "one that got away." I'm sure that's not true, actually, but that's what he is right now. Some day he will barely be a blip on the radar, except for having been immortalized in my songwriting.

Anyway, there we have it: Yesterday we got a glimpse into the future, today we got a glimpse into the past, Tomorrow? How about returning to the present for a while? There is actually stuff going on right now, no matter how minute it may be, that should be discussed here in the blog. We'll get to all that tomorrow, though. For now, it is goodnight.