Photo Credit: Megan Baker

Hello. So this post has been in my draft folder for quite a while and I’m still a little iffy about publishing it since it’s really personal to me. I might private it later or something. I don’t know how I feel about sharing this yet. The other day, I was looking at old private YouTube videos of my ex-boyfriend and me, and some things came to mind.

I don’t like thinking about the past. The past is all in our heads. It doesn’t exist. Why bother spending time rethinking what happened and how you could have changed it when you should be focusing your energy on the present? Yes. Learn from the past but don’t dwell on it. Those videos just made me think about how I used to love him. I thought he was my one and only. The relationship ended so badly that I don’t even know what I would have done differently. We were so young. I dated him when I was 14 through 17/18. I can’t remember. We didn’t know what it was like to be in a relationship.

It’s funny to think that maybe one and a half years ago, I would have taken him back if I had the chance. I’m glad that I met my current boyfriend, he honestly treats me like a princess and I’m slowly becoming a spoiled brat. Oops. It’s not that my ex treated mine poorly. It was both parties to blame. I said and did some things I was ashamed of. He said and did some things he probably shouldn’t.

I remember crying myself to sleep every night for a week straight. I remember asking my cousin for advice because I felt hopeless. I remember those sleepless nights and endless pain. I remember when we were in my car, I was crying to you. I can’t remember what we were talking about. I can’t remember most of the things we argued about. I remember you told me to cut my face. I remember you wanted me to look in the mirror so I can see the cut so I know that not only am I ugly on the inside, but I’m ugly on the outside.

I remember you told me to pop some pills and never to wake up. I remember how angry you would get when I texted back with an “ok” or a single word. I remember taking the bus for over an hour just to come to see you. Sometimes I ask myself why you never did that. Why was I always the one who had to take the bus to come to see you? I remember feeling so scared and alone at the bus stop around 7/8 pm with a dead phone. It wasn’t fun.

I remember when I didn’t go to school for two weeks, you didn’t even bother asking what happened or where I was. I don’t even know if you noticed that I wasn’t at school. When you asked me when I was coming back, I was so overjoyed. I thought you noticed that I was gone, but you didn’t. You asked on behalf of one of my classmates who was worried about me. You didn’t even care. I remember you didn’t want to tell other girls that you had a girlfriend in college because of your social image. If girls knew you had a girlfriend, they wouldn’t want to go to your party that your fraternity was hosting. You told me that your fraternity would make fun of you for having a girlfriend. I suppose what your fraternity thought of you was more important than me.

“It was all a misunderstanding. He does care about me. It’s my fault. He has the right to be mad at me,” were excuses I told myself all the time to justify the things he said to me as acceptable. Of course, the things he told me shouldn’t be taken lightly and I’ve said equivalent things to him. I’m not saying to take sides, he has his side of the story. I’m not trying to throw shade at him. No. I would say he did genuinely care about me at one point. The relationship went downhill faster than I could see it. I was in love. I wanted to spend every single moment with him. It was the adrenaline and it was stupid.

I wrote a paperback in my sophomore year about relationships – I don’t have it anymore, I wish I did. It was the epitome of how I felt at that time. I can’t write it as detailed as I wrote it back then because I don’t feel the same way anymore, but here’s a shorter and simplified version of it:

Brian Puspos said, “Its hard to be the heart broken, but being a heart breaker isn’t so easy too. If you believe in something, fight for it. This world wouldn’t have such a rich history if people didn’t fight for what they believe in. Giving up shouldn’t be an option when it comes to love. If you give up so easily then you shouldn’t be in love in the first place.”

You shouldn’t give up on love, but you should know when to give up. Relationships starts off so sweet and innocent. You get that butterfly feeling when you talk to them. You’re so intrigued and drawn into them. You want to know more about them. Then they hurt you. Subconsciously, you want to hurt them back too. You want them to understand how you felt so they wouldn’t hurt you again. It just becomes this big loop of hurting each other back and forth.

No one understands. The relationship starts off so sweet, filled with nothing but laughter. Along the way, it turns into something so vile. You find yourself crying to sleep every night trying to make everything right. You find yourself trying to push through the week with an average of 4 hours of sleep a night. You find yourself helpless. You didn’t want to leave because everyone knew you guys were together. You didn’t want to leave because of all the things you guys went through together. You didn’t want to leave because 3 years was a long time, but time doesn’t mean anything.

I can’t. I can’t remember the majority of it. It was something like that. I don’t even know.

My point is:  if I could tell my 14-year-old self, it would be to really think about myself. I have to put myself first because really, I’m all that I have. I shouldn’t have taken such drastic measures just to do what I wanted. I can’t even think of him the same anymore. It was like, something so good yet so bad for me. I reached a point where I did want to kill myself. I wish I could tell myself that there was a way out.

I’m happy with how things are now. I grew from it.

Note: This is merely the surface of my past relationship. There’s a lot more that happened but I chose not to talk about it because I don’t want to think about this anymore. Please don’t assume that you know everything that happened based on this post.