my love life

Love what is it? why does it hold such a big place in our hearts? I’ve learned to love from my parents, who by far are the biggest reason I believe that there is someone out there for me that will love me like my parents love each other. I also do know that love is hard and imperfect. You see people giving everything they got into a relationship just to wind up hurt, but those are the ones you get to learn from. Sometimes people come into your life to show you life lessons and show you how deep your love can truly go. 

This is my story of what love has meant and what it has shown me.

Love starts at an early age. For me I realized what love is at the age of 7. Me and my father were like twins and I always wanted to be like him. He would wake up every morning tickling my feet and body so I always woke up with a smile. This part showed me that giving love isn’t just about saying or doing things for someone but the ability to make someone happy. The feeling you get by making someone smile is contagious and you just want to do it more and more. I believe that as we grow up sometimes we become worrisome of letting people in, it’s like we have put up a wall to show less emotion because letting someone in just to be hurt is something we can’t bear. Sometimes this wall manifests itself from our past experiences or from being scared. 

I can tell you that for me I was just scared of loving someone so I always pushed my feelings aside and would deal with my own things because letting someone into what I imagined to be a rollercoaster of feelings is something no one would want. The second reason was my insecurities around 8th grade I had a huge crush on this girl in my civics class and I mustered up the courage to say something to her and before I could say anything she looked at me and said “You have a big unibrow” I didn’t say anything and went back to my seat. That day I got home and shaved that sh*t off so fast because I thought If I don’t shave that unibrow no girl will ever find me attractive, until this day I still shave it off because I don’t want to look less attractive. 

My second insecurity was my weight, around 10th grade I started to pack some pounds and got pretty fat, I just kinda looked at myself in a mirror and hated everything I saw. I didn’t really change anything about myself until the summer before I went to college. As the typical freshman coming in I had only I thought in my mind and that was the GIRLS. I dieted and starved myself until I got to the point where I liked how I looked and just as I started to like myself the acne came. Oh god, My acne was atrocious. I wore a hat all the time to cover up the acne in my forehead. Freshman year was a weird time for me. I realized that I wanted a gf but didn’t really know where to start. I always felt tough that I could be a good boyfriend but it just didn’t happen until that day… but that comes later in the story. In these new days of technology and tinder I adapted to master the art of “ Sliding in the DMs” my freshman year. Man I was swiping right on every girl and later came to find out I was just a horny freshman and wanted sex not a realtionship. I started to hook up with girls here and there until I finally took a cute girl on a date. I liked her but I didn’t really know what to do. It was fun and all but as the dates progressed I felt like we had really nothing in common and it ended. I always told myself that I would know when someone came along that I wanted to date, Like for the grace of god something was going to come down and I was going to feel some way and just know. 

My first glimpse of this was summer of my sophomore year. I met this girl who was great, beautiful, and fun to be around at the same time. At this point my master in “ Sliding in the Dms” had evolved to shooting my shot through snapchat. I remember that day pretty vividly, My friend blake was showing me this girl he thought was cute and had recently broken up with her bf. I saw her and remember adding her on snap and asking her to hang out. Within 10 minutes we had planned a date. I know this is going to sound super douchey but just hear me out. I took her to this one movie theater that I knew the seats recline into beds so “ we could cuddle” it wasn’t even 30 minutes into the movie and we started to make out. As time went on I started to hang out with her parents, her sister, and friends. I started to catch feelings pretty fast, and we started to hang out every day. Then the day happened, It was a week before going back to school and I kinda wanted to date this girl. She explained to me that she didn’t really want to do that and this was the first time I experienced being hurt and not really knowing what to do. I told myself what did I do wrong ? now looking back on it I realized it was just happening in the moment and she didn’t want to date.This was my first lesson I learned here about love, You can’t force someone to want to be with you. As I said earlier every small or big relationship will come with its lessons. We are still friends and  I see her now happily in a relationship, which I’m weirdly happy that she found someone that she likes and wants to be in a relationship with. I also learned that time heals all wounds I thought I really liked this girl but as I matured and grew I realize now that I just liked her company and doing activities with her. Oh yeah, I realized that I enjoy doing bf and gf activities like go to movies, concerts, the beach, riding roller coasters…. etc.

 As time went on I think that I used that breakup and became someone I didn’t want to be. I used that anger and frustration from how things ended and became a fuck boy. I was your typical fraternity kid. Girls liked me but I was still searching for that like I know I want this girl moment. 

And just as I was losing hope it happened… I met this girl. As you probably know I “slid in her DMs”. I remember the day like it was yesterday. I was scrolling through Instagram and this cute little “shawty” popped up on my feed with a National’s baseball cap and I instantly dmed her. I somehow convinced this girl to give me her number and she was the most sarcastic woman i’ve ever met her first text was “ You got the wrong number”. For a second I thought I just got played and was like F*ck, then she texted me back saying just kidding its Sara. We hit it off pretty well from the beginning,  we would text each other while watching game of thrones and talk a good amount. It progressed and then we met. I was trying to be the cocky dude because at this time I still thought that showing emotion was something guys don’t do. I remember I put my arms around her and the kiss was something special like out of one those movies where the guy sees her gf after 3 months of not seeing each other and they go in!! We finished the movie and went to drop her off at her friends. I went on vacation and then hung out with her after and we would talk and occasionally hang out here and there, I think she was playing hard to get. Man I wanted to date this girl so bad until one drunken night I asked her to be my girlfriend. She said yes but told me way later she thought I was just drunk and didn’t want it. When I woke up that morning the first thing I said to her was “are we making it Facebook Official” and we started dating. Up until this time I had always been the friend that no one thought would have a gf. My friends told me they would give it 6 months. 3 weeks in, I made my biggest mistake, I went to another college and still being influenced by my fraternity friends and also this being my first relationship I had no idea how to act and I messaged a girl to hang out. We didn’t end up hanging out but my gf found out she was crying and I felt like absolute shit. I was on a run when she called and Immediately went to my car to drive to her. And my tire popped leaving the drive way. I spend 3 hours fixing that tire until I got it on and drove. I remember I got to her house and she looked super sad. I couldn’t really explain myself other than i’m sorry that was the worst mistake ive done and apologized. We talked it out and worked out things. We were so in love, like I cant even describe it I wanted to spend every day with her. We laughed, went on dates to museums, and got drunk. We drank on my roof while I told her I always wanted to dedicate a song to her. It was Superstar by usher. I had never fallen for someone so much in my life. Everything about her was amazing: her eyes, her lips, the way she smelled, I even started to like cuddling. Then our first arguments started to happen. I figured out she was a little jealous and would take it out on me by trying to leave and I always chased her. We always talked it out. Then one night I remember I was at her house and we got into it and I stormed off then realized I was too drunk to drive so I went back I remember I saw her crying and realized that I can’t let her go. I hugged her so hard and just held her while we listened to yellow by Coldplay, to this day still one of my best nights and it came from an argument. We went back to loving each other more and more until not even dating for a full year we moved in together after I graduated. I saw myself marrying this girl, like we had our cute place made dinner, laughed, saw movies, danced. Then I realized moving in with someone is hard. My commute was 2 hours but I was willing to make the sacrifice so she would have a smaller commute because I knew how cranky she got in the morning and waking up early would not put her in a good mood. We started arguing and arguing it felt like we had lost the spark that kept us happy. The lesson I learned was that no matter what arguments you have if you truly love someone always try and make it work. We still had our good days but we had our bad days too. From my commute I was always tired and didn’t want to do much and my weekends were filled waiting for her to come home. I started to resent her from not doing stuff on weekends since she worked every weekend. But to me the good days outweigh the bad. For instance, the day of her 21st birthday I went and tried to make it the best day possible we got drinks, took her to eat, we drank more, got cupcakes and then eventually drove home. It started to rain and she just stuck her head out of the car and I have never seen someone so happy. The rain was pouring on her and I just felt this happiness from showing her a good day. 

Eventually the day of our lease ended and we decide to move in with our friends. More because she always wanted to live with her friends and I wanted to let her have that time. In our new places we started to hang out less and just hang out at nights mostly. I think I got consumed with pleasing my friends as she did and forgot about our relationship. We argued more and more during this time but I still saw a future. Until we broke up. This was the hardest thing that had ever happened to me. The love of my life was torn away from me, It was a mutual thing we both did stuff that lead to it. I learned another lesson the day this happened, Take the little things not for granted. The time you get to say hi to this loved one, the time you wake up next to each other, the saying I love you, the holding her, the facetimes and late night calls. I realized that I stopped appreciating the little things that made us who we were. I had lost sight of what mattered and instead focused on other things. I sought validation from my friends and going out rather than the person that meant the world to me. I forgot to show her why I wanted to marry her. The grieving process was weird I just wanted to talk to her but she was giving me a cold shoulder. Eventually, I just deleted her of everything and blocked her because it was hard to see her face. The hurt was also bad as I realized that my trust for her was shattered. I found out that she went to talk to someone that she told me not to worry about and that a week before we broke up she almost cheated on me. I remember her words when she told me who and said “ Well he looks like that” and me looking down at my self and seeing the weight I’ve gained and feeling horrible.  I wish I did things better with our breakup I was wanting to give her space but then didn’t. I tried to get angry and then forgave. I was all over the place. She told me she still loved me and sees me as part of her life. I know this sounds like me and her had problems but trust me these problems meant nothing to me compared to the love I have for her. I think she just has a hard time seeing clearly and is afraid of letting me love her because just like me and a lot of people the thought of being hurt pushes the ones closest to us away.

This relationship, my first actual true love relationship has taught me so much. It widened my understanding of how much I can love someone. Has taught me that I can’t lose sight of what makes something special. Treat the person you love with the respect and love as you first met them. I learned that the wall I put up about my feelings is okay to let it crumble and let people in. I don’t know where this love story ends or if it will continue. I guess now as before i’m leaving it up to god.