They say that you can learn something from every experience you go through. I have come out of my past a stronger woman. Most importantly, a woman that realizes what she deserves. Without our past, we would not be who we are today. Therefore, I would like to say thank you to my past for making me, as Tori Amos states in one of her songs, the girl that only sleeps with butterflies....
JM – He was my first love. Even though it has been 10 + years, I still remember the first time I saw him. I was working at that awful store and they had hired him and one of his friends to help with the restoration. It was early in the morning and I had gotten there before it opened. He and his friend were standing outside waiting for their team. He smiled at me showing off his adorable dimples. I was immediately his in my mind. During our short-lived relationship, I fell in love and I fell fast. He had a crummy life and I just wanted to protect him and take him in my arms and show him what real love was. I loved him more than anything.
He was, by far, the sweetest boyfriend that I have ever had, and it still stands true to this day. He brought me flowers, cuddled with me, talked on the phone with me for hours, and was always there to help me. He was my best friend.
Then he met her. He cheated on me and then left me for her. I remember the day it happened. He told me over the phone. While I don't remember everything that was said, I do remember him telling me (for the first time ever) that he loved me. Obvious BS, but I was 19...young and naïve. I remember going for a drive and ending up at a park, sitting in my car and bawling my eyes out. It was horrible...I don't think that I've ever cried that hard before. I felt like I was going to die.
To make things worse, shortly after he broke up with me I found out that I was pregnant. To add to it, we hadn't technically had sex...trust me...you don't have to have intercourse to get pregnant!! So here I am...19, newly single and scared out of my mind. JM took me to that first doctor's appointment to find out for sure and then after that he kept me on the back burner for a while. I was such a mess. We eventually stopped speaking and I ended up having a miscarriage...I was a little over one month pregnant. I still think about the child that we would have had. We were so young...babies ourselves, really. But what a beautiful child she/he would have been. I still wonder if he ever thinks about our past. It's one thing to break up with a boyfriend that you loved, but to break up with your first love on top of losing your baby...it took me a long time to recover.
First love is so sweet, magical, and innocent. After it is over you are forever jaded. There is no going back to that place.
JC – He was supposed to be my rebound guy. We were together the longest. I was still in the process of getting over JM and I had just gone through a life altering change. It was my first day of college and I was really nervous. I had gotten there early just to ensure that I was able to find my first class. I was walking down the hall and saw him. Tall, dark and handsome. I was ecstatic to find out he was in my class!
JC was a DJ and I thought that was SO cool. He introduced me to so many new things. We went camping all the time, we would take day road trips spur of the moment and we went on several vacations together. He was spontaneous, which I loved. He was everything that JM was not, which was exactly what I needed at that time in my life.
I loved JC unconditionally and lived my life in denial while we were together. He was the ultimate commitment-phoebe. He never once, during our 3 year on and off relationship, told me that he loved me. He hated holding my hand or showing me any affection while we were in public. I always came last in his life. He would never admit to us being in a relationship, because that way when he was with another girl, he could say that it wasn't cheating. I can still remember 3 instances off the top of my head where when we were together I had found "items" that weren't mine and were definitely not things that I used. I'm amazed at just how stupid I was.
After being with a person for so long, you develop this comfort zone. Many times the relationship is over and has been for a while, but people stay with each other, because they are afraid to leave "the comfort zone." With the push of a friend, I finally ended up leaving and he eventually found another girl. He ended up marrying her and now they have a beautiful family together.
JC was such a big part of my life for so long and it was really hard to get over that, but we maintained our friendship for quite a while afterwards and I still have fond memories of our time together.
TG – My baby's daddy. TG and I were roommates with one other person. I had been forewarned about him from JC (they ran in the same circles and were both DJ's) and my other roommate. TG and I became best friends and he decided that he wanted to be with me. This coming from the MOST commitment phoebe person I knew. He said that things were different with me. I decided to give him a chance. I knew that TG wasn't the guy for me, but we were best friends, we did already live together and neither one of us was dating. So, as horrible as this is, I guess I did it to pass the time.
The day I told him I was pregnant he cried. I had never seen a guy cry before. He was so sweet that night...but it ended up being just for that night. He turned horrible and I ended up moving out when I was about 3 months pregnant.
He disappeared and I moved out of state to be with my family. Obviously now things are OK with us. He decided a couple of years ago to step up and to be a dad to B. We were able to put our differences aside for the sake of B.
I find it ironic that the best gift I ever got (that would be my daughter =) was from a drug addicted, playboy DJ. I, also, find it ironic that out of all of them, TG did me the least amount of damage. Funny the way things work out.
BP – Our relationship was short-lived. I met him after B was born. She was almost a year old. He and I actually dated briefly in high school and he looked me up on MySpace. We started emailing back and forth and then eventually met up in person. I had not dated in quite a while and I had all this added weight that I never lost after my pregnancy. I had horrible self-confidence. He was funny, sarcastic, extremely smart, an all around nice guy and he liked me.
Despite how different our lives were from each other's, I clung to him, because I was so happy to find someone who liked me for me, despite all the stuff that I thought was wrong with me. In retro spec, it was doomed from the start. I had so much growing and learning to do, that it would have never worked out during this time period.
He ended up breaking up with me on the phone and I blurted out that I was falling in love with him. To which he replied, that was what he was worried about. It was a horrible, awkward conversation. A few months after we broke up, he started dating a girl and he ended up marrying her just recently.
BA – He came about a year after BP. I actually met him through MySpace. We talked on the phone every night for hours and hours and finally decided to meet. He was extremely funny, easy going, thoughtful and very blunt. He kept me rolling on the floor laughing, he'd bring me lunch and we'd have a picnic in the park across the street. He sent me sweet text messages, wrote me a song, brought me flowers, cooked for me. He fell in love with me a lot quicker than I did with him...which had never happened before. Here I have this guy that actually loved ME. I had never had that before.
Then a few months into our relationship, he changed...into the person he really was. He was the complete opposite of the person I fell in love with. Possessive, jealous, controlling, mood swings, pushy and belittling...just to name a few. He would call me and if I didn't answer, he would continue to call, email and text until I answered. We hardly ever went out with my friends...looking back, I can see that he tried to isolate me from my friends and family. Whenever I did go out with friends he would call and text me the whole time. Nobody in my life liked this guy and that made things really difficult. Here I was planning a life with the man I loved, but my family and friends hated him.
I ended up being one of those girls...the ones in a highly dysfunctional relationship that could have easily turned into an abusive relationship. Yet I stayed. Not only did I stay, I would always take him back after he left me for another girl. Unlike JC who wouldn't admit to us being in a relationship, so he felt better about cheating, BA was proud to say that he had never cheated. What he forgot to mention was that while technically he didn't cheat, he would meet a girl he liked and would break up with whoever he was with to be with them. FOUR times, he left me for other girls.
When BA got mad, he was a yeller and he would yell and say just awful things. I remember one time when we were house hunting he had taken me to Celina, which is far from my friends and family. He had found a house that was beautiful and the rent was cheap. I remember it had an underground shelter and as we were looking at it, a thought flashed through my head of how BA could kill me and hide me in there. The fact that this thought ever flashed through my head should have knocked the sense back into me. But it didn't...not yet.
It took him purposing to me for the whole picture to set in. And I say purposing in the loosest term. He did not actually purpose. He bought a ring and one day when I had gone to visit him at work he pulled it out and showed me. I paid to have the ring re-sized and when we went to go pick it up I just kept it on.
It was extremely hard for me to end it and move on. However, with the help of my friends and family, I was able to. Looking back, I can now see how lucky I am. Lucky that I found my common sense and did not marry him.
?? - I'm hoping that the one that fills this spot will be my one true love. Despite everything that's happened, I'm still a romantic at heart ;)
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