I’ve been in a relationship once. I don’t know if it was love, it probably wasn’t. I was freshly 16 and my brother's girlfriend at the time was one of my best friends. One time she happened to post about me on her story and this guy swiped up. Thinking back I don’t exactly know what made me so extroverted but I told her to give him my number.
We started texting and talking constantly. At the time I was still very particular about shutting my phone completely off during every period, a practice implemented in middle school, but I continued to do it because I promised my mom I would stay off of it during class. This changed when we started texting. I began to text a bit more in between books instead of my usual task of reading. We talked about anything and everything. At the time he was constantly fighting with his parents, so I was always there to console him. I do remember chanting to myself that I should urge him to go to a counselor and to not let his problems absorb my life. I had seen girls in Tv shows become consumed with their partners and let their lives be overtaken and I refused to fall into that trope. I was also still a semi-early sleeper, going to bed at 11 instead of the 2 am that this boy seemed to favor, but I let him keep me up on the phone every night talking about his work shift as he walked home.
It was probably only 4 weeks of talking before we planned to meet in person, but to us it felt like more. We planned for him to ride with my brother's girlfriend to a football game one friday night, but the night of he texted me and told me he couldn’t make it anymore. My friends consoled me, and I remember being a little sad, but I wasn’t heartbroken. I think that’s how I know it wasn’t love? Maybe I’m just trying to psychoanalyze myself.
He ended up surprising me and gave me flowers and I was so very happy. We took photos and I remember hugging him so tight and setting the photo as my wallpaper immediately. Modern day locket, I guess. It was great and I think I was happy, but I just… can’t remember. Like I remember more now as I’m typing this, but the memories still just kinda elicit a mixture of sweet first time ‘talking’ to a guy and the sharp sting of anxiety. I think that might just be hindsight talking though, as of course I have never called him my first boyfriend or my first kiss.
No, we never made it really past that talking stage.
I think it might’ve been the next week or the one after that that he sent me the text “I want to show you something but you can’t tell ** I showed you.” Now for me that set off my anxiety, I knew this was going to be something that would upset me, but I also knew I would never be able to move on with my life knowing this conversation was left unsettled. So I told him I wouldn’t get mad and that he could tell me anything. He sent me multiple screenshots. They showed me texts between my brother and **. They were discussing our relationship. Saying that they thought I was too young for a relationship and I was just using *** to test it out but our relationship definitely wasn’t going anywhere.
I remember this next feeling. I was hurt. My heart was shaking and I was shaking, but my head was pounding. The dinner I had just ate was making its way up. I was sobbing, for this was true heartbreak. Proof that my brother, who was one of my best friends and looked out for me in life, was talking shit about me to my friend and ***.
I don’t remember where I came from but I was soon in the living room yelling and crying telling my brother that I knew what he said about me and that I hated him. My mom and sister were confused, but soon after reading my phone- which I still clutched in my palm- they were caught up. I remember he knew he messed up. And he tried desperately to get me to talk to him, but I stayed buried next to my mother for the rest of the night. And the next morning I refused to talk to him. I don’t remember how we ended up making up, but we did.
The boy called me multiple times that night and the following days. He left a voicemail which I only recently deleted from my phone. I ended up telling him that they must’ve been right and that I felt as if I would never fully be able to get our relationship to anything more than a friendship after what happened. I never heard from him again. And the girlfriend, well when she broke up with my brother she took my best friend and since then I’ve heard from them once asking for money.
Since then no one has so much as told me I look pretty or asked for my number. I think that even if they did I’d be so wracked with anxiety I’d block them. It’s not that I don’t want to be in any type of romance because I so very much do. It’s that my anxiety has made it even hard to make or even maintain friendships, and people tend to pass me by, as if I am about as interesting as the paint on a bedroom wall. Maybe it’s all a matter of finding myself or breaking out of the safe nook I’ve formed in my small town. I don’t know and I’m sure you can’t tell me.