Remember when you were in love. Your first love. You’re in college, just turned 19. Imagine you thought you’d never find love... a combination of a complicated sexual orientation and difficult upbringing had you convinced that you were doomed to a lonely life. But then you meet this gorgeous, kind man who is smart and ambitious and charismatic and confident and he likes you, even as much as you like him. You’re pretty different, but that’s a good thing, at least from your perspective. You like learning about his culture, his religion, his childhood, his perspective. You like discussing his interests, politics, music, school, adventure, the future... Slowly, you fall in love with him. You do things with him that you never thought you would do, at least not so soon, or not so quickly. Your first seven months together are not always easy. College is hard, home lives are difficult, and depression poses difficulties for you both. But you have each other, and you stick it out until the summer, happy to have each other and very much in love.
The summer is hard. You’re both in the same place, but you don’t get to see each other very often because his parents can’t know about you and you don’t have a car. You miss him deeply and often feel neglected. He doesn’t miss you quite as much, but he’s just as sad because he knows that he’s letting you down and he hates feeling like he’s not good enough for you. By the end of the ninth month of your time as a couple, you’ve grown more distant. You’re suffering, feeling as if he doesn’t care about you as much as you care about him, and you feel abandoned. But you love him and are determined to stick it out until the school year starts again and you have time to work on your issues. Your boyfriend also feels disconnected from you, and he knows that he’s not making you happy.
Under mounting pressure from his family, school, and you, he ends your relationship. It’s not that he doesn’t like you, it’s just that he can’t dedicate himself to this relationship right now. At first you don’t understand what he’s saying. You ask him to explain what he means, and then you start begging. You ask him not to do this, sure that if he would just wait until the school year starts again in one month that you’ll both be fine and happy again. You can’t understand why he would do this to you. Does he not love you as much as you love him?
You see him the next day, and he takes you to one of his favorite islands, another place he always said he would take you but never did. At least until now. As parents walk by with children and old couples walk their dogs you cry in the grass as he looks at you helplessly. He hugs you, and eventually you let him. He ask to kiss you, and eventually you let him. He explains to you why he can’t be dedicated to you right now. He says he still likes you and suggests that maybe once you’re over him in the fall you two can be friends with benefits. You give him his birthday presents even though it feels a bit pointless now. You’d already wrapped them even though his birthday wasn’t for another month because you wanted to give them to him in person before you left for home in a week. At your prompting, he accepts each personal gift and reads your hand-made card. As you read your past self’s confession of undying love, you begin to cry again and do not see that his eyes still remain free from tears.
The next few months are like torture, and your suffering feels physical. Every moment of your existence is burdened by thoughts of him... your loss... thoughts of could have been. You see him on the first day back at school, and ask if you can take a walk to talk and figure out how to interact at your small college where you’re sure to overlap frequently. He invites you back to his room, and before you know it you’ve had the best and worst sex of your life. You leave, feeling unashamed but heartbroken. Despite your feeble attempts to avoid him, before two weeks have passed you’re having sex regularly. For almost all of that semester, you sleep over in his room around four times a week, and have sex most of those times. You never have sex unless you can sleepover. He acts like you’re his girlfriend, even to some extent when you’re in public. At first, he only has sex with other girls a few times, but he refuses to be exclusive with you. Then, he lies to you repeatedly and says he’s only having ded with you when really he’s having se with other women, too. You’re not exclusive, so it’s not cheating, but you’d asked him to tell you if he starts having sex with other people so that you could reconsider having sex with him. He lies to you instead, and you find out from other pellle. He breaks your heart over and over and over again, but you love him. You like having sex with him except when it hurts(it often does) and you love feeling wanted by him so you keep having sex with him even though you really hate thinking about him being with other girls.
You start drinking more, and smoking, and looking for other guys, and you find some... and you don’t like it very much, so you don’t let it go too far. But you still feel sullied. Except one time you get too drunk and have sex with another guy, and it’s amazing. He finds out and it turns out that he’s jealous... this makes you glad. You text during winter break and it’s almost like you’re a couple again.
He said his feelings are complicated. But you know they’re not. He won’t marry you because you’re white, and he’s not. He won’t marry you because you’re one of the oppressors and you can never support him being connected to his culture. Not because you don’t want to, just because you’re you. He said he’s attracted to you. And he is. Because you’re hot. Lots of people are attracted to you. But you don’t love yourself, and that also made him not love you.
You fell in love with a good man who was not good enough for you. You let a good man treat you badly and become a bad man. Don’t let his nature fool you.
Danielle, don’t you ever forget who he is. That man gave up on you because you were not worth the effort to him. He is not worth your effort! He does not deserve you! I know that you loved him, I know that being with him is fun and makes you happy. I know that it is so so hard for you to deny yourself happiness right now, but I really think it is what’s best for you. You need to make yourself happy. You need to find someone else, anybody else, and move on.
