Where I've Been

In honor of yesterday’s holiday, I decided to go all-in on a challenge with no one but myself: write about love.

Something about romance has always felt incredibly personal. Over the years I’ve grown exceptionally comfortable with sharing parts of my life on the internet, but love is a topic that I’ve deemed as better off in the pages of my diary — unread, untouched, and not to be criticized by others.

It’s an awful shame if you ask me, though. Some of my favorite writing will never see the light of day, all because I was either 1.) head-over-heels in love or, 2.) heartbroken and borderline inconsolable. It never fails to terrify me how raw and vulnerable these experiences at either end of the spectrum can be.

It only takes me a second to look inward and trace this fear of sharing, oversharing, or not sharing enough to an even deeper-rooted, lifelong obsession as being seen as “good.” I mean who wouldn’t want to be?

I hadn’t even realized that this is what it was until I recently re-watched a Taylor Swift documentary on Netflix, Miss Americana, where she talks about the pressures of being in the limelight for 15+ years now. Obviously that’s not my experience, but I resonated with it all the same; no matter to what personal cost, I've always felt obligated to be well-mannered and well-liked.

I’m hesitant to admit that I’m the happiest today that I’ve been in almost three years now. I’m hesitant to say that getting here was nothing short of a living hell, and that I hurt people along the way that I never could have dreamed of touching.

My niche in writing — I like to think — is being open and honest about my experiences. But in reality I have avoided an entire area of my life that has been just as frustrating as it has been formative. Don’t we all come with baggage, anyway?

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I wouldn’t have ever considered myself to be “boy crazy.” The thought of introducing a crush to my family was enough to turn my face beet red, and so guys in early high school never became more than that: a crush I admired from a distance.

It wasn’t until my junior year of high school that I was ready to take the plunge and go on a date with someone. I had no clue at the time that one night of eating chicken fingers at Friendly’s would evolve into an over three-year-long relationship with someone who I would forever consider as my “first love.”

Enduring the distance between our two colleges was difficult, but we tried our best to make it work for a while. When we broke up, there were more layers and complexities to it than I’d ever care to relive.

What can you do? I was told that break-ups weren't the end of the world, and luckily I had the support of my close friends and college roommates to help ease the sadness. I essentially started my college experience from scratch, and relearned who I was on my own. I came to a quick conclusion that writing was a much healthier coping mechanism than alcohol ever could be, and I sought out therapy when I was no longer proud of the person I saw in the mirror.

No matter how many weeks, months, or years I could spend “working on myself,” there was one cardinal rule I kept breaking, and couldn’t quite shake: don’t text your ex. If I hadn’t learned my lesson in 2019, you’d think that the message would’ve sunk in by 2020, or even 2021.

I stopped keeping count of the Sunday mornings where I woke up just to cringe at texts from the night before. Of course I had texted him, and it didn’t usually do me many favors. To the rest of the world we had been broken up for a while, but between us we had this ongoing habit of grabbing food together or texting beyond the annual “Happy Birthday!” messages.

Once I accepted that he wasn’t going to be ready to try things again after college ended (or maybe ever), I moved on. It took me two and a half years to open myself up to the possibility of someone new, and even then it felt like some sort of betrayal at first.

There was a lot that I learned about love and about what I wanted for myself through that new relationship. More than anything I learned to value each and every experience, and it has been a work in progress ever since to reframe things I once swore to regret in my past.

I don’t regret trying to fall in love again, and I don’t regret that it ultimately failed at the end of a few months.

My hands still shake as I admit that I was newly single when I texted the ex from years ago again - this time in the early hours of 2022. To the rest of the world, it probably seemed as if I was retreating back to the comfort of someone I shared a long and complicated history with. Although as the hangover subsided on New Year’s Day, I grew more and more certain that it wasn’t just some instance of loneliness or cry for attention.

Between the two of us, we knew it was more than that all along.

I never would have believed you if you told me that I'd be spending this Valentine's Day with Jimmy: my mysterious "ex" of three years, now turned boyfriend of like a month (but really someone I loved for six years straight).

To me it's chaotic. It's nowhere near an ideal story and certainly not how I pictured our lives unfolding when we first started dating in eleventh grade. I haven't always been the "good guy," or the paradigm for a good ex girlfriend at all. I've made made my fair share of mistakes, and believe it or not: it takes more time to process and learn from them than to regret and push off altogether.

But that's the truth. Mentally that's where I've been for the last three years, and happy is what I hope now to be for the next three and beyond. After several years apart, the reunion feels sweeter and more natural than I ever could have dreamed of — and it was often that I thought about the day that I could write this!

I know it's a late and rather unconventional Valentine's Day post, but if you're reading this, Jim, words don't suffice in describing how I feel about you. Getting to grow up by your side and look up to you (literally) has been the greatest pleasure, even if it means putting up with your fries-and-ranch combo or fear of corn. I love you!