I was going into my junior year of college, six months out of a relationship that had taken over my life the last two years. It had been my first relationship, and it was also long distance, so I was struggling to figure out what a relationship was supposed to feel like. I felt safe, I felt cared for, and ultimately I did feel loved, but I had this overarching guilt that I didn’t love him back.
I fought myself for months, wondering if this is what love was ultimately supposed to feel like, something dull that made me more angry every time I thought about him; I finally realized that it was him that I was just not in love with. When I broke up with him, I knew that I was leaving that cherished safety net. I knew that I was leaving someone who would’ve done anything for me. I just wish I could’ve said the same.
Trying to move on, I had met someone from a mutual friend two months before I went to study abroad in Italy. He was kind, funny and attractive. He kissed me on the couch in my apartment after finishing his favorite movie, Knives Out, and I felt this churning in my stomach that I hadn’t felt since the beginning of my first relationship.
We saw each other all the way up to when I was leaving to go abroad. He told me that he would have dated me had I not gone abroad, and for two seconds I genuinely thought about not going. But instead, I said that we’d see where things were once I got back, and he agreed.
That was the last I ever heard of him. I was experiencing my first ‘ghosting’ at a pretty extreme level—not only was I not responded to, I was unfollowed and blocked on every social media. It came completely out of the blue, and I suddenly felt remorseful for myself when I was abroad, wasting time thinking about him when I was in some of the most beautiful places in the world.
.
And i don’t know what i’m supposed to do
You cared about me so much
At one point
I thought things weren’t going to change
.
But the second i left
You were also gone
And that wasn’t my fault
.
It was yours
.
After that experience, I pledged that I wouldn’t get ghosted again. I was going to find someone with even subpar communication skills. I knew that I could take rejection as long as someone was telling me up front — what I couldn’t do was be left in the unknown.
It was a double-edged sword, though, as I was never good at vocalizing my own emotions. I’d freeze whenever there was a tough conversation and everything I said out loud was never what I was thinking in my head. This posed a huge problem in my first relationship; he grew impatient with how long it took to say that I was frustrated with something, and I grew tired of him never giving me a chance to speak.
Halfway through junior year and back in Boulder, I decided to give dating apps a try for the first time. I had been against them for so long because I thought that you were supposed to meet someone organically, withholding the recognition that time and trends change. I ended up only going on a date with one person, who I continued to see for the next month. We’d go on dates to coffee shops and restaurants, which felt wildly different from the last person, where we just hung out at one another’s apartment exclusively.
Things felt perfect — I was lulled into this comfortable state where I believed that things wouldn’t crack into chaos. But then one day, he asked to “meet up to talk.” I knew that wasn’t the kind of lingo you’d say when you were planning another date, so I had an aching feeling that something was wrong. Since we couldn’t meet until two days after the original text was sent, I had a lot of time to mull around the idea of him no longer wanting to see me. I practiced 100 different speeches in my head, determined to not be outpaced by a difficult conversation. Though miserable, at least I felt prepared.
Unfortunately, I was right — he didn’t want to see me anymore. He wasn’t over his ex-girlfriend, and needed more time to process the breakup. He said that if he had met me just a month later, things would’ve been different. He would’ve wanted to date me.
Because of those last words, getting over him proved to be so much harder. I asked for honest communication, which I got, but now with my feelings as the consequence. The words “if we had just met a month later” bounced around my head, and it quickly turned into paranoia. I knew it was over, but what if it wasn’t?
.
Then why am i still
Worried about running into you
And checking over my shoulder
And scanning the room as i walk in
Thinking that i’m going to see you
.
Almost hoping i will?
.
Even more than a year later, I can’t stop thinking about him. I’ve run into him a handful of times, a moment of recognition in a fleeting glance before we both look elsewhere. In a way, I don’t want him to forget me.
Going into senior year, I was really starting to think that something was wrong with me. I would always get so close to a connection with someone, just for it to be ruined at the very last second. Someone I had met in the summer and was seeing for over a month told me that he only saw me as a friend after we had slept together the night before — it was a reality check on the casual hookup culture in Boulder and how I no longer wanted to be a part of it.
I started seeing someone who I had gone on a trip with the summer before my senior year. It was very casual in nature, even though I just said I wouldn’t take part. For the first time, I had taken on this ‘I can fix him’ mindset and tried to convince him that he would want to see me long term. He was different from all the previous people I had seen before: he was in a fraternity, he was a year younger than me in school, he was over six feet tall, and blond.
A month in, I knew the ‘I can fix him’ ploy was a dud. He had so many other things going on in his life, as did I. While I wanted him to see me in a certain light, more than anything I just wanted him to continue being in my life. He was funny and a great person to have a deep conversation with over a glass of wine. Our music and movie tastes weren’t similar at all, but we bonded over the differences. Though I previously promised not to change my stance, I decided that I was fine with the casualness as long as I was able to see him. We agreed that we’d be the only people we were seeing, but we wouldn’t date. It was a situationship at its finest.
But three months in, he stopped responding to me — I was ghosted. I had the decision to make on whether I wanted to let this one slip through the cracks like the first, or to pry harder. I still didn’t know if there was something wrong that I was doing, but I felt that I deserved more closure than that. I knew my worth up to a point, so I reached out and asked what was up.
And to my surprise, he responded. He said that he didn’t want a long-distance relationship because I was moving away after graduation, and that he thought we were moving in different directions. I was confused reading this, since I knew that it was never in the conversation that we were going to date, yet alone be in a long-distance relationship. It felt like I was put into a relationship just to get broken up with. To make it worse, everything he said felt like an excuse for plainly not wanting to see me anymore. He was trying to save my feelings by not being honest, which was ultimately more painful.
.
But you
You were ‘mature’ about it
You said the ‘right’ things
You planned it out so no
Apology was ever needed
.
Except I didn’t believe
A single word you said
To me
.
In the end, I knew that falling out with him was an issue of trust. I was unable to overcome my preconceived perceptions of frat culture, where every thought of him was a worry rather than an enjoyment. We talked about how if we saw each other out at the bars that it wouldn’t be awkward, but we still haven’t seen each other — maybe that’s for the best.
At this point, I was all out. I was graduating at the end of the semester, and it really didn’t make sense trying to make a connection with someone when my imminent move post-graduation creeped closer and closer.
Of course, nothing ever goes to plan when you have a plan, so I found myself pursuing something unexpected: this time with someone I had known since my first semester of freshman year.
There had never been any direct history between us; the most ‘romantic’ we had ever been was when I kissed him for a card game dare freshman year, or fell asleep on his shoulder junior year. Now, the two of us were being more flirty with each other and it felt like all of our friends were secretly rooting for us. It wasn’t until a spy-themed party that I heard he liked me back, which was fitting, since it felt like I was completing a mission that night.
However, this dream I had in my head with him ended pretty quickly — only a week later did we decide to go back to being friends, the main reason being that he didn’t want a relationship and I couldn’t do something casual again. I tried to explain that it was still half a year before I moved away and that I would rather cross that bridge when we got there to be happy now, but I had learned my lesson from the last time: I can’t convince someone to want to be with me.
.
“I do not want to invest in you”
I could take this jokingly
Like being compared to a stock
.
But instead I took it as one
Of the most heartbreaking moments
Of my life
.
Because I usually make up
Disastrous scenarios in my head
Fueled by insecurity and self doubt
.
But this time
Someone said it for me
.
Though I theoretically ended with ‘nothing’ after all these years, I can’t say that’s exactly true. Through all the heartbreak was learning what I truly valued in a relationship. Through all the unread texts was me creating boundaries for myself. Through the tough conversations was me learning how to respond to them better while also giving myself grace if I didn’t say something I wanted to before.
College is for personal growth, and I can safely say that was accomplished during my time at Boulder, even if I didn’t find a college sweetheart. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the men, or maybe it was simply the circumstances of being a busy and young person in their 20s — I genuinely don’t think anyone can be blamed for how anything happened. I’m stronger, more resilient and finally know how to hold myself and my heart.
In a way, that’s all I can ask for.