Throughout high school, I wasn’t the “dating type.” While all my friends were going through their first relationships and first loves, I was the girl standing alone on the dance floor. The one who took her gay best friend to all the school dances. It was fun, and I was mostly a happy girl, but deep down I couldn’t help but wonder what was wrong with me. Why I wasn’t enough?
I was confident in myself but not confident in what boys my age thought of me. I didn’t understand why it seemed like nobody liked me or wanted to get to know me. I’m not proud to admit it, but I even cried about it sometimes. It seemed like I was the only 18-year-old girl who had never kissed a boy or gone on a single date. My self-esteem took a hit, and it made me feel like the living incarnation of Drew Barrymore’s character “Josie Grossie” from Never Been Kissed.
How I assumed boys viewed me.
I became very cynical about love and relationships, but I wasn’t necessarily bitter at my lack of boy-toys. Rather, I just halted all expectations of ever finding anyone. I imagined myself in terms of the “About the Author” section of my imaginary future bestselling novel. A badass middle-aged lady holding a white fluffy cat. A husband was not included, and that visual was fine with me. When friends asked me about what I pictured my dream wedding to be like, I didn’t have an answer.
My misfortune and bad luck with the dudes suddenly changed during the summer before my freshman year of college. I finally met and clicked with a guy who was kind, easygoing, and goofy. I had zero expectations initially and kept my guard up, but I was only fooling myself. Deep down, I really liked him. After a few months of the intimidating, infamous “talking” phase, we finally became #facebookofficial. He was my first boyfriend and my first everything. We had the exact same sense of humor and had so much fun together. We liked to explore and go on adventures, and we took care of one another and made each other feel better. We were inseparable and a lot happier than most other college couples seemed to be. He was not only my boyfriend, but my very best friend, and my comfort zone. He transformed my views about love and truly changed me for the better.
All of my prior misconceptions about how love didn’t exist were gone. I did that gross, typical instinctual thing that love-sick women do, where I started imagining how cute our children might look like 15 years down the road. For once, I was loving somebody more than I loved myself. I found myself leaving him a note or a personally-written poem hidden in his backpack, walking to the grocery store in the rain to buy him a birthday cake. Anything that put a smile on his face made me genuinely happy. I learned how to care for others in a deeper way and I will always be grateful to him for that.
The relationship ended after about a year and a half in the way that a lot of relationships between young people end. I got cheated on.
And It. Was. The. Worst.
I knew girls who had been cheated on. In my eyes, these were girls who were either ignorant and oblivious or just too dumb to ditch the relationship. So I knew to keep my eyes open. I knew to watch out for those little signs of unfaithfulness that are sometimes overlooked. There had been very few, if any, red flags. There were none. I had been vigilant, prepared and awake during the entire relationship. Yet, it happened to me, and I wasn’t expecting it at all. Afterwards, I pretended to be strong and unaffected. I don’t show emotion well and I have always been known as sort of an empowered, stubborn feminist fighter by my friends and family. I didn’t want anybody to think that I was going to let some silly little breakup tear me into pieces.
But it did.
I didn’t talk to anyone about it, and when I did, it was all very surface level. I never told anyone that I felt completely betrayed and broken. On the day I found out, I initially vented to my friends, but that was about it. After that, I kept it all inside, and nobody really knew the extent to which I was struggling. To the public eye, I was okay. Except I wasn’t. I had lost my confidence and my best friend.
I’ll spare the details of another very long story and provide you with this cute little SparkNotes-esque summary: I had a (brief) relationship with a new boy a few months later and got cheated on again. The end.
Um. Seriously? Hit me up, ladies, because I think I’d like to be done with boys.
Basically, I became numb. Everything stung like hell for a few months and occasionally it still hurts today. Once you go through something like that, your ability to trust is shattered and you can’t be put back together the way you were before. I don’t think I’ll be ready to date anyone new for a long time.
But that’s okay.
Being betrayed and getting my heart ripped into tiny shreds gave me a dose of reality and a new perspective. Not everyone you meet is out for your best interest, and no one is perfect. People are going to hurt you, walk over you, turn themselves on you and stab you in the back, even when you are least expecting it. I’m a lot more cautious of people’s intentions now. After my breakup, I had time to do some self-discovery and threw myself into doing what I loved most. I took the love I had given to my ex-boyfriend and gave it to dance, committing myself to my dance company and to loving the art of what I do. I took more chances, made new friends. I stopped sitting on the sidelines and started taking initiative. No boy has, is, or ever will define me. I started seeking opportunities that were presented to me and earned two new positions with on-campus publications: my school newspaper and…hello, Her Campus of course!
I am still healing and figuring out how to love again. Sometimes I am still reminded that a man I was in love with chose someone else over me, and I get bombarded with feelings that I am not enough. But if anything, it’s exactly the opposite. I am more than enough. I have passion, talents and goals, and friends who think I’m funny, smart and compassionate. If my significant other is too blind to see that, that isn’t my problem. Sitting around moping about what could have been never changes anything and doesn’t make you feel any better. As for those two guys? I’m actually currently on friendly terms with both of them, which comes across as shocking to most people. They don’t understand why I didn’t just say “Boy, bye” to both of them for good, but I like to look at things in a more positive light. I’ll never forget what happened, but what’s done is done, and I personally don’t see the point in harboring negative energy and holding grudges forever. It’s all about the good vibes, man.
One day, another person will walk into my life and think that I am what they have always been looking for. As for now, I’m in love with life.