Reddit, how do you feel about your first love?

She was an Air Force kid, it was middle school, and I didn't know it, but our time together had an expiration date. I can't remember how we met. Maybe it was 8th grade English, maybe it was before then. All I know is that she was a quiet, kind of punk-grunge-goth girl in the early 2000's. I was awkward, nerdy, and I didn't have many friends. But I fell hard for this girl, and, unbeknownst to me, she had a bit of a crush on me too.
We talked a bit through middle school. We were friends, but we didn't hang out, if that makes sense. We pretty much only saw each other at school, and if we had classes together, we'd try to sit close to each other. I never asked her out. She was small and pretty, and she had a constant stream of suitors. She'd date a different guy every month, and I didn't want to be part of that endless procession. I knew it wouldn't be good for either of us.

At the end of freshman year of high school she moved to England with her family. I was pretty torn up about it, but I tried to get through it. We would talk. A lot. On AIM, then MSN, we spoke pretty regularly for years. Her father was transferred to Italy and the family went with him. She would talk about living in Italy. She would tell me about her relationships, I would tell her about mine. She would tell me her troubles, including her battle with depression. We would send letters back and forth sometimes. She had beautiful handwriting, and always signed her notes with two x's before her name.

I still have all those letters. She told me I really helped her sometimes, that I pulled her back from depression a number of times. I didn't know any of this, and it made me feel good that I could help her. One day, with nothing to lose, I told her I loved her, really loved her.

She felt the same way, but it was impossible. We both knew this. Nothing would ever come of this. She met a guy and he proposed. I kept talking to her, and I chatted with the dude a couple times, and I tried my best to be happy for them both. Meanwhile my personal relationships were going from bad to worse. I dated other people, but in my heart I knew that she was the one I loved. My love life suffered as a result.
Freshman year of college for me, she breaks it off with her fiance. She finds God and it makes her happy. She says maybe she'll try to move back to the States. Maybe she'll go to a college near mine. In the meantime, she's visiting her aunt and uncle for a while in North Carolina. Maybe I could see her.

Of course I could see her. I had to. Fall break of my freshman year, I drove ten hours in a single sitting to see her and stay with her for three days. When I arrive, it's like she never left. We drive for ice cream in the night. We stay up talking in her aunt and uncle's living room. We take a ferry to a little island where there is a beach and an aquarium. We spend the day there, taking silly pictures. I am nineteen years old, and I am in love, and this moment has been five years in the making. I kiss her at sunset, barefoot on that beach. She bites my lip and laughs playfully. She is a fantastic kisser. She is a foot shorter than me, so I pick her up, feel her feet come free of the waterlogged sand of the surf, and I kiss her again. I tell her for the first time, from my lips to her ears, not through a screen or telephone, that I love her, and she tells me she loves me too.
We never have sex. She's a good Christian now, removed from her wanton days in high school. I kiss her as she snuggles into my chest on the couch and I jokingly ask her to read me a bedtime story, and I fall asleep as she reads from an old copy of Grimm's. She wakes me the next morning with kisses and blueberry pancakes. I'm the happiest I've been in years.

We spend the next day as kids do. We go here and there. We joke around. For a brief moment, we're both in love. She says another friend is coming to visit, on the day I'm leaving. He comes and I go. Before I do, I say my goodbyes, press her against the door of my car, and kiss her one last time. I ask her not to forget how she feels about me. She says, somehow, she doubts she will.

I drive home another ten hours with a light heart. I'm happy, really happy, for the first time in a long time. A relationship is still impossible, but I have some sense of closure. Maybe things can change. Maybe things will get better. I remember at this time we had Myspace. Facebook still wasn't very big, or maybe it wasn't even open to the public yet. Her Myspace has pictures of us both. I look at the pictures at the library computer lab of my university, and I smile.

A few days later, there is a new picture. It is her and the friend who came to visit, sharing a kiss. I feel something break inside. I remember that at the time, there were no tears. I had a hundred different emotions fighting inside me. I go to lunch as planned with my friend. He notices my face, and he instantly knows something is wrong. I tell him I'll explain if he comes to my apartment later that night, but I can't talk about it then.

He comes by after class. I am already monstrously drunk. I talk a bit about what happened. He understands. I'd already emailed her - probably a mistake, but it turns out she understands how I feel, and she apologizes a couple days later in an email of her own. I accept her apology, but we both know nothing will be the same, that nothing had been the same since I kissed her. She loves me, but it's impossible, beyond impossible. What we want out of life is so different, that it would never really work, no matter how much we loved each other.

She goes back to Italy. She never does go to school in the States. We kind of fall out of contact. We catch up every once in a while, and sometimes it's almost as if she hadn't broken my heart more than once, but it's never the same. She gets married a few years later to a different guy. She invites me to the wedding, but I can't go. First, it's in Italy, and second, I don't know if I could sit through that.

She and her husband move back to the States, to Oklahoma, then to Illinois. She's had two kids now and still looks incredible. She posts pictures of her adorable children and her budding family on Facebook nearly every day. I talk to her incredibly rarely. I'm okay with it now, but sometimes I think back to high school, and talking almost every day, and sometimes I'll think about that day on the beach in North Carolina. I haven't loved anybody like I loved her since, though I've come close a couple times. I know if somebody ever gives me that ache in my heart again, I won't let her slip away.

My house will drink alone every night, feeling empty inside.
But it actually will be empty inside.
It is a house, and nobody lives there.



Don't fall in love with a girl who won't look you in the eye.
Don't kiss a girl who won't ever kiss you first.
Don't hold a girl who won't lean closer.
Don't be a liar, and don't get caught and don't ever admit it.
Is it better to pull back, or to sit still?

night moves

A, it shouldn't bother me this much, and I know I have no right, but it's becoming just like it was with J, and all this business with LB and how it hasn't seemed like she's willing to see me bothers me. I have to be vague and as a result these sentences read like some kind of stream of consciousness nightmare. But the thing is if this all keeps up then there really won't be anything here left for me and I'll have to move on before it all gets to me again and I always have that face, that face that Kelly said seemed like I was missing something.

We've got our problems

I don't feel great today, I guess everything's been slowly catching up to me and it's all hit me today. I've been thinking of J and L, and always wondering what's going on with A and trying to get over it. I realized today that it's been a long time since anybody's worried about me.

And I thought I never would, but I really do kind of miss it. And I sleep with a pistol next to my bed every night but I'm still afraid, because the things I'm scared of can't be scared away.

any time will do

get the fuck over it. another discussion ends with me making her feel bad and myself feel like a villain. she's been hurt before in this exact same situation and I want her to ignore it and of course she cannot. This is selfish of me and I recognize it but damn it we're both going to be hurt, and when she loses me because of this I honestly hope it makes her recognize the fact.

it's hard to love someone.

what can I say to make everything alright? what can I say to make her change her mind?

nothing. nothing except meeting her three years and a lifetime ago.

I'm sorry things turned out this way. I'm so sorry life is this way. I'm so sorry we spend so much of life being apologetic. I've been sorry so much now, that I barely remember what it is to be guiltless.

an outlaw love song

it's been a really long time, drunk blog. that's not to say that I haven't been drunk but rather that I haven't been motivated to post, that I haven't had the urge to spill my heartache onto the internet. I don't know why tonight is different except maybe everything is just threatening to spill over.

so K and I broke up, to my shame. it's another case of it's not you it's me but this time perhaps I was more honest than usual, too honest maybe and after a relationship of lies I couldn't bear to lie to her in the end. I never cheated on her except emotionally I guess, which is the worst kind of cheating and I do honestly feel guilty about it. it's hard to love someone who doesn't love you. I know how it goes.

but then there's the last couple of months which have been spent in some kind of horrible limbo lying to myself, and it feels like it did all those years ago with J, where I was so sure that being in love with someone was enough, that they would be bound to love you back, and that would be enough. but that's how it comes down, I really do think I am in love with A and I have been lying to myself for a year and now when we're honest with each other there are still answers I don't want to hear. Honesty can't always be the best solution. But when I am honest I wonder who she is trying to protect, and I know she's had bad relationships and she's had bad breakups and she knows one day we will be one of those bad breakups

but I am okay with that

maybe I want that bad breakup and the happy times in between and maybe I know that we're perfect for each other and if she would let go we would be crazy about each other and maybe I shouldn't have kissed her at new year's eve. maybe I should have distanced myself from her when I had the chance, before all of a sudden we were spending every day with each other and talking when we weren't and I was slowly slipping into that hole and there was no way out. maybe she was trying not to hurt me but it's impossible, it's inevitable now.

I haven't felt like this in years, she's the first one to make me feel like I did with J, for real, honestly. There was the year of April and Liz and Hayden and it hurt, it really did, but who are we kidding, except for April it didn't mean anything to me, and it was only because she was so good at sneaking back into my life. But we didn't connect like A and I do, the whole reason why K and I broke up, because we didn't connect.

I miss how simple I used to think life was. But really it never has been, has it?

sorry, we're closed

it turns out closure is all it's cracked up to be in hindsight. sorry you feel this way and i'm sorry I feel that way. sorry that i was one way back then and you were another, and when you figured out what you wanted i wasn't part of it, even though the only one who's changed is you. i realized you want me but not me, i'm too messed up or not enough.