Tag: Dating

Memory Lane

Addendum

Melanie

“It can’t last forever, but who made the rule that the best loves do?”
— Tracey, from Ally McBeal

I’ve been thinking about my last post for the two days since I posted it. I really agonized over whether to share that with you guys, once I remembered what had really happened. I was ashamed to tell you, and I worried that you’d judge me, mostly because I’m judging myself. Anyone who knows me knows I have very high expectations of people, but most of all of myself, and it’s very difficult for me to come to terms with not living up to them. I suppose that’s why I managed to “forget” what Spike (in the comments) quite rightly called “key details.” But I also suppose I come by them honestly, by learning from my mistakes and vowing not to make them again.

I texted Karen before I posted it, asking if she thought I should. She asked if I could tell the story without including the part where I cheated. I said, “Not without feeling like I’m being untruthful.” She replied, “Then you have to tell it. Is your blog to make you look good or to express yourself honestly?” I decided she was right, and I still think so, but I do feel the need to defend myself a little.

I was 18 and about to be a sophomore in college. In my journal I had written that I was sure that I wanted to marry D, but that I wasn’t ready to “give up” the next “4-7 years” (I don’t know how I came up with that number) and never experience whatever else was out there. God, I was naive. How can you say, in the same breath, that you want to marry someone, and then describe the time between now and marrying him as “giving up” other experiences that you could have? That’s so wrong. I thought if I just kept saying I was happy, that I wanted to marry him (both of which I was sure were true, even as I developed crushes on other people), that it wouldn’t matter what else I said or did. Like knowing I loved him was a free pass to do whatever I wanted. That’s a truly shitty thing to do to someone (and that is the first real curse word to appear here at HMITH – well deserved, I think). Ok, so that’s not so much a defense as a self-analysis, but who cares? I just needed to get some of this out.

I can’t remember if I ever told him I cheated – my journal doesn’t say because it picks up a couple weeks after our break up and is light on details. I do know that about 5 years ago, I was reading through old letters and came across his. I read every last one of them, and when I was done I felt two things: deep sadness and profound gratitude. The sadness was because of the letters he wrote me while we were broken up in February, and remembering how much I’d hurt him pained me so much. The gratitude was because he managed to love me at all, in spite of everything. He really was so good to me. I had his email address, though we weren’t regularly in touch, and I sent him an email (which I saved, of course):

I was doing some organizing tonight, and I came across some letters that you sent me throughout our relationship. I just wanted to say thank you. Reading them, I remembered just how good you were to me, and how patient. I know that I never did anything to deserve someone like you, so I feel very lucky that I had you in my life. I am not trying to rekindle anything, I just don’t believe in letting kind things go unsaid. I wanted you to know that I have always thought that, of any man I’ve ever known, you loved me the best, and reading your letters tonight only confirmed that.

He responded, and was kind enough to lie a little: he said that he hadn’t treated me any differently than I treated him, that the feelings he expressed in his letters were a reflection of me, that I’m a good person, and that he was glad we had our time together. I saved that, too.

I feel horrible now, after writing the last post and thinking about the end of our relationship and what I did, but the truth is, when we were together and we were happy, it was so good. I don’t have any illusions that if I hadn’t cheated and we hadn’t broken up at the beginning of sophomore year that we’d be married for years by now – we probably wouldn’t have even lasted through college. But we might still be friends who keep in touch now, and we would have avoided a particularly ugly post-breakup event (the details of which I won’t go into). I miss him. He is a good person, and I miss having him in my life.

The point of the Memory Lane series is to figure out what I learned from each relationship, so here’s what I learned from D: the grass is not always greener; you think it will be, but it’s not, and sometimes, once you cross the fence, you can’t get back to the other side.

Or, in the immortal words of the Rolling Stones:

You can’t always get what you want
But if you try sometime
You might find you get what you need

Memory Lane

Memory Lane of Men, Part 2

Melanie

I don’t care what they think
I don’t care what they say
What do they know about this love anyway?
— Melissa Etheridge, Come to My Window

What can I say about D? Well, we met the July before we started at our small, east coast college, at a weekend orientation for incoming freshman. He was tall and skinny – 6’4″, 180 pounds – which for a very long time was precisely my type. I don’t remember how we ended up on the quad til 2:30 in the morning the first night, kissing, but we did. It wasn’t a furious make out session, either, it was a “I kind of really connected with you and I think I might like you, so let’s talk and kiss and talk some more” kind of thing. I remember that we each shared our senior year heartbreaks with each other and talked for hours. And that he told me he’d never rolled down a hill before, which I couldn’t believe. There happened to be a small hill right off the quad, so I went first and convinced him to follow me. He thought I was nuts, but he did it, laughing the whole way down. Later, after we’d been together four or five months, I convinced him to dance with me in the rain. Those are two of my all-time favorite memories.

When we arrived on campus in the fall, we had been talking on the phone a couple times a week, and we found each other’s dorm rooms pretty quickly. We didn’t start dating right away, and he didn’t end up being my first, but like Felicity said about Noel, he should have been.

He was a basketball player, and at our small, D-III school, everyone knew him. He’s black, and when we started dating, he took a bit of flack from some people, because he never tried to hide it. We’d walk to class holding hands, and kiss when we parted, and we never made a secret of the fact that I spent most nights in his room. Once people saw we were serious, they backed off, and no one ever said anything to me directly, but I know that it cost him something in the black community at our school to be with me. If it bothered him, though, he never let on.

D was . . . I can’t say shy, because that’s not it, but reserved, I think. He was very observant and didn’t talk a lot in a crowd or in class. Once we started dating, people would ask me, “Does he ever talk?” I’d kind of smile and say, “Yeah. He talks to me all the time.” It made me feel special. I can’t call him shy, because one of his favorite things to do, when it was just us, was play air guitar to Purple Rain. I won’t do that alone in my own house, but he would just go to town; it was the best (or “de best,” as he liked to say in a funny accent sometimes). He loved Prince. And basketball. And me.

And that’s what I can tell you about D: that of all the men I’ve dated, seriously or otherwise, he is the only one who I know for sure was truly in love with me the way I was in love with him. J, sure, he liked me a whole lot, and he might have even loved me, but he was never in love with me. And I’ve come to realize that M, who you’ll meet in Part 3, was only ever in love with the idea of being in a relationship – he was with me because he wasn’t with anyone else. But D and I, we were in love with each other. We had a good run; we had a very hard thing to deal with in the middle of our relationship, but we got through it and never looked back.

When May rolled around and it was time to head to our respective homes for the summer, I was devastated. We weren’t sure how often we’d get to see each other, and I knew it was going to be hard. We said goodbye for a long time, and I cried and cried. He handed me a letter before he kissed me goodbye for the last time – it was all about how much the year had meant to him, how much his life had changed since meeting me, how much he loved me. At the end, I’ll never forget, he wrote: “Don’t forget to come back to me.” At the time I thought, “What in the world does that mean?”

We saw each other once that summer, wrote each other a million letters, and talked on the phone every other day. It was awful. I missed him terribly, and he missed me. Sometimes, we wouldn’t even talk for minutes at a time, we’d just sit there on the phone, knowing the other was on the other end, and it would be enough. I couldn’t wait to get back to school in August so I could be with him again.

And then, when I got back, I can’t even explain what happened. We were both on campus, and we each knew the other was on campus, but we never called each other. I’m thinking about it now, trying to understand, and I can’t. I don’t think we talked for an entire week, and we didn’t run into each other in that whole time, either. When we did, we both just understood that it was over. I hadn’t forgotten to come back to him, I just couldn’t.

***** ~squealing brakes~ *****

Ok, have you ever remembered something one way only to hear the other person tell it and it’s completely different? That just happened to me, except it was my 17- and 18-year-old self who remembers correctly what happened between me and D. I wrote everything above and then went to re-read my journal from college because I wanted to see how I explained the not talking to each other when we got back to school. It turns out that the truth is, I was a terrible, fickle person who did not deserve him.

When I started this blog, I determined that I had only one rule for myself: no lying (apropos of nothing, and to maybe make you laugh one last time before I come clean, this is also the only rule of I Never, my favorite drinking game). So I’m going to tell you now what I had somehow managed to convince myself wasn’t true or had conveniently forgotten:

I cheated on him. At the end of the summer, just before it was time to head back to school. Oh, and once, I think, the first night back at school with an old friend (I was definitely the girl looking for love in all the wrong places. It apparently was not enough that I’d already found it, and in someone who wanted to love me back, no less, unlike the others.).

And that explains why I didn’t call D or seek him out; I was ashamed. I didn’t know how to tell him or if I should tell him. My journal says that prior to cheating and getting back to school, I had already been feeling like I wanted to break up with him, I was just waiting to be “sure,” because I’d already hurt him before and didn’t think he’d be as inclined to forgive me this time if I changed my mind again. (Something else I’d forgotten was that we’d broken up twice in February – shortly after the “very hard thing” alluded to above – because I’d decided I wanted to see other people, and he took me back when I realized I’d made a huge mistake. He knew I’d been struggling with that for a while, and when I crawled into his bed the night we go back together, crying and apologetic, he whispered in my ear, “I’ll never give up on you.”)

I should change the opening quote to Fiona Apple:

I’ve been a bad, bad girl
I’ve been careless with a delicate man.

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Memory Lane of Men, Part 1

Melanie

Still, there is a sense of missed opportunity. Maybe there is nothing, ever, that can equal the recollection of having been young together. Maybe it’s as simple as that. [He] was the person [she] loved at her most optimistic moment.
— from The Hours, by Michael Cunningham

I heard a story the other day about someone whose brother got engaged to his high school sweetheart – the brother is in his 40s, and he and the woman had been out of touch for more than 20 years when they reconnected and fell in love again. I’m a sucker for stories like that, and it made me think of my first love. I’ve had three (what I consider) “real” relationships in my life – one in high school and two in college. None of them lasted longer than 10 months. I don’t know what that says about me. Since then (ages ago, if you must know), I haven’t dated anyone seriously. It’s kind of sad, actually. Anyway, I thought I’d do a little deconstructing of those three relationships and see what I come up with, and lucky you gets to come along for the ride.

So: J. We met when we were 16; we both worked at an amusement park during the summers, and he worked with my best friend. I don’t remember exactly how we met, but I remember that our connection was pretty immediate. We didn’t date right away, at least not officially, because by the time we met, there wasn’t much time left before I was leaving for Spain for four months. We intended to have “a two-week fling” (yes, that’s what we called it – what the hell did we know from flings), but at least on my end, I was head over heels well before the end of the two weeks.

We used to sit in his car in the parking lot after work, late at night, just talking for hours. I didn’t have my own car then, and my parents used to have to come pick me up when I was finished closing. I don’t know how many times I made them wait, or for how long, because J and I never wanted to leave each other. And I’m telling you honestly, for weeks, we didn’t do anything but talk. He’d never kissed anybody before, and I was not that much more experienced. We had our first kiss in the parking lot of the 7-Eleven across the street from the amusement park. It was a Tuesday. I remember what I was wearing and the date, too.

I was heartbroken when I had to leave for Spain. J came over the day before I left, and we spent the afternoon making out and saying goodbye (my mom was out of town, my dad was already in Spain, and my brother was at college). In the weeks leading up to my leaving, J would joke that I would meet a hot Spanish guy named Don Flamenco and fall in love and never come home. As I was walking back up to my house after leaving him at his car that day in September, he called my name. When I turned around, he said with a grin, “If you see Don Flamenco, tell ‘im I said hi.” It was kind of a movie moment.

Spain was torture for me early on. I must have written J 10 letters before I ever got one from him. When I finally did, what he’d written broke my heart. He said he’d started dating someone at school (we went to different high schools), and told me how her eyes sparkled and some other crap I used to know by heart but have apparently forgotten. We had agreed before I left that we could date while I was gone, but I never intended to, and I hadn’t expected him to. I sent him even more letters after that, and thinking about what they probably said makes me cringe. I had a bit of a melodramatic streak back then (which is, I think, marginally more controlled these days).

By the time I got home from Spain in January, J and Sparkles had broken up, but he wasn’t ready to date me again yet. The day he told me he was – “I think we should try it your way” – was probably the happiest day of my high school life. I adored him – he was the funniest guy I’d ever met (and still is), he was thoughtful, I thought he was so handsome (baseball hat, crooked smile, and all) – and I felt like, at 16, I was done. I attribute a lot of that thinking to the fact that I’d never had a real boyfriend before him, and I assumed (from my extensive reading of young adult novels) that “love” was all you needed to end up together. I learned, though, that it doesn’t quite work like that.

Six weeks later, sitting in his car in front of my house, J broke up with me. That may have been the first time I heard “It’s not you, it’s me,” but I can’t be sure (it definitely was not the last). He said that he felt confined by the relationship, that when he was at school and girls flirted with him, he felt bad if he flirted back, like that meant he was cheating on me (since I wasn’t there). The true irony in that is that I used to feel that way with every “boyfriend” I’d ever had before J – I never wanted anyone to know I was “dating” (you know, dating like you hold hands in the hallway, and meet at your locker between classes) a guy at school because what if another guy I liked better than this guy saw me and then didn’t ask me out if he liked me because he thought I wasn’t interested but I really was interested? (I told you I was a little dramatic back then. Next time you’ll believe me when I tell you something.) When I met J, I realized for the first time that flirting is natural, and just because you flirt doesn’t mean you’re interested in that person or not interested in the person you’re dating. I never wanted to be with anyone but him from the day I met him, and I told everyone who would listen that we were dating. Even my parents.

When he broke up with me, I thought it was the end of the world. I thought for a long time, even between and after those other two relationships, that J and I were meant to end up together, and I spent a long, long time trying to make him see that. We danced around each other several times over the years, but he always backed off first. In the end, he married and moved to Texas, and he’s getting his PhD in something ridiculously right-brained like Renaissance Literature. To his credit, he put up with every crying phone call, every pleading letter, every sappy birthday card, every angry email (he wasn’t good about staying in touch – I just cannot imagine why), and we came out as friends at the other end.

A few years ago, I read through all the emails that had gone back and forth between us, and I was aghast. I immediately emailed him and said, essentially, “Dude, I realize I was crazy, and I’m so sorry.” I can’t imagine what it must have been like on his end to get these emails (and letters and phone calls) from me, and what it must have taken for him to not tell me just to leave him the hell alone already. I promised him then that he would never get another email (or letter or phone call) like that from me again, and I’ve kept my word. Partly it’s because our friendship is more important to me than anything else. Partly it’s because I respect him and his marriage. Mostly, though, I think it’s because I grew up somewhere prior to that and realized, as great a story as it would make, that we are not going to end up together. My life is not a movie Becca would watch on Lifetime.

The quote that begins this post brings tears to my eyes every time I read it because I think it’s exactly why J occupied such a huge place in my heart for so long: he was the one I loved when I first learned what love was. I know, looking back, that our relationship couldn’t possibly have been everything I thought it was. We were together for too little time, and I was a fool for drama back then. I overlooked a lot and gave him too much credit. I mean, objectively, when someone says, “I love you, Melanie. I don’t know if I mean it, so don’t hold me to it, but I think I do,” that’s not exactly a solid foundation for a lasting relationship, to say the least. At 16, though, the only part I heard was, “I love you, Melanie.” He was never ready to be what I thought he was, what I wanted him to be, and that’s ok. It’s enough that I got to love him for the time that I did, and that I learned, eventually, that you have to listen to everything, you can’t just pick and choose the parts that fit the story you’re telling in your head.

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Dentist Appointment Redux

Melanie

“It isn’t always how you look. Look at me: I’m handsome like anything and I haven’t got anybody to marry me yet!”
–Brian, age 7

My apologies for the delay in providing details. I spent most of yesterday sadder than I expected over this, after having to be “up” for Thanksgiving with the family. I don’t know how I can have come so far from the teenager I was in almost all areas of my life, and yet still be so much the same when it comes to men.

Caveat: this is long. I tend to be an over-analyzer, so I hate to leave out details. Skip to the last few paragraphs if you just want the bones of what happened.

Anyway: I was ready. My hair was cooperating, I was wearing new jeans that looked great and my boots that make me feel like I can do anything. I was nervous, really nervous. Luckily, it’s a 10-minute walk from the Metro to his office, so I was able to burn off some of that excess energy, so when I got there, I wasn’t talking a million miles a minute and pacing in the waiting room.

I didn’t see him before I went in the exam room. The x-ray tech came in first and took a hundred x-rays of my teeth, and I’m sure you all know how stupid you look with that thing clamped in your mouth. The door to the room was open because the tech had to keep leaving the room to take the x-ray, and the whole time I was praying he wouldn’t walk by and see me like that. Yes, I know he’s a dentist, he sees everybody like that, but still. I put a lot of effort into looking good, and the last thing I needed was for his first look at me to be that. This scenario also repeated itself later when I was hanging out in the room with those stupid fluoride trays in my mouth. At least the door was closed then.

Ok, so x-rays, x-rays, x-rays; cleaning, cleaning, cleaning. Every time the door opened, my heart jumped, but it was never him. Finally, all that other stuff was done, and the hygienist left saying the dentist would be in in a minute. I got up out of the chair, ostensibly to throw my tissues away, and she told me “Oh, just leave it on the tray, we’ll get it later.” What I really needed was lip gloss, though, so I lied and told her I just needed some Chap-Stick since my lips were dry after all the cleaning and flossing and flouride-ing. I will not see my future husband with naked lips, no sir. Luckily, there were mirrors on the wall, so I was able to fluff my hair and make sure there were no errant specks of toothpaste on my face before he came in. So nice of them to provide that convenience!

So I’m sitting in the chair trying not to panic, and in walks the Dentist. Oh my god, you guys. I had almost convinced myself that I had inflated his hotness and his funniness over the last four weeks, and that he couldn’t possibly be as handsome and funny as I remembered. But he was. He comes in all, “Hello, Counselor,” which made me laugh and led to a discussion of how long it took him to be comfortable calling himself Doctor. Then I asked him about his accent. I noticed it last time, but I couldn’t place it. He asked if I was good at geography. I told him I’m not, and that, in fact, I’d only just learned that the Philippines were in the Pacific somewhere (which is true, and I don’t care if it’s embarrassing; he thought it was funny). He said “I’m Latin, but I don’t speak Spanish.” I guessed Brazilian, and I was right. I could just die. Do you have any idea how beautiful Portuguese is? I could honestly listen to it for the rest of my life and die happy, without ever understanding a word.

Ok, anyway, back to the story. So he’s looking at my x-rays, we’re talking, and next thing I know, he’s running his fingers all around the inside of my mouth and making me stick out my tongue (oral cancer screening, you know), which is making me laugh, because I’m, for lack of a better word, giddy from being so close to him. He asked me what was so funny; I told him I felt like I was in a dog show, which made him laugh. Then he’s pressing on my sinuses and my neck (I don’t know; he was feeling my glands or something?), and look, I know he’s a dentist and he does that to everyone, but the size of the crush I have on him? I was a happy girl.

So we’re coming to the end of the appointment, and I’m getting nervous. The nurse or whoever was in the room with us at the end, and I knew I couldn’t just ask him with her there. I thought about asking her to excuse us, but I just couldn’t do it. He asked me if I had any questions, which was the opening I’d been waiting for. Some of you know I had a whole thing planned out about how I was going to ask him to recommend another dentist, and when he asked why, I was going to say, “Because I wanted to ask you to have dinner with me, and if you say yes, well, I think it’s weird to go on a date with your dentist. And if you say no, I’ll be too embarrassed to ever come back here, so either way, I’m going to need a new dentist.” Instead, I just smiled and said no.

He got up and asked me about my plans for Thanksgiving, and we talked a bit more, he shook my hand, and then he left. I was at the counter waiting to check out and the receptionist was talking to me, but I was totally distracted. I was thinking that I was a chicken, and that I’d regret it if I didn’t ask him, and I was trying to figure out what to do. Finally, he came back in the hallway, and I asked him to go back in the room, saying I needed to talk to him.

So we’re standing there, he’s all handsome and whatnot, smiling at each other. Right then, I was hardly nervous at all. It was just something that had to be done. I said, “So I had a whole spiel planned, but I’m going to bag it and just ask you if you’d like to have dinner with me sometime.” His smile got real big, then he blushed a little, and said softly, “I’m flattered, but I’m seeing someone.” I smiled, shrugged, and said, “I thought you might be, I just wanted to ask.” And that was that.

I went back to the reception area to pay and fill out a reminder card, but my hand was shaking the whole time. I don’t really know what I was feeling – sad, definitely; disappointed; a little surprised, even; and embarrassed, too. He came up from behind me, put his hand on my back, and when I turned to him, he said, “You know, you made me blush.” I laughed and smiled, but I don’t think I said anything. One of the receptionists asked how I’d done that, but I didn’t answer. I wished everyone a happy Thanksgiving and left.

I’m not going to lie: walking back to the Metro, a few tears escaped. There was so much energy and emotion leading up to that moment that it had to go somewhere. I was beyond proud of myself that I’d done it at all, but I was so, so disappointed that it turned out the way it did. I had considered the possibility that he had a girlfriend, of course, but I’d convinced myself that whatever happened between us last time, the spark, or whatever, meant that he probably didn’t. I know I didn’t make it up; there’s something there. All we do is laugh through the entire appointment; I bet we’d have a blast on a date.

So I’m sad. And it’s going to take me a minute to move on. And probably, if I’m honest, I won’t really move on, at least not yet, or not entirely. Because I have to go back in February.