i feel nauseous. i am thinking back to my 10 month situationship i was in with someone i thought was my first love. i forgot the feeling of happiness with him. i doubted my feelings towards him because i found out he was a terrible person. i still doubt my feelings. i told people he was my first love, but that isn't true. it was really limerence instead of love. i won't deny that he was the closest i've gotten to loving someone at that point in my life. but i could not accept him for his flaws and idealized him. even when he was hurting me, i hurt myself further by staying. looking back at it now, i feel disgusted by the things i put up with just to feel loved. he ed his friends when they were harassing me. but then he begged for me back and apologized because he said he didn't know it was malicious and that he meant to joke around but that he would warn his friends. he texted my friend asking her to ask me to unblock him so he could apologize. i sat there and watched as the text bubbles appeared and disappeared for 20 straight minutes. i believed he meant it and that he geniunely enjoyed talking to me. i thought i was special. i reached out to him after a few months and asked about him. we talked, exchanged banter, flirted. then a few weeks later, he ghosted me. i was confused and slightly hurt but at this point, i wasn't sure if i actually liked him yet. but i thought about him nonstop for a few months after that and the chemistry was so good to me that i decided it wouldn't hurt to reach out to him and just it that i like him so i could get it off of my chest and not have to think about it anymore. but i didn't know i would be starting a 10 month cat and mouse game. literally 10 traumatizing months that changed my perspective on love and guys.
he made me feel seen in many ways. we would stay up into the late nights asking deep questions about each other. read the same books and watch movies together and discuss the meaning and use the lingo. bonnie and clyde. elizabeth and mr. darcy. we learned the same language together. played chess together and he would beat me every time. these were all the things that i love doing. i love reading. i love learning languages. i loved playing chess, but now i can't because that was his biggest thing. it was going so well for the first three months. not to adhere to the "3 month rule" or whatever, even if it was 3 months. i think it worked out well because even though we had summer obligations (like classes or jobs), we still had a lot of time to talk to each other. when we entered the fall semester though, i felt like it just went to shit. we had fun talking together, but he grew to keep me at a distance. even in the beginning, we were so close to dating. he said he wanted to make it work even though long distance was difficult. but we didn't date because we wanted to wait until we were a bit older.
saying that you couldn't wait for the day we would see each other in person. but i was there in your city and you KNEW that. you kept texting me throughout the whole day. hell, you even skipped class that day because you "felt like it". what does that mean? you asked for my plans that day but you didn't ask to see me even though you were only 20 minutes away. you called me your woman, your favorite person, your girl. even when i jokingly called you names, you said you didn't want to lose me. you said you liked me. you wanted to go to italy with me. you always wanted to see pictures of me. you learned my native language. you explicitly said you weren't friendzoning me. you acted jealous when other guys confessed to me and did not want me to have a roster. you stayed up to wish me a happy birthday exactly at midnight even though you would always go to bed early. you would stay up until 5 am texting me for hours straight even though you sleep early. he was one of the only guys in my life that didn't look down on me and thought i was stupid just because i was silly or spontaneous. he thought i was smart.
where did it all go wrong? was it because we were busier? but i balanced so much on my plate and still tried to text you. so many days, almost every single day, i would sit there waiting 12 hours just to get a text back from you. i was there, like a dog. waiting. always waiting. and it hurt me so much. i think it was around october when i actually visited your city. neither of us initiated seeing the other. were we both scared, or did you not want to see me? because i wanted to see you, but i also was scared that you wouldn't like me if you saw me in person, or that you didn't actually like me enough to want to see me. that whenever you said you wanted to see me, you were lying. i think after that, our communication became more strained. it took longer for us to respond to each other. even though i waited for your text messages, i made you wait too. i didn't want to let you see how desperate i was, because i didn't know if you were playing me or not. and i feel like you were. because there's no way you can sit here and tell me that any person who likes you would make you wait long hours just to respond back to you, especially when it takes seconds to respond back to a text. so if you didn't like me enough, i didn't want to embarass myself and like you as much either. it's all so stupid and silly. you would make me wait, but then tell me that i should tell you about my day more because it makes you happy to see a phone full of text messages from your favorite person. but you never thought about how i felt. why would i share with you the excitements of my day if i wasn't receiving any reciprocity right away? did you want me to wait until my happiness died off for you to respond to old news? thinking back on it now, maybe that wouldn't have been so bad. but i didn't want that. i didn't want to talk to a wall. i didn't want silence. so even when you would take longer and longer to respond, i took longer. once you took 18 hours, i took over 24 hours. and it started becoming more normal for us. even though you didn't go days without responding as much as i did, you might as well have. and sometimes, waiting for your messages wasn't even fulfilling. sometimes i would be met with dry messages. don't even get me started on the dry messages. sometimes, when i did not agree to our plans to watch movies or call or whatever, you gave me attitude and texted dry. i always felt so, so bad. that it was my fault and that i hurt you. even when you canceled plans or had things come up, i never blamed you. i was always understanding. i had to put in the extra work to take care of your feelings when you guilt tripped me.
but we got so used to the silence. in november, there were days we would go without talking to each other. and this was when i found out you first texted my friend, chatting her up. when you first ghosted me, you had done something similar to her before too. but you came back for her, and then came back to me when i replied to your message again. december came around, and it was such a terrible and dark time for me. nothing in my life was going well. i lost all hope for my future and could not see any reason to continue living. i needed stability so badly. i needed you to need me back the same way i needed you. you kept saying that you wanted to see me in person, that you liked me, planning our dates and ideas that we could do together. i felt like i was being fucking breadcrumbed. because when i was there, you never intended on seeing me. but i thought, that things would be different in the future. when i would make more plans to visit your city, especially when i would be more confident in myself and feel like i could stand before you. it was driving me fucking crazy. because you would say all of these things, but you would also talk about your plans for the future and never include me in them. you said you wanted to be abroad for graduate plans. then when would we see each other? when would we have the time to be with each other? it didn't make sense, and it was making me more desperate.
truthfully, plans i made for us to be together didn't work out. i applied to university to be near you, but i wasn't accepted. i didn't care about the school. it was a decent school, but it was close to you. i wanted to be close to you. i wanted it to work, even if it wouldn't last that long (a part of me knew that it wouldn't have worked out since the beginning when you said you wanted to date me and then said you wanted to wait). but i only applied to one school and not many, because i felt stupid. it felt like i would have to acknowledge that i liked you a lot to do all of that for you even though you did things in the past that hurt me, like making jokes with your friends or ghosting me the first time. after you ghosted me the first time, you never followed me on instagram again even though you would send me links to reels. i was too scared to ask because you unfollowed me the first time out of nowhere and that hurt. things like this made me feel like there was always a distance between us. so when things didn't work out, i was crushed. the hope that i could see you in person was crushed. i couldn't see any definitive plans anymore. and it was killing me. i put all of my cards on the table at this point but you never made any plans to actually see me in person even though you talked about being together. we weren't together. i didn't know how much longer i could indulge in our relationship because i couldn't see it going anywhere and it was hurting me.
i think here, my resentment started exponentially growing. there was always some resentment, but i never brought it up. we were never in an official relationship. we didn't have any labels. i had no right to tell you how i felt or force you to listen to me. especially when you would complain about how every other girl always forced you to fit their expectations instead of accepting you as you are. i wanted to be different so you would like me. but that meant i had to swallow my complaints and accept the hurt you were putting me through. it became too much. i couldn't see the point anymore. it was hurting me more than the enjoyment i had with you. even though i always have trouble figuring out what to do with my life and making plans for the future, i could imagine spending my future with you. i couldn't do that anymore as time ed. even though i didn't relapse when we were talking, i lost it in december when i felt so lonely. you used to want to listen to me when i was sad, but at one point, you asked why i felt so depressed if things in my life was going well. but it always felt messed up from the beginning too. the dynamic was always off from the start. i felt like i always had to impress you instead of being my real self. i kept my embarrassing flaws hidden even though it affected me a lot. i think it was because of the friends and the ghosting thing. because of that, i was never sure of being in a relationship with you. my trust was ruined from the start. but i guess for some reason, i thought it could've been different or that you genunely liked me enough for me to not focus on the past and work towards the future together. i also noticed that you would not tell me what you were going through or what made you upset. you always kept it to yourself but you would mention it. so even if i asked if you wanted to talk about it with me, you didn't want to. i don't want to do all of the talking. i have a lot of hurt but i don't want to burden you with it if you don't want to give me the same level of trust to tell me about yourself. i don't want to be alone in this. isn't partnership about sharing these sorts of things and working on it together? why did it feel like an unbalanced scale no matter who did the talking?
it just made me sick. the same things you did that made me happy just made me sick. i felt nauseous. i couldn't be with you anymore. i had to leave. and i eventually did. i would never return to him. he's geniunely a terrible person. but sometimes, i just sit here and think. i came out of that situationship with so much hurt. it basically ruined me in many ways. i couldn't trust things guys said anymore, because i saw that he would say the same things to my friend. on that note, he would always text my friend whenever i wasn't responding back to him for long periods of time. he would ask her for nudes and get upset at her if she complained that he took too long to respond. he said they weren't dating, so why was she so demanding of his time? why couldn't she just enjoy the moment? why was she so stuck on the past? those were the same exact words i was afraid of. ironically, when i confronted him in the very end, he begged for me to stay and communicate. that he still liked me even though i said i lost feelings. that he wanted to work it out and wished he knew how i felt so he would've changed. said he wasn't never sure how i actually felt about him. i felt bad for him. i thought it was my fault. i am used to being avoidant and keeping things to myself, but i wanted to be better. so i stayed for a bit but quickly figured out it wasn't worth it, so i left. but i always found it funny how he would say all of those things to me but be unforgiving to my friend instead. we both never knew he was talking to both of us but talked about it after the fact and she would send me screenshots and my heart just dropped. because if i had spoken up, would he have been that mean too? did it really have to take me abandoning him to make him want to want me? i wasn't surprised about the fact that he was also talking to her. after october, when the replies were more distant, he started forgetting little things . about movies we watched together, or about the existence of my pets even though i mentioned them many times before. i thought to myself that there definitely had to be someone else that he was confusing me for. and that hurt me too, making me feel worse whenever he would say sweet things to me. hell, he never even said happy new years to me even though we were texting each other exactly on the dot. he said he wanted to marry me, but he couldn't even put a label on us. i don't know. it was too late by then. it just hurt hearing it at that point.
this ruined my nervous system for months. i felt sick about anything related to romance for many months after. even after 7 months. i felt like i wanted to puke whenever someone wanted something remotely romantic with me or gave me mixed signals. i hate it when guys take a long time to respond to my text messages. i hate it when guys make plans and never follow through with it. it lowkey makes me feel sick when i play chess or when i watch movies with guys or listen to music or read romance webtoons or hear guys give me compliments or whatever because it all just reminds me of how you hurt me. it doesn't remind me of you. i don't miss you. i just relive the hurt over and over again. my heart is in pain. i all of the nights i would wait for you, cycling between feelings of inadequacy and insecurity and feeling stupid about how such a simple thing of me being delivered could make me think you were leaving me again like you did the first time. i didn't walk away from this thinking that i could be loved as a person. maybe i did, in the beginning. but then i felt like i wasn't enough. i thought that all of the neglect you were putting me through was something i needed to put up with. that it was something i deserved because that was what it meant to love you. my devotion and compliance was my way of loving you. did you ever realize that? was that why you kept stringing me along? did you want to take advantage of how much i was willing to put up with without asking for much in return? i wanted to do anything you wanted to do and i never complained because i thought that wasn't what you wanted, so i shouldn't do it. but i couldn't see you liking me anymore in the end. it wasn't worth it. i couldn't justify it. i probably could've if you would've ed little things about me, but you didn't. and i was the only one carrying the memory of the things we did together. so what was the point? stick around with you for a few more months just for you to forget everything about me? it wouldn't have gone anywhere anyways.
why does everything have to be so complicated? why can't it just be simple? i need safe. i need stable. i don't want to sit here and second guess anything, nor doubt myself and my ability to be loved. i was done waiting. nothing could ever compare to the heartbreak you put me through. it hurts as bad as it did before when i get reminded of it by the little things i encounter in my life.
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