Fifteen years ago today was the day I realized I was falling hard. So began my first really big and heartbreaking case of unrequited love. The whole thing seems pretty trivial in retrospect, but at the time, I was a complete and total wreck. The three or four of you faithful readers who were there at the time will probably not dispute this.
Quickie version of the story: he was a friend who MIGHT have wanted to be more than a friend but, if so, he was unable to admit it. And I didn’t help the situation much with my own lack of honesty about my own feelings. And after many months of this drama, we actually got drunk and slept together. That was the beginning of the end.
Lest this sound like some cheesey “coming out” story, it’s not. We were both quite “out” at the time, thank you.
I have never been such a mess in my entire life. I couldn’t think of anything else. I let my entire life go to hell. I cried my eyes out weekly, and sometimes daily. I made my friends crazy with my depression and most of them never even knew what was causing it. I dropped out of school. I nearly dropped out of life, although not in a suicidal sort of way.
I often wonder if I EVER completely recovered from this one.
Since 1984, I’ve never let myself become so obsessed with anyone (although I have gotten moderately obsessed once or twice). This is probably a good thing, but I sometimes wonder if maybe I didn’t go a little too far in the opposite direction. I came out of it all perhaps a little less loving and giving and a little more selfish, particularly with respect to relationships.
Obviously I can’t blame every “negative” apsect of my life on this one failed romance. I was 19 years old; everything is a crisis by definition at at that age. But I did learn some frightening truths about myself from it. And this one coupling has affected every subsequent one at least in some ways.
1984 has some mighty tall and lingering shadows for me. All in all, I don’t much miss it…