30 Day Writing Challenge: Day 02 (Someone You Used to Love)

Write about someone you used to love.

Don’t think I expected to have a prompt as difficult as this one.

I think that it’s in human nature for us to try and forget the “used to’s”. There’s something about “used to love” that inherently hints at failure and/or negative feelings of some sense.

For me, that is definitely true.

Just like everyone else in the world, I have known heartbreak and failed relationships. Granted, now that I have the benefit of hindsight, I realise that while those things hurt very much at the time, they were terribly negative things, and that losing them was the best thing that could have ever happened to me.

I have loved a few people in my life. There have also been a few people that I thought I loved – mistakenly. Instantly when I read this question, I was taken back to my second and final high school boyfriend.

We had grown up as close friends, and there had always been a tension of attraction between us. Yet, no matter how close we got, or how pressured we were to “get together” there was something that always warned me away, something that always made me hesitant.

Finally, in my final year of high school, I succumbed to the pressure and gave in to my friends and family, getting in a “relationship” with this friend. I felt that it was inevitable. We had everything in common: music, friends, humour, taste in movies and sports. He had pursued me for years, and a part of me felt nearly beholden to give in to his advances.

Early on in my senior year, we finally began dating. Everyone was ecstatic. They had all been predicting this for years; we were going to “get married on a mountain” for sure. Everyone, our parents included, just shook their heads and smiled when they found out, each and every one of them giving us that “about time” look.

At first, things were incredible. He treated me better than I had ever seen any other person treated. His family bought me clothes and diamonds, took me on a trip to Hawaii. We were inseparable. We laughed all the time, went everywhere together and hung out in all the same groups. It seemed like a match made in heaven, and soon we were planning our prom and our move to college together.

Unfortunately, we were both too young.

Shortly after graduation, we moved to college together and got an apartment. At first, things continued on in the same manner, happy and functional. But it wasn’t long after that things began to change and the cracks began to show.

Being his first time away from home, and being a part of a group that was very wild, he began to want to party and sleep the day away, occasionally penetrating that continuum with 8 hours campaigns of Halo and Gears of War. He became extremely close to siblings that lived life in the same gear, lots of drinking and parties, not considering responsibility or any of the serious aspects of life.

Myself, coming from a completely different background, went an entirely different way. I was planning to be a doctor, and had been raised in a household that was strictly opposed to drinking, drug use or partying of any kind. I wanted to be a professional rugby player, and spent hours in the gym, practicing rugby and spending weekends away in training camps, breaking up the time with 3 hour Honors Biology courses and weekly Honors Chemistry courses.

Not long after the commencement of our second semester of school, things were going badly. We were fighting quite a lot, as he wanted to stay out and drink and party, and I wanted him home to spend time with me. One weekend, when I was supposed to be away for a USA Rugby training camp, I became extremely ill with a severe case of the flu, and my boyfriend went home suddenly to spend a week partying with his sister and her long-term boyfriend.

About three days into my illness, I became so ill that I could barely move from the couch, running a fever of 103 degrees. I couldn’t hold down any food or drink, and on several occasions, fighting the delirium that comes with excessive fever, thought I was going to have to call an ambulance to come and rescue me from certain death. I tried several times to contact my boyfriend, after several days of no contact at all, with no success.

On the fourth day of my illness, a coach from one of the regional rugby teams I was supposed to be trying out for showed up at my apartment, bringing my food, water, electrolyte drinks and medication. I realised, suddenly, that what was happening was not okay. I should not be there, on my own. I lived with someone who supposedly loved me and wanted to “spend the rest of his life with me”. Why wasn’t he here? Why wasn’t he helping me get well? Why was someone that was virtually a stranger there taking care of me, while my boyfriend of two years was hours away, partying the week away and ignoring my phone calls and text messages?

Things only went downhill from there. We stayed together for about another year, but things were terrible. He quickly got even worse in his partying habits, leaving me for weeks at a time with little to no contact so that he could go home and party with his sister. When he was home, he spent his weekdays sleeping and playing video games, spending the weekends partying with his rugby teammates, often not coming home at all. I began to resent him massively, as I struggled with my heavy school load and the struggles of living in a new town where I knew no one.

Finally things came to a head, and I found out that he had been cheating on me, both in our new college town and back in our home town, with one of the first girlfriends I had ever had. That was the breaking point for us, and after a horrendous extended fight that even involved members of his family, we finally split.

After that breakup, I was utterly destroyed. I had lost the person that I thought I was going to spend the rest of my life with. Suddenly, I felt so completely worthless and devoid of any possible value. I had lost the only person that I really thought I loved, and this loss threw me into a tailspin. I turned to partying and skipping class, and soon, my entire world was turned upside down.

While that was, without a doubt, one of the darkest periods of my life, I am now grateful for it beyond a shadow of a doubt. The person that I was before that breakup is not someone that I would now be proud to be. I was angry, tightly wound and judgemental. I thought I knew best, though I was no more than 19 years old, and I thought I new exactly what life was all about.

In addition, I realise that I had made myself “fall in love” with someone that was not only poisonous for me, but someone that had none of the qualities that I would ever want in a serious partner. This boy that I had convinced myself I loved was not handsome or particularly smart or even funny. He was not someone that cared little for the opinions of those around him. He was not someone with any kind of drive or ambition. He was not the light, he was the moth.

I had spent much of my high school career as single, and had somehow developed the idea that my self worth was defined by being in a relationship. I had forgotten the values that had so inspired me in the writings and lives of the women that I worshipped, women like Elizabeth I and Anne Boleyn.  I had let myself fall into that age old trap of women, and now found myself utterly destroyed and without purpose because of his indiscretions and fallibilities.

I realise now that this implosion of our “love” was the best possible thing that could ever have happened to me. Had this situation not detonated in the way that it did, I would not be the person that I am today, and I would not be sitting where I am today, in a relationship with the greatest, most handsome, creative, intelligent, funny, driven, caring, loving, and ambitious man that I now call my own today.

Without the loss of this “love”,  I would not have known the beautiful heartbreak that threw me to the edge of oblivion and forced me to look into the darkest pieces of my soul.

For a long time, I thought I hated this person. Maybe I did. Now, I am so grateful for everything that he did for me, for if I had not completely broken myself against his cruelty, I would not be the open minded, free spirited, beautiful, cultured and experienced woman that I am today. I would not be this woman that takes chances and follows her heart. I would be a lonely, insecure and judgemental crone who lived blindly in the darkness, unable to see a way out.

So for that, I thank you love of the past. Thank you for the heartbreak and the betrayal. Thank you for your deceit and your cold uncaring. Thank you for your insecurities and your faults. Thank you for all of your flaws and your reckless and immature abandon.

Without you, I could not be the success that I am today. Without you, I would not have found the love that has transformed my soul and given my life wings. Without you I would not have found my heart’s flame. Thank you.