Unnamed

You know how there’s always one memory you carry around with you from a relationship? That one good memory that no one else can even come close to recreating?

I’ll never forget ours.
I’ll never forget him.

He once told me, in the very beginning, that he never regretted any relationship he had ever had, because you could always learn something from them. He was right.

I learned more than he’ll ever know.

****

I never thought that I would become a statistic. I never thought I’d ever do some of the things I’ve done in the past year, but I did.

Whenever someone tells you a story about something they did, it is true that you, the listener, might act differently…or exactly the same way…but you’ll never know until it happens to you.

No one knows until it happens.

****

I met him at our college football game. It wasn’t a thing where I was immediately attracted to him or there was a jolt of lightening, but I did enjoy talking with him. He didn’t call until two weeks later and by then, I had forgotten who he was. It took me a second to realize who was inviting me to an October party at their house.

He was two years younger, and if I hadn’t gone to that party and stayed at the university bars where he wasn’t old enough to go, I’m sure my life would have been drastically different than it is now.

But I went.

I brought my friend with me.
I flirted.
Then he kissed me. In the most freshman way possible, by pushing me into another empty room of the house, playfully taking my hands and pulling me towards him. To be honest I didn’t really see it coming at all. And that’s when it began.

****

After that party, he and I saw each other every day. Our first date was two days later, on a Tuesday, and we went to a chain restaurant. It wasn’t anything fancy, but he seemed so much more mature then guys my own age. For one thing, he actually listened and wanted to know about me.

Each kiss was incredible.
Each touch was amazing.
And every time I saw him, I was proud to have him as mine.

Within the first week, I met his friends, he met my friends and he met my parents. It must have seemed fast to the people on the outside, but it felt just right to us.

I do have to stop here and say that I was very scared. I had gotten out of a relationship a year before, and my head was very guarded, but my heart wasn’t. Looking back, I think my heart and my head fought against each other about my relationship with him from the beginning to the end.

My heart wanted to find love.

My head said I wasn’t ready.

Anyway, he and I began to know more and more about each other, both physically and mentally. I remember once he said that he needed to make up a word to describe me because ‘gorgeous’ and ‘perfect’ weren’t enough. He said sweet things like that often. And they weren’t lines either, they were purely and simply his thoughts.

We became the couple that’s talked about. His friends were happy he had me and told me this. My friends said that there was such a difference about him; he actually cared.

Soon it became ‘we’ are going somewhere and ‘we’ are doing something. I was always included in everything he did and he was always included in everything I did. There was no more ‘him’ and ‘me’; there was just ‘we.’

And we were perfect.

I told him things I never told anyone, and he did the same.

Sure we’d have a few fights every now and then, but it always worked out. Mostly because he actually wanted to know what we were mad about and how we could fix it. He was a very good listener. He always considered us equals.

****

Since I was a senior and he was a sophomore, I had already started to have the mindset that a job was fast approaching and employers were looking at what I was doing.

I worked hard at my college career. I was a strong woman. I had a 4.0 GPA; I was the founder and president of two clubs on campus, held the public relations leadership position in another club and managed to do individual public relations consulting and campaigns for clients around town. I’d also had two internships, but I wanted one more.

I had been looking at internships close to where he lived, and would be living for the summer, but I was also looking at one place in particular that wasn’t where he lived. In May I was offered two internships: one where he lived and one where he didn’t. I chose the one where he didn’t. Around this time, things started to change.

****

We started having big fights. I can’t say that I blame him for most of those, in fact I blame me. Like I said before, my heart and head were in a constant battle. My head was trying to figure out ways to get out of a relationship and my heart wanted to be in love.

He said he wasn’t upset with me for choosing the other internship in the other city, but eventually, towards the end, he told me that he was.

We moved away from each other at the end of May; him to his city and me to mine. We were only three hours apart, but apparently three hours can be an entire world.

We still saw each other every weekend, but something changed. He was now back at home with his close high school friends, reliving times he had with them for much longer than he’d had with me, and I was forgotten…almost.

Meanwhile, I was starting my new internship, with a desk and computer and another intern. I worked hard and soon my internship became one of the only things I could talk about. It was stressful, fun and interesting. I would try to tell him about my day, or have him help me with a work-related problem and at the beginning of the summer he listened, but by the end of the summer, he’d find a way to get off the phone.

I never heard much about his days, although he would say that I never asked, but when I did ask, he would never tell me much. I guess he was back where he was supposed to be and now I was a foreign entity.

We were in a relationship, but we weren’t. It’s cliché to say it, but it was a shell; almost completely empty inside.

****

We ended up almost breaking up three times that summer, but each time we couldn’t let go. Close to the end of my internship, and close to my birthday, he came to my apartment in my city and gave me a diamond necklace. The first he had ever given a girl, and it was perfect.

Even though things had not been going well, we still wanted to hold up the illusion, for ourselves as well as others; that we were meant for each other.

However, our communication between the two cities that summer faltered and by the end of July he was the last to hear about any news that I had and I was the last to hear his.

I remember asking him, and trying so hard, to get him to speak to me more, to get him to communicate so we wouldn’t lose what we had. He always said the same thing.
“I don’t like talking on the phone.”

That’s where we lost the ‘we’ and became ‘him’ and ‘I’ again.

****

I think we both knew it, as most couples know that we were going downhill. We were almost to the end. But like most couples, we refused to admit it.


We came back to school after that summer and both thought that maybe we were just in a phase. Maybe we had had problems because we had been far apart from each other and moving back to within walking distance of each other would fix it.

I tried, but he didn’t.
I wanted to be ‘we’ again, and he couldn’t stop being ‘him.’ I even spoke with him, the good listener, about the way I felt and he said he would fix it.

At one point, he put a bouquet of roses in my apartment while I was out with a girlfriend. When my girlfriend and I came home, I was so stunned we literally sat, sipping wine, staring at the roses. I had become fed up with being taken for granted for so long and I wasn’t sure roses were going to fix that.

I slept alone that night.
I didn’t call him and thank him for the flowers.
I didn’t know how to react.

We spoke about it the next day and I told him I need to be a priority in his life, I was tired of being taken for granted, and I needed him to need me.

Maybe he tried, but he was so used to being ‘him’ from the summer that I was no longer a priority.