all adventurous women do
ALL ADVENTUROUS WOMEN DO
It’s been a while since I found out. A lazy college Friday afternoon. No class, no internship, nothing to do. I wake up just in time for lunch and then crawl back into bed after stuffing myself with various vegetables I think will make me full enough to not binge on green tea ice cream. I am wrong. I am so sleepy, and just want the weekend to make me forget the week, and the world.
My best friends tiptoe in, climb over piles of clothes and various old essays to sit on my bed and tell me they need to share something with me. They are cautious and we giggle because we are all so nervous. The anticipation weighs on my chest. It feels silly and scary all at the same time.
They don’t know how to tell me. If they should tell me. One of them heard from a friend, who heard from many friends. Everyone is talking about it in the collegiate “athletic community,” so it must be true.
He’s gay. Now. He’s gay now.
The only boy I ever truly loved. The only boy who ever loved me, or so I thought. I say “okay,” and I laugh maniacally because that’s what I do when I don’t know what else to do. It seems so foreign and awful and right all at the same time. Some stray pieces fall into place, but I can’t move from my bed.
My friends, those lovely girls, they sit with me all afternoon and let me feel. I holler about how much of a joke my life is, about how love is a torturous lie. They reassure me in vain that the entire relationship was not just a sham, that I was not an unknowing front, that all this bitterness can be let go for a simple lack of understanding, of communication perhaps.
What did I do wrong? Maybe nothing. Why has no one loved me since?
I’ll never forget the night he told me loved me. I waited for those eight fucking letters for months; he was waiting for me to say it first. It was April 1st, and I worried immediately it was an April Fool’s joke. No one outside of family, or close girlfriends had ever uttered those three little words. It’s always when you least expect it. I was tipsy and thinking of nonsense. I couldn’t say it back at first because my heart was so full I thought it might burst.
I don’t know if he meant it when he told me he loved me, if I was the only girl he ever truly loved, if he would ever really “close the book on me.” I probably never will. Sometimes I wish I could go back in time and avoid the whole thing, never go on that first date and refuse to fall for him. I wasted months of my life wondering why I was not enough for him. What I did wrong. It would’ve made that portion of my life a tad simpler. If I had just never met him.
But what if I was something to him? Maybe he didn’t love me, not like I loved him, anyway. But I hope that I helped him in some way. Helped him discover what was going on beneath the surface. Because despite the way things fell apart, despite the way I humiliated myself in the name of teenage love, he was something to me. He was a lesson, an impression, a way of coping.
I have no idea where he is or what he’s doing. I’ve come to the place where I can look back on our memories fondly, without hate or judgment or bitterness in my heart, and I hope he can do the same. All adventurous men do.
