There is Always One...

So here is a bit of a story.  This may turn out to be what you refer to as a "girl blog", but not in the normal way.  This is not about girl troubles, just more of a story about a journey with a particular person.

So when I was in high school, I could not get a date for the life of me.  I was the "friend."  All nice guys know the pain of being the friend.  These amazingly beautiful and sweet creatures are treated like shit and then they come to you to cry about it.  Well, once I got out of high school I suddenly became more attractive to the opposite sex it seemed.  My years of being the nice guy paid off and I could not fit the ladies into my schedule.

Anyway, I started dating this girl at this time.  She had a younger brother that I knew as well and we used to all go out together, play music, movies, whatever.  One time we all went out to eat after he got out of high school.  This time, he brought a friend that he was kind of hanging out with.  She was by far the most beautiful young woman I had met.  It was not that she was completely hot in a standard Hollywood sort of way, but she had this air of confidence well beyond her years along with a smile that could slay a dragon.  Mix that with deep blue eyes that seemed to hold a sad, human soul and I was hooked.  We never talked much then, and I never pursued her as I was in a relationship and she was still a couple years younger in high school.  Really too young at the time.  I believe I was 20 and she was 16 or something like that.  I cannot recall exactly, but it was too big of an age difference.

To move on though, that girl stayed on and off in my life through my group of friends.  She would date a friend or somehow be associated.  I always had this secret crush, but nothing outside of that.  Once she got a couple years older, we started hanging out again.  She was dating this asshole guy and she often needed a friend.  By this time, I was good friends with her.  The guy was always jealous of me because for some reason we seemed to have this bond, this deep love that neither of us seemed to want to admit.  She always smiled and hugged me and my heart would flutter every time.  She was always more happy with me than with her boyfriends, but we still were not any closer to dating ourselves.

Finally, she graduated high school and started to go to the community college where I went and worked.  All of a sudden, she was thrust back into my life.  We had occasionally talked about trying to date at this time, but it was always this situation where she was dating someone or I was dating someone.  Never did anything line up.  We even went so far as to make one of those marriage pacts.  By the time she was 30, if neither of us were married, then we would get together.  This clock was finally ticking!

Well, as we were back into each others life at this point, we finally started going out to lunch often, just the two of us, hanging out, watching movies, and running errands together.  One day in between classes, she came along with me to the bank so that I could deposit my check and take her out to lunch.  During this time I was a manager of a pizza place, worked as a tutor and councilor at the college, had a band, worked for a karaoke company, and went to school.  I was a busy guy.

Once we were done at the bank, I went to open the door of my truck for her, as you do, and she stopped while entering the truck and kissed me.  Not a simple peck mind you, but a passionate kiss.  Never in my life has my heart skipped so many beats.  The feeling is something that I remember to this day and I will never forget.  It was that amazing spark that you think only exists in film until it happens to you.  Not only did I receive a display of affection from this woman that I had feelings for for many years now, it was the fact that she came to me.  It was a signal that she was ready to move to the next level with our relationship.  We were moving closer and closer to finally having those elusive titles of "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" that has seemed to haunt as since we first met.  The only problem turned out being that it appears that she was not quite signalling that at all.

I thought this was a shoe in.  I thought we were finally going to be "together".  This was not the case.  A few days later she comes by my work with some friends.  One of those being a guy that I also knew from school.  She was all over him, in front of me, blatantly.  Later, she came to me to ask me what I thought about him, almost asking my permissions to date him.  I was hurt and terrified, but I am not one to get angry or territorial.  I just reverted back into "friend" mode, game her as honest of an opinion as I could at the time, got mopey, and that was the end of that day.  A couple more days go by and I find her at a friend's house.  We talk a bit about it.  She says she does not want to settle and wants to date a few guys.  So she was not signally that we were going to be together, she wanted us to date, but not exclusively.  I thought that maybe I could handle this.

A couple more weeks go by, we are hanging out, I take her out for some Chinese food lunch.  We stuff ourselves on cheap Chinese buffet and go back to my vehicle.  As we are pulling out of the parking lot, she looks over at me with those eyes and that smile, and I know what she is thinking.  I read her like a book.  We stopped my car right there and start making out.  We ended up blocking traffic in the parking lot for a few minutes until we got a grip on ourselves, but I did not care.  I felt that I had won the lottery.  She was dating around, but it seemed to me as if she had finally made her choice.  I was the one.

So, a little more insight into this woman.  I mentioned the air of confidence that she exuded.  This air was a defense mechanism, a strength to her, and the more she held it up, the longer she would have until she had to deal with her own pains and emotional baggage.  She never wanted to be human, never want to show people that she was anything but happy and smart.  On this front, she was never really comfortable talking about the things she did, let alone being questioned on their morality or merit.  She seemed to trust me more than anyone, but even that was glazed with this layer of saccharin.  I was a councilor in college.  I was trained to read people and I knew all of this about her.  Her eyes, which always told me so much, told me more than she even knew, but I could not talk to her about these things as she would just get more defensive.  People are quite often like great poetry.  They are not that hard to read if you really put in the time to look, but that does not mean that they are easy to interpret or fully understand the true depths of.

This leads me back to my story.  I thought that I had finally been chosen to try to make her happy.  This was incorrect.  A couple more weeks go by and she is rarely talking with me.  Finally she breaks it to me that she is going to date this other man for awhile, and see how that goes.  I was hurt, but I understood.  These were friends, and I will support them and we still had not lain out any ground-rules for our relationship.  During this time though, she would continue to hint at us, drag me along, keep me in some sort of bond where it seemed like she and I were going to be together.  More and more this frustrated me.  I knew that I was being manipulated, but like any addiction, it was so hard to do anything about it.  This had to stop.  I needed to know the truth.

I invited her out to coffee, telling her that we needed to talk.  She seemed to think this was more innocent, friendly, hanging out.  We went to the StarBucks one morning, ordered our coffee, and sat down.  She said, "What's up sweetie?" to which I stared at her for a minute, trying to find the right way to frame what I wanted to say.  Finally, it just came out like this, in a very calm and deliberate style:

"What the hell are you doing with me?"

That was all I said.  That moment I saw something that I had never quite seen.  It was like her soul was shattered.  Those blue eyes glazed over with tears.  She is someone that never wanted anyone to see her cry.  To her, this was a weakness and she never liked to face her weaknesses.  She did not really cry, but she did inside, you could see it.  She was fighting so hard to figure out what was going on and she did not quite know what to say because she had never been confronted so blatantly about her actions before.  This did not make me feel good in any way, but it had to be faced.

After maybe the longest 20 seconds of her life, those small moments that seem to last forever, she was finally able to squeeze out a "Well...what do you mean?"

She knew what I meant.  I retorted with something along the lines of "Well, you seem to care for me, I care for you, you tease me with affection, with passionate kisses, but never seem to want me as more than a friend.  Please, I can't do this anymore.  It hurts too much.  If you want us to be together, I need to know.  If not, that is fine, I still love you as a friend, but let me know.  I can no longer let myself be dragged around by you.  Please, tell me what you want with me, why you do this to me?"

This caused another stunned silence.  What answer was she supposed to give other than face the facts that she had been using me to fluff her ego and be somewhat of a safety.  She finally said something that I still to this day am unaware of it's truthfulness or not.  That being said, I like to believe it because it makes me feel good.  I was looking as deep down into her at the time, and still I could not tell either way if it was true or just something to appease me.

After fighting back tears, holding onto her strength, she said "It is true.  I love you.  I love you so much that it scares me.  I feel that if we were to be together, that would be it.  It would be set.  My feelings for you run so deeply that I know I would not leave you and that scares me.  We are still young and have lives to live away from one another.  Someday though I feel we will be together, just not today."

This eased me some.  I don't believe that she had ever in her life been backed into a corner like that.  She was always so sure of herself that people followed.  She was forced to give a hard answer and that is what I received.  It was like the chains were free from me.  I had a definite answer.  It was not to be at that time.

EPILOGUE:
We remained friends and while occasionally losing contact with one another, we always were in the background.  That guy she was with at the time instead of me, well, they were engaged for awhile.  I warned her of something that I felt about him which she ignored it and it turned out to be true.  He was gay and finally admitted it to himself and they broke up.  After that she dated a good friend of mine, like a brother, and that was hard for me to sit and see.  I knew 100% that it would not last long though as they were both very stubborn individuals.  It ended badly and shortly after.  Then I started dating someone else, she started dating someone else, moved a couple of towns over for school.  Once in awhile we would still get together for drinks.

The last time I saw her in person she brought her new boyfriend to me for approval.  After meeting him, talking to him, he seemed like a good man.  I was happy for her and she was happy.  For the first time she had a glimmer in those wonderful eyes that I had not seen before.  She honestly seemed that for once she knew something.  She knew who she was, she knew of her past wrongs, and what is clear and correct now.  She was on the right path and winning at this game we call life.

That was a few years ago when I last saw her.  We lost contact for awhile, but then one day I found her on the facebook.  It was hard because she was now married to that same guy with a new last name.  We spoke some, she felt bad that I was never let known about her marriage.  I wished I could have been there.  I always feel like I should have given her away in some form, even though I know this was not true.  I wrote her a letter telling her that our chance seems to have sailed, but I was happy to know she was in good hands.  She never responded to it, but I never expected her to either.  It is not her way to face things like that.  =)

I was inspired to write this all down to both work out my own story, but also because we were recently talking as old friends again.  She has moved away, living what she says is a happy life across the pond now.  She is restarting school to finish her dream and she posted a new picture of those eyes and that smile.  It was a face of pure joy that I had not seen on her, or on anyone for that matter, in years.  I almost wanted to weep because I was so happy and proud of her.  She made it through some rough times.  My only regret is that I was not always there by her side to help her on her way, but sometimes that is not our job, no matter how badly we want it to be.