It Takes A Lot of Pain to Make You Grow

I have made, as we all have, a large number of mistakes in my life. One of these revolves around a person that I hurt many years ago and how I wish I would have had the chance to make it up to her somehow.

On a freezing winter night in January a few of my friends decided to throw a bit of a bash at their house since their parents were away for the weekend. We were in college and of course took this offer up. Our parties were never big and crazy or anything, mainly consisting of some alcohol, occasional drug use, some sex, but mostly just friends hanging out together, blasting music by Tool, Nine Inch Nails, and Smashing Pumpkins, and holding some of the best casual video game tournaments around. We would beat the shit out of each other on Mario Golf, Smash Brothers, GoldenEye, F-Zero, or whatever the game flavor of the week was at the time. 

This particular gathering started out the same as most, but this party had a few other people as in fringe members and acquaintances, friends of friends if you will. One of these people was a girl named “Tina” who was a friend of a friend that I had met once or twice, but never really had a chance to talk with. This time though, with me being a single guy, her being a single girl, we starting talking and had one of those evenings that most of us have been through where we meet someone, become so infatuated with them, and just talk with them most of the night.

Early that morning, like around 2 AM or so, a few of our or friends head to their house to do mushrooms, a couple of our friends passed out watching TV or something, and Tina and I stayed up talking on a small couch. She decided to turn out the light, said she was tired, and wanted me to cuddle her so she could sleep a bit. Of course, this was no problem for me at all. Tina was not only smart and interesting, but quite lovely as well. She was skinny, blonde, blue-eyed, and had a certain honesty that I found intriguing. 

Well, needless to say, cuddling turned into making out and making out turned into heavy petting. After a couple of hours Tina said that she needed to head home and since she had been drinking, I offered to drive her. I was always the designated driver in the group. We exchange numbers, emails, and that was the end of the night.

Over the next couple of weeks we would call each other, get together for dinner and more make-out sessions ending with us giving each other orgasms, and that was about it, no sex. It was simple and fun until I had to fuck it all up.

See, I have that problem where I think that every woman in the world is amazing and beautiful and therefore fall in love with pretty much every girl I meet and think that we would be perfect together. This curse, I will say, has gotten me a lot of friends, gotten me laid a lot in my past life, but also left me with a lot of remorse for people that were hurt in the process, sometimes due to my selfishness, but many times just do to our misunderstanding of love, sex, life, and whatever else. Basically…just due to that thing which we call youth.

I had been single for a couple months after ending a long relationship, then a short rebound relationship, so I thought that maybe it was time to try again. This girl blew my mind at the time and thought that I loved her. I asked her if we could be together, instead of this simple dating/fooling-around type of thing that we had going on now. At first she was reluctant, citing that she was afraid to jump into a relationship. She had also gotten out of a long-term relationship recently with her high-school sweetheart and the only guy that she had ever made love to. This was understandable, but about a week later she relented and decided that we would be a couple.

At last I had this wonderful creature as my “girlfriend.” Looking back, it is silly to me how much titles mean to for certain things at certain times in our lives. This was the first girlfriend that I had who was not only smart, fun, and beautiful, but who I would walk down the street with and other men were jealous of. This is not to say that she was the “hottest thing in the world” by media’s standards, but she was striking. To a college guy, even a smart and modern guy such as me, little things like that still mattered to some extent, even though we pretend that they don’t, that we are so much more evolved. Even though she would not have admitted it, I have the feeling that she also loved the appeal of dating me, a rather respected community member who was also in a popular local-scene band. She had a weird obsession with musicians in general. Like I said, that is an assumption, so take it for what it is worth. 

Tina and I went along as normal, but overall it was not a terribly exciting relationship. We just hung out, listened to music, played games, went to band shows, made each other cum, nothing out of the ordinary, but nothing was really progressing either. I see now that it was actually rather stagnant as a whole, but I didn’t complain because it was simple and fun.

Then a day came where Tina went to the doctor to get her normal, womanly check-ups. A couple days later she calls and tells me that she needs me to come over to talk to me about something. She seemed upset so I told that I would be right there and rushed out the door. When I got there she was sitting outside waiting for me, had me come in with her, and she told me that she needed to be held. I was scared, but putting the pieces together in my head on the way over I kind of had an idea of what the next conversation was going to be about.

Tests had come back and she was told that she had a certain sexually transmitted disease. No, it was not one of the major, life-threatening ones luckily, but it was something that she would carry with her for the rest of her life.

She told me about it, and then told me that she felt horrible, she was glad that we had never had sex, she knew who gave it to her since she had only had sex with one guy, and that she would understand if I wanted to break up and that maybe it would be a good idea. Then she asked me if I wanted to leave…

Goddamn I was a scared, punk-ass kid. We lay there, holding each other for 20 minutes or so and I just could not think of what to say or what to do. She had given me an out, almost telling me that I should dump her and leave, but I knew that was the wrong thing to do. I cared for this girl and wanted to support her. I kept turning these back and forth ideas over in my mind, trying to think of questions, trying to think of ways to ask permissions, but really I think that what I was doing was stalling. I see now that I had already decided to run, but I was trying to find a way to justify it as correct and to not hurt her feelings any more than she was already hurt today. 

Finally, after what seemed like forever of us in silence, I said that I thought I couldn’t do this. She just said okay as if she already knew that was the answer. She walked me to the door, kissed me, and said goodbye.

I sat in my car for a while before I could leave. I felt awful, selfish, and just plain dirty, but I also felt that if she wouldn’t have told me it was okay to go, then I wouldn’t have done it. Maybe it was what was supposed to happen? Maybe we were meant to be together at all? It was sign. 
Those ideas were all bullshit, but sometimes we tell ourselves little lies just to make it through the day. We do things that we know we shouldn’t, and find ways to rationalize or justify them as if we made the correct decision. 

I could not stop thinking about her, the pain and guilt that I had, and the pain and guilt that I caused her. I tried to call her the next morning and she did not answer. I went to work that day and tried calling her over and over. I wanted to see her, drop to me knees, and beg for forgiveness for the wrong that I had done just the evening before. I realized that I really did care for her and to care for her meant being there, supporting, and helping her through her troubles in life. I fucked up.

I was a train wreck at work. I spent my time just trying over and over to get a hold of her with no luck. Finally I asked my boss if I could take off early because of the state I was in. Being a pal and able to see how frustrated and upset I was, he let me take the evening off.

As soon as I left work, I drive right over to her house, but she was not home. That is when I started getting scared. Did she do something horrible? She didn’t have any plans for the day that I knew of and I did not know why I could not find her. I called some friends and no one knew where she was.

The next morning I got up to find that she was online, on chat. I pinged her and asked her if she was okay and where she was all day because I was dying to get ahold of her. She said that she had called her sister, who lived a few hours away, and she had come down and they spent the day together. I asked her if I could call or come by to talk to her and she refused. She told me that I could say whatever I wanted to say there to her.

The conversation didn’t last long, but it was basically me telling her how fucked up I was, how sorry I was, and how all I wanted to do was hold her and be there for her. She told me she would think about it and get back to me soon. She also said not to try to contact her until I heard from her. 

This next chunk of time was spent with me beating myself up mentally for causing more pain to another human being than I had ever set out to do. I was young, stupid, and selfish. While it was not malicious, it was still mean and heartless. I never wanted to live through that feeling again and if this is how horrible I felt, I just thought about how awful she was feeling, and it all started back up again.

Needless to say it took a few days to hear anything from her. She had sent her reply via email and my internet was out for a week. Finally I asked a good friend to check my email for me over the phone and therefore had to confess my entire story to him. He checked and read me the email which was basically her chewing me out for being an asshole and telling me to fuck off, and to stay out of her life. I was terribly upset, but at the same time there was at least bit of closure to the situation. 

EPILOGUE:

That was the last contact I ever had with her. She not only stopped talking to me, but also accused all my friends of being douchebags and stopped talking to all of them as well. Yeah, it was a little silly to blame them for my mistake, but I see that as maybe she was so hurt that she didn’t even want to hear my name or events of my life. That may be a bit egotistical to think that I was that important, but it is all that I can really come up with while trying to reconcile what happened to myself.

This event spawned a series of events in my life where I decided to stop dating for a while. I was tired of hurting people or causing pain, so fuck it. Even if I liked a girl, I felt like I needed to be choosier and wait for the right girl. After some time this just made me feel pretentious and uptight, so I lightened up on the rule some, but that choice helped me on the path to where I am today with wife, child, and even career. 

It was one of those moments where I learned from my mistake and in the end I feel as if I am a better person because of it. I like to believe that when we are caused pain, we grow and come out stronger on the other side. This is one of the cases where I caused the pain though. While I no longer have trouble sleeping at night because of it, I do still often think that I wish I could make amends. I would be self-serving though, and therefore I do not pursue this thought for she asked me to stay away. 

The only way I can show her the respect that she deserves is to follow her wish and hope for a day that she will reach out to me, but recognizing that I do not deserve that courtesy from her.