general love ramblings...this is long, be aware...

up until i was 16, i never dated anyone longer than 2 weeks.

when i was 16, i met a boy on these forums waaaaaaaaay back in the day when it was still just hippyland. i'm not naming names, but he is no longer with us, sadly. i'll just call him "daren".

we befriended each other because i wrote a post and he replied and it was a pretty badass reply, so we got in touch with each other and started chatting online pretty regularly.

we started to get a little flirty, but he was 21 and i was 16, and i was scared by him wanting to come meet me and be more than friends, so i, in the nicest way possible, told him to back off because i didn't want to have a relationship with someone who was A: 5 years older than me and B: lived over 700 miles away. i soon forgot about him, sort of. i was 16 and just being a teenager and smoking weed with my friends and shit. just trying to have fun and stuff.

a few months later i had my wisdom teeth pulled, and i was pretty much stuck in the house, so i was online a lot. one day i was looking through my emails and found an old email from him, and i thought, well, he was such a nice guy and i just blew him off. i'm such an asshole. we could just be friends and it could be cool. so i wrote him a little email and we exchanged numbers and stuff, and started talking again.

we became more than friends...he was, dare i say, my first love, though i never, ever once met him in person. in fact, to this day, i know that i was in love with the "idea of him," since we never met in person, and i didn't truly know him. but i knew a part of him, and we had a connection. we had wonderful conversations. and so i consider it my first love, because it was the first time i ever had feelings of that magnitude for anyone, real or imagined.

we made plans to meet, but something always came up, and i cried a lot over him breaking our plans. but his cover stories were believable, and he was very good at hiding his myriad of problems: his addiction, his mental illnesses (this kid was FUCKED IN THE HEAD), all of that shit. i was young and innocent and virginal, and still very, very trusting. my closests friends and my mom could see through it, because they were on the outside looking in...but all i saw was good because he sweet-talked me. he wrote me the most beautiful poems, and pretty looking letters, and sang to me over the phone. he was sweet and it worked.

the way it ended was not us officially breaking up...i almost broke up with him several times just because he wouldn't come to meet me and my folks weren't about to let me take a greyhound all the way to where he lived when i was that young (and i wouldn't let my kid, either). so basically i was tired of waiting around for him, and i wanted to meet him in the flesh to confirm that our love was really meant to be. sounds like a reasonable request to me. so there were several times i seriously and with a heavy heart considered axing the relationship because of the distance and his lack of an effort to come MEET me in person. but every time we would talk, his sweetness would tug at my heartstrings and i'd always change my mind, damn it all.

the way it ended up going down was this: i didn't hear from him for a month. i got this weird e-mail from him saying that something was wrong and that he didn't have time to write, but he would write me later. after that, nothing. i finally was able to get ahold of his sister (his family screens all their calls and i left a message telling someone to get ahold of me via e-mail or something because i was worried). she told me everything that happened and what was wrong with him (the stuff he had hidden from me). basically he ended up being hospitalized for having a mental and emotional meltdown and totally shutting off from the world and people, along with becoming extremely physically violent with anyone who tried to reach him. and apparently he had lied about having 2 jobs (one of his excuses for not coming to see me) among other stuff he told me. so, yeah. it really sucked finding that out.

during this time in my life, i was 17, i was really depressed because my grandpa who i was VERY close to died of bone marrow cancer, and my mom starting drinking daily and being very verbally abusive towards my whole family, and my mom and stepdad were going through a rough patch in their relationship because of all the drama, and my best friend found out she had to move away to illinois, and i hadn't heard from my boyfriend in FOREVER and was worried sick. i went from a strong-willed, and independent young lady to a codependent, pathetic girl who lost all of her identity, gained about 50 lbs in that year, never got any sleep or had any fun, and stopped hanging out with my friends, thus becoming the biggest loner on the face of the earth.

i, in my moment of weakness, turned to my one vestige of comfort at the time, a little place called the internet. biiiig mistake. i could have just decided, fuckit, i'm gonna go out with my friends and be myself again. but i didn't. i turned even more inward and spent all my time chatting with people online. i was still waiting for daren, but i pretty much knew it was hopeless, but i maintained the facade that i still had hope that we could one day meet and everything would be wonderful.

to be continued in another post, as it will be too long to post in just one...

 

my folks had AOL at the time, so by default i was on AOL chats a lot. usually member chats. i ended up on a flakey new-age "spirtual" chat one day and ended up somehow meeting my next boyfriend (my big rebounder from daren) on it. my next boyfriend, i'll just call him "matt," was 24 years older than me (yes, i know it's sick and i would never do it again, so don't worry).

it started out as us just chatting and talking innocently about issues in life. he was more like a mentor to start out as, but he had a strong hold over me at this weak moment in my life. he was super nice to me, and made me feel like someone on this earth understood my pain. everyone else was just like, "what's the big deal?" they didn't understand, but matt did. he always made me feel like there was always a spiritual answer to everything. a lot of his beliefs were legit eastern philosophies that i have always believed in, but some of the other stuff was really flakey and suspiciously new-age. but at this tender time in my life, it was really easy for me to by sucked in. i became sucked in. matt manipulated people into believing that he is some kind of prophet of the divine and is an integral part of the spiritual scheme of things. he claimed that i was in a past life of his and that he remembered me. things just built and built, and he totally manipulated me into thinking i was in love with him.

i guess in some fucked up way i needed someone to want me. i needed to feel wanted or i was seriously going to end up withdrawing deeper into myself and become more and more useless.

he basically told me that he wanted me to move in with him RIGHT THEN and that he couldn't live without me for another day. WHAT THE FUCK??? i should have seen that as a red flag, but i didn't. of course, i didn't oblige him. i was planning to graduate mid-term and i only had like 2 months of school left. i wasn't about to run away from home to be with someone i hadn't even met in person yet. i was weak, but not retarded. i did make plans as soon as i graduated to go and visit him, though.

i spent the rest of senior year half-assing, being depressed, not really being social, etc. i told everyone that i might be moving to georgia (where he lived and still lives...i live in indiana) and even had a going away party and shit. my parents were livid about me even going to visit him, and i don't say i can blame them. it's because they loved me. i wouldn't want my young daughter to throw her life away like that, either.

i went to visit him, and the first day was pretty fun. i lost my virginity to him (EEEWWWWWWWWWW). i mean, for an older dude, he was pretty attractive and sexy, and he had ways about him that turned me on. he convinced me that i loved him and that he loved me by being a manipulative motherfucker. but i wasn't in love with him, and i eventually got that through my thickass head.

but i visited for about 5 days. i spent MY MONEY and MY TIME to go see him, and after the first 2 days it was almost like i didn't exist. he ignored me, pretty much. i was chopped liver. but for some fucked up reason we ended up going out for almost a year, and i visited him 3 times during that year. each visit was the same. the first day was fun, then the rest of the time was just boring as shit. we never went out anywhere or did anything interesting. we'd basically watch TV the whole time.

finally i came to my fucking senses. i broke up with him because i just wasn't feeling it, and i could tell he wasn't, either. i don't think we ever WERE feeling it. he just used big, serious love-words to hook me in at first, the bastard. most of the time when i visited him i felt like i was really just his little fuckdoll anyway.

he only went down on me ONCE, and he always insisted i go down on him. FUCK THAT. and it was very unromantic most of the time, and pretty mundane. oh yeah, and he RAPED ME. ANALLY. i didn't want to do anal, because it's just not my thing, but he decided he wanted it anyway, so he took it. i never forgave him for it, but at the time, i didn't make it an issue, either. and i would spend my money and time to visit him and he didn't even seem to care. fuck him.

for some stupid reason, for about 3 months after we broke up, i was sad about it. i felt lonely, even though i knew it was for the best that we broke up and i wasn't with him anymore. we still talked on the phone a lot (why????) and it was still fucked up for a bit longer. he still talked spiritual new-agey shit and finally after awhile i had the balls to tell him i didn't agree with him on everything.

i woke up one day. i realized i was 80 lbs overweight, very depressed, and very lonely, and was too young to be feeling that way. i started walking every day, eating better, and i even called up some of my friends for the first time in a couple years (after the whole daren fiaso), and just started being myself again gradually over a few months. i successfully stayed single for 2 more years. i needed to be single for awhile so i could develop my sense of who i was, since i had lost it.

update:

i met my fiance and we instantly fell in love but took it slow at the same time. we are now engaged, but are still taking it pretty slow. we aren't getting married for at LEAST 2 more years because we want to be completely sure that it is the right thing for us. we pretty much are sure, but we're just trying to be smart. it is the most amazing relationship i have ever been in. he allows me to completely be myself, and he appreciates who i am. he makes me feel good to be the person i am, and i only hope i do the same for him. he is my best friend and favorite person. we are soooo in love.

needless to say, i don't talk to matt anymore. he manipulates people. i can't associate with someone like that.

years later, me and daren somehow got back in touch, and he admitted that he didn't want to come meet me because of all of his problems and my love was so genuine and pure, and he didn't want to show me the real him and break my heart like that. it broke my heart even worse that he was so mentally screwed up that he would get a TEENAGER to become so emotionally involved with him when he was 21 years old, let alone never had plans to ever meet me in real life.

we stayed in touch for a very short while, but i was so disgusted with who he REALLY was, i couldn't keep talking to him. he is dead now. i don't really know what his cause of death is, and i never got to say goodbye to him or wish his family condolences because i heard it from a friend of his well after the fact. i never wished death upon him, ever. i would never wish for anything as bad as what he went through to happen to anyone. but i like to think that perhaps in the next life he will be a happier person. i can only hope

 

wow. I just wanted to post in awe of the sheer profundity of yours. There were a lot of meaningful miseries in there. How many have the same thick view of what they want regardless of what it nets. And that guy with the manipulation! wow. too much there... I cannot really relate because I clam and don't open up to people much, so... but that you open to him and he does that... seems extremely really slimey that he did all that. Was this posted at 1:30am for you? it shows up that way for me. I think it's easier to post deep stuff when it is early in the morning. I really feel for your past, and I am really happy that things are going the way they are. I hope you are benefitted by what happens to you. That takes a lot of strength and confidence... have to be able to let go of being the beneficiary. I only assume this is waht it would take because it represents that which I feel I lack... when I feel that I don't lack I feel benefitted. But if I really wanted you to feel better I would make myself feel better so I could get into it when I talked with you. Then you would be benefitted. Arggh, I've confused myself. Bye.

 

hehe i know what you mean. i am actually thankful for those experiences. they helped to shape who i am. it taught me a lot about life. and i believe that the great spirit looks out for the good people. my life now is so much better than it was in those days. you have to dig through a lot of shit before you find the gold!

 

how do you formulate a response to that?!....ummm....wow. i've gotten in a number of online relationships, some went better than others but nothing nearly like that....i....uhh....you've left me practicly speechless, but i will say this:

it's good that you've taken this as a learning experience and taught yourself something by it, because the time spent is already gone, and by learning from it, you're making hte best of it. good luck with your fiance!

 

thanks well, i wasn't really even looking for responses. i just wanted to write about my experiences in the hopes that other people going through similar things might be able to take something from it. i am greatful for the neato responses i've received, though thanks for the feedback.