Wham!

I am so amazed. Just when I thought I was going to be okay, WHAM! Life decided to smack me around a little bit more.

I am convinced that whoever set my life’s path (me, perhaps?) had a great sense of humor. Either that or God just really likes irony. I’m not sure which.

First, a quick update: Kung fu was good. This class starts out by teaching you tai chi, which I am learning now. After a few months, you progress into kung fu. Tai chi is interesting and I’ll definitely ride out the month with them. I’m a bit sore from all the exercises I did yesterday, but that’s because I was out of shape to begin with. This will help get me back in shape. That’s a good thing.

A couple things happened today that I am still reeling over. I called FG, very upset over some things that happened early this afternoon, and left him quite a distraught voicemail. He IM’ed a few minutes later and said “Want to meet somewhere?” Grateful to get out of the house and have someone to talk to who would understand, I drove up to a local food place and a long conversation ensued.

I wrote an interesting email today. I didn’t realize that I was still holding some pain in hurt inside of me for something that happened with an ex-boyfriend a while back. A friend of mine is going through one of those stages where he is insisting on having only non-serious relationships. Now, I did this for a long time as well. In fact, I have a friend who is 20 years older than I am, single, and who is still going through this stage.

Anyway, I told my friend that it really made me lose some respect for him to find out that he was basically being a player (as FG would put it.) He fired back with “Who are you to tell me that you don’t have respect for me when you just went through this whole thing with C…” (etc.)

The email I wrote back to him was pretty interesting even to me. I didn’t really know where I was going to go with it, only that I had to explain to my friend that I’d been through all this before. I also had to explain why I won’t go through it again; why I no longer get involved in non-serious relationships or “friends with benefits”.

You see, in January, I got involved in a relationship with a friend. At first, I thought this was just going to be a casual fling. It turned out to be way more than that, and he fell in love with me. I found out later that he wanted to propose to me. The relationship I had with him fell apart after a few months, and he tried to kill himself.

When you watch your best friend/now-ex-boyfriend lying on the floor, completely drugged out of his mind, angry, scared, and trying to kill himself, things change. For me, that day was a turning point. I may have not even known it then, but I’ll never forget calling the police, trying to get him to stop, anything… so that he would still be alive to see the next day. So, whenever I find someone now to whom I’m attracted, I remember that scene, with my best friend lying there on the floor, with me pouring alcohol down the drain and him yelling “Don’t touch me!” I’ll remember calling his mother and having to explain the whole situation to her while she was crying and yelling on the other end of the phone. Above all, I’ll always remember the look of mixed hatred, fear, depression, loneliness, and love in his eyes that day, and it will haunt me for the rest of my life.

I know that that relationship almost killed my best friend. I know that it almost killed other people, and maybe even some innocent bystanders. And although I know that he had problems before we dated, I now have to live with the fact that I helped him get to that point. Although he has forgiven me, and we are regaining a lost friendship, I am still haunted by it. For 3 months I did not know whether he was alive or dead. I did not want to know. I knew that I couldn’t live with myself if he was dead.

That’s why I never want to be in a casual sex/kissing/whatever relationship again. It’s just not worth the pain. And for all of you out there, who, like my friend, say “That isn’t going to happen to me,” well, perhaps not. But whenever you get someone’s heart involved, you leave the door open for heartache. Sometimes, it’s best to just leave that door closed.

I know the people involved in this story are reading this blog. To my friend/ex-bf described above, don’t feel bad about me having to go through this; just know that it needed to be said, and I will be okay. To my friend I wrote that email to today, I just want you to know that the reason I said that I couldn’t respect you for that, even though it hurt you, was because I care about you deeply, and I never want anyone to have to go through what I went through earlier this year. Even if you say it’s casual, and she agrees, you never know whose heart is going to get mixed up in it and who will get hurt. It’s not worth the risk to leave that door open.