On First Love

Or, "if I'm gonna set everything on fire, I might as well reveal the series of events that first pushed me in that direction".

December is one of those months for me. Y'know, that sacred time of year when absolutely nothing goes right no matter what I do, when all hell breaks loose on a regular basis and I have no control over any of it. This pattern was first established during the two years in which the holiday season was clouded by death (thankfully my birthmum's funeral wasn't until January and all of that was handled very well; my aunt, a year later... not so much). But the event that sealed December as my yearly month of horrors happened when I was seventeen. I fell in love for the first time, and four years later, I'm still not totally over it. Every year around this time, I forget that the person I generally refer to as the Vulcan isn't just a prick, he's a whole darn cactus of issues. Even though I still consciously know that. Well, hopefully writing out that story - properly, in a place and form that people who were on the fringes and can guess who he was will be able to see - will prevent that from happening this year. Fingers crossed.

I'd actually met him a year earlier than that, under interesting circumstances. I did speech and debate competitions in high school - no, scratch that, I did speech comp exclusively except for one practice tournament my junior year when my friend's brother had a scheduling conflict and she needed a debate partner and I am easily talked into things. Enter the Vulcan (it would be years before he got this codename, but let's use it from the beginning here for consistency). Our first round was against him and one of the little mouse-boys that were half of our region. Mouse-boy didn't matter, didn't do much, I can't even remember who he was anymore. The Vulcan, on the other hand... sixteen-year-old me took one look at him and decided he was going to die. I didn't even know his name at that point and I wanted to end him. The closest I got was nearly hitting him several hours later, completely by accident because badly designed hallways and I talk with my hands and he just happened to be walking by. (He thought it was intentional and spent the entire weekend wondering what he'd done to annoy me. Answer - he existed. That was enough.)

A year passed. If anything, I became a worse person over said year. But then, first tournament of senior year, I saw him again and I woke up. He was nice to me, which in hindsight was exactly how this became a problem. In general, guys were not nice to me at that point in my life - most of 'em were either terrified or just flat ignored me. This one, for some reason that I still do not understand four years later, did neither of those things. He offered advice on how to do a content warning on one of my pieces (I completely ignored this and continued to perform said piece without telling anyone in advance that it ended with me miming self-harm), he looked at me like I existed and was valid, and... I was utterly done for by the time I added him on FB two days later.

At this point, I would not have described myself as a romantic. Oh, fictional love stories were the best thing ever and I'd already done quite a bit of fluffy fanfic, but real life was a different beastie. I was pretty sure I'd never seen a functional relationship. I was even more sure that marriage and children were the exact opposite of what I wanted. (Quiet rebellion against the Bubble, in hindsight, but also where I was as a person.) I had not consciously crushed on anyone before, and my one attempt at flirting with someone had ended in me learning exactly how far and fast I could run in heels because I'd lost all ability to speak. I was not fated to fall in love. But then I did, and it remains the singular most questionable decision of my little life.

My knowledge of how attraction worked verged on the nonexistent. My mother, who I would later learn had a range of experiences to back up this belief, gave me the "girls and boys can never be just friends" and "boys will only ever take advantage of you" speeches and that was about it. I'd watched the scenario play out a year previously, when one of my least favorite people in the world had a relationship with another friend's brother, ended it suddenly and dramatically, and caused the poor darling to have what we are all still pretty sure was a minor emotional breakdown. So, being the misinformed innocent that I was, I believed that the reason the Vulcan was playing nice with me was because he wanted me. Which was admittedly confusing because he had status within our mutual circle and I didn't, but hey, sexual attraction is weird right?? It was a totally plausible explanation, and one that impacted the development of that friendship.

I fell for him. To this day, I don't know why other than that he saw me, not the little rebel girl or someone who needed to be fixed but the valid-albeit-lost young woman I was blossoming into. I don't understand that either. He had no reason to be nice to me, but he was. How was I not supposed to develop my very first fluffy feelings?

I waited and waited for months for him to say something. He had to be into me, right? There was no other reason someone would put up with all of the crazy I flung at him, and oh was there ever a lot of that -- I have a tendency to reveal way too much (this whole blog is an example of that) and I made sure that boy knew exactly what he was getting into. It didn't affect him. I would later learn this was because he has the emotional comprehension abilities of a gerbil, but at the time I thought it was cute. But on the other hand, he didn't say anything. We were both technically old enough for feelings to blossom. He lived roughly half an hour from me. So... what was the problem?

Answer - he didn't see me that way. He never had. I found that out when I finally told him where my heart was almost a year into this mess. He shot me down in the most emotionless logical fashion possible (which is where his nickname originates, if anyone hasn't figured it out). I, in turn, went into a depressive spiral, listened to too much Adele, went even deeper into the spiral, and eventually hit a point of self-destruction that even my mother couldn't ignore. I was eighteen. No one had ever taught me how to deal with this, because good Bubble girls were only ever supposed to love once. This wasn't supposed to happen. He'd been my Person, I'd been so sure of it, but... nope, I never even had a chance.

There's more to the story, of course. There were a lot of little moments that year - my second accidental near-death experience, for one - and a few things that happened after. I tried to be friends with him again, still fluttered for him, but again I was shot down - that time the day before Valentine's Day (see what I said about emotional comprehension abilities of a gerbil?) - because he had a girlfriend. (Apparently she broke his heart two months later. By that point, I couldn't have cared less.) I realised that I could, in fact, do a lot better than the golden boy who prolly just put up with me because I was everything the girls of our world were not supposed to be. And once that realisation hit, I became softer, less ambitious, less terrifying. Less like the person he thought I was and more like the person I wanted to be. For the most part, I've moved on.

But I still wonder. What if things had been different? What if he'd known the chance he had and taken it? Where might we be if my feelings had been reciprocated? I'll never know. It's been years since I've felt anything other than frustration (and not the fun kind either) towards him. We talk about every six months, which is to say that he remembers I exists and messages me and asks what I'm doing and I pretend I care. It normally happens right after I've gotten home from a wedding, though he has no way of knowing that. I passive-aggressively messaged him several bitey Taylor Swift songs about this time two years ago; he didn't react. That chapter's over. But there's still a little corner of my heart consumed by the first time I wanted someone, and sometimes that want rears its ugly head.

So, this is me saying that I am not the girl you thought I was. I am not ambitious and terrifying; I have no plans to change the world, and I'm starting to get bored with the thought of just burning it all down. I can still run in scary heels, but otherwise I am so different from who I was four years ago. I'm not happy yet, but I'm a damn lot closer than I was then. I do things for me now. I am working towards a quiet life, and someday, hopefully any day now, I will meet someone who will love me like you never could. Someday, I will look back and it won't hurt to think of you. Someday, I will be whole.

(Oh, and you mentally ruined a whole flock of fictional characters and three very good albums for me, and I'm not over it. That, I am not moving on from.)

But thank you, you hopeless idiot, for starting me on this journey. If you hadn't been such a prick, I wouldn't know that the things inside my head are bad and need to be dealt with. If you hadn't broken me without even knowing, I would still think that boys like you are the best I can do. They're not. I can do so much better and someday I will. Just watch me.

Song of the day - "Wildest Dreams", Taylor Swift.