The Ex

I’m newly single.

I met my first real serious boyfriend when I was away at college. Oddly enough it was a boy from home that I didn’t even remember adding to my Facebook. He began chatting with me while I was at school and when I came home for Winter break we actually met for the first time. I wasn’t stupid about it. We met in a very public place, I got myself there and home.

I don’t want to say that he was abusive because I feel it is a very serious accusation that should never be tossed around lightly. He never hit me, maybe it would have been easier for me to leave if that’s what he did. No, he fed into my insecurities, and exploited them.

Before we even met I told him up front that I was a heavy girl. He told me the usual line, “I just care about personality, and you’re nice and funny. I don’t care how you look.” Then the very first night I stayed at his place we were cuddling when he asked how I felt about losing twenty pounds. (At my heaviest I was 283 lbs. I am now 190 lbs) That should have been it for me, but I knew that I was unhealthy and I needed a change, so I justified it in my head as him caring about my well-being.

While I was at school, I became very depressed and homesick, I stopped going to classes and rarely left the room. I decided it was time for me to withdraw from my classes and come home. That’s the first time he broke up with me. I remember him telling him that I didn’t fit into his mind set as a proper potential life. He helps run his family business and there was no way he could be respected with someone like me in his life. And then he told me “It’s really a shame because I will never find anyone better than me.”

Once I was home, I began talking with him again and we started seeing each other again. He told me up front that we had an “arrangement” but he’d treat me like a girlfriend, but that’s not what I was. Another red flag. After a few months, I was losing weight (2-3 lbs a week) and getting comfortable. That’s when I made the proposal of trying again as his girlfriend. He basically laughed at me and told me not to worry about it that I wasn’t competition against any other the girls he have never met. But I couldn’t walk away from him at this point. I went right back to him.

Then he began actively looking for someone else. His sister suddenly fixed him up with a girl she went to college with. And he told me he was once again done with me. A week go by and he calls me with his sob story of how the girl stood him up, and avoided him and finally told him that she wasn’t interested. I felt bad, it’s a shitty way for anyone to be treated and so I went back.

And then it happened again, guy he was working for said he had the perfect girl to fix him up with. And he actually turned the guy down. I know what happened at this point. He had gotten comfortable with me.

He had started calling me his girlfriend, which is something he had done when we went to parties, because he said it was easier than explaining our situation and embarrassing me, but he had starting doing it around the people that knew us and knew what was going on between us. He never really discussed the change with me, so I had to assume that nothing between us had changed.

One night he told me about a girl he was checking out at lunch and was disappointed that I wasn’t so enthusiastic. He told me that he was always disappointed that I never liked myself. The next night he broke up with me saying that I held me back. That when I visited I never made him study for his GED or practice his essay writing. It was my fault that he had not accomplished any of his goals.

We kept talking as friends; he went to meet a girl one of his coworkers set him up with. She didn’t like him. And once again he turned back to me. I’ll admit that I wasn’t to tell him no, but I didn’t jump and say yes. And that shook him.

We talked for a few more weeks and finally I let him see some of the pain he had caused me. For two years he was the only person to call me up and ask how I was doing, I felt like he was the only friend I had left and I did value that friendship, because we did have fun together. He introduced him to dagorhir and boffer sport that included three day camp outs and late night parties. We shared a joy of gaming, I’m a PlayStation girl and he always had his computer games going. He taught me how to play League of Legends, he liked that I was a gaming girl. We shared anime and manga. I taught him how to make awesome sausage gravy and chicken Alfredo. We did smile together and have fun. And that’s why I wanted to keep the friendship, but when I was finally honest with him I told him, “You’re a great friend, but you were a shitty boyfriend.” He told me he didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

I sent him a message on Facebook saying that I would still be his friend if he ever found himself in need of someone to talk to. All he sent back was “I’m done getting hurt by you.” Maybe I did something I didn’t notice. Some terrible trespass that I overlooked.  I want to ask him to sum up all these hurts, just as I did above, but that does seem callous. So I will let him have his pain and I will have the happy memories that we shared. The pain is a lesson and not something to cling to otherwise I will never move on and find happiness.