Let’s begin from when I dated this guy for two years and how I felt during those years of the relationship. When I look back, those two years were two terrible years of my life where I made my boyfriend the centre of my universe and did everything possible to make our relationship work.
How can you blame a little girl who just wanted the same love story as her mom and dad. My parents were high school sweethearts and they ended up marrying each other. But the problem arises when we focus too much on making things work, forcing our reality to fit into the picture of the perfect future dream house, family and life.
And it gets aggravated when we stop looking at ourselves for who we are and instead start looking at ourselves through the eyes of that special someone. More often than not, that image of us is likely to be tarnished and untrue. I think that is what happened in my case. To put it very bluntly, my first boyfriend was not the one for me; we were never destined to end up together.
However, the romantic at heart that I was, the believer of happily ever afters and ‘I am going to make this work, no matter what,’ I tried tirelessly to make it work and ended up being labelled as a crazy girlfriend.
I started feeling that expecting my partner to make me a priority in his life and asking him to spend time with me (when he just wouldn’t) made me a clingy and overly demanding girlfriend. He would ignore my calls for days and still appear active on social media, and as much as it hurt me. After all, aren’t we all brought up being told that women must compromise and that one must bend down to make a relationship work. I used to take in all my tears, put on my happy cool girlfriend mask ( even though I used to be feeling super low and distraught inside) and go out on dates with him and be intimate, when all I was desperate for was an honest conversation and expression of love. Long story short, this couldn’t continue forever and one day I had a mental break down.
He ghosted me instead, leaving me all alone to get out of my craziness. Six months down the line, when I had managed to scarcely accept that I had been ghosted by who I thought was the love of my life, I met a boy in French class. After my past experience, I had built these high walls around myself, too scared to be my real self, to expose the crazy inside of me and risk myself being hurt and ghosted all over again. I just did not want feel those feelings ever again and I would have done anything to protect myself.
I don’t know exactly when but those infrequent conversations, turned into these honest, raw talks about life, relationships, feelings with this new boy. He eased me into sharing with him my deepest fears and appreciated me for being true to him.
This new boy asked me out and as fearful as I was, I said yes. After all, he was the one who made me realize that I am not crazy at all. In fact, I am just a girl who is too much of everything, who wants to live it all, feel it all and how could that ever be a crazy or negative thing. I have never felt happier, more vulnerable or more in love.
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