Damaged. Ripped to pieces. Naive. Young.

Ever since “Duke” took a break from our relationship I felt damaged. I couldn’t get him out of my mind, hoping that I could prepare myself for the worst. I tried everything to get my life back on track, to find my individuality – to prove to Duke that I was something worth missing and to restore some of my own self-worth that was torn apart the day after our “six month” mark.

This didn’t work. I neither got the love of my life or restored any inkling of self-worth. I figured that maybe I would just circle in this holdingpattern, and could eventually attain one of these two goals.

That brings me to part 2: last night. By accident, I began a conversation with “Duke’s” new boyfriend. They had been dating for two weeks -he broke up with me three weeks ago. It’s fair to say that this new information shook my world. I felt so many emotions last night: anger, jealousy, love, betrayal, despair, loneliness – the list goes on.

Duke texted me last night. I assumed his boyfriend put two and two together and told him about our chat. Our conversation started off with a “WTF?!” to which I responded “I didn’t know you could rebound so fast.” It escalated from there. “Duke” told me that over the last month of our relationship, I annoyed him and that he became emotionally unattached. Because of that, he told me it was very easy to get “completely over me.”  He then scolded me for not going to him about his newfound relationship and that I had no right to speak to his boyfriend. I told him that in fact, I had no idea he was in a new relationship already. I spoke to him with the love I had for him, which I couldn’t deny and the realization and acceptance that “Duke” and I will never be. I wished him happiness because that’s what I wanted for him. Then I got a very cold and biting “Thanks!!!! Will do!!!!” in response. That was it.

I didn’t know what to do with myself. Anything to relieve my pain, even for a moment, felt worth it to me. I reached out to my church youth leader, but little came from that. I asked Alec if he could come over. Of course he came over – we spent much of the night trying to make sense of what happened. Alec tried to convince me that I was not at fault for this break up and that it was “Duke” that was the douche in the relationship. To an extent, Alec was absolutely right.

Throughout the six months of our relationship, “Duke” would go days at a time ignoring me, and only then I’d find out that it was my duty to understand why without having to ask. That is essentially what our last month was, me not picking up that there was something wrong and him not telling me what was bugging him. That’s how things ended. And now I see from both of our perspectives what was happening. From my perspective, I felt him pulling away and my response was to seek him out more and try to figure out what was wrong. From his perspective he pulled away and I didn’t catch the memo, and to him, I became more clingy and annoying.

Understanding this helps me realize what happened. But it doesn’t help the pain all that much. But the further insult of his rude, cruel texts from last night finally became clear to me: he was an asshole to me, so I wouldn’t contact him anymore. I’d let him see the pain that I was in, if he cared at all to notice. He was protecting himself and I think it will work. I don’t want to contact him anymore because I feel like I would only get hurt more, so he wins. He gets to live without the guilt of shredding my young, naive heart.

He pulled away for a good reason. We were getting too serious, I had given away everything to him because I thought he felt the same for me. I fell in love and I think he thought he fell in love. But “Duke” is smart he knew that accepting the vulnerability of love has some of the greatest risks of pain that the world has to offer. So what am I? I’m young, naive and fell into the trap of love. I used to think that I was ahead of the curve, I was mature and found true love. This has been a reality check. I am not as mature as I thought I was. I thought that love meant I could give away everything to my lover and expect that he would take care of me, my love and never hurt me. I was so wrong.

I think I’ve experienced what so many have gone through in their first love. Love isn’t easy and it doesn’t necessarily find you at age seventeen. Love is rare and true love is even rarer. True love is when both people in a relationship would never do anything to hurt the other. I did not have true love. True love will hopefully come in time. In the meantime I need to focus on myself, my family and friends. I need to reassess and rebuild my individuality – something precious that I so naively gave away to “Duke.”

For at least a while, this will be my last blog post. Thanks all for reading, you guys have been very supportive.