I am still in love with my ex-boyfriend.

We were high school sweethearts and stayed together through my first two years in college, for a total of four years. Two boyfriends and a year later, I still cannot forget him. This blog entry is a part of my mental memory dump to shift him from brain to paper, so that I might finally erase him from my consciousness. Read here for a fuller explanation and for the first part of the story.

As I left Chinese school, I couldn’t help but laugh at how obvious you were; challenging my friend to a race in the middle of the hallway so you could show off to me?

As luck would have it, we both walked into the same math classroom on the second floor. Linear algebra with Ms. Baker was so boring, thank god you sat next to me to keep things interesting. Throughout the course, if I wasn’t either doing my math homework, or doing homework for another class, then I was probably stealing glances at you, wondering if you were doing the same with me. Our math classmates placed wagers on, in the vulgar terms of a high school senior, when you would “get in [my] pants”. Kids don’t grow up much from elementary to high school do they? When Ms. Baker asked for volunteers to demonstrate something by hands, you immediately volunteered after I did. Our classmates “ooohed” just like stereotypical fourth graders. One time in class, after we had started dating, you had your hand laid behind me on my seat. In the middle of her lecture, Ms. Baker walked down the aisle and forced you to keep your hands to yourself. For some reason I have that moment engraved into my memory, especially the look on her face as she used her arms to gesture, “apart”.

We had a pretty symbiotic relationship in math. You were brighter than I was, but I was harder working. I let you copy my homework during lunch, and you would help me with the harder problems. I let you do all the work on our collaborative tests. Well, sometimes I just pretended to need help so I could spend more time with you. I remember one time after school we were sitting in the front lawn, leaning against the ugly white blocks that covered our school front. The weather was so beautiful and the wildflowers were in blossom. You had your arm around me, even though it kept you from writing your homework. You were a senior, so it didn’t matter anyway.

I guess I did actually learn something from that math class.

4/4/3 Trying to fall asleep but can’t, and have lots of work due for the end of the year.

“You need to let go of the past”

The past few nights I have kept myself awake thinking about him, reminiscing on old memories. One by one, I replay them in my head until I miss him so much that I am inspired to call him, hoping that he might tell me he misses me too.

“Sup?” he says.

“Oh I gotta go, the basketball game is on.”

He leaves me alone with the dial tone, with not even  a piece of self-respect to cling to.

Perhaps I keep thinking about him because I am afraid of forgetting. For one last time, I am going to allow myself to enjoy our memories as I record them here in writing over the next few days. After this, I will never think about him again – until a future when all this is behind me, and I can revisit this entry without mixed feelings.

“The first time I saw you, my impression of you was just that you were very Chinese,” you told me, referring to the oversized red fleece handed down to me from my mother that I always wore to track practice. We were laughing about how we had both noticed each other as freshmen, but despite being on the same track team and in the same Chinese school class, had only met as seniors.

I sat with my friend R_ in the Chinese school cafeteria. He was working on homework with a little punk kid because his Chinese sucked. Then you sat down across from me. Turns out that punk was your brother.

I could see the resemblance. You had a punk smile on your face, one that read “I’m the man, yo”. You wore clothes that were too big for you, but not in a ghetto way, just in a – I don’t know how to buy clothes of the right size – way. I thought you might get up and break dance, miserably. I wasn’t far off the mark. You tried to impress me by folding a paper crane, which I threw away as I left. Undaunted, you challenged R_ to a sprinting race and then to a basketball game to show off. But I wasn’t interested and left for my orchestra rehearsal.

You always did love to talk about yourself, even as soon as we first met you were showing off the fan your grandfather penned with calligraphy. I listened, nodding my head and asking you questions, if only out of pity that you actually thought people were as interested in yourself as you were.

“That’s when I first started liking you,” you told me, “because you listened to what I had to say”.

In truth, I was just being polite.

That night I sneaked out of my boyfriend’s house. I seem to have a flair for dramatic break ups.

Dear __,

I’m sorry I didn’t leave tonight because I was trying to hurt you. I left because I felt  uncomfortable staying in your house. I’m tired, emotionally not in the right place, and so I’m going to wait for a few days to make sure I don’t make any rash decisions. Let’s just give each other some space for a while.

Crystal

I can’t sleep so I just wanted to get some things off my mind that I forgot to say tonight (or thought about later).

When I neglect my blog, that means one of three things:

1) I’m so happy that I either don’t have time to blog because I’m busy enjoying life, or I don’t need to blog to release my emotions

2) I’m so busy and stressed out academically that I don’t have time to write

3) I’m too depressed start writing

It’s been almost a week since my last entry, and as I reflect back on this past week I must say that it’s definitely not option number one. Blogging is just like any habit, once you miss out once, it’s easy to continue missing out, and every day missed brings down my self esteem. Every day, it was just so easy to spend that last hour of my day stressing instead of destressing. Over the weekend, I slept almost twelve hours every day (on Saturday I woke up at 4 in the afternoon) and canceled just about every commitment I had (dance practice, chorus performance, elderly center volunteering, squash game). It seems that I’ve entered a state of stress-induced paralyzation and lethargy.

Some of you may have seen my facebook and twitter status last night: FML FML FML FML FML. Today at four I had a twelve page essay due, for which I had only started writing last night. Halfway into the night, with twelve pages of bullshit and hours of reading left to go, I could not manage to focus my attention on my work and kept watching Taylor Swift videos on youtube. I was also craving chocolate cookies but could not gratify myself. It’s funny how despite the fact that I have less assignments this week, my stress level was higher. Even though I’ve dealt with writing papers of equal length every week, for some reason I couldn’t handle it last night. Looking back, I have absolutely no idea how I went from twelve blank pages to twelve pages of text, and I also have no idea where my 16 hours went. But in the end, no matter how far away from completing your work you think you are, work always gets completed.

As I crawled into bed tonight, with no intention of writing, my mind started to race – as it usually does when I try to sleep – and I could not fall asleep despite having only slept two hours last night. That’s when I decided that I should finally get out my laptop and write down what it is that is bothering me.

I have a friend who has feelings for me, but I don’t have feelings for him. It’s strange because theoretically he is just my kind of guy: smart in a specialized field (biomechanical engineer going to grad school next year), yet cares about receiving a liberal education (takes random classes like psychology), has similar interests (was in my Chinese history and literature classes), and knows how to have fun (is my dance partner in the dance competition). My friend (the green elf) even told me that he sounds perfect for me. But the laws of attraction cannot be explained, and I just am not attracted to him.

This is not a situation that is foreign to me. It’s actually pretty common for my guy friends to like me. My roommate says she can see why: because I’m pretty open and warm to others. Generally though, my friends are pretty far away and I can just let the situation smolder. Additionally, we were very good friends to begin with, so after the fact we can return to being good friends.

However, in this case I only met him at the beginning of the term and am living in the same building with him for the next five weeks. If I deliberately ignore him, a) it will be quite obvious and require significant effort on my part, and b) we won’t just go back to being friends – but will probably not continue to develop our young friendship.

I had the sense that he liked me since the beginning of the term. One night I had a nightmare in which I dated a tall Asian guy who looked remarkably similar to him; in the nightmare, I let myself agree to see the man, even though I didn’t like him and ended up feeling horribly trapped in a relationship I never wanted.

In my wakeful life, I’ve been pretending to play dumb to all his signals. However, I have a feeling that I can’t keep putting it off anymore. He is a pretty forward guy, and it wouldn’t surprise me to hear him confess his feelings for me soon. Today, I heard it through the grapevine that he has been confiding in our classmates about his frustrations over how I don’t respond to his signals. Our dance competition is this Saturday, and he proposed a celebratory dinner afterwards – somehow I feel like he is planning more than a celebration of our dancing.

Sigh:: so what is bothering me is – how do I let him know that I am not interested in him, without hurting his feelings and still keeping the possibility of developing our friendship? What should I do if he does confess his feelings for me?

That was my friend’s response when I asked him how he was feeling. After hearing him out for a little bit, I suggested that he write about it and to publish it on my blog. I told him about how much blogging helped: to be able to write my feelings and thoughts down and share them with others, and then to receive words of comfort, support, and advice. Please read his thoughts below and share what you think.

Last year I broke up with my girlfriend of one and a half years. It was very much my fault, and I wanted to make it right. I could not believe I had let things get to the way things were. I needed to do something about it.

A lot of things kept me back. Jealousy, paranoia, the fear of losing someone were all present, especially since I was away from her for six months without having the slightest chance of meeting up. It was extremely difficult for me because of the potential to meet other guys (which she already had, prior to us breaking up). I just wanted things to be the way they were again.

I wanted her to love me again the way she had. Back then I would know that her interest was solely in me, that she would want to most of all hang out with me, and that she had the most fun with me. I have no problem with having other friends or anything, but at the end of the day I felt special. I miss that feeling. I miss having that. Will I ever be able to get that back?

I realize I probably don’t deserve any other chances, but I still do love her very much. I wish it were mutual. I really miss a lot of the things we’d do, even if they were silly like playing the Sims or Text Twist, or throwing pieces of fruit at each other, or some more crazy things like running around the halls chasing each other. I know that to her it was a different feeling breaking up than it was for me. For her it was more of a relief. Maybe she was right about me though. Maybe I haven’t changed and only care about myself.

I’ve been ignoring her because I can’t shake the feeling that I’ll never see her again and that nothing will ever happen again. But by thinking this, I’ve been ruining my chances. In less than a month I don’t know if I’ll ever see her again, but if I had done everything right starting from a year ago, maybe things wouldn’t be the way they are now. But it’s too late to look at the past. I’ve ruined everything. On top of all of this I keep caring about her hanging out with others and having fun. It’s no wonder she does though, seeing as I never ask her to hang out and don’t initiate any conversations online. Again, it’s because of the feelings that resurface when I do.

Should I even care anymore? Why do I care about the stupidest things? What should I do? I feel like I’m running out of time. I feel lost.

It is 12AM. After only sleeping three hours, a two hour rowing practice, and a formal dinner, I thought that I would go home and zonk out around 9pm. That’s what my body was telling me to do anyways. Three wasted hours of laying in bed later, I am still awake.

I retract any hypotheses I made earlier as to the cause of my current bout of insomnia. I know now that the inexplicable stress, stomach queasiness mistaken for hunger, muscle tension, can all be explained by one reason:

Subconsciously, I didn’t want to sleep because I was scared of having the same nightmare again.

A week ago, my most recent ex-boyfriend appeared in my dreams. In my dream, he had a new girlfriend, who I not only met but had to become friends with. She constantly asked me if I was ok with their relationship. She was white, which brushed some of my social insecurities and innate feelings of inferiority when interacting with that racial group. That night was when my sleeping problems started. I went from sleeping at 10 and waking up at 6 to sleeping at 3 and waking up at 12. Last night I dreamed about him again.

I thought I was over him. I hadn’t given him the slightest thought for months. Why is he coming back to bother me now? I can’t afford to have this continue so early in the term. Does anyone have good suggestions? I’m going to try sleeping to music so I can think about other things.

I dated this guy for four years from junior year of high school through sophomore year of college (“A_” from this blog). We broke up just this past June. It took me forever to get over him, and now we are even friends. Recently I was searching through old emails for something he sent me and decided to reminisce by reading old emails. Thinking that I would have fond memories of halcyon days, actually my main reaction was a churning in my stomach from the thick sugary sappiness.

Here are just a few of the many overly lovey-dovey epistles I wrote him:

Oh my love for the first time in my life,
I miss someone like i’ve never felt before.
Oh my lover for the first time in my life,
My heart aches ten times more
(Can’t remember if I was trying to quote a song or if I actually wrote this)

In your busy life, please remember to take a few minutes and think of me.  Trust me, i’ll know when you are.

My soul is shaking.  I want to break out of this cage and run across the ocean to you.  If you could know how much I long for you, how much you dominate my thoughts.  If I could just hear your voice, read one email, or a simple hello message left for me online, I would be happy.

I’m in geoscience right now but all i can think about is u and how much i am still stuck in the oral freudian phase

I just wanted to write to you and tell you how much I miss you and how much I love you

I think about you every second, almost; like when i was at a red light today for a really long time and i wanted to reach out my right hand and hold your hand.

Of course, my sappiness wasn’t un-reciprocated. In fact, it was probably learned from him. Here are his responses:

To a Wonderful Girl,

Hey beautiful stranger,

Before I went to sleep, I was laying on the matress, looking at the stars. I was listening to Jazz on my CD player and I was thinking, “It would be so nice if Crystal was here and I had one of those headphone split things so she could hear was I hear, see what I see, and feel what I feel.” The feeling was surreal. . I felt a bit insignificant, but mainly I felt a longing for your company.

I miss you so much. I sometimes can’t concentrate on what I am reading because I keep thinking about you. I love it when your hair is glowing. Like that one time in the car, the sun was at your back, I think it was setting. Then the edges of your hair has glowing red. It was really beautiful and I wanted to kiss you then, but I was driving.

I love you
I hope you smile when you see this
because i’m smiling as I write it
thinking of you
I love you
hey, thats kinda like a poem.
not really

Yours adoringly, affectionately, and admiringly,

Your true love,