We are the lovesick. The fearless ones. The never giving up.
The hearts undone. Sick with the desire to love. To live so far
beyond the boundaries given to us. We are the fence-hopping
fools who never stopped to read the signs. The ones that left
the world behind. Like dreams we’ve drawn in neon light. Just
moments in the sea of time. We are the lost ones wandering.
The soon to be smoldering. Last to be found. The first to fall and
fail to fly then shatter on the ground. We are the rebels running
wild through a darkness that can swallow us. But we’ve set fire
to our souls. Burning brilliant blinding gold. The flames that illuminate
our lonely road. Our futures holding fates untold. We are the
ever-refusing to fold. To fade away or worse to lose. The few that
bend and break apart the cages of our rules. Born desperate for the
promise of the mystery unknown. We are the lovesick. And just like
the sun we will always rise. Hope still shining in our eyes...
-Jason Reeves


******


I feel empty. Vacant. Numb. For those of you who say unrequited love sucks, there are worse things in life than not having someone wanting you the same way you want them. Let’s say, for example, not knowing when to forget or if you should at all. There’s a quote I like by Paulo Coelho. It goes like this; “Waiting is painful. Forgetting is painful. But not knowing which to do is the worst kind of suffering.” That statement is probably the truest thing I have ever read in my life because it’s just so right. I fell in love for the first time at the age of 15. We met in April and talked through the end of September. He left me on the 25th of September, and while I didn’t realize it at the time, my life changed drastically that day. The first five months of knowing him were unadulterated bliss. I fell in love somewhere between the late night talks, flirting and banter, and sarcastic remarks. Of course, from the get go I knew I was a goner. He was my ideal guy, my own special version of perfection. He did everything right, said everything right, never made me uncomfortable in the slightest, and I never questioned his intentions or motivations because they were always pure and real.
Here’s the big problem with me and Calum. I’ve never met him. We met on a website intended to give people the ability to have pen pals on the internet from all over the world. I know it’s stupid to fall in love with someone you’ve never met, but I trusted him. I would trust him with my life if I could. Love is about trust and hardships. You can’t love if you don’t trust the person. You also can’t love if you haven’t experienced hardships and worked through them together. I know I can trust Calum, because even though he challenges my limits he would never push anything too far. I can tell him exactly what I want and I know he’ll respect my wishes. I really believe that I could be in love with him. Since we didn’t get the luxury of talking face to face or in actual physical form, we built up a lot of communication skills. Communication is so important if you want a good relationship. Calum could tell exactly what was wrong with me and knew exactly how to cheer me up. He made me happy. Truly happy.
My relationship with Calum gave me two big questions; could you really love someone you’ve never met, and why did he do what he did to me? Perhaps I should explain first. I said before that he left me on the 25th of September, and he did. Just not the way most people would expect. You see, that was the last time he talked to me. He didn’t ever say goodbye and we never broke up. He just disappeared. No more messages, no more Facebook posts, no e-mails, nothing. It’s like he vanished off the face of the planet. That’s the worst part about being left like that. You don’t get closure, at all. It’s happened to me before and worse yet, it’s happened to him too. For me, not talking to me and leaving me hanging is the worst sort of betrayal. He knew exactly what suffering and torture he was putting me through. I feel like I can’t breathe half the time. I fell into a depression once I realized he wasn’t going to reply, and that took a while because I still expected to see a new e-mail with his name on the sender’s spot. I still expect for there to be a new message with his name on it. I obsessively check my messages and e-mails. Every time I see that I have a new message I get my hopes up. They’re always crushed over and over and over again. Daily. I still have every single message he sent me on the website that we met on. I know I should delete them if I want to feel better, but I think it would kill me. Those messages and my e-mails are all I have left of him. I don’t get the amenity of having old clothes of his, or photos, or notes we passed each other during place. I don’t even get so much of a phone call or text message. So why does it hurt so badly?
Some moments have been worse than others. Occasionally I’ll forget that he abandoned me and I’ll be okay. Then I remember and I say “No, that was Nathan. Calum would never do that to you.” But then I remember both of them did that and it feels like I’m drowning. Other times I felt like I never deserved him. I kept him, or at least tried to, only because I was selfish and he doing this was punishment. My heartbreak didn’t bring me anything good. My grades didn’t improve, but they didn’t get that much worse either. They dropped just enough for me to notice and make me unhappier. In short, up until February, my life felt like my own personal brand of h*ll.
February changed everything, again. I got a message from him after a particularly nasty message I sent him. The message basically said I’m sorry a lot of times and gave an explanation as to why he became absent from my life. He met someone else. He moved on while I was still waiting for his return and that hurt me more than I thought possible. All that time, I didn’t know what happened to him. I thought he could’ve died for Christ’s sake, and I never would’ve known. But I suppose I should be glad because I got the one thing I never got from Nathan. Closure. He knew what I was going through this entire time but he didn’t care. He was with someone else. Happy. And I was miserable without him. How pathetic does that make me?
Yet, I still hope even now. I hope he’ll realise that he made a mistake in leaving me. We had something good and pure that I’ve never had with anyone before or since. He’s put me through every emotion possible; anger, love, happiness, tranquillity, and even embarrassment. The only time that I’ve ever felt embarrassed is when I told him I loved him the first time. It was an accident; I didn’t even mean to say it. It was probably towards the end of June and Calum and I were doing absolutely great. We were talking one night on messenger one night and I was listening to “Just a Kiss” by Lady Antebellum and I was telling Calum about it and I sent him some lyrics of the song, the chorus section. The section that happens to insinuate that the person it’s about is deeply in love and terrified of messing it up by going too fast. At the time when I sent it, I didn’t think anything of it. Unfortunately for me, Calum did, and he also pointed it out. I believe his reaction was “Wow.” It was repeated several times. The rest of that week was sort of awkward between us, mostly because of me and my accidental declaration of love.
We turned out alright though. The following month of August was the time when he finally admitted he felt the same. I was completely overjoyed. We were officially together for a little over two months starting August 18th. We lasted up until the day after my birthday, which was another great day for Calum and I as a couple. He gave me a birthday present of sorts, an e-card. That wasn’t the special thing, but what it read was. It was titled “Why I Love You” and it was the most thought out, best, and genuinely most perfect gift I have ever received.
My life was h*ll for five months, and then finding out he cheated on me just made everything worse. I was willing to forgive him though, and I still am. I told him as much, but did I ever get a reply? Once. After the message he sent me on the website telling me he cheated on me and to e-mail him if I ever wanted to talk to him again, I got exactly one message from him. We had arranged to talk the following Saturday after the message and I waited all day for him to show up. He never did, and eventually I got the e-mail that told me his grandma was sick and he and his family went to visit her in the hospital, and he checked to see if I ever got online again but I didn’t. That was the last time I heard from him. It’s almost May now, and that was February. Why am I still hoping?
I’ll tell you why. I’m in love. Hopelessly, irrevocably in love. I was always cynical about love, and I never expected to be in it fully. Strong emotions, yes. Completely gone for a guy, no. I never expected myself to ever cry because of a guy. With Calum, I’ve cried myself to the point of sickness multiple times. The day that we would’ve known each other for a year I became ill for almost an entire week. I was confined to my bed and left to think about him and only him. No one else even makes a place on my radar. I am one of the lovesick. I hope when that’s all I have left. I was quick to fall in love and never stopped when things got rough or completely stopped altogether. I prevailed the sad music phase, the grief of possible loss, the never ending pain, and the loss of one of my best friends. That’s what he was. He was one of my best friends. He’s better than most of the ones I have now. He’s always comforted me and made me happy even without flirting with me. I still miss him, and a lot of what I do and see reminds me of him. But I’ve faced the hurdles and can accept whatever comes next. I’ll always love him and miss him. I just wish he knew that and didn’t ever blame himself. I didn’t and never will.
If there was something I could say to him now, face to face, it’d be “I love you.” It’s a simple phrase, three words, eight letters, but it packs in so much. It could be the best thing to say or the worst. It could change your life like it did mine. I hated showing my emotions because I was so afraid the minute I did someone or something would ruin it and my chance of happiness. I didn’t grow up with my parents as role models for the perfect relationship. My mom doesn’t like my dad that much. Actually, she thinks he’s a jerk. I took a risk with Calum, and I never expected him to hurt me in any way. I fully trusted that we would continue to grow closer, despite the difference in location. He would get done with school and move here and then I would finish school and eventually we’d grow up, get married, and have kids. He joked once that his family was sort of partial to having twins. I miss the jokes and laughter he caused me. I miss everything about him. I hope he knows that.