Closure

I've been realizing that my past mentions of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend have been too many and too sparse in detail to do over a fifth of my life a justice. I've been too whiny; I've been playing off the fact that a one-balled mutant had to find the gumption to end a long-term relationship. The real fact is that we were unhappy and didn't want to be together – it could easily have been her who ended the relationship, but, given the circumstances, it was better for me to the be the one to start the process.

We first met when I was a freshman in college. She was intimidating – sexy in a sophisticated yet slightly curvy sort of way. Imagine a skinny, well-rounded, black girl with perfect dreadlocks and blue contact lenses. I had this premonition upon meeting her that she would teach me about unrealized parts of myself – that I would connect to parts of herself that she never before knew existed – oh, that our limbs might one day be wrapped around one another in existential, unforgiving, honest bliss. I somehow knew this within six seconds of meeting her.

She lived in the same dorm as I did, and I made my first approach during a party. She danced with me, and we broke down into a violent kiss before she pulled away and said that she could tell that I was a horrible lay from the way I danced.

I tried again in the dorm lounge a few weeks later – not quite a party, but a gathering that wiled away until only the two of us remained in the dorm lounge.

“No, you're not experienced enough for me. I don't need that,” she said.

I had heard that same argument many times that night, so I finally asked what experiences she'd like me to have and with whom and where I should have them. I also asked why someone as experienced as herself was saying no to one more experience.

I was very inexperienced; I hadn't had any sort of sex in high school and only a few seemingly natural but sometimes awkward acts in college. I had thought that women were inaccessible; unless I knew some secret code coupled with an impeccable technique, I would most likely have to find new ways to rhyme 'wait' with 'masturbate.' No one wanted an amateur but then how could someone gain worthwhile experience?

“Well, I'll just have to find my experiences somewhere else,” I finally said. I went to my room and tried to pass out so as not to have to deal with the teases and taunts of that night.

The faintest of knocks at my door - I thought it was my imagination, but I opened just in case. She was peeking around the corner of the hallway, looking very adorable and innocent instead of experienced and intimidating. I followed her upstairs to her room but was too nervous to get fully hard.

I went down on her instead. She tasted perfect as I licked and sucked and marveled at how warm and smooth the skin of her inner thighs felt against my cheeks when she clenched her legs.

“Well, I guess you're not a bad lay,” she said. Those words made me wonderfully hard.

I had left my ARMY shirt in her bedroom. It wasn't as threadbare and raggedy as it is today, but I wore it more back then. Our first night together was a little before Spring Break, so the shirt remained there for over a week while I went to New Orleans on a community service trip.

Getting back, I was irrationally terrified of climbing the stairs, speaking to her, and reclaiming my ARMY shirt. I kept trying to think of excuses that would take me up there. Knowing what I do now, I would've asked her out to dinner and casually mentioned the shirt as a way to go back to her room and see what the conversation turned into. Instead, I jogged up the stairs when I saw her door open, didn't make much conversation, and asked hurriedly for the shirt.

She had folded it and put in one of her drawers. She was always very neat and organized.

There were more parties, and the nights spent together became a regular thing. A lot of our sex was her tipsy and me stoned – good fun.

Even then, the issue of whether or not I was in her league came up occasionally. Some of her friends weren't impressed by me. When I asked why, she told me that I had potential. We left it at that.

Summer came and, as a freshman, I was staying for summer math while she was going back home. We never made any exclusive relationship demands, but we had been seeing a lot of each other and no one else. It was a weird, distant arena with many unspoken implications, but, to make a long story short, I woke up with another girl naked in my bed about a month later. I had had a mild acid trip the night before and had played Edward 40-hands as I was coming down, so I how I got to that state was a bit of a mystery.

I had a very fun morning with that girl. We also hooked up a day later in the Outback, a few acres of wilderness at one end of campus, on a beach towel. It was fast and exciting. I told my semi-girlfriend about the first hook-up, and her first question was “how was the acid?”

It was only a month or more later, after summer math, that I guiltily told her about the second meeting. She blew up (she kept asking me to tell her who I had slept with – I never did) and we “broke up.” It was more a parting of ways. I hadn't thought of us as boyfriend-girlfriend but friends with benefits who happened to be exclusive – she felt differently. Yeah, I was very inexperienced.

I used that inexperience as an excuse and said that I didn't want to spend all my college years, which were supposed to be some of the best years of my life, with just one person. I needed more experience.

She was very chill with that, and my first semester sophomore year (junior year for her) was spent seeing other people. At the start of that semester, I had also dislocated my knee in cross country. I could no longer keep up with the mileage and strain the sport required. Running had been important to me all through high school and freshman year, although my unhealthy lifestyle didn't support it. Without it, I felt broken, depressed.

I ended up asking her to get back together, although I was the one who had claimed that we'd never been together. But I was doing it for all the wrong, selfish reasons. Luckily, she refused. I went on to meet two or three girls, some nice and some crazy. Looking back on it – it wasn't a bad semester.

Next semester, same year – we somehow got back together after I hit on her in the same drunken lounge environment. We gave each other hickeys; we marked each other.

First semester, junior year – she said that she wanted to hook up with other people. I said that was fine through gritted teeth, when I should have said I didn't want that and gone my own way. Instead we started seeing other people – I met more girls this time, some nicer/crazier than a year ago. I was also a mess, doing too many hard drugs.

We still hooked up from time to time, but I was disgusted with myself for doing so. The worst time was near the beginning, when I was in a synergistic, drunken state. I knocked on her door and it took me a good while to realize that she was in there with a person that I knew. I came back later that night, downtrodden.

“You can either spend the night or leave,” she said. I stayed and fucked her in the morning without making eye contact. And that night is where I should have left, where I should have worked more on becoming who I wanted to be. I've had situations with other girls where we see other people, and it hasn't been a problem. With her, there was too much history, too many emotions, too much time. I should have realized that and left. Instead, I stayed for awhile and resented her.

There was an HPV scare during all of this, and I had to hear it from one of the guys that she'd been hooking up with rather than from her. I had been about to spend a night with another girl but told her about the possibility and slept alone that night.

When I confronted my ex-semi-ex-girlfriend about it; she said that she wanted to know whether or not it was just a scare before telling me. I said some nasty words, and we stopped hooking up.

By second semester Junior year, we were back together. Starting to see a pattern?

It happened gradually this time – coffee, back rubs, and tearful sex. I told her that I loved her. She said the same.

As she was getting ready for graduation, she told me that she still wanted to be together. I was hesitant about being in a long-distance relationship but agreed. Before she left, I gave her my ARMY shirt to take for safekeeping.

The distance was dreadful, another worry to an already stressful senior year. I worried about not being the young professional guy that she seemed to crave. I worried about her always going out to bars and looking so damn good so damn far away. She was honest and faithful, but it was still a strain on the both of us.

After my graduation, I had no real plans. I had applied and been accepted to a low-residency MFA program that would allow me to have a job if I wanted to. I worked part-time jobs and wrote part-time – a little bit of everything and nothing all at once. I didn't smoke as much or do other drugs, but I gradually started drinking more and more, shying away from full-blown alcoholism but still drinking unfortunate amounts at inopportune times.

In short, I was an emotional man-child and felt like a disappointment to my girlfriend. We lived together for two years in Charlotte and Chicago. We had good times, but there was also a sense of inferiority and of impatience, the feeling that she didn't want to be with me but was somehow putting up with it.

Instead of being too whiny, I may be getting too depressive now. We had wonderful moments – a sushi picnic in snowy mountains, a bonding 3-day journey across the states when I helped her move my senior year, a surprise connection with our airplane seats right next to each other when she flew me out to see her, a psychedelic trip where her almond-shaped eyes widened at every little flower in a two mile radius, jokes, tickles, dates, dinners, love-letters, sweet-talk, and on and on and on – please don't stop.

But it had to stop. I should've been happy with getting to date and hook-up with a beautiful girl, moved on my Junior or Senior year, and still remained friends at a distance. I shouldn't have been a weak, dependent person who kept coming back even when I realized that I didn't like that way I felt or was being treated. I should have been happy to be myself and felt happy that she was herself.

And that's the thing – I was realizing that, looking beyond my own passivity and low self-esteem, I didn't want to be with her. I could have left at any time, but I didn't. I was afraid of being on my own or never finding anyone better for me. Empathy leads to understanding, but understanding doesn't necessarily lead to happiness or some type of greater love. I realized that there were parts of her beautiful personality that wouldn't change and that I plain didn't like, just as parts of my own nature drove her crazy.

A few days after my first surgery, I broke up with her. I could see that same pattern starting to emerge – me giving into weakness and trying to prolong my time with her/regain dependence even though I was very unhappy. Her feeling sorry for me and my predicament and perhaps bearing my company for a bit longer. I couldn't stand to see that pattern take place a third time. I was done.

As the two months and two surgeries went by, I tried at first to send a few longish emails to her; I was foolishly trying to recreate the love emails that we sent during the summer of my freshman year. She sent back a nice, short response about how she'd always love me, regardless of how many balls I had. The other responses were disappointing, so I stopped sending emails.

I also realized that I liked not being stuck in the same apartment with her. I was reading to my heart's content, writing at odd hours, getting my stride back for my web writing job and not feeling guilty for wearing shirts she thought was ugly, for not having a schedule that better fit her work day, and feeling stupidly disappointed when I tried but failed to explain an interesting moment of my day to her.

She was supportive in her own way during this time, but I didn't feel like it was the support that I wanted or needed. It was a soft break-up, since all of my stuff was still in our apartment and I paid half of the rent while I was gone. During my absence, she kept saying that she was in a funk, and I asked if it was because of me. She said no. I believed it. Yeah – still not that experienced.

We were on OK terms, but I made the mistake of coming back to the apartment for a week and a half before my travels and overstaying my welcome.

I helped rearrange furniture and prepare for her bachelorette pad and tried to keep everything clean, but I was definitely still in the way, just by my very presence. I hadn't given her exact plans of what I was going to do after my travels (I was still figuring this out for myself and trying not to panic), and it had disrupted her life. We tried going out to dinner a few times, but the talk always came back to our past relationship, and it usually wasn't an uplifting conversation.

I told her that she was making me feel like an unwelcome burden when I'd be out of her hair in a few days. She told me that, to be entirely honest, I was that burden and my poor planning had made these past few months very hard for her. The sad part was I knew it to be true.

My second to last night there, she threw a party for friends and coworkers, a party that I wasn't meant to be there for. I could feel the resentment building as I drank more and more and eventually went blackout. Later that night, with only the two of us remaining in the apartment, I told her that she was a fucking bitch and I had wasted three years of my life with her.

I was being verbally abusive; she called 311, Imed a mutual friend, filmed me, and had me leave my parents a voicemail. She also barricaded herself in the bedroom. I don't recall any of this, but she said the voicemail I left was very cruel. When I called my Dad the next day and asked about the voicemail ashamedly; he said it didn't seem cruel, was mostly coherent, and seemed to fit his impressions of our past relationships. The film was sent to me as a private video on youtube – it was me stretched out and slack-faced drunk on a couch spouting nonsense while she wheedled away with questions. The only coherent sentence came at the end of the video (“I should've broken up with you in college.”) I don't think I constituted a threatening figure, but I'm not sure what to believe anymore. I learned all this from an email that she sent to me that morning as I woke up on the couch.

The sad part is I realized that what I said about wasting 3 years of my life felt true to me. In the next ten minutes, I'm hoping to write a few more paragraphs and have this finished. I don't want to devote any more time or emotional energy than I have to while I enjoy my stay in beautiful Miami. The first week here was paradise, but a homemade mojito triggered a memory. I was grinding up limes and mint for my drink and talking to a girl at the house I'm staying at. It came up in my conversation that my ex-semi-ex-full-ex girlfriend didn't like pulp of the texture of fruit, so she'd have a bartender mix the mojito and strain it. I started remembering other quirks about her and felt unhappy for the next few hours. I don't want to waste any more time than I already have, so this mediocre summary is a way of storing those memories, a way to remind myself that I'm free and could've been so all along. It's a way to acknowledge that any unhappiness was ultimately my fault – closure.

She was out on a date that day after my drunken tantrum, so I replied to her message via email apologizing for my actions but not for how I felt. Here's an excerpt from that response near the end:

I have to thank you. I've realized that some of my anger stems from being afraid. I'm sorry for directing some of that anger at you. I've been a fearful person for most of my life, and these past few months have really scared me. The reason behind my travels, poorly planned or not, is to face as many of those fears as possible. Even though the cancer didn't spread, I still feel as if there is something horrible growing within me. I want to face it, accept it, and eradicate it. You've helped me face one of those fears, the fear of being unwanted, not desirable, a burden. It's a subtle fear, a constant nagging doubt that I will never be the person that I want to be. For the past few years, I've been trying to be the man that you and other people want me to be, and that's no way to live. I can't give a shit that I'm unlikeable to some people if I ever want to be myself. Thank you for helping me see that.

I'm leaving tomorrow for Florida, but I've already overstayed my welcome. After I get packed, I'll be spending tonight in a motel. I know that it's better for us not to be around each other; right now, it's like a scab that only looks worse the more you pick at it - perhaps that will heal over time. Wish me luck on my travels, and I hope you have a beautiful April. Jeezus, who knew that our last couple of days would be like this - but at least we can say that they weren't devoid of some type of passion?

She replied with an even longer email that detailed how she had felt these past months. Many part were painfully true to read – others I just couldn't agree with. Much of it was about communication and how I didn't listen or truly know her, how she didn't kick me out of the apartment despite the advice of her family, friends, and coworkers – something along those lines, since I wasn't really paying attention. Just kidding, parts of her message helped me understand that I have been really selfish. I thought the fear and pain was mine and mine alone. But all this time family, friends, and my ex-semi-ex-full-ex girlfriend were upset and suffering as well. Thank you all for your support, and I'm sorry for being blinded by my experience.

All the same, I copied points from her email that I felt to be false and came up with counterarguments. I would send a long email back to defend myself against these misperceptions. I planned, read, and re-read as I sat in a Floridian airport waiting for a delayed flight. I did this... until I realized that I was in Florida. Poor planning or not, I had started the first leg of my journey. I had recovered from cancer. I had reconnected with old friends. I had countless options before me that had been invisible to me several months ago. Why was I wasting my time writing a stupid, huffy email that would only lead to more arguments? I sent her a short email that thanked her for her response, promised that I would give her at least a week's advance notice before I picked up my remaining boxes, and said I'd send her a post card.

I would say the moment of closure was leaving for the motel on my last night in Chicago. I stuffed my ARMY shirt into my backpack, and I triple-checked everything in my bag, wondering if I would break down and spend one last night in the apartment. I kissed her once and hugged her, not making eye contact, not wanting her to see all of that anger, shame, and regret. I didn't speak a word because I knew that I'd start crying. What else was there to do? What else was there say? Nothing – and so it was time to finally move on and accept the terrifying responsibility for my own happiness.