It's been almost two years...
Find a Conversation
| Fri, 08-10-2007 - 7:56am |
First of all, I didn't know if I should put this under "breaking up" since we were never officially a couple, but it hurts too much to call it anything else.
It's a long story, but in short five years ago I became close friends with this guy Brian. Even though we lived roughly 300 miles away from each other (we met at a summer camp we both worked at), we spoke virtually every day on the phone or computer for hours. Even after I stopped working summers at camp and started doing summer internships, I still talked to him upwards of 2+ hours a night. We saw each other whenever possible, but that was maybe once every 4-5 months. At the very least, we always made sure to see each other on our birthdays. The few times we did spend together were always kind of magical (at the risk of sounding cheesy). The morning after the first time he came to see me on my birthday, he woke me up to watch the first snowfall of the year together. We just sat and enjoyed each other's company. The next year, I crashed the car my parents bought me for my birthday not three days after and instead of making fun of me like all my other so called friends had, he just put his arms around me and kissed me on the forehead as soon as he walked in the door. Then there was the time I came up to see him on his birthday - I woke up at 6am to try and scare him while he was still sleeping and as soon as I opened the door he was in the hallway trying to do the same thing to me. It still hurts now just writing about the kind of bond we shared.
After about 3 years of this kind of friendship, I really thought that I was in love with him. I'd never been in a real relationship before and I was really kind of clueless about the whole "love and be loved" thing. I told Brian how I felt about him, and that was pretty much the end of everything. He told me he cared really deeply for me, but he wasn't ready to be in love and he didn't think he could ever be in love with me. I still remember the last things we said to each other:
me - "How can you just sit there and tell me that what we have doesn't mean anything to you?"
brian - "Why does it have to mean anything? Why can't it just be what it is?"
It hurt because I had watched him date a litany of useless, brain-dead girls and wondered why he could be with them and if he put me in an even lower category.
That was two years ago. I cried on his birthday and resisted the urge to even so much as shoot off an impersonal "happy birthday" email. My friends insisted that we just used each other for emotional support during a rough time in our lives and now that that period is over I should move on with my life. For the most part, I thought I had. I stopped thinking about him entirely, deleted his number from my cellphone (trust me - this took about 6 months worth of rationalizing to do), and started dating. I should have mentioned that the entire time I was with him I never so much as kissed a guy. For the last 9 months I've been in a great relationship with Josh. He's kind, wonderful, funny, smart, overall pretty much the perfect boyfriend for me. We've known each other since grade school and on the whole we're very close.
Really, everything was going perfect until I ran into one of my old coworkers from that camp in a parking lot at a neighboring college. One of the first things he asked was if I still spoke to Brian. I was kind of shocked because I hadn't thought about it once for over a year. I went back home and found old letters, photos, gifts, ticket stubs, other things that had just been lying around my insanely messy desk and just had a really good cry. To this day I don't know if I really fell in love with him, but I do know that I really cared about him and to a certain extent still do.
I really don't know what to do. It's been so long and I really have tried everything to put him behind me, but there's always something there reminding me that he was a part of my life for a pretty long time. My biggest fear is that I'll never get as close as I want to with Josh because I'm still hung up on Brian. I gave myself two years after this before I even started thinking about dating and I'm tired of being a prisoner to my emotions. I hate it because I love Josh but he accuses me of being distant and distracted. Thinking about Brian just makes my stomach go crazy and renders me useless for awhile. Right now just writing about it I feel like my stomach is going to leap out of my body and I feel as if I'm about to faint. I think it's because there was a pretty big lack of closure and some stupid small part of me still thinks there's hope, but I want to stop feeling that way. I feel like I've tried everything, so any advice would be appreciated.

First loves are the hardest to put in the past. I don't believe you're still in love with Brian, case in point, you hadn't thought of him the whole time you've been with your current boyfriend. We always make things so much more dramatic than we need to ;)
Ok, so first thing is you're going to do is clean off your insanely messy desk and get all the stuff that reminds you of Brian out of there. All of that is bad ju-ju, it's just holding you back from your life now. Not saying you have to throw it all out, although it's more helpful to you if you do. Keep one or two really sentimental things and chuck the rest. The couple of things you keep you put away in a box in the back of your hallway (not bedroom) closet or your garage, preferably.
Next, what you're going to do is to write Brian a goodbye letter. You're NOT going to send it to him, don't you dare, you're writing this for yourself. You need to get those emotions and feelings outside of yourself, writing them out is one way to do that. So write out everything you've ever wanted to ask him or say to him, and then you're going to let it go. You're going to burn it. You'll sit there with a drink, and you watch it burn it outside until the ashes fly up and away, taking all of those feelings with them. This is one of the most ancient types of releasing rituals, cleansing by fire, so it must work, right? It does, I promise.
When you're done doing that, you'll be able to start focusing on HERE and NOW and APPRECIATE all that you have. THAT will open your heart, finally.
Good luck.