Babbles

The Forbidden Subject

Nate. The sun rises and sets on Nate. The Golden Boy. Or maybe the dark, mysterious heart-throb. He used to be all this and more to me.  He broke me after I broke his heart. He loved me, but I didn't know it went that deep. I thought he was only interested in a flirtationship after I said no to going out with him for three reasons.

1: I don't remember what the first one was anymore.

2: One of my friends likes you (the friend was Victoria at the time).

3: I will never ever tell you (It was: you are an asshole). 

After he asked me and I said no, we just continued like nothing ever happened, and gradually the first and third reasons just kept getting less and less valid after I got to know him a lot better. We continued to flirt for two weeks, and then summer camp came.

This sounds way too cliché. Sorry.

I went to summer camp, and Joan came around again.  Joan had been at the summer camp last year as well, and we had liked each other then.  A year had passed with just a couple of facebook conversations, but I had never really stopped liking him over the year. As it turned out, he was set in the same time slots as me for the two weeks I was there. There was no cell phone reception or internet connection at the camp, because the camp was in the mountains, so I had no way to talk to Nate. I think you know where this is going.

Throughout the course of two weeks, Joan and I became close again, and were heavily teased for being in love.  In all fairness, we acted like it.  We spent time hiking, making candles, seeing the sunrise, and so much more at this camp, and I knew that I liked him.  I also knew that I would never see him again (because he was from a little country in between Spain and France).  The two weeks went by like a dream, and when I was almost in the car, he kissed me. It was my first kiss. I had wanted him to kiss me, and it was wonderful.

I got in the car, and fangirled a little with my mom. As we went down the mountain, I began to feel more and more guilty. How could I tell Nate? I knew I had to, I had told him that I had never been kissed and I certainly wasn't going to lie to him. 

As soon as I got reception, I got a few texts from Nate about how I wasn't going to get this until I got back from camp, but he wanted me to know that he was thinking about me, and that he missed me. So I texted him that I had to tell him something, and I told him that I had had my first kiss. He flipped out. 

He was so mad that he had to stop talking to me immediately. I felt awful. Even though I hadn't technically done anything wrong, I knew that I should have just chosen one and not led the other on.  But it was too late, and later when I got home, Nate resumed talking to me after my pleas to talk to me.  I could hear his voice through the texts, and the malice he held towards me was almost unbearable. I can still remember some of the messages. WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING? was among the many texts he sent to me. That was the first time he had ever cussed around me, and it really hurt. 

About a week later, he had calmed down enough to agree to just be friends, and we talked a lot on Skype etc. But there was always this elephant in the room of my past transgressions.  I confided in him, and called him when I was having panic attacks. He was my rock. But he never trusted me during that time.  The school year passed in which I hardly saw him at all, and only talked to him twice.  The next summer, we decided we should continue talking like we used to, and I knew that he had forgiven me. 

We hung out one day with another friend of his, and it was one of the first times I had seem him face to face in a long time.  I was an amazing day, but I realized I still liked him.  I also had just found out that I would be moving to the Czech Republic.  I confessed my feelings to him, and he told me that he felt the same way.  And for a couple of days, we didn't really do anything about it.  Then I told him that I would be moving, and that I wanted to try long distance. 

He said no. We talked more, and I almost forced out of him what he had never been willing to confess. He thought I would run away immediately because it was so horrible. He told me that he had tried to commit suicide five times. He told me he didn't want to get better, that he deserved it. He finally told me, and I told him that I wasn't going anywhere. He told me that I wasn't worth trying a doomed long distance relationship for in his attempt to push me away. It worked, I believed him.

So I went to my new school with a crushed self-esteem, and a crushed heart. He apologized, and told me that he had no right to say what he did then, but I'm not really sure that he ever really understood how much he had hurt me, and still continues to hurt me. I still think of him from time to time.  He always had this strange gravity that makes girls just want to change who they are just so that he will like them. He has been labelled so many things just because he doesn't feel the same way that girls do for him, but he has deserved a few of the labels given to him as well.

This is the one thing I can't talk about with my best friend. I have never been able to freely talk to someone about this.  All of my friends have known, liked, and resented Nate for who he is, or have just not cared about the story.  She was infatuated with him, and he never even knew her.  She feels like her feelings are invalid compared to mine, and even though I try to tell her that she has a right to feel, she only thinks she has a right to feel pain.  If I even mention his name, I can see the pain spreading across her face.  I just want...what do I want?

I think I want to know I'm being heard.  Or maybe that my feelings are valid. Or maybe I want to know that the story is over. Or maybe I want the story to continue. But above all, I think I want to know that Nate knows the story.