the mind of me

Friday the Thirteenth

5/13/16

In all of my years I never feared today's date. As a superstitious person, I embraced whatever life decided to throw at me on the dreaded thirteenth, but to my surprise I had some of my best days on this date.

Until today.

For the first time in so many years, I believe in bad luck. And I'll tell you why.

My life has been pretty unfair to me in all of my seventeen years. Born to a messed up family, I can't keep a friend to save my life, and I spend my time huddled up in my room because there is no other way to spend my life.

One day, 2014 I believe, I went to a grocery store with my mom. I was only like, almost sixteen, so of course I spent every second with her. What are friends???

I saw a familiar employee, a tall boy with dark hair and big blue eyes who I had seen a million times before but this specific time it was different. He stared at me, trying to focus on his work but he couldn't look away for more than two seconds. I got out of sight, but something in my heart kept telling me to keep my eye on him, to not let him slip from my gaze. So I did, I smiled at him. He smiled back, flashing perfect white teeth. This dude looked too perfect to be an actual human. 

"He's so cute," I whispered to my mom who was in the self check-out line, directly across from him. 

"Where?"

"Right there." My finger pointed to him before he could turn around and catch my mom looking at him, that made him chuckle. 

She looked at me, then at him, and back to me. "He's okay. Nothing special."

My eyebrows furrowed, confused as to why she couldn't see how special he looked to me. Why couldn't she understand why I couldn't take my eyes off of him, or why he refused to take his eyes off of me? There was something in those big sleepy eyes, the color of a perfect baby blue sky. 

I went home that day with an odd feeling in my chest. My mind raced with thoughts of him, there was no ridding him from my brain. I could see his smile behind my eyes, I could feel the sweat on my palms, the pounding of my heart in my chest. 

Later that evening, I got a notification on my phone that caused me to look at the screen twice. 

"_______ Started following you." (Of course I bleeped out his name.)

Naturally I didn't recognize the name, so that caused me to go to his profile just to be surprised by those blue eyes, that perfect smile.

My heart raced.

It raced even faster when I received the Kik from him. Remember when everyone used the Kik messenger? Yeah, back when it was popular that's how we communicated. Don't judge.

"I'm really sorry if this is weird — I wasn't deliberately looking for you because I didn't have a name to match your face, but I saw you on _______'s profile and I couldn't resist. Do you believe in fate?"

I laughed. No, I didn't believe in fate, but this was too good to be true.

The next few months passed, Kik messages turned into text messages. We discussed our desire to travel the world, our family, our past love life. He asked how old I was, terrified to give my answer, I had to tell him I was merely sixteen. 
He was in his twenties. 
This difference between us caused us to lose our connection. Things were beautiful before the truth.

Like I said earlier, too good to be true.

I was used to life not working out in my favor, I was used to getting set up just to be knocked down later. The disappointment was really setting in when I realized that I wasn't allowed to think about him anymore. I would never get the opportunity to hold his hand, to hear what his laugh sounds like, or to look into his eyes. Was I in too deep? Of course. Could I help it? Of course not.

Even though I thought it was the end — we spoke on and off the last year, the awkward small talk. I was sixteen and young, he was older and wise. He had a career, I sat at home and did homework. 

"How have you been?"
"I've been good. How about you?"
"Oh good, I've been fine."

Flash forward to summer '15 — I'm seventeen.

The day I decided to rekindle what we had, I had been laying in bed that night, re-reading all of our old conversations. Finally, my fingers typed, "Hey stranger."

My phone buzzed almost immediately, my heart raced. 

"Hey! Wow, haven't heard from you in a long time. What's been up?"

That night, we discussed everything. We covered every little topic, even the ones that could usually break newly formed friendships.

"I hate to ask you this, but I need to know your thoughts on God. So far I feel like nothing you could say to me could offend me. We have to disagree on something! It's crazy, I've never been so in-sync and connected with someone like this before." He asked, making me smile because I felt the exact same way. We agreed on everything, had the same views, same opinions. 

We talked about God and politics, the two subjects that you should never discuss with anyone because of all of the different opinions, arguments are easily started. Instead, it scared us even further because we agreed on everything. 

Then we got deep — we both had fathers who left us. He opened up to me completely, telling me things about his relationship with his father that he had never told anyone. He was completely vulnerable that night, letting me see every broken piece of him. 

"I'm sorry I'm talking so much, but, you're just so damn easy to talk to! Usually I'm not this open, not even with my closest friends I've known for years. I don't get how you do this to me."

My entire seventeenth year was filled with him.

Late night phone calls when I was sad, his texts to check up on me - make sure I was okay, the inside jokes we created, the deep talks, the laughs we shared, the visits to each others work, the smile on our face when we saw each other, the dreams we had of each other during the same night. When I'm crying, he has the power to make me smile again just by hearing his stupid voice. My self esteem issues went away when I talked to him — he made me feel like I deserved the love I felt, like I was beautiful. Like I was enough.
Love was consuming me and it was so real. 

I thought I had experienced love before him, I thought I went through all of the hurt and the passion I would experience but I was so wrong.

The love is true and it's pure, it's everything I could've wished for. 
I tried to move on to different guys —since we couldn't be together until I was eighteen, I thought maybe it wasn't mean to be— but none of them could compare to that fire I feel with him. I feel passion, I feel lust, I feel love, I feel the caring gestures, I feel incredible, I feel confident, I feel the perseverance. We are determined to be together. 

Up until recently. 

The phone calls are becoming a rarity, the texts aren't as frequent, we don't visit each other anymore. He's always talking about new girls, trying to impress them, see if they'd be interested in him. And of course they would be, I'm just a normal girl. There are women out there who are better looking, better bodied, and could probably give him more than what I can.
I'm so scared that these almost three years of waiting for him will go to waste.

But the thing is, I'm giving all I have. 

He has received everything I possibly have. He has 100% of my soul, my heart, my body, my mind, everything.

But when he leaves me for a girl who can give him more than what I could, my world will crash and burn. He is my everything. I've gone against my advice to people and I've let a man consume my world and take control of my heart and my happiness.

I guess I'll pay for it when he leaves and takes all of my soul with him.

Nothing good happens on Friday the Thirteenth.