Lessons Of Life

Chapter 4: Love Hurts

I didn't know much about love. I was always afraid of it. I thought love was just something you'd see in movies. The only thing I ever loved was my family and friends. I was told love hurts. But could that be true? I always thought. If love is so powerful and makes a person so happy, how could it ever hurt? Then I fell in love, and it all made sense.

It's not love that hurts....it's what you go through when you love someone, or it's letting go of someone you love. I had my first real committed relationship this year. I came out as bisexual and I dated a female to male transgender. It was already a long shot for a first relationship but I knew it was what I wanted. I questioned my sexuality since the 7th grade and up until last year I tried to forget about it and stop thinking too much of it. Last year I started crushing on girls again...I was scared. I was scared of what my family would think. Especially my parents. I've grown up with my mom and I talking about boys and me fangirling over male celebrities. I always hid the other side of me, because I learned it wasn't right. I grew up and thought that I HAVE to be with the opposite gender, it's just the way it has to be. So when I started getting these thought I was terrified. Terrified that what if I were to marry a woman I loved? What would my mother think? Would she then cry because she now didn't have a "normal" daughter who she would see walking down the isle to a man standing afar at the other end. Would she wish it wasn't like this? Because now she can't relate to her daughter and help her through things? And what about my father? Now he won't have the satisfaction of being the overprotective father to the boyfriend or husband of his little girl. But these are 50/50 chances. Bisexual isn't just the attraction to a female, it's the attraction to both genders. I just dread the day I fall in love with an actual woman and I get looked at differently by family and even the public eye. I can't help who I love. I was just too scared to give it anymore thought. But last year when I started thinking about it again and crushing on girls, I thought "How can I hide from this? I can't keep running, It's who I am and there's nothing I can do to change this." But I just never knew how and when to say it. So I didn't.

This year I became friends with a transgender in my school. We started texting. Texting lead to flirting. And flirting lead to him telling me he liked me. Before he told me how he felt, I started feeling the same way but I pushed those feelings away. I pushed them far into the back of my mind because I knew that's not who my parents wanted me to be. I would cry because I didn't know what to do or think. I was always honest with my family but lately I've been keeping to myself. I hid it from them for so long and it killed me. Once I started feeling these feelings for him I had an overwhelming feeling of fear and confusion. I tried talking myself out of it and telling myself that it's not me and that I can't be the way I am. But after he told me he liked me, my heart started beating out of my chest. I would get the feeling of when you see your 3rd grade crush in the hall or when your crush talks to you. I got that feeling of attraction and I couldn't stop it. I didn't know what to do in that moment so I continued to tell him that I was confused and needed time to think about my feelings for him. I took time and I realized it was too late to turn away. I felt in love with him and I wanted to pursue those feelings. I didn't want to hide anymore and run away. So I sat down at the kitchen table with my mom the next day and we were making dinner. I remember the moment perfectly. My mom was making spaghetti and meatballs for my dad because it was his favorite. I sat with my mom to keep her company. The noodles were steaming and the meatballs were bubbling. The room was pretty quiet. Time seemed to fly by me as I sat there scared, wondering if this was the right time to tell her. I felt my heart racing as I continued to sit there silently trying to persuade myself to tell her. She then sat down and I finally found a way to start the conversation. I began by telling her about the transgender I have been texting. She knew of him because he was all I talked about. She just thought we were friends but I continued on by telling her that he expressed his feeling for me. I read her the paragraph he sent me and she seemed to take it pretty well. She smiled and asked me if I liked him. I told her I was confused but really it was mostly fear that was holding me back. Not only was I scared of my sexuality but I was scared to love. How could I possibly love someone if I can't even love myself? All the fear seemed to escape my body as my mother told me she doesn't care who I like. She then went on to tell me a story about her lesbian friends.

My mom has two friends who are lesbians and they are married. The one friend was never lesbian growing up. She was always into men and she went through three marriages, evidently they all failed in the end. Then that friend met the other friend. She fell in love with her. She never thought she would love a woman but she did. And they then got married and live happily to this day. The point of my moms story was to show me that you can't help who you love. Love finds you, you don't find love. It made me feel better. But I still had my father and my family to worry about. Although I felt most of the fear leave me, I still had a lot within. I realized that labels aren't real. Labels are something completely made up by the human race. We are born in this world not knowing anything. We grow and we learn. But the one thing that the world never fails to teach us, is that women are to be with men and men are to be with women. We learn this at a young age and we are then restricted of the chances to express ourselves. Love isn't something you can force on someone. If a woman likes another woman, there's no helping that. Labels are just words. Love is within and a lot more powerful than a concept made up by humans. This helped me accept myself better, because at the time I didn't label myself. I was just a human who did human things, one being love. I then fully accepted myself and went on to pursue my first relationship. Everything seemed to fall into place and I was the happiest I've ever been after three years of agonizing depression attacking me everyday. This didn't cure my depression but it surly helped me a lot. And I felt like the weight of the world was finally off my shoulders.

My mom told my dad about my situation and at first he was very shocked and couldn't really wrap his head around it, but sooner or later he came to accept the fact that this is who I am. The rest of my family was very accepting and happy for me and that made me feel absolutely amazing. The only people I thought were a little iffy on the situation were my dad, my pop pop, and my oldest brother. But they soon, like my dad, just accepted the fact. My one cousin is gay and he came out last year to us all. Since then my family has been very accepting of these kinds of things and I was lucky for that.

Three months we spent in the talking stage. He finally mustard up the courage to ask me to be his official girlfriend. Of course I said yes. He lives a very hard life. With accepting himself and his family not accepting him and a lot of bigger problems. He has an addiction to drugs and alcohol and it wasn't to party, it was to numb his pain. He was suicidal and depressed a lot and loving someone who went through this hurt, and watching him suffer killed me. I felt very stressed and overwhelmed throughout our relationship and I constantly worried about him. Whenever he didn't answer my texts I knew he was doing something he shouldn't have been doing. He went down under a bridge near his house to do what he had to do to numb the pain. And each time I knew when he did it. I would sob in my bed waiting till he got to his house and called me. Each time he was quiet and dry with his answers. We would just sit in silence then drift off to sleep together. It killed me to live that way during our relationship. To constantly worry if he was even alive or committing suicide. It was hard on me, and it affected my mental state too. I was more worried about him than I was with myself and that wasn't okay.

Two weeks after we became official, he told me he couldn't do it anymore. At first I thought he meant life, that he couldn't do life. I asked him what happened and what was wrong but he said "No, I can't do us". My heart sank....it started pounding and my face grew red and warm. I started crying so hard and I couldn't hold it together. He told me he wasn't okay and he wasn't in the right mental state to keep a relationship with me. I believed him, I understood. I just wanted him to be okay so I told him I understood. I told him I wasn't going anywhere and that I was still going to be there for him no matter what because I cared too much about him. I cared too much to walk away like everyone else who came into his life. I couldn't give up on him and I didn't plan to. We continued talking and he told me that he just wants to get better so he could treat me with all the love I deserve to be treated with. I stayed....and I waited. I was still hurt so bad that it had to come to this. All our memories thrown away. I was hurt. And that was when I finally understood how love could hurt.

.......But that wasn't the end of it.