The Mishaps and Misfortunes of a Mann

Chapter 5: The One Who Chose Me

Another one of my so-called love affairs, also intertwined itself around various relationships with the BFTB and began shortly after the relationship with The Wrong Romeo.

It all began at the coast trip I had with my best friend in year 7. Now, the encounter with this boy was fairly unexpected and therefore something which truly caught me off guard. Spending more and more time with him at the beach sparked an interest for both me and my best friend. This is never really a good thing, but nevertheless we found great excitement and enjoyment over liking the same boy. I'm not entirely sure whether it was this discovery of liking the same boy or something entirely different that caused a divide in our friendship, but it happened.

It was one morning, when the sky was grey and full of rain that I received the most shocking proposal, something that definitely brightened up my day. Luckily this time, instead of being asked by one of his friends, The One Who Chose Me had the courage to ask me to be his girlfriend; himself. Naturally I was, if I may say so, fairly familiar with being asked to be someone's girlfriend, and therefore of course I was extremely poised and flattered by the whole thing, without making it evident how excited I was. I gracefully accepted the proposal, and all the while there was one slightly evil thought running through my mind; "he picked me instead of my ex BFF!". This made me feel extremely powerful and instantly gave me a new confidence which I liked more than the fact that I now had a boyfriend, and therefore gained him the nickname in this book; The One Who Chose Me.

I shall give you a quick summary of our relationship:

Each day I would enter school with a new excellently done hairstyle, walk down the little ramp on the way to the changing room, whereby The One Who Chose Me would be waiting like a gentleman in order to hug me good morning.

Then throughout the day, even though we were in the same class, I would not say a single word to him, give or take a few questions and statements.

Then finally at the end of the day, I would retrieve my bag from the changing rooms and proceed to hug him goodbye.

Well it did not stop there. When I got home, I would then text him on my wonderful Nokia brick and we would then begin to tell each other how much me missed each other, even though I had seen him that very same day and I would also see him the next day, not to mention the fact that the only words we would actually say to each other was "good morning" "goodbye" and "how are you?". If you ask me, it was a relationship filled with excitement and constant surprises!

Our first kiss. It was not something that happened the way I imagined and was definitely no better than my first ever kiss with The Wrong Romeo.

It was break time, the weather was warm, there were children playing in the playground, and there I sat behind the sports storage room with a few of my friends, and in strolls The One Who Chose Me. There was something extremely dodgy about the way that he and his friends approached us and then proceeded to speak to my friend alone in a very hushed manner, which worried me slightly. After a few giggles and hushed whispers, my friend came back to relay the information that he wanted to kiss me. Oh god. At that very moment my heart sank and skipped a beat at the same time and my very first reaction was to get up and run away. So, I did, or at least I tried to until my friend dragged me back to the circle of boys, which had gotten seemingly larger and had now turned into a congregation of my whole year group. So there, in the middle of no less than 20 people, we kissed. Standing a metre apart, leaning in with our hands behind our backs, our lips barely touching. You can imagine it was a picture of true heart felt romance and passion.

I remember when I first started dating him, I did with my best friend (not the same one that he chose me over) what any young teenage girl would do; stalked him on Facebook. I know that ladies you can all relate. Scrolling through his photos going "I promise he looks better in real life", because every teenage boys photos are all the same; some with weird filters, others doing some sort of activity like fishing or just plain ugly ones that you really question why they would even think too put it on social media. My friend teased me for so long about this boy and all those terrible photos of him, but then to my amusement, started liking him many years later.

Unlike the BFTB, The One Who Chose Me was rather open about our relationship, and when I say this, I mean he told everyone he knew. Now, this was rather flattering I must admit, at least for a while.

Well it was his birthday party and I was late because I had dance, which was clearly a priority over my so-called boyfriend. I arrived about an hour late, and on arrival there was a whole brigade of people, mostly his family members, all there to greet the beloved 'girlfriend', which to say the least I found highly embarrassing and unnecessary. His mum in particular seemed the most excited to see me, and as I got out the car she yelled "Oh how wonderful the girlfriend has finally arrived", which was just not something I wanted the whole neighbourhood to hear. As all 13-year-old parties end, there was truth or dare, and of course I was dared to kiss him, for may I say more than 5 seconds. I know, even I was quite shocked by this far too scandalous situation, but none the less I did it. There we were on the trampoline surrounded by all our friends and some friends of his I had only just met, one of whom at the time I did not know would also be one of my crushes when I was older. I don't know what it is about watching people kiss that young children and early teens find so fascinating, the newness of watching something you only believed to be true in the movies unfolding right in front of your eyes was somehow something that was highly intriguing.

Have you ever suddenly stopped liking someone and just not known what to do? Well that's exactly how I felt with The One Who Chose Me. You see, we were drifting apart, and I couldn't help feeling that the initial spark that was there just continued to fizzle out as the days went by. I was in quite a dilemma, purely due to the fact that I just didn't know how or when to break up with him, and I knew from the last way I ended things with a boy that I had to take the moral road and break up with him face to face. This idea just seemed like the worst plan on earth, firstly because I just didn't know exactly what to say because my excuse would sound terrible, and secondly because I just didn't want to hurt his feelings. So due to this dilemma, I did what any normal person would do, and I waited for him to break up with me. It was a long, drawn out wait, pretending I still liked him, but eventually the time came...

It was on the last day of term before the Christmas holidays in year 8 and I heard through the grape vine that he wanted to break up with me, so when I was summoned to go and see him, I was prepared to produce the waterworks and act ever so devastated and surprised. Well he used the oldest trick in the book to break up with me. He decided to blame me for 'cheating' on him with the BFTB because I had sent him messages that had love hearts in them, which I literally sent to everyone. In all honesty I thought his break up game was extremely weak but at least I didn't have to go through all that trouble to come up with something to use against him. And that was the very end of a rather long, yet slightly one-sided romance.