The Mishaps and Misfortunes of a Mann

Chapter 11: The Tall Two Timer

Broken hearts. A topic almost every teenage book, movie or series has, and something felt by most. Still to this day I am not completely sure of what exactly happened to my heart and if it was actually broken or perhaps just a tiny bit fractured. As you have all seen through the years of my previous love affairs and wild romances, none of them ended according to plan, and some didn't even begin. Let's just say that this one was a little mixture of both, it ended before it even had the chance to begin.

Without a shadow of a doubt, this was and still is the most complicated and unexpected situation of all, something that never really blossomed past the point of hidden feelings and inescapable problems.

Have you ever just suddenly gained an interest in someone? You all of a sudden just want to get to know them? It's before a crush, just a simple yearning to want to discover more about someone. I think it's safe to say that this was the only time I had ever felt such a feeling, not completely compelled by their physical appearance and instead simply finding myself wondering about them.

It was around November of 2016 when I started to notice this particular boy more than usual. Even though we only had a few classes together he seemed to be something that interested me. It never occurred to me that anything would happen or that there were any feelings until the last day of school before half term in February 2017. I was saying goodbye to him in the car park just before I went home, and it was the way he wrapped his arms around me when we hugged and then dragged his arms down mine that set off a strange spark within me.

Days later I pondered messaging him, wondering if it would be a waste of time, until finally I did. We were driving up to Nanyuki to spend a week there, and I stared at my phone for at least 10 minutes wondering if I should send the message or not. It was at that moment that a strange sense of foreboding came over me, and I suddenly felt as though sending this text message would have some large and devastating effect on my life in the future. I sent it anyway. If only I had listened to my instinct and gone on with life as normal, perhaps I wouldn't have found myself in the countless sticky situations that followed.

Throughout our time of texting, I never really started to develop real feelings, as I wasn't entirely sure how he felt about me, and from my previous experiences I wasn't about to dive right in if I wasn't absolutely sure he might possibly feel the same. So of course as every girl does, I asked several of my sources to try discover whether or not he would "get with me", a term we used that honestly just meant kissing. Even after being told that there was a possibility, I was always sure that there was no way that he would like me, and I guess you could say that that was my first mistake.

Weeks into the new term, just before the Easter holidays, we had a school disco. I of course saw this as an opportunity for me to dress up all sexy and try desperately to impress this boy. I had the plan all figured out, this was the night I was going to make my move and it would end like one of those rom coms which always end with the boy and girl happily together riding off into the sunset. Well it's safe to say that this did not happen. My game plan was quickly destroyed when I saw him with another girl. She was new, extremely pretty, and had a reputation of always getting the guy, and I knew then that there was never any point of my plan, and this confirmed my suspicions that he could never have liked me. It was a sad moment, not just because I watched the guy I had slight feelings for kiss another girl, but because I blamed myself for the fact that I was unworthy of him. Something I wish I never felt.

They started dating a couple of months after, which didn't really phase me as I had tried desperately to tell myself that us ending up together was just a fantasy I had created in my mind that had zero chance of ever coming true. We continued to text, just as friends, well at least for the time being. I always liked to text him because he always seemed to genuinely care about what I was saying, a clear mistake on my part.

I knew that his girlfriend did not like us texting so much, but I never understood why, because at this point it was entirely innocent. I would always tell myself that I didn't like him or even have feelings for him, because I knew that if I did it would not end well. I kept this up for a while, just being friends because obviously I knew he had a girlfriend, but my old feelings were soon brought to life again when he told me that he too used to have feelings for me.

One random night he proceeded to explain to me at the same time I had slight feelings for him, he had feelings for me. Why does this seem to happen to me! This news annoyed me because I just didn't understand why then he had chosen his girlfriend over me, and why he had kissed her on that night and not me. I guess it was just a right place right time type of situation, and it was just me not actually believing that he may have felt the same. It was like the movie Love Rosie, where they always seem to like each other but are always caught up in different situations which make it impossible for them to be together.

Over time I quickly realised that their relationship was much more serious than I actually anticipated, and so again, I pushed the slightest thought of liking him far to the back of my mind. It was hard, because I knew that texting him so much wasn't good, firstly because he had a girlfriend and secondly because it was getting harder to suppress my feelings for him, but I just couldn't help myself. Ladies and gents, this is probably the worst thing you could possibly do if you like someone and are trying not to. Just don't text them. That's it.

Even though I pretended, to myself above all, that there was nothing there, there always was. It was hard to put into words the exact feelings that I felt for him but I knew that it was something different. It was different from the others because as much as there was lust, there was most of all a feeling of connection in a way that I still can't quite explain, which I'm sure many others have felt.

So I had an imaginary summer romance, believing that perhaps one day it would blossom into a love so strong it would surpass The Notebook! This clearly was completely fictional and far out of reach but, oh how a girl can dream. As summer ended and school was on the cusp of starting it did not fill me with much joy that I had to go back to school and continue to see the developing romance that was not mine. Again and again I told myself that nothing would ever happen between us until one fine day in September...

It was the day of our bonding trip, a day that is supposed to somehow get everyone in the year to suddenly be friends in a day. A day might I add that you spent most of your time bonding with a canoe in the middle of some random dam! It was floating down this dam with one of my friends that my feelings for this particular guy were beginning to resurface and as much as I did not want or expect them to, they were slowly remerging.

That evening I was talking to this boy and he proceeded to tell me that he did still have feelings for me. This was somewhat shocking, amazing, however also deeply depressing all at the same time. As much as in the moment it seems like the type of thing that you want to hear, it just adds more confusion. So he sent one of those long drawn out messages explaining how, yes, he loved his girlfriend and he wanted to be with her, however he had feelings for me which were somehow slowly developing. Well what exactly was I supposed to say to that? You all may be thinking; 'Tell him that you like him too and tell him to dump his girlfriend and run off into the sunset with you'. You know I probably should have but instead I told him to stay with her and there was clearly nothing he could do and that he should try suppress his feelings for me. I mean hello, what exactly was my game plan? Yes I was trying to be a moral person and yes I was doing what was best for their relationship, but let me tell you that was absolutely not what I wanted. That night was the first time in a while that I had properly cried over a guy. And this time it was less of the dramatic Sam Smith type of crying and more of a sort of feeling of helplessness in a way that made me feel weak. A very strange feeling, that at that point I did not know would be the first of many moments like that to come. This I guess you could say, was the moment when he gained his name in this book; The Tall Two Timer. 

To be continued...