by heart

weheartit

I got coffee with an old friend from high school the other day and we had a lot of catching up to do as we hadn’t seen each other in about a year and a half. About half way through my iced latte, she brought up my ex from high school. My ex, who, I completely lost touch with after we broke up in the beginning of Junior year. Well, technically, we never broke up. We’d decided that we should go on a break for awhile, and then somehow we never got back together. He moved on, a little too quickly for my liking and began dating this really mean girl. Needless to say, the rest of my junior year and the entirety of my senior year were spent with me moping around about having lost the first person I ever fell in love with. I watched from afar how in those two years just how drastically he had changed. He was partying a lot more, hanging out with the popular kids, and refused to even look at me when we passed in the hall. It was like we had become complete strangers, I didn’t know him at all anymore. When prom came around, I was sort of dating someone new and he was still with the girl he began dating after our break up. I heard rumors going around that he wasn’t sure if he was going to go with his girlfriend or if he wanted to take someone else. I had mentioned the idea of he and I going together to a few people, and the idea got back around to him. But we hadn’t spoken in months so in the end we wound up going with the people we were dating.

Towards the end of the school year there were a lot of senior activities going on, like the prom, prom weekend which was spent down the Jersey Shore, the yearbook signing dinner, class trips, and with the deadline of graduation drawing near, the seniors all became a lot closer. I saw him around a lot more often and even began hanging around with him and his friends again. We still didn’t really have any substantial conversations but we were at least being polite to each other and making eye contact again. When it came time to sign each others’ yearbook, I pretty much wrote him a novel. He wrote back a pretty lengthy message as well, and to my surprise, basically apologized for the way everything went between us over the last two years. He also mentioned how I was big part of his life and that he would never forget the times we spent together. Then it was time to go our separate ways for college, he going out of state and me going to school an hour up north. He broke up with his girlfriend, and I broke up with my boyfriend. The next time I would see him would be the following summer, where we only exchanged awkward ‘hellos’, due in large fact that he had brought his new girlfriend from school with him. I couldn’t hate her, she was sweet and they seemed happy together. As I got into my more crazy partying habits at college in the two years that followed, I found myself on more than one occasion, drunk dialing and drunk texting him, even though we hadn’t spoken in so long. And then the next morning I’d feel like such an idiot.

His friends told me that he ignored my text messages on purpose and that I needed to stop doing it. I tried. And for awhile it worked. Until one night a couple months ago, he drunk texted me. The last time he had ever texted me first was back in high school, so I was entirely shocked to see the texts from him, despite them being solely alcohol induced. The next day when I texted him back asking what that was all about, I received no answer. I couldn’t say I was surprised. The following week, I found myself drunk at a party, and texting him again. The text I sent was “I hate you.” And then I broke down. I cried, and cried, and cried and felt so pathetic. Four years later and I was still lingering over my ex boyfriend from high school. I knew I had no more feelings for him, but that he would always hold a special place in my heart. And that I was jealous that he had a new girlfriend, and that he was happy, while I couldn’t manage to find one decent guy at my school. The next day I decided that that would be the last time I ever drunk texted my ex. I was making myself look foolish and obsessive. I deleted him from my face book friends account, I untagged myself from pictures we had together, and I erased his number from my contacts list in my cell phone. I haven’t had contact with him since then and God only knows the next time I’ll run into him. I wish that our break up could have had a better ending so we could still be friends to this day or at least be civil. So many times I’ve considered messaging him and telling I’m sorry for telling him I hate him, and for all the stupid texts I sent over the past two years, and for butting into his business with his new girlfriend. But then again I know doing that will still make me feel like I’m bothering him and obsessing over him.

I told my friend that I was getting coffee with all about my attempt at erasing him from my life. I then laughed and said, it’s not like it matters if I have his number in my contacts list or not, I still know it by heart. As I drove home from our coffee date, I got to thinking about that expression. Saying that you know something by heart instead of just saying you have it memorized. I guess I will always know him by heart, considering he will always have a piece of mine.
-B