fullcrazy: A Semi-Short Story

Have you ever worried that you held someone prisoner?

We had been a couple once upon a time. In the same way that some people “accidentally” have sex, I accidentally ended up in a relationship last summer. It’s often said that once you stop looking, that’s usually when you find it. I met her in a very random gathering of acquaintances — some old friends and some new people who were all connected in some way to a friend of mine from college.

She didn’t seem intimidated or scared by the scar on my head. That was the first sign that she might be different. (granted, she hadn’t had to see it first hand for a while, so maybe that was why) She was nerdy, she was intelligent, she had a great sense of humor and an even better sense of music. These days, good music taste is a relationship requirement. You just have a good idea things will flow a little better when the other person recognizes that the sample from “It Was A Good Day” was originally from The Isley Brothers, or when the two of you can trade good music.

I said back then — and I maintain it to this day — that I always wanted to keep her around. Some people you meet and their spirit or something about them is so positive and uplifting, that you never want to lose it. I told her I had hoped we would always be friends. Because in a world that champions the fake or gives the two-faced a center stage (hi, VH1), genuine people are hard to come by. You don’t just have one of those dropped into your lap and leave it behind. You just don’t. Well, people do all the time; I guess I should say, you SHOULDN’T leave them behind.

I became attracted to her, as it often works when two people have common ground and make each other laugh. For some reason, my jokes weren’t corny to her — or they were, and somehow she still laughed because they were funny and not out of pity. She called me “refreshing,” which was an uncommon adjective to me at the time. We progressed towards a relationship but didn’t really acknowledge it (or at least I didn’t) until a few months into our interaction. The relationship-esque demands existed even without the title, though: loyalty, consistent communication. I had since decried the concept of starting as “friends first” to start a relationship. It didn’t work, I insisted, because if you didn’t pan out, you could never make a clean break. To borrow the words of one Musiq Soulchild, you would “just want your friend back” and never be able to get them. It helped that I hadn’t known her before.

On our first date — because she was long distance, four hours away — we made it official. I believe that there is a process to things, a way courtship should be done. I hesitated to make it official on our first date, but as I wasn’t getting out to Waco very often, I agreed with her point about “what was I waiting for.” It actually started out terribly. (lol) We resolved to see a movie that we were both interested in, I bought the tickets late, we arrived late, and I kinda rushed her past concessions (though we really needed that popcorn). We snuck in gummy worms (Trolli, for the real) and enjoyed the movie, then ate a taco spot shortly after. At the taco spot, we talked more in-depth, about past demons. I was aware of her dating history, but she wasn’t as aware of mine. Having been closed off by many people before, I, too, had mastered the art of building a fortress around my heart. As I’d spent months campaigning for her to let me in — in spite of her insistence that she was an “open book,” she didn’t share everything with everyone, and that made sense — I’d also held her at a distance from knowing me.

The date ended on a better note. We took “usies” and shared kisses and cuddled up on her couch and talked. She would teach me to improve my communication skills. I would make effort to know she was appreciated — I even commissioned a painting of her and her then-baby boy at the time.

“… And I can’t leave you alone (can’t get you out of my system)…”

In all my pursuances of the opposite sex, they all share one commonality: sooner or later, they all fall away. It’s something I’ve become accustomed to and, in fact, struggled to find the reasoning for. My own frustration with me feeling like she didn’t give me credit for trying, coupled with my concern that I wasn’t enough (she was former military, on the cusp of graduating college, and I was in a retail job with no college degree still), caused me to fall back. She ended it. And at the time, when she ended it, I was hurt but I was nonchalant — because it didn’t “feel” like a breakup.

I fought to get her friendship back. I used casual conversation and then got deeper. I realize that plenty of people do this for the sake of “weasling their way” back into someone’s life. I would say my intentions were genuine, and that I really wasn’t trying to weasel in. I EARNED my friendship with her back, but in the back of my mind — I wondered if I was keeping her somewhere she didn’t want to be. I never truly ruled out the possibility of us getting back together at some point down the line. Not soon, but certainly not never. In enjoying having her as a consistent presence in my life again, I may not have realized it wasn’t so enjoying for her.

There is no right way to tell someone, “If you give me time to get myself together, I’ll be more ready for you.” This is common especially in Black relationships. It’s a common trope in Black romantic comedies and fiction works. But I also know too many REAL-LIFE stories where brothers will tell sisters, “I’m working on me, but I really want you, you just gotta give me time.” LL Cool J and Lyfe Jennings even wrote a song about it. It’s unfair to ask someone to wait for you and, possibly, lock them out of better possibilities for something that isn’t certain. The truth, is that if she had given me time to get myself in better order and she wasn’t interested in being a couple, I wouldn’t have faulted her for it. If she met someone else over the course of that year who was closer to what she wanted — to what she DESERVED — I wouldn’t have held that against her. I just wanted the opportunity to try.

“And I wonder, if it’s, worth me, holdin’ on…”

She ended our friendship. I wanted to fight her on that very badly. VERY badly.

But I wondered if I had become The Beast to her Belle — held her captive as a result of my own selfish desire. She had joked, once, that I had “dragged her back kicking and screaming” to being friends, but I’m not so sure that was just a joke. I would’ve felt guilty forever if I had kept her somewhere she felt she had to be, rather than where she WANTED to be. I intended to write. I intended to write something grand and campaign for my forgiveness and our friendship… but I worried that I’d been holding her prisoner. Captive in her feelings. She had demanded her freedom; who was I deny her that? Even if I felt I was getting better, who was I to hold her back from finding her BEST possible mate?

Nobody.

We had been a couple once upon a time. Now we weren’t even friends.

So instead of writing that to her, instead of extending her sentence in the prison I didn’t realize I’d put her in, I write it here. I add her to the list of good things I’ve ruined, and maybe take a small comfort in knowing at least I saved her from the worst of me.