burying that love story
My younger self was always a believer in happily-ever-afters. It was peak 2000's to ship Zack & Kelly, Pacey & Joey, and Ross & Rachel. It was imprinted in my soul that I was going to marry my best friend. Not in the cliché, my boyfriend is now my best friend kind of way, but in the this dude has been in my life for a while and one day we will realize our feelings for each other and fall in fucking love kind of way. I blame TV shows for their damn formulaic tropes, but that’s what I truly believed my love story was going to be like. He is going to be my Pacey. And I am going to be his Joey.
Fast forward to today, that isn’t my narrative anymore. I buried that dream when I buried my relationship with Mike. And besides the betrayal, it was the other hardest part to deal it: letting go of the love story I had so anxiously waited for since I was a kid.
It wasn’t until a month ago that I realized how formative that dream of mine was for me—I love love—and my version of love isn’t going to happen for me anymore. I struggled to grasp and identify that part of my sadness. It felt like grief. It felt like an improper goodbye. And so, I write about this to give that former part of me a proper mourning and farewell. One that I could have only written three years after the fact, where time (and therapy) was allowed to do its thing so I can look back on it without so much romanticism or sadness, but with a lens of clarity of what I had to let go of.
This is that love story.
We were friends.
The beginning of our story was made-for-television writing. We kind of had a Barney and Robin vibe going on. We were each other’s wingman—we bugged each other with silly faces, bonded over shared bites of pizza, and snuggled after last call. I would sift through his texts and tell him whom to hook up. He would call dibs on my bed if I didn’t have a guy over. I would rub his hair. He would rub my back. We just genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. We laughed a lot. I remember that. And for a year, we were perfect, platonic weirdos in crime.
But, it wasn’t until my last night at Cornell that things started to change. We walked down College Ave, waving goodbye to Ruloff’s, Collegetown Pizza, and The Palms while on our way to a final farewell party. To beat the light, he hurriedly grabbed my hand to cross the street…and then didn’t let go. Was this some sort of scene from ‘Can’t Hardly Wait’ where people saw us and wondered if we were together? I didn’t know what to make of it. After the party, we headed back to his place. And to this day (even after all that shit), our last night together is still one of my favorite memories with him: me dying from an alcohol-plagued sinus infection and him rubbing my back to make me feel better. It was our last snuggle ever as friends. It was so us.
The turning point.
Of course, this is part of the story where my friends were surprised at how dumb I was for not noticing. Or even surprised that Mike and I weren’t already hooking up. Then they asked if I liked him. My instinctive reaction was no. It didn’t ever cross my mind until he held my hand. Why would he like me? I knew his record with girls, I didn’t and couldn’t be just one of them.
When my flight departed the next day, I had a pit of anxiety from not knowing when I would see him again. I already missed him. We pinged everyday at 11:11 and ended every conversation with “I love you”. We skyped for hours talking about our future plans. One day he joked that we would get married on top of a mountain and move to SF to open our own restaurant group. He sketched a picture of us. I mailed him his favorite pillow that he hugged whenever he would stay over. It was a new territory for us, but one that still lived in the friend zone. I started to like him, but was scared of that feeling not being mutual. Unbeknownst to me, parallel to these moments we snuck in, he had confessed his more-than-friendly feelings for me to our mutual friends. A month later, I had confessed mine to them. They squealed “you’re perfect for each other”—and those were the words that my younger self earnestly took to heart. This was going to be it. So when he came to NYC and exclaimed he was going to finally be with me, that platonic statement wasn’t so platonic anymore. I had subconsciously thought he was going to be the one. We went from snuggle buddies to best friends to soulmates after just one kiss.
And that’s when my love story failed me.
The love goggles.
4.5 years later, that relationship was built on an archaic hope I had—that if we loved each other enough, the rest of the pieces would fall into place. But, my idealistic love story was like beer goggles—I made excuses whenever I felt disappointed, I looked past his transgressions, I tried everything to make this damn thing work. I fell in love with his Peter Pan heart, I fell in love with his family, and I fell in love with how comfortable we were already. But what we had actually failed to do was talk about our future together — he never even knew this love story of mine existed — and I had superimposed this dream of mine into our very different reality.
One of the most heartbreaking, but bittersweet memories I have with him is the version of us I had a hard time letting go of. We were laying in silence, staring at the ceiling, when he turned to me, breaths apart, and told me that I was the person he would want to live forever with. My heart sank. It was very Peter Pan and Wendy. And oddly that is what our love story became—he was a lost boy who didn’t want to grow up and I was ready to.
Fast forward to d-day, it was his own struggles that revealed the very painful truth that he wasn’t my Pacey after all — and it wasn’t the love story I had made it out to be. Unfortunately, our college-born friendship wasn’t strong enough to survive an adult relationship. He didn’t complete me nor did I complete him.
My new narrative.
The cliché of finding myself when I found love wasn’t this. At the ripe old age of 26, I found myself when I was forced out of love. I only know this post-break-up, but I was more in love with what our love story could have been than our actual relationship. And I had to admit that to myself so I could properly bury that dream and allow my narrative to grow into whatever shape it needs to become—one that starts with a blank sheet of paper and a kid who still loves love.
*this is essay 16 of many. join me every Sunday (or so) for a new one. tata.
