The College Series Pt. 1
I woke up with a jolt, a little out of breath and my heart pounding. Light was leaking in from my blinds, and I turned and saw my roommate’s cover softly rising and falling with her breath. I felt myself shrink a little, squeezing the pillowcase in my fist closer to my face, as if I could make my body so tense that there was no more room for him in my mind.
It happened like this once every few weeks since we had ended: I would wake up in the early morning, maybe 4 or 5 a.m., after him having appeared in one of my dreams that night. I would sleep fitfully for a few more hours, wavering between fighting that dream and wanting to see him again, even if it wasn’t real.
I still felt the puncture wound from that conversation at the beginning of February, I guess. He was in love with someone else, a girl from high school. Had been the whole time. I remember sitting in those plastic chairs outside my dorm, completely numb, watching a dog scramble after a tennis ball in the grass while he fumbled over words, his voice breaking like he might cry. I looked at him, hoping that when he remembered that moment, he thought of my face, blank but icy, how I didn’t yell or scream or call him a asshole, how I spoke in a slow, low voice, picking my words carefully, meaning every syllable.
I remember the way that conversation ended, when I received the confirmation that no, they hadn’t hooked up and well… yes, they had kissed. I swallowed hard and fast, grabbing my purse from the table and muttering a sarcastic “good luck with everything” as I stood. Then I walked back to my dorm, my boot heels clicking. I’d learned enough from the “can we talk?” texts to know that — if you could help it — dress so that they knew what they were missing when you walked away.
This wasn’t the first time I’d had this kind of conversation, and I was beginning to think that it probably wouldn’t be the last. A dark cloud of pessimism was fogging thicker around my naive conception that people meant what they said, kept their promises, that opening up and trusting them was safe.
I wasn’t really struggling with this idea of stopping people from walking out of my life. If they didn’t want to be there, so be it. The drunk texts, the pathetic begging and pleading to ‘just try again,’ the picking of fights over something that was already broken was the stuff that I rolled my eyes at. The problem? My lack of resilience. Sickly sweet, syrupy resilience, dripping off human honeycombs: the types of people who bounced right out of one relationship into the next, loving each like they could never be exhausted, like they had never been heartbroken.
I wanted to stop getting hurt. I wanted better control of my heart, better grip on my fingers so that it wouldn’t fall so easily at someone’s feet. I wanted to be able to live up to the phrase that I told my friends with boy problems: leave before you get left.
I’m barely 19, experiencing my first year of college. I’m fiercely independent, I don’t feel like I need a partner to make me happy, and I’m incredibly careful when it comes to protecting my heart. I thought I was doing everything right, but I’ve still ended up with nauseating heartaches.
The truth is, I’ve been hurt before. It broke me. Every true heartbreak that we go through is an exhausting process of rebuilding, rearranging, and readjusting. But I’m starting to learn that the world does not spare those who believe that they “don’t have time to get heartbroken.” We’re going to fall for people who we probably shouldn’t, tie ourselves up in messy on-and-offers, and give more than we receive.
I don’t know how many more “can we talk” outfits I’ll have to throw on, how many more biting words I’ll have to swallow back, or how many more times I’ll want to turn right around and ask to give it another shot. But my heeled boots are perched patiently in my closet, and they’re ready.
