The Difference of a Year

A true story. These are my experiences with Valentine's Day. It's for a contest, but that felt mighty good to write down.

 

I saw the date on the calendar. I saw that it was Valentine’s Day, and the thought made me grin. Today was the day that I would finally be with the person I wanted – David.

I got halfway out of bed and sat for a long while as the dull white light outside the window grew brighter. I looked around my nearly empty room. The carpet was gone, the walls were scrubbed clean of paint and wallpaper, and all of the furniture was piled into the center of the room. We were redoing it. It was the end of old things; it was the start of new things.

My musings came to an end as I suddenly could not contain my excitement. I got down from my bed and into my computer seat – about two feet apart, courtesy of the crowded furniture.

My thoughts drifted to last night as I waited for the computer to boot up. Brandon and I had to have had the most civilized breakup in history. It was a simple, mature, calm conversation that ended the relationship – not exactly what you would expect, but we had broken up before, so I supposed that Brandon knew how to handle it.

I felt somewhat guilty for isolating him and then dumping him like that, but I could not help the fact that I loved David. I felt somewhat guilty for cheating on Brandon during the days before now; surely he didn’t deserve that. Surely I should have waited, but I hadn’t. I felt somewhat guilty for not telling Brandon the real reason that I was leaving him, but soon enough I would have the love of another and the past would be behind me.

The computer had loaded. When I struck up a conversation with David, he was in a foul mood because he wouldn’t be able to spend today with me – it was a long-distance soon-to-be relationship, and that often troubled us both. But today I had good news. I smiled to myself, knowing he wouldn’t be in his current mood for long. I beat around the bush for a while to make him curious, and then I told him about the breakup.

His reaction was exactly what I expected, but that was a good thing. I wanted him to be happy. I wanted him to know we could finally be together, that this didn’t have to be a secret anymore.

On this day I celebrated with my love, and I could not have been happier.

 

…

 

I saw the date on the calendar. I saw that it was Valentine’s Day, and the thought made me frown. This day was undeservingly marred by bad memories. I attempted to ignore the date altogether. I pretended the memories were nightmares, but in the end, it didn’t help. The truth came crashing down on me, and I gave up trying to stop it.

On this day, exactly one year ago, I had begun to ‘officially’ date David, who had been my secret lover up until that point. I was not proud of that fact in the least. One year ago was one out of several days in my life that I wish I could go back to now and slap my younger self. The younger self who thought she understood love because she understood attraction. The younger self who served her own desires and wishes, and paid no mind to others.

How could I have been so stupid? I wondered idly how many people have thought that at some point in their lives. I would be willing to bet that the vast majority have. But I was sure that if there was ever a way to measure how ignorant a person could be, my younger self would score very high.

I was young; I was in love. That was all I knew at the time. I didn’t understand how to control my emotions. I didn’t understand that I didn’t have to get involved with any person that I fell in love with. I had never experienced unreturned love, and I still hadn’t now. I always assumed that I would get what I wanted in the ways of love, because so far, I had.

David turned out to be the one type of guy that I had sworn off dating by now. He was abusive – in the emotional sense, at least. I suspected that was only because of the distance. He manipulated me. He lied to me. Man, did he lie to me. He lied about everything under the sun, and I had believed it all. I had come away from the experience a whole lot more skeptical of people and vowing to be honest as much as possible.

David had taught me a lot, though he didn’t know it. He taught me what it felt like to be numb. He taught me what true sleep depravation felt like, complete with red, blood-shot eyes from crying all night. He taught me how to fake a smile. He taught me how to weave complex lies and pull them off without a hint of skepticism. And he did this all while I still loved him.

To be fair, I had ended it twice with him. The first time was right after I discovered that he had been lying to me about multiple, incredibly big things that I dare not go into detail about. I wanted him back before twenty-four hours were up. I ended up getting him back within that time, although he actually didn’t want to at first because of an angry e-mail I had sent to him because of all the lying.

The second time was because I couldn’t justify going out with him any more, because he wasn’t a person who followed God like I was trying to be, and more so because he kept forcing me into sexual situations that I didn’t want to be in. That was one of the rare times I actually had some sense back then. I actually tried to move on after that – but alas, I found myself wanting him back within 48 hours. I had him back without any problems that time.

The third and final time we separated, it was his doing. He thought the relationship wasn’t going well. Something inside me broke, and I became numb, like all the times before when he had hurt me. Somehow, this gave me some sense. He wanted me back barely within ten minutes, but I didn’t want him by then. Even after he accepted this fact, he tried to keep talking as if we were normal friends. It was too easy for me to think we were still together. I broke off contact so I could get over him on my own.

A month later, I had seen Brandon again. I was happy to see him, since we hadn’t talked in a while. We were still friends, but we were kind of distant. Something about him had attracted me again that day. We had started flirting…

I backed out of the memories happily, running my fingers over the locket he had given me for Christmas. I got up and got ready to face the day. I was going over Brandon’s house to share Valentine’s Day gifts. He would hold me in his arms, and I knew the moment he did that I would forget all about the reasons to hate today.

On this day I celebrated with my love, and I could not have been happier.

Reviews

[NCPanthersgurl]

Wow. Even though I kind of expected the reunion with Brandon, it still managed to surprise me =] Awesome work!

[Ady]

You structured this story beautifully. Each sentence seems well-thought out and constructed. Good work!

[Johnny Tragedy]

Good story. Love is a complicated thing to describe on paper. Sounds like you should stick to Christmas though. :)