He Said, "It's Not Your Fault I Love You"

I spent my whole life believing that because I wasn’t in love at 13, or 14, or 15 or whenever I heard the right song or watched the right movie, I would never be “in love.” Then I met a boy who tore me apart through text messages and monthly meetings and a final rejection so kind that I couldn’t even allow myself to be bitter. After that, I really didn’t feel. I was used to having more crushes than I could count on my fingers and suddenly I would go to school dances and look around at the throng of boys I had known since middle school and find myself repulsed by them. I didn’t want anyone. More and more aggravation and harassment and tragedy pushed me further and further away from caring about relationships. By the time I graduated senior year, my childhood friend had died of cancer, my closest friends had become acquaintances and I was left on my own. I had daily anxiety attacks in my house, alone. Alone. Alone, but I couldn’t bear to see anyone. So I was alone, for a summer, my only interactions being nightly greetings to my parents and four failed job interviews. Alone. I really, really, really hate to be alone.  I wanted a change, and if I couldn’t have change I was beginning to prepare for an end. I was sick. I was desperate. 

I was an incoming freshman and hopeful electrical engineering major at a top state school, with my best friend since middle school as my roommate. I met people who told me I was right about how poorly my friends had treated me, people who let me be silly and awkward and say the wrong things, because I was honest and funny and could have a smart-enough conversation.

My college has a nature preserve. It’s a beautiful pond surrounded by woodlands and I met people who loved it so much that we would go at every opportunity, to a park at the end of the forest loop or stand on the bridge over the pond with our heads buzzing from exhaustion at four in the morning to stare at the stars. There is nothing in this world like the dark dome of sky stretching over trees silhouetted by moonlight on a velvety fall night. It was on one of these nights that I started to fall in love.

We had played Dungeons and Dragons together that night, which is an incredibly dorky way to begin a dramatic story about an incredibly dorky boy who is my best friend first, my boyfriend second and my Dungeon Master third. It was one of those nights where nothing could tire us or totally fill our heads. I felt like I was made of static and cold wind, and the moon was full and the night was clear, so we went to the bridge and stared up at the sky. Altogether, there were five of us: me, Blaise, Blaise’s sister Lizzie who was visiting for family weekend, Henri, and Tony, who had been Blaise’s friend since high school. We later invited my suitemate, Emily, out to cheer her up after a long week. Blaise walked her to us on the bridge. Five minutes later, Emily was smoking and I was reeling over the side of the bridge to keep from having an asthma attack while we talked about flashlights in the trees. It must have only been a minute after Emily had locked her pipe away in a children’s leopard print lockbox that the police came by. While I was silently counting the sentence for aiding and abetting, Blaise had assured the police that we were only enjoying the night and we were soon on our way. It was agreed that we would head inside somewhere, but Emily ran from us and we chased after her, into roads and woods and across parking lots until she was so furious at us that we didn’t dare go after her any longer. I was terrified for her, angry at her, and hurt by her. I was blocked from her social media and distraught that she would not forgive me. It was so late at night, and I had my apprenticeship for the school radio the next morning, so Blaise offered me his bed and said he would sleep on the floor. Instead, I only took his comforter, and I watched from the floor as he sat crouching with both feet on the seat of his chair, texting me furiously so we wouldn't wake his roommate. Every now and then he would get up and work on his printer which he never did fix. I found that I loved to watch him work, with his face set in a focused, soft way, because he loved to solve problems and he loved to have problems to solve. 

We stayed up until dawn, and we talked about sunrises and sunsets and how we hoped that everything would be okay. He told me about the world he had grown up in that was so different than mine, a world that would make anyone angry. But he wasn’t. I woke up early to get to the radio station. Before I left, I looked at him lying under his bare sheets in his clothes from the night before, braced against the almost-freezing cold that blew in from the window. I laid his comforter back over him and walked out the door.

That day was a terrible day. My parents had decorated my suite as a surprise for my eighteenth birthday, which was that Monday. I broke down in tears when I saw it, and they didn’t understand why. I had hardly slept, I hadn’t eaten, I hadn’t showered, and my suite was empty. I cleaned up quickly, did my best to explain, and we ate lunch at a McDonald’s down the road because I couldn’t think to have anything else. When my parents left I had a terrible panic attack on the floor of my common room. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t think, I had a massive project due on Monday that was hardly started, and when I looked at my computer I felt so sick that I fell to the ground and I screamed. I screamed and screamed and SCREAMED because I didn’t know what to do, and no one came, and I was alone and I was empty and I couldn’t think or act or do or be and my chest and stomach burned and my skin was hot and raw and my heart was in my feet and I wanted to destroy everything, I wanted to tear everything apart while Pinkerton was still playing from my laptop and my best friend was on the phone, trying to give some sort of comfort. My parents came back as soon as they could and I cried and screamed into my mother’s arms while my parents tried to grapple with the knowledge that their daughter was insane. That she was sick, and alone, and broken and that she had been since the summer or the memorial service or senior year of high school or sophomore year when her teacher called home to ask why she was crying every day in class or freshman year when she was sobbing in the hallway and was pulled into the Vice Principal’s office or since seventh grade when every other word was an apology or since fifth grade when she screamed at her bullies on the playground and hated every minute that she wasn’t in her hometown because moving towns is terrible and change is terrible and people are terrible and death is terrible and after all of it, after all of it loneliness is TERRIBLE and I was alone.

Lots of things make you anxious, or sad, or lonely.

Make you angry.

Make you empty.

Parties at midnight alone make you empty. Movies and shows and love poems make you empty. Your friends and your enemies make you empty. I was tired of being empty.

Online dating designed by geniuses and used by idiots. I am one of those idiots. I want to say with total clarity that pizza, dogs, and being taller than 6 feet is NOT a personality. Smoking weed is NOT a personality. Wanting to have sex with me is for the love of God NOT a personality. Three dates, a waste of my time, a few good stories that you’ll have to pay me 50$ for, and the lingering feeling that I was picky, or unappealing or not trying or trying too hard. 

At least it gave me some peace. Each online match was proof that I could be attractive. I was able to delete the app and carry on knowing that, and after all of it, I was happy. College is kind of great. No one minds that you’re trying to figure out how to skateboard in the middle of the afternoon while having a conversation with your mom over wireless earbuds and playing off a fall as a bad connection. I do wear a helmet. Don’t worry. 

And no one minds that you use the building’s lounge to play Dungeons and Dragons and your suitemate thinks the 3D printed dragon your Dungeon Master gave you as a thank you for your friendship is “cool as fuck” and you can just walk to a pet store with your roommate and buy a beta fish you name Omega 3 Fatty Acids, Prince of Whales and Swimmer of the Seven Seas. 

And no one asks questions when it’s 11 at night in the basement of the library and your Dungeon Master is holding pins in place with his bare fingers as you solder and he reminds you to wear goggles and he carries your massive project back to your dorm for you and he texts you when he gets back so you know he’s safe.

Two weeks after my birthday, Tony confessed to Blaise that he loved me, and he asked Blaise to see how I felt. I already knew, because I can always tell, unless it’s Blaise. Blaise and I talked, and I told him what I knew and thought about what I felt and what it might mean, and remembered how I had lied on the floor crying to my roommate that I liked him and how terrible it was that I liked him, and she reminded me that it was 3 in the morning and that I had been up since 8 the previous morning and I went to bed not feeling much better.

I texted Tony that I needed a therapist. I went to Blaise’s dorm with tears in my eyes and agreed with him that we both needed time, and medicine and therapy and maybe a good hug or a sensible slap to the face. I wanted to wait until Thanksgiving at least.

Two weeks later, I sat on Blaise’s bed and took the worst possible approach. It went a little like this:

“Blaise,” I said, “I want you to tell me what you want.”

Blaise started to tear up and his head fell. “I want so much, and I have-... I don’t know…”

“Don’t cry! I didn’t mean to make you start crying, I just meant-... No! Okay, just… tell me what it is you want, in the form of a question.”

Blaise was pretty distressed at this point. “What?”

“Okay, okay, in the form of a yes or no question, ask something of me that would give you… what would make you happy.”

I really don’t know why I kept going, except that being asked out by a note was awful, being asked out by text was worse, and call me old fashioned but I wanted to be asked out by a man for once. “Uh…” he said, “What do you mean?” He paused for a second and then his eyes snapped to mine and he said “Wanna go out with me?” which perhaps lacked grace but I didn’t ask for grace so I laughed and said yes.

All I will say is that Tony didn’t take it as well as I had hoped. This is where his story ends for us. I wish him luck.

This narrative is supposed to be about a secret I’ve kept from Blaise for the almost 3 months that we’ve been dating. That might not be a long time, but in that time he has given me more than I ever would have thought I would get.

He lives seven minutes away from me. Every day, three times a day, he walks those seven minutes alone in the cold in his old sneakers just to walk me seven minutes back to the dining hall where we met. Then he walks those seven minutes back to my dorm with me and leaves me for the walk back in the snow and rain. He waits outside the door to the building for me to let him in while I’m still getting dressed. He waits at midnight when he has a morning class the next day. He waits and waits and waits. He carries my bags, my packages, my folders, my books, and he has once even carried me. He stayed at school during finals week just to help me crawl through it. One night, they were selling Sicilian pizza at our favorite dining hall, and I did not have the mental capacity to eat that terrible hard square cheese monstrosity, so he carried my laptop bag up three flights of stairs, waited for me as I sat on the ground in the snow because I was exhausted, put my things in his room, gave me water and candy and walked with me on an empty stomach to the furthest dining hall, that just so happened to be closed. Then he waited with me an hour until they reopened while I watched Minecraft YouTube videos on my phone, because I really am a mess some days. 

Since that night when I fell asleep on the floor, I’ve spent several nights in his bed. 

I can’t. For some reason I can’t. I want to believe I’m still Catholic, or in control of myself, or practical enough to want to avoid risk, so I cannot and I will not and he understands, but we like to sleep beside each other because as my aunt put it, “there’s nothing that compares to sleeping next to someone,” and she’s right. She is right.

My roommate once said that he was a good man because he waited for me. Even until marriage, he would wait.

Since that night when I slept on his floor, I’ve gained full DJ clearance at the radio station. I’m on the air Fridays, from 1am to 3 am. He has an 8am class that day, and he wakes up in the middle of the night to walk me back to my dorm, because he knows that I’m afraid of being alone, and he wants me to be safe. Two days ago, I slept over at his dorm instead, because...

He really loves the sunrise. He says he loves to see me when the sun rises. He loves the warmth and the ocean and the summer, and once he told me that if he wasn’t worshipping me like the sun, he was doing something wrong. I love the cold and snow and the winter, and with him I started dreaming again. I started dreaming all of my old dreams of living in an A-frame in Maine or in a little house in Old Quebec City where I could see the St. Lawrence steaming in the freezing, pink winter mornings, and watch the silent stars that came after brilliant pink and yellow sunsets. I love sunsets, and winter sunsets are the best. Beautiful color on color shining like nothing else on white clouds and white snow and dark trees. He dreams of living in Costa Rica on the ocean and swimming every day, but he tells me now that as long as I am there, he can be anywhere.

He loves me. He says it by accident, because I told him once about how sensitive I am to those words, and how I can’t stand them being thrown around. I want them to be special, and said in a special way in a special place at a special time with honesty and meaning.

Last weekend, I was angry and sad and scared and pressured into going out and getting myself drunk on two kinds of vodka and whatever they put in those big orange coolers at frat parties that you’d usually see on the sidelines of football games. I strode along the side of the road through the snow from theta chi to delta psi in clothes I had borrowed from Emily and told him I loved him, and got no response so I said it again and I don’t remember what happened next.

The night passed, and I was sticky and wet from spilled drinks and hot from it all and then very very cold. I sobered up and admitted to myself that it was true, but I lied to him and told him that I didn't know. That I was sorry but I couldn’t know and he would have to wait. My roommate says that he is a good man because he waits for me. Blaise would wait out Hell while I tied my shoes if I asked him to.

He is one of the most intelligent people I know, but he doesn't read, and there are some things on me he can't read either.

I can tell from his tone and his face and his words that he guesses and wants and hopes, but he really doesn't know.

He doesn’t know that I love him.