False Hopes

It started when I was 16. The greatest love story I've ever known. 

We met at a Halloween party - I saw him from across the room, and couldn't keep my eyes off him. I was young, I was stupid and I was also very drunk. I spoke too loudly to my best friend at the time and the next thing I knew someone was asking me to stop shouting that I thought his brother was the hottest guy I had ever seen. 

I wasn't planning on attending a house party for Halloween, but my friend liked a boy and that boy asked her to come. I was walking from room to room, and used a bathroom upstairs since the basement was filled with drunken strangers. As I was walking out I heard someone shout at me asking why I was upstairs. I looked down and caught his eye. He was wearing a white t-shirt, and looked older - probably 18 or so. I was nervous and didn't know how to respond, so I apologized profusely. He said it was fine, but that no one was supposed to be upstairs and asked for my name. He was one of the owners of the house, which I hadn't known at the time. 

In that moment, I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. He asked me my name, that means he thought I was attractive. The night went on, and eventually I wanted to go home. As I was walking out he came up behind me and asked if I was leaving. He then asked me for a hug and we parted ways - leaving me thinking of him the whole night.

I didn't know his name, and I wasn't close to the friend that invited us to the party. The next day I kept thinking of him, and picturing scenarios in my head of a lifetime of happiness because, well, I was sixteen, and like I said young and stupid and full of hopes and dreams for a perfect future with the perfect man. 

I could go on and on chronologically, but that would take a week to read about. So let's fast forward and I'll give you an overview. 

He asked the friend who I was, and as Facebook was the main social media back then, we added one another on it. I don't know who added who first, but it happened. We started chatting on Facebook, on MSN (oh how I miss that beautiful software) and eventually on the phone. Now the phone is the key to this part - this is the moment we found out each other's age. Apparently I'm awful at gauging another human being's age since he was 20 years old and I was fucking 16. Yes, a huge gap and especially huge when you're only 16 in your second year of high school. 

I still remember the moment. I was reaching into my fridge to get a water bottle and that's when the bomb was dropped. I think we were silent for what was probably only 30 seconds but felt like 5 minutes. His response was, "I guess we could still be friends then." After that is kind of a blur, but eventually the friend thing didn't stick and we started a relationship. 

Not one person in my family or his was happy about it - he was my older brother's age, and my older brother had a tiny bit of anger issues and wanted to kill him. His parents didn't know about me, but his older sister did and did not think it was a good idea. I mean it probably wasn't now that I look back at it, but at the time I just thought I was so fucking cool for dating someone older. 

Six years went by - and not one day passed without me feeling this sense of overwhelming love for him. We could be lying in bed watching TV and I would look over at him, and just start to smile. My heart would fill with this feeling I had never experienced before, just loving someone so fully. We had our ups and downs, and we fought - a lot.

He was older and therefore thought he was wiser than me. Mix that with an old school European mentality and you have a mans man straight out of the 40's trying to control a young girl who hate's listening to other people's suggestions.

Eventually, it became too much for me. I was getting older, and had just started university. I wanted to go out with friends, and I was learning a lot about sexism (good ol' feminist class probably ruined it all). I started fighting back a lot more, especially when I would be asked to clean the house on Sunday's or learn to enjoy making food for my partner.

After 4 years I met his father - he was a very strict man, and when he met me I was automatically my partner's future wife, and therefore, his daughter in law. We went to their cottage on the weekends - which consisted of me not being able to sit beside my boyfriend, and a lot of picking vegetables in the garden and cooking and cleaning inside while the men 'worked' outside - worked while also playing on ATV's and generally getting to do all the fun stuff. 

Okay, I'm embellishing. I was still able to do the fun stuff, and that cottage will always be one of my favourite places in the whole entire world - but still. 

I think it was about after a year of going to the cottage - and seeing my future play out right before my eyes with his parents that I started thinking about our relationship differently. His mom would cook and clean up after all of them, literally taking their dirty dishes after dinner from the fucking table itself. She would do everything her husband told her to do, and would never question a goddamn decision. It took a lot for me to not say something to her, I loved her and we had become so close, and it just hurt me to watch her be this sort of half human when in the room with her family. 

I don't know when I came to the decision, but eventually I did and nothing could sway me. I couldn't stay with him anymore, I had to get out of it. I kept picturing my life as a housewife, with no friends that were men, and no job except rearing the children. It just wasn't me, and no matter how much love I had for that man love just wasn't enough. 

We broke up - he tried to get me back for months - I was having way too much fun being single and said no over and over and over again. 

He got a girlfriend. I was fine at first, but it just started eating away at me. How could he move on? How could he love someone else? How dare he treat her in ways I asked him to treat me for years. I know the last part from a lot of late night stalking on social media by the way. 

I wanted him back, all the love I felt for him over the years came back at once and washed over me with this strong need to be with him. He said no, over and over again. It was devastating, and if I'm being honest, I was a psychotic fool for about 6 months. 

I still think of him, and keep up with his life through various means (i.e. stalking social media and speaking to those around him). He's having a baby, with the girlfriend I told you about. 

I found out, and it was like a knife to the chest. It's been 4 years, and those who didn't know us look at me like I'm a complete idiot. "What's wrong with you, its been so long. This is ridiculous that you even feel this way about it." "You have to move on". I mean, I thought I did - move on I mean - I thought I was over all of it, and that yes I still had love for him, but finally understood that we could never be together. 

I guess it was this moment that I came to the realization that I had just assumed we would meet later on in life, and get things back to the way it used to be. We would be older, more mature, calmer and be able to be happy the way we should have been for all these years. 

The baby changed it all though. Like I said, old school man, so having a baby means that he will stay with her forever. 

I called him, we talked about the baby, and the conversation ended with a question. I asked him, with zero sense of pride, and full of utter sadness: 

"It wasn't supposed to ever actually be over. Didn't you think we would end up together when we were 60?"