The question that ruined my life

I never was good at discerning the reasoning behind any of my thoughts, I just thought something, and I did it. Looking back now I can see how some may have viewed me as confident, but it was just a pure ignorant idiocy that got me through things. Once I set my mind to it, I wouldn’t ever be content until I finished for better or worse. I guess that’s made Miranda fall for me in the beginning. I almost had the "teenage dream" this is girl, but I digress, let me start at the beginning. Miranda was definitely a cute girl, and we had our first interaction in tenth grade during AP world history. She was the quiet girl and I mean THE quiet girl. Like she would just look at you if you tried to talk to her and she would just wait until you left. Me being quite juxtaposed as the way too energized, class clown felt it was my mission and mine alone to get this girl to open up to me. I never wanted anything from it. It was just the challenge for me, and I would keep cracking at the walls around her mind until things finally came down my senior year. I won’t lie, I was a huge flirt, and she was very cute, but she was never my type. Yet I had so much fun stealing her calculator in calculus and typing little pickup lines every day. I had no idea we were beginning to fall in love. She dealt with very high anxiety and somehow my attempts were allowing her to relax. For her, everything was changing.

Things took a huge turn when I decided to throw a party at my house inviting as much of my senior class that would come. Of course, I invited her, but she wouldn’t come. We were texting quite regularly at this point, but I had no desires to try and date her for I was huge into sports and ran sub five-minute miles during gym class and she would only ever walk. I knew I valued her mind and her body, but it just wasn’t all there for me. I begged her to come, and she refused until I decided I wanted to make out with her and only her that night. I live next to a farm and as an active climber I loved climbing into the loft and watching the stars and moon up there and all I could think is this would be such an awesome place to kiss. So, I got one of her only two friends to give me her address that night and was going to force her to come. As always, I never thought the plan through, and her parents attempted to scare me when I came to pick up their daughter at 9:30. Her stepdad just got back from grizzly hunting in Alaska and bless that ignorance shield because all I could do was excitedly be like that’s an awesome gun sir! Can I hold it!? I then asked if it was ok if Miranda could come out with us and ill have her home once everyone is going to bed and somehow, someway they agreed. So, fast-forward to the good part. Here we are at the foot of the barn and Miranda is newly to my knowledge afraid of heights. Would this stop my perfect little idea, nope not in the slightest. I turned into the most professional motivational coach that an eighteen-year-old could be and then physically had to move her one limb at a time up the side of this barn. I wouldn’t let her quit and we did eventually make it to the top. I was actually pretty proud of her. We actually got to have our first kiss up there and it was exactly as great as it sounds. After we hung out for a while with her just resting her head on my shoulder and me just yapping away all night, I helped her down and took her home. Can you guess what happened next? That’s right we didn’t talk for four years. It was an awesome memory but for me, nothing was changing.

She ended up going to college and I went away to do my own thing. We still talked and were close but never saw each other again for a very long time. We went through a lot of changes during that time. She grew way more confident over those years, and I got hooked into the party life of drugs and alcohol. She was never into all of that, so I tried to keep her distant from it as much as possible. When we eventually did meet back up, we had both failed at the things we were trying in life. I won’t be specific but we both wasted some good years of our lives failing. I guess we really bonded over that when we started talking again. Those times were probably the best. We went to a few amazing concerts. We took trips to the beach. We even had the worst vacation ever trying to ride the tallest roller coaster in America in New jersey and it was just a horrible trip. Seriously screw New Jersey. But we still loved that trip because we were together. I remember taking some drugs and showing kids how to play Hackey sack on the beach until the ball just broke. Then when I went to buy a new one some dude just gave it to me for free. She would just relax and watch me the whole time. I think I was very happy then. I think we both were. Very soon everything was about to change.

We had a great relationship. She didn’t ever beg to date, and we could hook up as much as we wanted which was great for a dude like me but eventually feelings manifest into the point where I had asked her to date and to move in with me. She said yes to both of those things. She would wait until she heard my car and run downstairs to give me hugs as soon as I came home. Those were things I loved. The things I hated were when I tried to introduce her to my friends. Everyone was quite confused on why we were together because even though she could talk for forever around me she always got quiet around strangers. I’m an extrovert at heart. I would invite all sorts of people over and she would hide upstairs and didn’t want to come down. This was the beginning of the friction between us. I also was getting hooked on a terrible substance and she hated being around me whenever I was on it. Things weren’t all bad, but the fall was beginning to happen right then. Life continued like this for almost a year. Then one day I was planning an out of state trip and something happened, that would affect me to such a level I have yet to recover. It was the one event in my life that changed literally everything.

Miranda never cared about titles in a relationship. There was a guy from her college days that she met online who felt extremely similar to her. They eventually would hook up until he had to leave because he was in the military. Well, he was back in town with just days before this trip we were supposed to go on and she made it very clear she would love to hook up with him but only would do it if I said it was ok. I panicked; I just couldn’t decipher how I really felt so I told her it was ok because at the end of the day she would always be mine. Or so I thought. I was way too emotional and couldn’t handle the aftermath of the decision I made. I would continue to dive deeper into substance abuse and self-sabotage that relationship until we eventually ended things for good. I have since got my act together and can finally with confidence call myself a mature person. I wouldn’t go so far as man yet but I’m still getting there. She still haunts me every day. I remember when I told her she was the perfect height to wrap my arm around and how she would love to remind me of it. I remember during one of our first fights she told me she wouldn’t give up because I was her person. I can't escape the memories. I never knew I loved her until it was past the point of no return. It was really all down to just one decision I made. I think about what my life could have been if i was just more honest. I know it’s my fault, that’s not the moral here. What I’m trying to do is warn you before you lose YOUR person. Think about your decisions. All it takes is one wrong one until you find yourself like me, crying into a mirror at three AM asking yourself “Dear god…..why is everything changing”?