Unrequited Love

Love is a funny thing. Two people meeting in a random occurrence that grow together in such a way they feel more themselves with the other. Being without your partner makes you feel as though you're missing a limb. Love is an emotion so deep and complicated it's often misinterpreted. Lust, infatuation, need, convenience. It's turned into a word that's thrown around with such little thought, it has lost almost all meaning. I have claimed to love almost every man I've been in a relationship with, but have I actually had that love for each of them? No, I didn't. I said it because they had said it to me and it was expected I feel the same. Sometimes I said it out of habit, other times just because I wanted to feel that way. Though I believe false love isn't the form that hurts most.

Unrequited love is an extremely complicated emotion. Being in love, truely, with a person but never being able to express it seems to hurt much worse. Love needs to be returned, love needs to be felt. Sometimes it's a friend, other times someone you've never physically met, but it all feels the same. You're willing to give up your life for them, do anything to make them happy, but they don't know how you feel. Love knows no bounds, state lines, country boundaries, time zones. Love exists whether we want it to or not. Unrequited love breaks hearts based on missed opportunities, wrong times. It breaks hearts because most aren't willing to give up their comfortable lives on the risk, especially when separate countries are involved.

I've been in this situation before, though in position most wouldn't expect for me. I'm the one who tends to fall fast and hard, though that has been changing more recently. About two years ago through some chance through random messaging boards, I met the most amazing boy from Canada. We had spoken constantly from when we met in mid-May and quickly became great friends. We shared practically everything and I missed me when we weren't able to talk. He was one of my closest friends, I did have feelings for him but I mostly ignored them considering I lived in America and he was in Canada. I made sure I only thought of him as a friend in order to protect myself and still casually flirted with men in my area. Every time we discussed our days, I never noticed how it hurt him to hear about the people I met and became interested in. Soon we had discussed him coming to visit me. I was more excited than ever, one of my best friends was finally coming to see me. Then I moved to my college town the first of August.


When I had moved into my apartment, I lost internet access. My roommates and I couldn't afford the extra bill on top of our rent, so we went without. About a month in I signed onto Windows Live from my phone and there he was. I was so estatically happy to see his name. I immediately messaged him and we began to catch up on our lives in the month or so we hadn't talked. Overall it wasn't much, other than my no longer being single. That hit him hard, harder than I expected. I thought I was in love and I thought someone I thought of as a best friend would be happy for me. When I asked him why it was such a big deal, he admitted he was in love with me. After that conversation, he really wouldn't speak to me. To be completely honest, I was crushed. It hurt more than I harder than I would've believed and I thought about him more than I should. I realized how much I had taken him for granted, how much he was always there for me, how he always cared about me no matter what my past or present was. He was my crazy, dorky, adorable Canadian friend that meant a whole lot more than I should've. The flood gates opened, I let all the feelings I had suppressed come flying out. I didn't love him, but the possibility of that happening was there. I was in that apartment for a little under two more months before I moved back home in November..

I continued to date the boy for another two weeks before we broke up. He had started to distance himself from me, barely speaking to me or seeing me. I just stopped thinking it was worth it. That night I went home and emailed my Canadian friend telling him of the break up and explaining how much I wanted to talk to him. When he began talking to me a few days later he was pretty cold and distant. He told me how much I had hurt him and how I broke his heart when I fell for someone else. I knew I still didn't love him, but I told him how I did feel. We were talking almost every night again and I felt more at peace than I had in a while. The talk of a visit was mentioned but quickly dismissed. I had ruined that chance when I hurt him. Despite his obvious feelings for me and how much he meant to me, I continued to see other people. Sometimes I hid it from him, other times not. The next boyfriend I started dating in mid-January was basically the end. I had led him on too long, even though I never wanted to.

Yes, I knew how he felt and yes, I knew what I was doing. But somehow I kept ignoring all of that and continually put myself first. All my selfish needs fueled by actions. Wanting to be held rather than just hearing the words. Since my botched engagement, I've always been better with physical intimacy than emotional. I tend to fake the feelings thinking the physical will make the other part easier. I continually broke one of the decent men I have ever met because I can't handle love. He hasn't spoken to me in over a year and honestly, I don't blame him. I was horrible to him and it didn't deserve it. I do know I can never go to Prince Edward Island or I'm getting my ass kicked. I almost want to go just to get what I have coming to me.

Love can suck. It will break your heart and hurt you more than you could ever imagine. But it can also be beautiful, make you the happiest you've ever been. It's all about timing and circumstances. Knowing when to take the chance and when it's too much of a risk. Love terrifies me, but it's also something I miss dearly. I honestly wouldn't know what to do if I were ever to fall in love again. Physical intimacy is so much easier, very little thinking required, and so it's what I gravitate to. I'm a shameless flirt, but that requires such little emotion it's crazy. Every once in a while I become attached to a person, but more often than not it doesn't pan out. It happens, you just learn to take things as they come and go.