Love stinks. At least, that was my motto until roughly a year ago. On and off. When I was a teenager before I got my first date, I desperately wanted it. It was the only thing on my mind and I cringed at how desperate I was. Unrequited crushes that never hid and other assorted embarrassments–I was just the worst. I had a crush on the same boy from first grade until sixth grade and only stopped because we went from elementary school to middle school, which had many more kids. I couldn’t keep tabs on him like I could in elementary school.
I was a freak from the start. A second-generation immigrant kid from a weird Asian country well before being Asian was exotic and cool. I was fat, awkward, and way too smart for my own good. I got picked on by the American kids for being too foreign. I got scolded by the Taiwanese moms for being too boyish. My home life was shitty and I lost myself in books because I hated the real world so much.
I got my first boyfriend when I was sixteen. Seventeen? Summer before 11th grade so sixteen. He was smart and cute and very kind-hearted. We went to different schools so only saw each other on the weekends. We dated for two years and while we both wanted to wait to have sex, we did almost everything but PIV in those two years. I enjoyed it at first, but it got to the point where it was all we did every time we went out (in his SUV, which, you know, romantic), which started to make me uncomfortable. I couldn’t find the words to tell him, however, and went along with his plans to go to California for college. He was going to Stanford and I had applied to UC…want to say Santa Cruz? Whichever is closest to Stanford. He said that if I didn’t go with him, we had to break up.
I had my eye on someone at work (mall. Different stores), anyway, so I broke up with him. I called St. Olaf to see if they still had a spot, they said I had half an hour to decide, so I did. That’s how I ended up going to St. Olaf, which was–an interesting place to go to college. That is not the point of this post, however, so I’m just going to walk on by that.
I had a serious relationship while I was at St. Olaf that seriously messed with my brain. Let’s face it, I had issues beforehand, but it didn’t help to have someone who didn’t know what he wanted himself. Or rather, it would have been more honest of him to say that he wanted sex and a companion, but not a monogamous romantic relationship. In fact, he asked me out after omitting the fact that he was in a romantic relationship that he demanded open up when his girlfriend went abroad for a semester. He wanted his cake and to eat it, too, and he seriously messed me up in the meantime.
I want to stress that I was in no shape to be in a relationship in the first place. I was looking for all the wrong things and for all the wrong reasons. I wanted someone to complete me and fill the hole that was inside me (innuendo semi-intended).Don’t get me wrong. I loved him with all my heart, but it was not a good kind of love. I was too clingy and too needy, and I didn’t know how NOT to be that.