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a tenth. a first. and a goodbye.}
Sunday, December 2, 2018 | 9:19 PM | 2Comment




To my beloved Internet,

It has been long. Much too long. How I've missed you.

I have started and stopped several entries before this one. I never posted them because they didn't feel quite right. And just as well, I've been so swamped with my fiction writing this year (a revision on one of my novels that resulted in axing 50k words from it, work on another novel I started in '16, and finishing a whole novella!) that I felt like I couldn't dedicate enough time to writing a nice update for you all.

Also, at some point, there was so much happening that I didn't feel like I could adequately write about it all. But, as always, there is the ever-famous bulletpoint entry. So let me sum it up for you:


  • In March of this year, I entered my 25th year around the sun. Many confusing, exciting things have happened in my 25th year, but I've enjoyed 25. 25 is nice, and so far, much nicer than being 24.
  • In May of this year, this blog turned 10 years old. An entire decade of being your ridiculous, overly-sensitive, one-and-only Hopeless Romantic.
  • I continued working at my job, and I continued loving it, as well as being able to experience wonderful opportunities for my resume, as well as wonderful life experiences.
  • I started going to the movies by myself, and it turned into one of my favorite new hobbies. Turns out I'm a bit of a movie junkie, and I enjoy watching them the most when I'm alone, but with a group of other movie junkies who watch movies the same way I do--silently. Ahh, sweet silence.
  • I started seeing someone, who then became my very first boyfriend.


Huh. Sooo...where to begin?

Kidding. I know you guys are DYING to hear me dish on this guy who became my first ever boyfriend. Me. Hopeless Romantic, in the year of 2018, AND A FIRST BOYFRIEND. 

FINALLY.










Now, before you all celebrate, let me stop you right there: it's not Brennan. And it didn't end well.

But, well, seeing as he was my first boyfriend, and most people have their first boyfriend/girlfriend in like...middle school, sometimes high school? Yeah. Usually that does not work out so well. And in this case, it didn't.

But let me start at the beginning. Let's call him Jon.

Now, after the whole Brennan ordeal of late last year, I ended up confronting him. I told him up front that I had felt taken advantage of, and used, and that it didn't fly with me. I told him I take my own feelings very seriously, and that I need someone who takes me seriously as well. I told him that I'll be his friend, but if he can't handle being JUST straight-forward, platonic friends, then he needed to stay away from me.

He ended up responding with this whole rant about how sorry he was for treating me that way, and how he didn't even know what he wanted or what he was doing with his life, and honestly it was pretty sad. It was through this that I realized how hard this breakup of his had been on him, way more than he had initially made it seem.

Frankly, after all of that, it put me off of Brennan for good, and I left him alone. Aside from him sending me Merry Christmas and Happy New Year texts, we mostly stopped speaking--which, after the way he had treated me, I was glad for. Immediately following, I signed up for Bumble, wanting to move on ASAP.

Nothing came of Bumble for several weeks afterward. For a little bit, I was talking to this guy from there who Super Liked me, who ended up coming on WAY TOO STRONG and made me super uncomfortable 95% of the time. 

Nothing came of it for months, and I was feeling so weary of the whole dating scene that I was planning on deleting the app.

But when I sat down to delete my account in June, I decided I might take one last swipe-through, just in case. 

So I was swiping. Swiping, and swiping, and swiping. Losing my faith in humanity and swiping. Feeling my soul die and swiping.

Then finally, miracle of miracles, I find a guy's profile that interests me. Just to see, I swipe right. We immediately match.

The guy? Jon.

I send the opening message, telling him he's handsome and making a comment about something he'd written on his profile. He immediately messages back, super friendly, we talk for a bit. He asks me out to a movie for the next weekend, I say yes. Success.










Now, when we meet in person for the first time, it's a little weird. He's kind of quiet, he's obviously very nervous. I was nervous too, but after seeing him, he was much more nervous than I was. I try my best to be friendly to make him feel at ease, and we go in for the movie.

His laughter during the movie is high-pitched and it alarms me, but it's kind of hilarious. The unashamed, loud way that he laughs is disarming, and shows me that he doesn't care what others think. It warms me to him.

After the movie, I ask if he would like to get coffee at my favorite cafe by the movie theater that plays k-pop videos. He says yes.

He pays for my coffee, and we get to know each other a bit. He seems to have trouble looking directly at me, but he still seems nervous, so I give him the benefit of the doubt. (I found out later that he spent our entire first date absolutely terrified. Poor guy.) He lived in Japan for much of his adolescent years, but he says he likes it in America better. He complains about the trains in Japan, and it endears me to him. He lived a whole life growing up that I could never even imagine, and I want to know more.









So I say yes to date two, brunch at a hole-in-the-wall place downtown. He's a bit warmer this time, more comfortable. We talk about all our favorite movies, and our favorite music. I notice the tattoo on his forearm: the solar system. I love space. And now I like him even more.

Date three: Watching Harry Potter movies at his place. I was hesitant about going over to his apartment--I had never been to a man's apartment before. But I said yes, trying to take a step outside of my comfort zone.

He sensed that I was uncomfortable, and as we watched Chamber of Secrets, he only holds my hand. Fingers laced. I'm on cloud nine.






After date 5--a day trip to the mall, where he bought some things for me as a gift--when we watched a Japanese reality show on Netflix, he asked me to be his girlfriend. I cried, and I said yes. And when we left his place a couple of hours later so that he could drive me home, there was a double rainbow across the sky.

It felt like a sign. A wonderful gift just for me, from the universe.

That day made me so happy. It was wonderful, now knowing that these things could happen to me. I thought I was defective. I thought something was wrong with me. I thought I was the only one who would never experience that kind of happiness.

I now know that it's possible.






Unfortunately, after that, things steadily went downhill.

We still did fun things. We went to movies, talked on the phone, went out to eat, sat in his car for hours just talking and watching funny videos on each other's phones. Those parts were great. Those were the things I had always wanted, and never thought I deserved. 

I'll cherish those firsts for a long time. Maybe forever.

But sometimes he would ignore my boundaries--my personal boundaries as well as my relationship boundaries. At first I thought it was a mistake, and made excuses for him. I would restate them again and again, reminding him. He would say 'okay' and nod like he understood, and then he would bulldoze past them all over again. This happened so many times that it felt like I was losing my mind.

It happened so many times that when he told me that he loved me, it didn't feel like he meant it.

He said 'I love you' to me after 1 month of being official, after changing our relationship statuses on Facebook.

He said it right after I told him, repeatedly, that I wasn't ready for sex, and tried to force me to do it anyway.

I didn't say it back, Internet. Because the moment he said this to me, after the way he had treated me before in that confusing, unsettling moment, I knew I didn't love him.

Because I could never love someone who wouldn't treat me with the utmost respect. I thought he respected me--he opened doors for me, held hands with me in public, drove me home, and he told me he respected me. I thought that was enough. 

But other times he would shove his tongue down my throat like he was getting paid $200 a minute to do it. Other times, when I told him I was having a bad depression or anxiety day, he would ignore my need for space. And he would whine and guilt trip me when I said I wasn't ready to sleep with him. And when he wasn't whining and guilting me, he was groping me. 

At first it just began to annoy me. Then it began to anger and sicken me. We even began fighting about it. One of the last times I called him out on it, I got really angry. I thought we had settled this discussion the time before, and I was tired of feeling unheard. He swore up and down that he wouldn't do it again, and that he was sorry, and that he'd do better. He blamed his stress on it, and that he didn't mean to upset me. Little did he know, that final time we fought over it, I decided it would be the last time.

A lack of respect is not love.

We spent so much time angsting over this in the end that he barely know who I was.

Maybe Jon truly did love me, or who he wanted me to be. Maybe he still does. Or maybe he just said it so I'd sleep with him.

Either way, my mental health was suffering. The moment I realized I wasn't happy anymore, I wanted out. I needed to end it.






The worst part was that he was away on a trip and wouldn't be back for weeks. And I'm not some asshole who breaks up with someone over the phone. So for weeks, I stewed in misery, waiting for him to return from his trip so I could break it off.

I felt terrible about it. I knew that it would be awful for him to be dumped right after returning from a trip. But I also knew it would be worse, nay, cowardly to dump him over phone call or text while he was gone. It would've been downright cruel. So I did what I had to do.

He had told me once that one of his exes had dumped him over text, out of the blue, without even saying why. So I did the opposite of that.

When he returned from his trip, we went out. In person, sitting outside at a cafe, I told him exactly why I was breaking up with him. And I cried more than I thought I would, though admittedly I have gotten over it pretty fast, 3 months later.

Aside from the boundaries issue (which is unacceptable) and the not listening thing (he was the WORST LISTENER.), what it truly came down to was incompatibility.

He needs someone who wants to screw like bunnies all the time, and who doesn't mind someone who's a bit clingy.

I need someone who listens to me, and who respects me, first of all. But most of all, I want someone that I love.

Because when it came down to it, Jon was not right for me in several ways. I liked how attentive he was in the beginning, how sweet and thoughtful he was. But it changed so quickly, and he showed this other side of him, which I couldn't stand so much that he became unattractive to me. He became so unattractive to me that I knew I could never, under any circumstances, fall in love with him.

I need someone that I love.

And I know what love feels like because I have loved someone before.








With Ricky Bobby, I saw all of his flaws. I knew who he was, and what all of his weaknesses were. None of them mattered. Because down to my very soul, I loved him

I loved him. And as I said three years ago, I may always love him.

I swore I would never blog about him again. But on this tenth year of this blog, I can't help but bring it all back to the knucklehead that made me start this whole thing in the first place.

For years, I've wondered. Wondered if I'll even love someone else.

Thanks to Jon, I know I can.

For a little while, I thought I was on my way to loving Jon. Perhaps I was close. Before that whole incompatibility thing reared its ugly head.

And because of him, despite how it ended, I know now that someone can love me. That I'm not just this unloveable sad sack of a human, the one who cried herself to sleep in high school, thinking no one could ever love her.

I know I can be loved. I know now.









How long have you known me, Internet?

Have you been with me for all TEN years? In that case, wow. Thanks for sticking around.

Has it been a shorter time than that? Even then, wow. Thanks for being an anonymous friend in this lonely wide world.

For ten years, this blog was my sanctuary. It's been the place where I air my deepest thoughts, as loudly and as boldly as I want. I spent my formative years pouring my soul into the words on this diary, where strangers could either read them and identify, or read and be entertained.

I owe so much to this little space right here. This little corner of the Internet has meant the world.

But I'm sure that many of you, if there are much of you left, have noticed my increased absence in recent years. I would be surprised if anyone was reading this right now, in fact.

It's not that I've lost the drive to write. It's that I've channeled all of my energy and all of my soul into my fictional works. The more I gave to my characters, the less concerned I was about my love life, and the less self-absorbed I was.

And the more I've poured into my stories, the less energy I had for dissecting my own life and spreading it into words on the Internet, for the whole world to see.

My stories have grown into books. Books, plural. That I want to publish one day. And most of all, this year, I have been seeking a literary agent to represent my work. To find a publishing house so that those words might become real books one day.

This blog has been so much of my heart for so long.

And that's why I'm turning it into what I love most in this world: a book.









Of course, it won't be a memoir. I'll rearrange some things, pick better changed names, make some things more interesting (i.e.: FICTIONAL.). And of course, give it a happy ending, as my favorite kind of fiction deserves.

As for this blog, and for you all, I wish I could give you a happy ending.

I wish I could've come back with a bombastic, final blog entry in the form of AND THEN I FELL MADLY IN LOVE WITH JON AND HE PROPOSED TO ME AND WE GOT MARRIED AND BOUGHT A HOUSE AND NOW WE'RE HAPPILY EVER AFTER THE END.

God, I wish I could've. More than anything.

But the sad fact of real life is that it's not as interesting as books. Things don't normally get happy endings. If they get endings at all, a lot of times they're anticlimactic and full of loose ends. Sometimes the endings are sad and tragic.

I think if I had eventually abandoned this blog, just up and left it without another word, that would've been the tragic ending.

So I thought: if I give this an ending, let it be like most of life: anticlimactic, same as always, and maybe a little boring. (Aside from me finally filling you in on that first boyfriend thing, months later.)

Because God forbid, Internet, that I end this epic love story with you with a tragedy.

To those left out there who have read my words, read my life, and have stuck with me, this is where we say our goodbyes. I've always been terrible at goodbyes.

This ride has been wonderful. And I wouldn't have wanted to spend it anywhere else. I may not have found love in Jon, or in anyone after Ricky Bobby (so far), but I sure found it in myself, and in you.







When I finish this book loosely based upon this hopeless romance life of mine, I'll likely delete this blog from the face of the websphere. I hope that enough of you see this final entry before I do, but don't worry, that may be awhile. (But just in case, if you wish to download an archive of my entries, or copy-and-paste or screenshot them, or what have you, I would do it ASAP.)

If 'The Life of a Hopeless Romantic' (title pending) appears on the YA shelves of a bookstore one day, I hope that some of you might recognize me there and pick me up to live on your bookshelves, so that you won't forget me.

Because I certainly won't forget any of you.

I love you. Adieu. The end.

And, for one last time: Happy Holidays, and happy New Year. Take care of yourselves, Internet. May your lives be full of love. And show love to one another, even if it's hard to find for yourself.

xoxoxoxoxoxo

Forever,
Your Hopeless Romantic


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