For the last several weeks, the focus of this blog has been my diagnosis of bipolar disorder and my medication (with free side effects! What luck!), but its origins actually lie in two discrete units (read: people), one of which was my ex-boyfriend, Joel, and our break-up two years ago tomorrow. Since I started taking my medication, the really intense feelings for Joel that continued to ruin my emotional life have, for the most part, disappeared – the “love,” the longing, the feelings of loss and betrayal. And honestly, I’m glad they’re gone, because they were really messing me up! However, there’s still something in me that loves him more than any other guy I’ve known and so I’m going to give you bits and pieces of Our Story (which is, honestly, a very sweet story in some places) in the hope that if I tell it from beginning to end, maybe I will be able to let it go. It is my hope that I can accept that the beautiful existed and let go of the hurt, and finally get my life back. I don’t know how much I’ll do per entry, or even if it’ll be in chronological order, but I think it needs to be done. For a while I thought that it was done, it was over and the meds had helped with the feelings, but this last weekend was special meetings at church and the whole first service was spent with me watching the back door in dread of him walking through it, and I know again that he’s still entrenched somewhere in my heart.
Tomorrow will be the two year anniversary of our break-up and yesterday Joel began his move to Pennsylvania, continuing a life that in no way includes me, except possibly for those moments when he’s walking along and suddenly smells my skin or hears my laughter. Now, I know that I should wish him well and happy, but the bad me hopes that he has those moments for quite a while longer, because it simply isn’t fair that he should forget someone so easily whom he swore to love forever. I admit that I have some bitterness about this, but losing a large part of my innocence and sense of romance seems like a pretty big deal to me.
I want to start this off by laying a few facts out on the line. Firstly, Joel and I started dating about four months before his eighteenth birthday and one month before my twenty-fourth birthday. I realize that a lot of people have strong opinions about these kinds of age differences and a good deal of the time they are perfectly legitimate, but I have an aunt and uncle who started dating when he was 16 and she was 26, so I think it works sometimes. And I thought this might be one of those times. Second, Joel’s mother has been wheelchair-bound since she was 20, he has a sister about eight years younger and a brother about four years older, and their father left their family because of a drug and alcohol problem (stemming, ironically, from undiagnosed bipolar disorder). He returned a couple of years ago, but Joel spent his formative years with a closet alcoholic father and his teenage years raising his little sister and caring for his mother while his older brother continued his college education and struggled with the weight of becoming the head of the household. I’m telling you this because really, seven years is a huge difference in some ways, but sometimes, it really isn’t a huge deal. In my case, it was a heaping helping of both.
My story with Joel begins when I returned from spending five months in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. When I left Joel was a somewhat gawky sixteen-year old with sticky-outy ears and definitely still my buddy’s younger brother. My first clue that things had changed was in February, two months after I came home, when he came up to visit and to paint his grandparents’ house. I went to church for Wednesday night service and happened to go downstairs to the young people’s class. As I walked toward the doors, I could see the back of someone I didn’t quickly recognized and as I walked through the door I suddenly realized who it was.
“Joel!” I shouted, being quite overjoyed at the prospect of seeing someone who had been my friend for years and who had been faithful in emailing me while I was gone. But when he turned around, it wasn’t Little Joel, my crush’s younger brother facing me; it was Joel, the young man, and in my head I said something resembling “oh crap,” because I knew that I was in deep trouble. Gone was the baby fat and the awkwardness and instead there he was, Joel, looking very much like a version of the man of my dreams. His face split wide in a smile and we met in the middle of the room, where he hugged me, and I really knew I was in trouble, because he was seventeen years old and I didn’t want him to let me go. Later he told me he hadn’t wanted to let me go either, which could explain why the hug went slightly longer than the socially-acceptable limit!
I’ve talked with other friends and we agree that it’s not the person’s youth we’re often attracted to, but the possibility of the man that could be simmering just under the surface. So, in the interest of inquiry, have you ever been attracted to someone completely inappropriate? And not just because of age, either.
Posted by melindam 
Posted by melindam 
Posted by melindam 