on love

the journal part

Man, editing is hard on mobile.

Ever been in love? Goodness knows I have. And I'm not gonna lie - when it's great, it's the most divine feeling. Mostly, though, it just makes me physically ill.

The first time I was truly, genuinely in love was high school. (Sooo, there was this skinny little queer boy...) He was my best friend. WAY out of my league, sweet as fuck, with an almost ethereal beauty. He had the MOST BEAUTIFUL VOICE - he sounded like the choirs of Seraphim when he sang. (We were in Beauty and the Beast together - him as Belle, myself as LaFou, and his sister as Gaston. Our director was cool as fuck for that!)

And I was a damn mess.

We dated for a bit, and I learned incredibly quickly that I Did Not Know How To Be A Partner. I would avoid him, out of fear, I think.

He ended up moving to the other side of the country, and so began my first ill-fated encounter with open relationships. I don't hold what happened against him - we were both young, I was emotionally and physically unavailable even before he moved, and he had done his absolute best to respect the boundaries I put up. We're still friends, and I still love the fuck out of him.

Then it was a guy I met online. He was younger than me, an incredibly talented artist, and traumatized beyond belief (to be fair, so was Belle Boy!). I felt protective over him. He used his trauma to justify a lot of bullshit, though - including hypersexuality. He loooved to put himself in bad situations, and I could never be angry - if I was, he launched into a horror story about how he HAS to be this way to COPE.

I was with him for two years, and met up with him once. Opening the relationship was something he brought up all the fucking time, and I tried, tried to impress upon him that I just. Didn't want.

I just sorta met my limit one day, after I started falling in love with a person from college.

He may have been my first kiss, but this fucking creature - they were the first kiss I enjoyed. They were sorta butchy, but soft around the edges; we went to trivia and they had blonde, curly hair like a halo. They were wilder, I think, than I realized. They broke up with me over summer break; I had jumped into it because they were pretty and nice to me, and they recognized that. I wish I would've taken it slower, maybe not dated them at all - they deserved my best, but I was too busy comtemplating which garage to jump off to give them that.

And then. And fucking then.

I'm pretty used to not being the First Choice. I'm used to my partners looking elsewhere for what I can't give them, and I honestly can't really blame them for it. It was all too easy to fall for someone taken.

I tried my best to navigate it responsibly. I moved out of the city, back with my mom, when his girlfriend expressed concern (I have a lot of feelings about her - she was so fucking kind and patient. Everyone knew she had a bit of a soft spot for me, and I loved her; I really, really did, but we were both so scared, and sometimes I feel like I was an emotional support pet for her). Here's where I fucked up: the guy's mom reaches out to me, asks me if I wanted to move in with her, and I'm like, "fuck yes", assuming it's not an issue since she didn't like his mom anyway and I'd be an hour further away from them both.

Like a fucking idiot.

Here's my current dilemma: they're broken up. He called me the day of, sobbing. She still lives with him. She doesn't WANT me to know and thinks I don't. I still live with his mom.

I'm pretty sure he likes me. He sure acts like he does. I KNOW he still loves the fuck out of her. But like. Dude.

Am I a bad person for this? For being so elated when his mom says we'd be cute together, for being so jealous over someone I have no fucking right to even look at like that? Am I a bad person for wanting to tell her how he looks at me, how he talks to me, how he takes me out and makes me feel like I'm *worth something* so she stops talking like I'm nothing to him?

Am I a bad person for being so terrified they'll get back together, even when I know they make each other happy?

I'm not his first choice. I know that for a fact.

Maybe I should just stop fucking talking to the guy, lmao. Maybe I should've done that from the start.

If I can't say it to his face, maybe I can say it to the one dude who knows this website exists and knows exactly who I'm talking about - on the off chance you see this: I am desperately, foolishly, and irresponsibly in love with this man. And I feel like shit because of it. Words of wisdom are more than welcome.