I Dated Internationally As a Teenager

My biggest confession is that when I was sixteen years old, my boyfriend on the internet flew from New Zealand to America to be with me, and it defined almost everything about my love life for multiple years.

I know that every time I tell someone the beginning of this story, the look of shock is always followed up with so many questions. How did we meet? How was it even possible for two teenagers to find love and make it a reality at such young ages? What was I even thinking?

They're all fair enough questions. My answers are either halfhearted explanations of teenage dreams or one giant shrug. However, the entire story is real, and it comes with a lot of eventful elements: first love, the loss of virginity, betrayal, emotional abuse, regret, pregnancy, pregnancy loss, a broken heart, and a teenager changed forever by every bit of it. If any of these subjects are too difficult to read, I encourage you to find another confession to drink in. This one may be too bitter.

In those "good ol days" of my internet affections, the sweet words exchanged between me and my first love felt like perfection. I couldn't possibly imagine that a love greater than ours existed anywhere else. I had so many exciting, naive thoughts about my first love and our future together.

He's so perfect. He's so handsome, and he wants me of all people! He's going to fly here, we will share our epic airport kiss, and everything will be just as perfect as it is online. We will joke, share websites we like, talk about our favorite books, and I'll hear stories about life in New Zealand and cultural differences. I'll get to teach him about things in America he isn't used to, and we will have children and get married someday! I'm going to move to New Zealand and live in a beautiful country with his family who have amazing accents! I can't believe this is the love story that's all for me.

The internet was the most exciting place for me as a young teenager in the late 90's and early 2000's, and love made it even more exciting. I was extremely introverted, so relationships prior to this one were never taken seriously or treated like actual partnerships (the status at school was nice), nor had I ever felt so beautifully swayed by the words of another person. The only thing I knew about love was everything I saw in Hollywood or read in books, which made me believe I knew everything there was to know; adding in the complete fantasy that my love and I shared online had me in the most optimistic mind frame I'd ever been in. I was young, but I was so certain we had already found exactly who was meant for us. I figured I was just that special.

He arrived in late February of 2004, after several months of online wooing and swooning, and we had our epic airport kiss. I expected that to be the beginning of a love tale better than any romance movie I'd ever watched with my Grandma.

It was, at first. We held hands, felt giddy, kissed frequently, and expressed our breathlessness over seeing one another face to face against all odds. We were two sixteen-year-old kids with guardians who allowed us to explore such an amazing experience, and we seemed like we couldn't have possibly been any happier. It certainly looked picture perfect to me.

Within four days, my love asked to take my virginity. I hesitated, unsure as to how I would feel years later, but his persuasions got the better of me and I allowed it to happen. After it was over, he went to my laptop to browse the internet and check in on friends back in his country while I chose a book to read. Later, on a whim, I chose to open my saved conversations folder for my online messenger so I could clear space and delete unnecessary things. In the process, I noticed that even though I had changed settings, conversations my love had been having with his friends had saved, and in a folder for my own conversations nonetheless. Curiosity, immaturity, and self-esteem issues got the best of me; I discovered that he had hopped online so quickly after our first time having sex to complain to his "best mate" about how horrific it was to sleep with me. My virginity made things uncomfortable for him.

We talked about it, and he assured me that it was just guy talk that I didn't quite understand. I was young, so of course I accepted this explanation and happily moved on for a few days...until the other thoughts started to hit me. I started to wonder what else he might be saying in "guy talk" and how much of it might be true. Since I'd invaded his privacy by reading conversations with his friend, I didn't dare venture onto the laptop for any further hurtful things to read, but my worries grew by the day.

Worrying led to confrontation, when I boldly chose to demand the truth from him. "How do you feel about me now that we have met in person?"

He didn't pause. At all.

"You're fatter in person, I'm not as attracted to you, and honestly I feel like you owe me a lot for coming all the way here. Look at me. I have a swimmer's body, I'm hot, and I need a hot girlfriend. If we're going to be together, you have a lot to change. Can you just let me help you with that?"

The pain was unable to be put into words. I could write poem after poem about the way his harsh, quick, cruel judgment of me as a partner based on my appearance alone ripped my soul and buried each piece ablaze with the agony of love's first attack on me. I could spend plenty of time expressing the impact this pain had on my self-esteem, but rather, I'll let you decide how horrific it would feel to hear such things from the person you handed your heart and virginity to with complete trust.

I accepted his help.

The first step (no pun intended) was to begin running up and down the stairs to the apartment I lived in with my Grandma: ten times, whenever he insisted upon it, was the rule. This was to help my physical shape, so I would be more attractive nude, but the best part of it was that I would be physically healthier (according to him.)

His next strategy was to control my meals. If he chose for me, then I couldn't possibly continue being unattractive. When we ate anywhere, he ordered for me, and I would smile and thank him for thinking of my well-being. When we ate at home, he prepared food for me, with no salt and plenty of healthy choices. I took everything with a smile, because it was so sweet that he cared so much.

Eventually, his help wasn't working fast enough, so things progressed to other means of encouragement to make me try harder to look more physically appealing. We would take trips to the mall where he would rate other females and describe to me what exactly I would need to do to achieve a look like they had. He would ask me to select a woman I wanted to look like and have me list the things I'd need to do to achieve her look. We visited every store in the mall and looked at clothing that didn't fit me so he could remind me of how much work I had to do.

He tried. A lot. Somehow, it just wasn't working.

I offered to allow him to find a local partner for physical activities while I continued to improve myself. He took on that search immediately, but he grew frustrated when I wasn't able to drive a vehicle for him to meet potential hook-ups.

Maybe I should just end it all. Maybe I shouldn't try anymore. I can't be what he wants, no matter how hard I try. He made me have sex with him today, and he made me look him in the eyes so I could understand how absolutely disgusting it was for him. I wanted to cry, but if I did, he would have been angrier. I've tried starving myself, I've tried exercising, I'm doing my best to do everything exactly as he says. Why doesn't he love me for that? Why doesn't he love me for trying? I'm worthless. I'm going to hurt myself, because nothing else makes sense right now...

My mental health spiraled rapidly. I didn't laugh or smile anymore. My family started noticing that I wasn't myself anymore, but I didn't care. I ended up asking a family friend to buy me some cigarettes, and when I started smoking, it repulsed my love to the point that he stayed away from me more often. It excited me to have a reason to make him uncomfortable for once. I enjoyed lashing out in a minor way for how much he had been putting me through. Every disgusted, forced eye contact during what should have been intimate moments flashed through my head as I inhaled each drag like it was actually saving my life.

I ended up calling my sister and brother-in-law, in tears, holding a bottle of pills in my hand as I contemplated suicide. They talked me out of it but didn't hold back on the rage they felt against my love. He found out we had spoken about our issues, and my permission to speak with them was revoked immediately.

Things continued for months, and they did not improve. He still had a long time until his Visa was expiring and his flight home was booked; there was no chance of escaping this hell unless a miracle happened.

It's true, you know, what "they" say...be careful what you wish for.

On the day that we officially ended our relationship, my love managed to change his flight to just a few days away. I was shattered in the most relieved way that I never knew I could experience.

That is, a relief that quickly turned into vomiting, dizziness, breast tenderness, and sensitivity to smells; the symptoms overwhelmed me so much that a trip to the store for a pregnancy test became an immediate priority. Predictably enough, it was positive.

He was unhappy, to say the least, but my immediate instinct was to lie.

"I know you're leaving, but listen, I will call the doctor's office and I will talk to my Grandma. We can get an abortion. I won't keep this, I don't want it. Go back home like you planned and you won't have to worry about a thing."

Meanwhile, the child would be my secret forever. I just wanted him gone. My youthful, sixteen-year-old self was becoming a mother, and she wanted to do whatever it took to keep her child safe from a monstrous boy who didn't deserve to be called a father.

My reassurances meant nothing to him, and he took matters into his own hands before he departed.

After he left for New Zealand, the baby passed. I was no longer a mother-to-be. I was a teenager with the hardened soul of a woman who had to grow up too quickly. I remember the exact moment I realized I lost the child as if it happened yesterday: I was curled up, reading, when I felt an overpowering sensation of death within me. I sat up, panicked, trying to sort out of I had sensed a death somewhere else of someone I cared for. It took moments to realize that the sensation had come from inside me, and I rushed to the bathroom to confirm my suspicions.

I never got to decide a name. I just knew that I had already begun to grow fond of the feeling of loving your own child, and that I felt like my lost one had been a girl. I quickly chose a name to refer to her in my mind whenever I thought about her, because I had to give the loss something meaningful to me.

I was sixteen years old. I lost my first love, to the point that seeing him again would literally never happen, and I lost my Rose. I lost my youth, I lost the sacred gift of virginity that I had only wanted for my truest love, I lost my will to live, and I lost my identity.

I lost everything.

It's been seventeen years since I saw his face. The longer that time passes for me, the less I care about what he put me through, but the instinct of blaming myself or seeing myself in a negative light is one I gained through love at the age of sixteen. It's a flaw that I own and hope to eliminate through perseverance, but it's one that I'm almost comfortable living with. Optimism and a positive outlook on myself don't come easily, but the fight makes the moments I succeed all the more enjoyable.

Love can make you, break you, shake you, or multiple other words that may or may not rhyme with the ones I mentioned. In the end, you learn something, and learning something new every day is something else I think "they" got right when they first said the phrase. Love is, if not a fairy tale, an educational experience that no book can teach, no matter how it ends.