Enough

When you spend your life observing the world you find yourself constantly looking for patterns to reference to your life questions. You search for answers in everything. Unfortunately, It all eventually becomes clutter taking up any free mental capacity you have left. All that clutter can make it easy to lose track of yourself in other people's issues. The only way to clean that clutter is to relive the past on repeat until you can somehow find a way to separate and untangle the parts of you affected by those same outside influences. Once it gets even a tiny bit organized you become able to then use those outside influences to grow and heal. It's a skill you can't master right away. But if you remain open to trying and create a habit of occasionally cleaning up now and then even the worst events can become a moment to heal. A person can hurt emotionally through heartbreak and still heal as if it were a physical injury. Both are wounds, some just take longer than others to heal. Even when you do think you have healed time passes and you look back to realize you still had growing to do.

My first heartbreak happened over ten years ago. Still to this day, I find my mind replaying the events and getting different answers. We weren't in a real relationship, to begin with. We were just teens playing dangerous games with our own emotions. You always remember your first heartbreak or at least that's what they say. But does that count if you weren't truly in love with the person? Do infatuations count if they are strong enough? I remember every detail of that night. Most of my memories from my adolescence are short moments or fuzzy in some way. That night however is stuck like a movie I've seen a thousand times.

Her name was Thane. She was a year and a half younger than me. Surprisingly enough I met her at the church youth group my father used to drag me to. At the time I was struggling with my sexuality. I had only ever kissed another girl twice before and on a dare. She was beautiful and charismatic. Almost everyone I knew had a crush on her at one point or another which made me dislike her at first. Her best friend began dating my younger sister for a bit allowing our social circles to cross. Because of this, I found myself spending more and more time with her in a group setting. The more we spoke casually the more my interest in her peaked. We sort of bonded and went from friends to something a bit more than. We never officially dated though. She was dating a local boy that her father, The Spanish pastor, approved of. Still, she swore up and down the cared nothing for him and that it was all for appearances. Of course by this time my feelings for her grew so I believed her. I used the fact that she was cheating on him with not just me but two other of her guy friends as proof to back up her claims. Since I was the only girl at the time that she was involved with, I let myself believe I was an exception somehow. That what we had was as real as it could get.

We would sneak away to some corner somewhere to make out or we'd mess around at her house with her parents being none the wiser since I too was a girl. To the outside world, we were just close friends. But behind closed doors, it was much more intimate. What we had had no label but if I were to call it anything I'd say it was simply delicate. On February 6th at 7 p.m. that delicate illusion shattered to pieces. I went over to her house with one of our friends named Tommy. Tommy is one of the guys she was cheating with. The three of us were hanging out in her room listening to music. Thane began making out with Tommy causing feelings of jealousy to come to the surface for the first time, overwhelming me. I thought I hid my tears well but Tommy noticed. He then confronted me and told me to be honest with her before leaving to give us space to talk. I Confessed to her that I was in love with her.

We talked for hours about it. Her exact words were, " I do I love you. I do. But my body can't be confined to just one person. Maybe someday, but for now you have all of my heart. Can't that be enough? " I wasn't ready to lose her so I only nodded in reply. We ended up spending the night together as she whispered sweet nothings in my ear, pulling me deeper into her grasp. Sometime around 3 a.m. I awoke with her in my arms. My phone was on the side table and she had been texting her boyfriend from it playing games trying to catch him cheating. Somehow seeing that snapped me out of whatever hold she had on me. I gave her one last look before leaving her a note saying It's not enough. I walked the two hours it took to get home tears Streaming down my face the entire time. Once I got home I had to go back to acting normal since no one in my family had a clue what was happening. I didn't get a chance to process and mourn the loss of the relationship. This eventually caused issues in my next few relationships. I had to take the time later in life to reevaluate everything. I blamed myself for years and hated myself because of it. Now as an adult I realize there is no one to blame. We were just naive kids trying to find ourselves in other people. While that moment did hurt more than any other experience, it taught me a lot and I was able to grow emotionally from it. I became a more empathetic and understanding person to not only my own needs but others as well. I no longer dwell on the past but instead, look forward to the future where I will have grown even more than I am now.