The Lost Love that Saved my Life

In my adolescence, I got crushes on people that I had only seen and interacted with a few times, but none of that prepared me for what I was about to experience. I met this guy who went to school with me through a similar extracurricular activity. He was a couple grades below me and typically I didn’t go for guys younger than me, so I didn’t pay him much attention. He knew my best friend really well, so as time went on I got more familiar with him.

One day out of the blue, I got this strange feeling that I wanted to know him better. He was well liked and funny, so I could see why my best friend liked talking to him. As time went on I started to develop feelings for him. We started hanging out all the time, and him, my other friend, I even got a gym membership together and began going everywhere together. We were so close and it was like I understood him and he understood me. I became dependent on his presence. I confessed my feelings and he do not reciprocate the same feelings for me. Still, we continued to hang out and I became so attached to him that I felt every emotion involving him in every ounce of my being like my existence was tied to how I felt with him and about him. I just didn’t understand how I could feel so close and attached to him, but he didn’t feel the same even though we were experiencing the same events and had no secrets between us. He depended on me to talk to and be vulnerable around. I became an emotional support system for him, but he never did the same for me. I was just useful for when he needed me. I was putting a lot of pressure on him to care for me the way I cared for him and ultimately it had a bad impact on the both of us.

My best friend that also knew him told me that he wasn’t worth that much effort considering he obviously wasn’t doing the same for me, but I didn’t listen. I began to lose myself trying to make him love me. I based everything I did off of what he would like or wouldn’t like. I sounded like a mad man because I felt something so intense that it was more important to me than taking care of myself. I used to tell him I needed more or I couldn’t do it, and he’d say he would do better but it never happened. Eventually I let go of it all and tried to move past his chapter in my life.

I left a very lengthy paragraph in his text messages to give closure to our friendship(we rarely talked at this point because I had given up fighting for him so calling him wasn’t worth the effort), but he never responded so really it was just for me. I realized that I deserved to be happy and it didn’t matter what he thought about that. If he wanted to care about me, he would have within all the time that we had known each other.

I struggled with my insecurities for months afterward. I was trying to find myself again and I felt like I had taken a single step towards the mountain that I was going to have to climb to recover. I had just started college a couple months after that last text and I had no motivation to succeed. I was working between 30 and 40 hours a week along with trying to keep up with all of my classes meanwhile still fighting my insecurities and hopelessness. I began to fall into a severe depression. I was missing classes and not turning in work. I was working but I had a terrible sleep schedule, which did not help with me missing classes. I would work 3 to 11:30pm , then stay up for hours after I got off and once I finally fell asleep, I would have to go to class. Somedays I slept through class while on Zoom, other days I wouldn’t even go. I was depressed, stressed out, and I felt like a failure.

My roommate, the best friend that I known from high school, would go out with her friends and most of the time I didn’t go because I had work, or I just didn’t feel like being social. She began staying at her girlfriend’s dorm and I became lonelier and lonelier. I’d come back from class and she’d be out with her friends, and then I’d come home from work and she’d be stay at her girlfriend’s. I was truly all alone. I had one friend that my roommate and I had met a couple weeks after the school year started who spent time with me when I wasn’t at work, but she wanted to do more than sit around in the room so she’d force me to start going places.

We started making it a point to go walk and get exercise if I stayed up all night and we went to eat after I got off so that I would actually have a proper meal and not just a little snack that I would grab on my breaks. I started to develop a new sense of hope like I could actually do something. I was no longer just a sad excuse of a human being. My roommate and I started making time to spend together, and we’d write music. I was still failing school, but my outlook was started to get better. I was beginning to find myself again. I was actually worth something again.

I realized that everything that I had done to make this guy want me and notice me were things that I deserved to have done for me. I only wanted the bare minimum from him, but I deserved so much more. All that strain I had put on myself was because I didn’t love myself first. I started requiring more from the people in my life and to my surprise that costed me a lot of people, but I didn’t want to be the doormat anymore. Loving someone one sidedly showed me that I shouldn’t have to fight for consideration, attention, and especially not for someone to love me. I was bringing so much to the table that I didn’t even realize had value. I was cashing out so much for so little.

I am now recovered from that heart break and I began taking risks to go out of my comfort zone and to my surprise it was rewarded. I found the right people to be around and to stay away from the toxicity. I began to only give love to those that gave me love back. I finally feel beautiful, worthy, and hopeful for the future. That roommate of mine and I both decided to leave school because we just weren’t happy, but now we are planning on trying to start a music career. I’m finally fighting for my dreams, and discovering passions that I never knew I had. I’m finally developing into the person I want to be and living the life that I want to. I once thought that my life revolved around one person, and now that I have started focusing more on me than those around me, I can finally be happy.