i ran all the way home just to say i'm sorry

I HAVE TO TALK ABOUT SOMETHING. please believe that i am not being melodramatic when i say this is the meanest thing anyone ever did to me, and is a trauma i am still dealing with to this day.

three years ago i started talking to a boy online. let's call him BIGDUMMYHEAD. i already knew who he was because he played guitar in a band i liked. he knew who i was because we had mutual friends in common. he lived two hours away, and within days of us talking we already made plans for him to come hang out on my radio show. after hot trash, we went to a party and he sat very close to me on the couch. he put his hand on my leg. i can't remember if we kissed that first night, because i blocked out a lot of that time in my life.

DISCLAIMER: let me say right now that even looking back, i STILL do not think i did anything wrong. of course that might sound selfish or ignorant but i am not just saying that because i'm not willing to accept the blame for the way things turned out. this was entirely on him. one thing that i will say was my fault was being too naive not to realize that things weren't what they seemed. i also certainly rushed into things without thinking them through, and i blame that on the fact that i had been single for 3 years before he came along and i was smitten with the idea of being in a relathionship again. i only wish i had protected my heart a little better instead of just giving it away to the next guy who told me he wanted to take care of it.

quickly, we settled into a routine: we would visit each other every weekend, usually switching off. sometimes he would have a day off work and would come up unexpectedly, and that was always a nice surprise. even though i have always been terrified of driving long distances by myself (i HATE the feeling of being lost and i am terrible with directions!), i found myself hurrying home from work on friday afternoons so that i could pack up and drive to his house until sunday night. sometimes, we took the greyhound (which was a fear in itself to get over). when we were together, i thought things were perfect. he was like a little kid in the way he would get so excited to take me to his favorite places around town and show me things i wasn't familiar with. he took me to an amazing record store on the back of his cute little motorcycle. i cooked dinner for him and his roommates. he liked to put on records and slow dance with me in the middle of the room. as stupid as this sounds, i have to admit that i felt special dating this guy in a band i liked who knew all these other people in bands that he would introduce me to. plus, he knew a lot about music in general and turned me onto a lot of new stuff that was exciting.

sometimes he could be impossibly romantic and i was a complete sucker for it. one weekend that i wasn't scheduled to come visit, he begged me to come see him and promised that if i would, we would go out to karaoke with his friends and he would sing "beast of burden" by the rolling stones to me. he did, then proceeded to get kicked out for jumping up on a table to sing it to me. another time he learned how to play "our" song one man band style and led me down into the basement where all his equipment was so that he could surprise me with it. we were both so embarrassed that we couldn't look at each other while he sang it to me. but it was cute.

when we weren't together, we would text and call constantly throughout the day. he said silly things to me about how he wanted to marry me and live together. he seemed offended when i took it as a joke; wouldn't i like it if he moved to cleveland and we could get our own place? he said we should start a band together. i started looking for a place to live. i started buying used dishes at the thrift store. i told my roommates i was moving out.

sure, it seemed crazy after only a few months. but it was also exactly what i wanted to hear. i'm not a big fan of the whole dating scene. i always imagined myself marrying young and starting a family and cooking casseroles for dinner. so when he pseudo-proposed, i pseudo-accepted by making the appropriate changes in my life. the plan was that he would move here in november. the last thing he had keeping him in town was driving his friends from japan while they were on tour during the last week of october.

but as soon as he left for tour, the phone calls stopped. i didn't even try calling him myself, figuring he must be busy and he would call me when he got a chance. soon even the texts stopped. he claimed he was "too busy." one day while i was at work, he texted me, "i don't think this is working out." which was news to me, because before he left things were working out so well that he was moving his whole life 200 miles to be with me. it was a very ugly time for me because i never saw it coming, and he was not sympathetic at all. he said very terrible things to me, called me names, told me to get over it, said we had nothing in common and he didn't see a point in being together. once he dumped me via text message, that was good enough for him to cut all ties and put me behind him. not surprisingly, i wanted more of an explanation than this. i got none.

within a few days, one of his friends had the decency to call me and tell me that BIGDUMMYHEAD returned to town with the all-girl japanese punk band he was driving around and married the lead singer. she barely spoke any english. i even asked him about her one time because i heard a rumor about the two of them. he said that was silly, they were just friends. they started a band together once they were married. he posted lots of pictures of the newly married couple on the message board where he knew we both posted and i was sure to see them.

so there i was, completely humiliated, hurt, confused, disappointed. i had nowhere to go because i already told my roommates i was leaving and they made plans of their own that didn't include me. and to top it all off, BIGDUMMYHEAD was going around telling everyone this happened because i was crazy and he didn't want to date me anymore.

UGH.

occasionally, i would see him at a show in my town or his. we always pretended like we didn't know each other and i made sure not to make eye contact. once, when i walked right past him and i wasn't expecting to see him at all, i burst into tears without warning. i didn't even feel them coming. it was that painful to see him and remember what he did.

last nite i went to now that's class with josh. BIGDUMMYHEAD was there, driving another band around on tour. it made me so uncomfortable just having him in the same room as me, but i tried to ignore it. then, he walked past me and WAVED AT ME. more than anything, i was pissed. how DARE he think he can treat me the way he did and then just wave like we were old friends? i fumed. josh patted my hand to comfort me.

later on, he walked by again and said to me, "hey how are you?" i must have looked confused because he explained, "just saying hi!" i was too shocked to speak, but i found my voice quickly because there was plenty i wanted to say. "why?" i demanded.

"why what?"

"why are you saying hi?"

"because i'm friendly. i'm always friendly. you should know that."

i was appalled. i asked him if he even remembered the last communication we had and he said no.

"it was when you called me in the middle of the night and said, 'listen you fat nerd...'"

then he apologized. he said he was sorry for what happened because i was a good person and i didn't deserve that. he said he was a "different kind of dick then" and he honestly didn't even remember saying those things, but he knew he was sorry for what happened. i asked if he was drunk or on drugs. he said no. then he told me that me and josh look sweet together and he is glad i'm happy.

when he was talking to me, josh tried to stick up for me by saying, "she doesn't wanna talk to you." but i had to silence josh. because HE OWED THAT APOLOGY TO ME and I DESERVED EVERY SECOND OF IT. i never thought it would happen. i never thought the day would come.



i cried, sitting there on the purple couch at now that's class.