The next series of posts I’m going to talk about my dating life. About boyfriends, crushes, guys I was involved with and guys that had an impact on my self-esteem (good or bad). The names I use aren’t the real ones, because I’m telling my story and not theirs. If you know, you know. Like I’ve mentioned before: I didn’t really have a good start when it comes to self-esteem. I didn’t want to be a burden to people in general, so I tried to blend in and not stand out. I was pretty alternative, though. So not standing out, to me, was more like not being vocal, than wearing clothes everybody was wearing.
During my childhood I had normal crushes on boys in my class. I was too scared to tell them, so I never had a boyfriend in primary school. Which was fine by me, I had enough on my mind already. When I was in the last year of primary school, I fell on my face one day and chipped both my front teeth diagonally. Both teeth also shifted up and because that happened, my teeth had to lower again first before they could fix the chipped teeth. This took my teeth six years; my entire time in high school. I hated my face. I never laughed, I just smiled with my mouth closed or with my hand in front of my mouth. I was also afraid to eat in public. I never bit into stuff, I just tore it with my hands into bite sized food so people couldn’t see my teeth. Most of the time I just wanted to be invisible. I still do. And I still smile with my mouth closed most of the time.
The first three years of high school I didn’t have any illusions of guys liking me, so I didn’t even have crushes. What was the use? In year four I had a free period twice a week. None of the friends of my “odd one out” group had the same free period, so the first weeks I spent them alone. Two guys I knew found out I didn’t have anyone during those free periods, so they just asked me to come spend those periods with them. And so I did. They had a friend I didn’t know and we clicked immediately. He was a bit weird and odd, but I think that’s what I liked the most. His name was Ant. I remember we one day went to the supermarket to buy crisps and cans of soda. And suddenly one of the guys just sprayed soda onto one of the others guys and a soda spraying fight began. It was so much fun and at some point Ant just sprayed his entire can of soda onto me. I was drenched, but I had so much fun. The four of us went to the school’s sports fields and just laid on the grass and listened to music. I was laying against Ant and it was the first time I felt like somebody could maybe like me.
Pretty quickly the friendship turned into a relationship. One day we met up to go to a forest near us. We had a walk and we talked, but suddenly Ant was feeling unwell. He wanted to go home. This was definitely not what I had planned. Fuck! I wanted more time together. Ugh. He was on his bike and I was with public transport. He walked me to the tram and when it was time to say goodbye, he gave me my first ever kiss. It felt so weird and wobbly. My lips were trembling. This wasn’t a good one. So I kissed him again. This was better. Much better. I was in love.
I don’t think Ant was in love, though. I guess he just liked me being into him. Outside of school we talked on msn and through text message. One day he just started this weird conversation about hating his parents and wanting to break their neck. And as if this wasn’t weird enough, he also told me he sometimes thought about how it would feel to actually choke someone. He described how he would put his hands on my ‘cute little’ throat and put more and more pressure onto it. It weirded me out, but it didn’t put me off. I still very much liked him. We still had some nice moments.
After a month, completely out of the blue, he ghosted me. Which was extra weird because I could still see him at school. He was THERE! He didn’t respond to any of my texts, he didn’t read my msn messages, he avoided eye contact at school. Nobody knew what was going on. Not even those two friends. I still don’t know what happened, but I do know it hurt me. A lot. A few weeks later we went on a school trip. I went to Rome and he went to Barcelona. One night one of the two friends called me and said Ant wanted to talk to me. And I was so happy he finally contacted me! The happiness didn’t last long. He didn’t say anything about what happened. He didn’t say much at all. He just asked me if we could be friends. I told him I needed more answers about what happened. He hung up on me and we never talked again after that.
At some point I found out that Ant heard he had Aspergers in the period we “dated”, if you can even call it dating. To process the breakup and ghosting and everything, I told myself I was dumped because of his Aspergers. I sometimes joked I was dumped by autism. But I actually still think I just wasn’t interesting enough. If I ever get the chance to talk to him again, I want to tell him that it’s okay. Whatever it was. We were just teenagers. I would just like to know what happened. And why couldn’t he just talk to me? Wasn’t I worth that? I genuinely hope he’s okay and I hope the weird thoughts have stopped.
After the 2006 FIFA World Cup I, for some reason, got totally into football. I followed a football newspage and replied to a lot of posts. In February 2007 someone asked me to join the forum of the same site. And so I made an account, not really thinking about how many people would expect me to prove my love for football. I got a lot of questions, a lot of annoying dm’s and comments, but also met a lot of nice people. I am still a member of the forum. I never post on the football related topics anymore, but I do still talk with some of the people in chat or in the non-football related topics. Anyway, when I was still new I met someone on that forum. We clicked, he was nice and he lived near. So we agreed to meet.
Iwan and I met at a shopping mall. I was early and so was he, but he didn’t see me at first. He went inside the mall and went into a store. It confused me a little bit, but I decided to stay and wait at the spot we said we would meet. When we actually met it was SO awkward. He was nice, but I was a bit weirded out. He seemed to be into me and I wanted someone to like me. We walked to his house and went to his room. We started to kiss. I liked the kissing, but I guess I wasn’t really into Iwan. He was nice though and he wanted to keep seeing me. So we got into a relationship. I believe I saw him twice a week and I always went to his place. I went there by tram and he walked towards me when I arrived at the tramstop. I actually lowkey disliked that, because I didn’t want to be seen outside with him. I know this is weird and mean, but I wasn’t really physically attracted to him.
We never really did anything together. We just went to Iwan’s room, watched movies and kiss. At some point he wanted more and I was ready for more. I preferred having my first time with him, to having it with someone I extremely liked. It made me less insecure, because it didn’t really matter, I think. It was okay. I don’t think I was really impressed by it all. I expected more from it. After this first time I went home by tram, as I always did after seeing Iwan. In the tram there was this guy flirting with me. I really liked that. I have always felt really ugly, so any attention was welcome. The guy came sitting next to me, put his hand on my leg and started kissing me. I wanted him to like me, so I didn’t push him away or anything. I just let him do that. He gave me his number when we arrived at my stop. I thought about calling him, but I was afraid to. So I never did.
When I was a kid, I had tonsillitis a lot. Usually twice or three times a year. A week after meeting that guy in the tram, I got tonsillitis again. Hello Karma! This time it was worse than ever before. My throat was so swollen, I couldn’t even open my mouth. I had the highest fever you can imagine and I had to go to the hospital. Because I was 15 years old, I was still young enough to go to the children’s department of the hospital. I was the oldest kid there and got all these cool things. They gave me a tv with game console, a laptop and the most yummy drinks. I didn’t get any solid food, because I could only consume things through a straw. But it was still all so delicious. During the day I got a lot of visitors and during the evening the nurses came to my room to talk about their day and ask me about mine. Iwan also visited. I didn’t like that, because I hadn’t told my parents about him. I was scared they would see him before I had the chance to tell them. Ugh. My parents didn’t see him. My aunt did. She visited me one day while he was also there. He was already leaving when she arrived, but she said she wouldn’t tell my parents. And she didn’t.
After a week in the hospital I had a surgery and the day after I was discharged. When I arrived home, something else arrived too. Iwan had sent me flowers. Yuck. Why? Were we 50 years old already? With these flowers taking up a lot of space on the dining table, I had to tell my parents about Iwan. Unfortunately. They acted exactly how I thought they would. Being all weird about it. Making jokes, asking questions. This was exactly what I was avoiding. Especially because I knew I was going to break up with him. About that: How do you do this? How do you break up with someone? I didn’t know. And because I was still figuring this out, I still saw Iwan a few times. We also had sex again these times. I am awful, I know. Eventually I had enough courage to tell him and that went pretty okay. Maybe he already knew it wasn’t going anywhere.
For what it’s worth, Iwan: I’m sorry. I handled things wrong. I wasn’t a nice girlfriend. I did to you, what I always fear people will do to me. You were my ‘lack of someone better’ and I genuinely dislike myself for doing that. Not being someone’s first choice, is my biggest fear and my main insecurity. I know I was a teenager and teenagers fuck up. But I’m still sorry for all this.
Four days after I broke up with Iwan, I went to a concert. My first real concert. June 5th 2007: Paramore, Billy Talent and My Chemical Romance. Oh my god. I went with a “friend” from the “odd one out” group from school. While we were waiting outside, all we saw were people wearing black clothes. There were a few exceptions. One of those exceptions was a guy wearing a red polo. He made eye contact and waved at us. He and his friend (who WAS wearing black clothes, haha) asked us to sit with them. When the doors opened, the guys still had to wait for a friend of theirs. We decided to wait with them and entered the building with the five of us. During the concert, we stayed with those guys. The guy wearing the black clothes was flirting with me a lot. But I wasn’t really interested in him. I liked the guy wearing the red polo.
At some point between two of the acts, this guy (Arja) said something to me. But because there was a lot of noise, he had to say it with his mouth close to my ear. I felt some kind of tension during that and I think he felt the same. When My Chemical Romance started, he and his friends picked me and my friend up a few times. So we could see things better, being tiny little girls and all xD. At some point Arja stood behind me, put his hands on my hips and started kissing my neck. I SO liked that. We also kissedkissed a few times. After the concert we exchanged phone numbers and we immediately started messaging the next days. He started and I asked him if he had already missed me. He jokingly said that missing was a big word. I liked that, but it also made me insecure. That wasn’t the only thing he did that made me insecure. There will be a lot of things during a lot of years. I think most of the damage did to me, most of the insecurities I have, are done by him. It started with him telling me he was in a relationship. In the coming posts I will keep sharing bits of the things I’ve experienced with Arja, because he came in and out of my life during all the periods I’m going to write about. So remember the name.
