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I was 18 years old, full of hope about the world and my future. I met him during orientation just before classes were to start at college. We were both freshman, he was a few years older as he had waited to go to college. How we got together was very quick. We didn't know each other for more than a few days but we had shared so much with each other that it felt like we'd known one other for years. It felt like we were meant to be. I had gotten rejected from my #1 choice and so I had chosen that school, he had waited after high school and this was the only one he had applied for. We compared more notes and everything seemed to just point to each other. It was uncanny and I thought for sure that it meant that we were meant to be and I thought he felt the same.
A year and a half later we were going through problems like any other couple. Lots of disagreements about big and little things. He tried to tell me what he thought was wrong with us but I didn't comprehend it very well. I still thought we could get through it and we would be happy. I was still very young and naive about our future together. He ended up breaking up with me. I was absolutely and utterly devastated and to add insult to injury I found out that a couple of days after our break up he had hooked up with a good friend of his that we both knew at school. Technically it wasn't cheating since we had been broken up but it sure felt like the twist of the knife several times over in my heart. The stress spilled over into the physical realm. I was barely eating, I had withdrawn from all social activities, I cried every single day, I gagged every morning with nothing coming up because of how little I ate. We had so many mutual friends and I couldn't look any of them in the eye. Truth was most of them were guys and I automatically assumed that they wouldn't want to be around me, that they would be on his side.
Just around a month after we had broken up there was another man. That really has it's own story which I will post as "College Confusion: The Other Half" but for right now I will say that I was moving on to him, my ex found out and convinced me to come back to him.
So we got back together a month later and I was over the moon. Things couldn't have been better. About 5 months later it was happening all over again. Fights, jealousy, anger this time I ended up breaking up with him. On his birthday, I didn't plan it or anything it just happened that way. We had gotten into a really bad fight that day and I thought he was going to end up doing it anyway, so I did it first thinking it may be easier for me that way. Nope, same thing happened again, utterly devastated. Again about a month later he convinced me to get back together with him. It took him a lot longer to convince me this time. I really didn't want to do it, to have to go through everything all over again, but there was still a part of me that was that naive teenage girl thinking that love could conquer all and that we would get through this.
This time we lasted for 7 more months. Same things were happening again. It just so happened that when we broke up this time it was just before summer break after our junior year. It was only two weeks before he started begging me to come back to him through instant messaging. I was home and he was at school for a job, we were 3 and a half hours apart and the distance made it easier for me to say 'no'. He persisted all through summer. We had some really big fights over instant messaging and we went a good while without talking at all. Just before I went back to school for senior year we made up and decided to be friends.
Senior year started and we couldn't seem to help ourselves, we ended up kissing every time we hung out. I did not want to get back together despite what we were doing so for senior year we were friends with benefits. Even though I knew it wasn't going to last past that year I didn't care, I wanted to live in the moment. Graduation came and went and we went our seperate ways. Again I was devastated more so than I thought I would. I thought I had finally accepted that we weren't meant to be but I guess the 18 year old girl had been inside the whole time. We tried to remain friends, keeping in touch through e-mail and social networking but that ended up in disaster. I became depressed and uncertain of what my future held.
I later found out what I couldn't comprehend all those years before, we could never work out because he had a lot of trouble with my quietness. Should have been obvious really he always seemed to bring that up as ammunition against me in a fight. I'm a very shy person and I'm also quiet and apparently my personality with that wasn't enough for him. He never truly loved me because of that. He told me that the reason he kept coming back to me was because he could see how much I loved him and when he saw he was losing that he wanted it back. He was never at any point in love with me the way that I thought he was.
It's been 5 years now since I graduated college, I've actually made a lot of progress but not as much as I should have. I haven't even been on a date since then never mind a long-term relationship. I haven't truly made any new friends. I've got friends from high school I hang out with regularly and I get along with everyone at work but I don't hang out with anyone that I didn't know before college. I only talk to 1 person I knew while at college. It's been a long hard road and I still have a lot of work to do. I will probably never truly heal 100%.

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