When Idris and I were over, around the beginning of my freshman year, I met a guy whose initials I share - so I'll refer to him as EC. We had been chatting online for a while (this was, like, back when the internet was kind of still new and online chatting was all the rage) on irc and, while we'd flirted back and forth in that "kindergarten - I like you so I will make fun of you" kind of way, we'd never seen each other face to face. And, you know, pictures back then were all grainy and inaccurate so while we'd seen each other's photos, he still could have looked like Chewbacca. Well, because God views my life as a colossal sitcom, complete with bad Superbowl commercials and infomercials for P90X, EC did not look like Chewbacca and was, perhaps, about as far away from Chewy as an attractive human being could possibly be.
He probably wasn't all that cute BUT, let us remember. I was 18 and not too bright :)
On irc there was a channel (#black, #blackhouse, #blaklife, etc.) where a bunch of us undergrads used to just hang out and talk all kinds of ridiculous shit. My nickname was (and, actually, still is) Cocoa and his nick? Well, that's not critical to this tale. But, if anybody from irc reads this, they also will know exactly who I'm talking about. It would actually kind of suck if he read this but, then again, maybe it wouldn't.
....anyway.
So, our channel had planned what we called a "reunion" at The Gallery Mall in Philadelphia. Folks would come from as far as they could to these reunions and they were fantastically underplanned affairs that ended up with people sleeping on dorm room or apartment floors or spare futons or sofas wherever possible. I remember one year, one of these mini-reunions was held at my college over our Spring Break and what I can vaguely recall is having so many people asleep on my and my roomie's floor that you could barely walk to the door. Once you DID walk out the door and down the hall to the common room, there were people sprawled over the floors and couches there as well. Nobody showered; it was like Woodstock, but without the music, the drugs, the sex, and the historic significance.
At the mall, EC and I finally connected; I cannot speak for him, obviously, but *I* was speechless (in my mind, only - by now I'd gotten sort of good at hiding my nerves behind wit and sarcasm...or maybe that was my "tell"?). I was SO taken by him and I said to myself, "Wow! He's hot!" But even then I knew it was something more than that. I wouldn't say it was love at first sight as I knew the chances of that happening were impossible because I didn't believe in it. Further, I was 18 and he was 26 so part of me was like, dude, you're almost 30; why are you trying to holler at me? The other part of me, that remembered our conversations up to that point, knew that he had a wandering eye and an even more wandering, ummm, sense of commitment? LOL He just wasn't one to be tied down at that point in his life, least of all to an 18 year old college freshman. So, I played coy without even being able to articulate what coy was. I knew, though, that I was smiling a lot and batting my short but ultra curled eyelashes whenever possible and he seemed to go for it.
And I loved the way he smelled. He didn't wear cologne but, instead, used baby oil - and not, like, in the weird way LOL! Johnson & Johnson baby oil is an EXCELLENT moisturizer LOL! You know, saying this out loud REALLY is sounding creepy, but I swear it wasn't! While I don't remember the brand of baby oil it was (after our situation, I successfully forced myself to forget it), I remember exactly what it smelled like. When I smell it today, I immediately think of him. Seriously. Immediately. I stop whatever it is I'm doing and I allow myself a few moments to remember the good times...
.....but I'm getting ahead of myself.
So I was digging his aroma, his body was amazing, and the slight, but noticeable, gap between his two front teeth was so awkwardly appealing, I found myself smitten. The sexual energy and tension was equally as immediate. We clicked right away and told ourselves we would hang out but, at first, I really didn't think it would happen. While I was smitten and totally head over heels in lust with this beautiful man, I was still holding onto the reasons why any continued interaction with him would be a catastrophically bad idea. See, I was at a point in my life where I could clearly recognize the bad things for me but I wasn't quite smart enough to stay all the way away from them. So he and I did spend time together; a lot of time together. I found myself taking the train into Philly after class and on weekends - likely when I should have been studying - and he found himself on campus far more than I'm sure he'd originally intended when we first met. We spent the remainder of my freshman year involved and, when summer came, my departure from school spelled the beginning of our end. He helped me move out of my room and our goodbyes were filled with promises to email and call and all those other lies you tell yourself and each other when an otherwise informed silence doesn't seem like enough. By this point, I had fallen in total and complete love with this guy, in spite of every reason I should not have, and the entire process was heartbreaking for me.
And that was only the beginning.
Due to my inability to focus, I took (was asked to take.....) a semester off to get my shit together which meant that my return to campus would not be until January. That meant that for seven months, EC and I would be separated by multiple states. While my childlike devotion to him would have withstood any time frame, his devotion to me was transient, at best. If I'm generous with my guess about how long it was before his eye began to wander, I'd wager that he made it through the middle of July. We spoke everyday at first, but then not so much. I had a job and was in school (proving to my undergrad institution that, in fact, I was not an unfocused simp LOL) and did all that I could to keep busy and keep my mind off of the relationship I had that was fading before my eyes. By the end of the summer, though, I suffered no illusions about whether or not we were still together and, perhaps even without making any significant announcement on either side, the relationship was over.
Around October/November, I called my friend (my freshman year roomie) and we were having our usual chat and she was catching me up on campus gossip so I wouldn't feel out of the loop when I returned. In this particular phone call she said, "Ummm, you know EC and his boys have been on campus, right?" *pause*rewind* I said, "What?" and she said, "Yeah, he's actually been spotted a few times. I haven't seen him, myself, because you KNOW I'd have some shit to say to him before and after I cussed his ass out, cuz that ain't right! Everybody knows he was with you and that Diane, cuz I think that's who he's here to see, that Diane knew it and she acts like she don't even care!" I'm sure the rage in my voice was audible. It had to be. I felt it in the back of my throat, like when you know you're about to say something to hurt somebody's feelings and you're doing it intentionally so that they cry for a long time. It's that same knot that rises up and causes you to sound like you're stammering when, in reality, you're fighting the keep the adrenalin out of your vocal chords. I know she had to hear it. But, if she did, she didn't let on.
I thank her for that; in doing so she allowed me to indulge in the illusion that I wasn't hurt, that I didn't care, and that I wasn't going to cry for hours as soon as we got off the phone. It's amazing what your friends do for you when they don't even know they're doing it.
We finished our conversation talking about crazy professors and tap class and she agreed to stand in my stead of the housing lottery that was coming up. It was all I could do to keep from falling apart. As soon as we hung up, though, I walked to my room, closed the door, and cried as quietly as I could so my mother wouldn't ask, in her less than compassionate way, "What you cryin' about?" My mother never asked, in that sensitive, maternal way, "What's wrong?" or "Are you ok?" I think, to her, crying was a sign of weakness that was not to be tolerated or indulged so I cried and cried for at least 2 hours, wiped my tears on my bedspread, sweatshirt sleeve, and pillow case, waited about an hour so my red eyes appeared normal, and then I emerged from my room citing a marathon study session for a phantom exam I had coming up.
Maybe my mother noticed I didn't have any books. Maybe she didn't. At that point, I didn't care.
When I finally returned to school, I had been given a dorm room, a single, in Mary Lyons (ML) which was the dorm FARTHEST from campus LOL! So, to get to class, I had to either walk the mile or call the campus shuttle. I couldn't skip any class, ever, because I was on academic probation, so I spent a LOT of time calculating how much sleep I could get before I absolutely had to get up and run to class to be on time! While I was settling back into my routine, the EC situation continued to plague me because, of course, I was now hearing from MULTIPLE sources that he was STILL visiting campus. So now? Now I was pissed. Now, he was just being disrespectful and so was the bitch he was there to see. Whether it was Diane or anybody else, whoever she was, she knew I was back, she knew EC and I had history, and as far as I was concerned, she was just as culpable as he was.
That's when I became KIND of a stalker LOL! I called his house - a lot. I sent passive aggressive and snarky emails, to which he rarely, if ever, responded. When I would see him online, I would barrage him with private messages that he effortlessly ignored. There are few things worse for me than when communication breaks down and, in this case, it had broken down in an irreparable way. Even more critically, I needed to know why he was doing this to me. Why was he embarrassing me in front of my peers, my friends? Didn't he know how much I cared? Was he sorry about any of this? Did he even care? I would end up going to sleep with a dull pain in the pit of my stomach every night thinking and figuring that he was doing all of this on purpose. I would cry myself to sleep many nights, not understanding what I'd done to him, to God, to anyone to deserve this type of treatment.
And then I thought of Idris and it all made sense. OK, so I'm not some holy roller who necessarily believes in the vengeful hand of God, but I do believe that karma is one, bad, Queen Raja fierce type bitch. And in that moment, when Idris popped into my head, I knew karma had made her way around to me and was tapping me on the shoulder like, "Yeah, I'm actually here for you." I didn't like it at all, but when I'd finally taken responsibility for my behavior with Idris (who had, by this time, already graduated), the nagging pain of the situation with EC dissipated. It was not overnight, but it was relatively quick and, when I got to a good place in my spirit, I stopped calling, stopped emailing, and stopped initiating contact online. With the cessation of my communication came the temporary end of my stress about him. I still stopped dead in my tracks if I smelled baby oil in a store, but I was finally in a place where if I saw him on campus (and I never did), I knew I'd no longer have the urge to bludgeon him with a heavy object.
It's funny how when you finally make peace with yourself over a situation, God comes around with His jacked up sense of humor to test your resolve.
About a year later EC and I found ourselves in a conversation that ended up with him coming to campus to, actually, see me. I had this whole, elaborate, "You ain't shit" speech planned and, after its rehearsed delivery, I would send him on his way. I also had this mix of, like, anti-men songs that would be "haphazardly" playing in the background. My favorite song out of this mix was "Too Gone, Too Long" by En Vogue and it was my favorite because I'd successfully fooled myself into believing EC was coming to visit in order to beg for my forgiveness or, at least, try and reconcile for some benefits.
Yeah, basically I thought pretty highly of myself and my elaborate plan and the scripted conversation I was prepared to have. In my mind, I was prepared for anything he could possibly say, any question he could possibly ask me, I knew what questions I would ask him, and when I'd ask them, and I was ready! I saw him walking toward the dorm and coming and I was so psyched to have had this plan all laid out.
And then he hugged me, and I smelled him, and at once it was so familiar and safe. (sidenote: it was also, at this point, that I recognized I either needed to cut my nose off or figure out a better way to deal with my intimacy issues LOL). I did remember one question, though, because it was the most important one to me. Yeah, I'd had this whole Socratic line of questioning that was supposed to make him realize he was an asshole, but none of that shit mattered because, in the 45 seconds it took for him to hug me and for my nose to recognize what he smelled like, I was immediately back to the hurt and desperate girl wanting to know why he had been so mean. So I asked him. "EC, why did you do it?"
His response? "I don't know, I wasn't thinking"
I'm sorry, what? Because, ummm, you're like 28 now and I will need you to know why you do certain things?
I remember being so hurt because I took his answer, or lack of answer, extraordinarily personally. I felt like he knew why I'd agreed to have him come over. He knew I would ask this question; he knew I'd obviously wanted to know the answer but he was too selfish, too self-absorbed to give it to me. That's really how I processed that interaction: he was being deliberately obtuse in order to not provide me with the closure my soul so desperately needed. That night I knew, in my heart, I'd never get it. I'd never get the apology. I'd never get an explanation.
And that's probably why the wound has never completely healed. Someone mentioned his name to me a few weeks ago and I froze. She said he'd asked about me. At first I was like, "Why the fuck is this dude still even saying my name?" but then I was like, hmmm this is kind of nice. I talk to some of his friends on a regular basis and never ask about him - mostly because I assume he's fine and don't really want to know if everything is going well. In fact, because the wound has not healed, I am actually still in the space where I hope something is grotesquely wrong in his life. I know it's juvenile to think that, but I accept it. I did find it flattering, though, that over a decade later he's still asking about me. This shallow and indirect appeal to my ego encouraged me to reach out to him (we're connected on LinkedIn) and say hello. I did, we exchanged emails and texts, but even those ceased pretty quickly.
I realized that even now, despite tons of emotional growth, metacognitive analysis, and simple maturation, EC can bring me to a point where I'm that same hurt little girl (ok, ok teenager LOL) who either wants an apology or some sort of Divine retribution. Actually, perhaps on a more basic level, I want him to want me again so that I can reject him; THAT way, he can begin to feel the pain that I felt. When I think of the emotional wound that this situation continues to be, I think of it as something that, long ago, should have been stitched. Instead, I kept replacing bloody emotional bandaids until it scabbed over. But it seems like whenever I'm not looking, the scab comes off before its time and the process begins again.
Wiser today than I was yesterday, and even the day before, I am now fully aware that EC cannot be in my life until I've healed. He's unhealthy for me because he brings out an Erin that feels defenseless, vulnerable, and open and while those traits help make a person stronger, you have to be surrounded by folks who care enough about you to see you through your vulnerability, help you build your defenses, and help close you off to those things that would hurt you. I am determined for this wound to heal on its own. I have no choice. The stitches I thought I wanted are tainted with his betrayal; the scab I need is formed from the ashes of my own anguish and self-love - I am my own phoenix :). When I've finally become the person I'm intended to be, the scab will fall off naturally and I'll be better for it - with or without EC's apology.
And, knowing him, it'll be without :)
Thanks for reading :) By the way, I haven't proofed this. It's, like, 5am and insomnia is slowly giving way to the need for sleep (FINALLY) so please excuse any typos or significant plot gaps. If you find any, let me know and I'll try to fill them in LOL
Good night!!!
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