Lately, I have found myself looking back. And each time I look, my eyes begin to water. My life has been a rotary door of relationships, some coming and some leaving, but hardly any ever staying. The friendships I had in high school slowly burned out as I was one of the very few of my graduating class to attend a 4-year university. Most of the friendships I acquired my freshman year in college turned out to be merely based on proximity, and thus, eventually died. Sure, I would bump into those people throughout the course of the next 3 years (I mean, how could you not at a college that was built around a man-made pond). Sure, we would say hi and acknowledge each others’ names as we silently prided ourselves on still remembering them. But meaning, fulfillment… freshman-made friendships rarely include those attributes.
So along we moved to our sophomore year, the year in which we were supposed to finally settle on a major, the year in which we were supposed to be regularly active in extracurricular activities, the year in which our friendships would begin to solidify. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen for me. You see, the day before I went back to school for my sophomore year, I broke up with my girlfriend of over two years. I was tired of being tied down, and I was determined to give myself at least some commitment-free months. I had always been active and committed to things my whole life, whether it was church and related activities, leadership positions in high school, the older brother responsible for the higher standard, the mentor who helped peers make it through the alcohol-induced nights, no matter what it was, up until August 2006, I was always committed to something. I needed freedom. I needed isolation. And I began to take it. I avoided groups and organizations because I didn’t want to commit to more people. I loved it, until I didn’t.
I distinctly remember one sophomore night near Thanksgiving or our Fall Break where I started crying in my room, left still crying, found some fire-escape stairs on the back of a building, sat, and cried for three hours. I remember taking out my phone and going through my contacts one-by-one wondering who would come sit with me if I called them, but I never found a single name I was 100% sure would drop what they were doing and come comfort me. And so, I began to distance myself even further from the crowd, and I began to slowly push away the relationships I really needed.
And then I met a girl. She came into my life, but, defying the physics standard that stuff will go where nothing is, I invaded hers. Her friends became my friends. Her hobbies became my hobbies. I cooked, I did dishes, I spent the night at her roommate’s boyfriend’s house. And I loved it, every minute of it. But then, she left. Abruptly. Suddenly. And I was left holding the pieces of my heart with no one to help me pick up what was still on the ground.
I remember running to my RA and asking him for help, even though we rarely spoke to each other outside his mandatory “you doing OK this week?” I had no one, and my trust in humanity, in relationships, in commitment died. Unfortunately, as Frank Crane says:
You may be deceived if you trust too much, but you will live in torment if you do not trust enough.
And I no longer trust. I don’t trust my alleged best friend since college, I don’t trust my family. I only really trust my fiancee. But as I wait for her to finish her education as I have mine, I sit in torment, alone, looking back at time when I had friends, when I was cared for, and when I trusted.
