a hopeless romantic pt.VI: Third Time’s A Charm
The saying usually goes, ‘and the truth shall set you free.’ Well, in my case, that didn’t work entirely. This part of the story is kind of a blur, but I do know I spent the next few months going back and forth between ‘I like him,’ and ‘I don’t like him.’ Initially, I tried really hard to convince myself that this was too soon to be happening for me and after ratting us out, there was no way he still liked me anyway. Back to just friends we go. Plus, after all this foolery, I needed to focus on me and truly pray to find out what I really wanted. Encouraged to do so by a friend of mine, I even created a new list and told myself he didn’t fit any of these new characteristics. I was over him, moving on . . right? W R O N G.
That lasted maybe a good month, month and a half and we hardly spoke during that time. However, our birthdays came along (being just six days apart) and that may have rekindled our fire a bit. He celebrated his birthday with a house warming, which I attended, and the following weekend, I celebrated mine with a 90’s themed house party. We didn’t interact much at his party because I, of course, was trying to be low-key, yet there was a gesture he made that caused me to wonder, ‘maybe he does still like me.’ I tried not to overthink it. He wasn’t able to make it to my party the night of my birthday, however, earlier in the day, something else unexpectantly happened. I received a ‘happy birthday’ message from him via facebook messenger and BOOP we were at it again. My first reaction was, ‘really dude?’ — here I was again in a position to compromise or to not compromise. I thought of mentioning it to my leadership but, I didn’t. I can’t remember if I took the bait and responded, but from there we were kind of back on good terms again.
Fast forward a bit, we had a few group interactions and I again was communicating with my leadership about my interest. Yet, there was still a part of me that tried to get away with doing things my way. We had a mutual friend that knew us both really well and really supported our ‘getting together.’ I confided in her a lot about my feelings towards him and needless to say, some of the advice that was given I should not have considered. This was when I began to feel the need to prove myself to him. That the rules didn’t matter and that he was worth bending them for (again). He was older, more mature, independent, had a good job, a car, a new house—a wife was the last piece he needed, others would say. Oh, and did I mention he surprised me with a McCaw jersey (my cousin) as a late birthday gift? How generous and thoughtful he was too! *insert palm face emoji.* So, to my downfall, I wanted him to know that I cared about our friendship and didn’t want things to be awkward between us, which lead me to purchasing late housewarming/birthday gifts for him AND delivering them . . to his house . . on Christmas . . with no real accountability. And because I was still floating between ‘I like him’ and ‘I don’t like him,’ needing to vent, I mentioned aloud what I had done at a girl’s night days later (intended to just be towards our above-mentioned mutual friend), but shortly after New Year’s, the word got around to my leadership and I received a phone call. It blew up in my face and we were DONE DONE once again.
I guess third time’s a charm though right? Because our relationship didn’t quite end there, but picked up AGAIN months later . .
Until next time . .