here i am again...

It has happened again: my girlfriend broke up with me this afternoon.

Before you start getting angry at her, let me step up in her defense. While in the past, girls have stepped on my heart and squished it as if it were some kind of venomous arachnid, this situation is different. Granted, I am not the happiest camper right now. How could I be? Am I mad? No. I understand her reasons. I am just… frustrated. Frustrated because this always happens. I feel as if I can’t expect any more. I can’t expect a normal relationship because, quite frankly, I’m not normal. I’m too strange. Too weird. And I have the worst luck with girls. Somehow I always end up with the good ones—and, in this case, even the best ones—but this sparkle of hope breaks with the tidewaters of normalcy. I can’t exactly tell you what it is—and this out of ignorance—but for some reason none of my relationships work out. Do I have too high of expectations? I used to. Not anymore, though. I guess I just want a normal relationship. Where I like her, she likes me, and we enjoy a good relationship without all the complexities and extenuating circumstances that make a normal relationship hard to come by or flat-out impossible.

Did I treat Courtney right? Yes. Did I make sacrifices for her? Yes, but I should have made more. I can turn over my relationship and scrutinize over every detail with a microscope, but I must just confess that I am not perfect. I made some mistakes. Everyone does. But on top of those mistakes, I treated her right. I treated her like a princess. We like each other a lot. But we both have issues we need to deal with, and if we are in a relationship, dealing with those issues becomes second-priority. Neither of us are ready for a serious relationship with the concept of marriage on the doorstep. What marriage needs—in my case, maturity and responsibility, and in her case, you’ll have to ask her because I’m not going to divulge her secrets on the internet—are not present in us. Where I succeed, she fails; and where she succeeds, I fail. Both of us have so much to work on. We are good people, she and I, but we aren’t ready for marriage—and if marriage is what dating is all about (at least in this point in my life), then what’s the use of dating when we don’t even have the fundamental building-blocks required for marriage?

How am I doing? I’m doing all right. Granted, tears welled up in my eyes a while after she broke up with me. I like that girl a lot. I mean, I really, really like her. She means the world to me. And not being with her anymore, not being able to call her “my girl”, not being able to enjoy a romantic relationship with her… Well, it feels like someone has sucked the oxygen out of my lungs and then plunged me into a deep vat of icy-cold water. But I must take the pain, because I know that she did what she had to do. For once in my life I have to simply suck it up and confess, “She’s right. We’re not in the right condition for a relationship.” I can’t base everything off of how it “makes me feel.” Sometimes, as the dirty cliché goes, “Truth hurts.” A friend and I went to Mt. Echo and talked after she broke up with me. Courtney and I had gone to Mt. Echo so many times, all the memories hit me like a flood: memories that once brought laughter and joy now brought sorrow. But I have to embrace the sorrow and let it transform me. Let it teach me. Let it mold me… And let it transform, teach, and mold me in good, beneficial ways.

I’m not angry with her. I’m upset, sure, but not angry. “Upset” can have so many different meanings. I am “upset” in the sense that my heart is heavy, a knot forms in my throat, I find myself fighting off the voices in the quiet: Why even try? You will never have a normal relationship. You’re too weird for it. You’re not good enough. You’re just a screw-up. The Enemy likes to attack me in this way. I know these are his most potent lies—he attacks me where I am weakest, and he does so feociously—but sometimes it’s hard to fight them. I am “upset,” but not at her. I am upset at the situation, but not at her. She did what she had to do. She did what she knew she had to do. She did what both of us knew had to happen, but something I did not have the ability to do. She had to step up to bat, and she did. And she should be commended for that, even though it causes me—and her, let’s not forget—pain.

I want everyone to know that Courtney is a very good friend of mine. She means a lot to me. I hope that one day we will be back together. I don’t want to be with Sonja, Jessica, or even Julie. I want to be with Courtney. And she wants to be with me. But right now, that can’t happen. Maybe next semester will be better. But then again, maybe not.