How Come R Don’t Call Me

*This is going to be a long one*

So much has happened since I last wrote a blog post. I find myself a few steps closer to graduation and adult life. I find myself filling out applications for graduate school, and considering my options for jobs afterwards. My parents are planning to leave my childhood home in Los Angeles. My younger cousin, who I thought would never grow up, is going on her first college tour. I walk down Brown St., the main road cutting through campus, and I have to acknowledge that many of these faces are no longer familiar to me, and many don't recognize mine. There are so many changes going on, and I am trying to keep up.

Much of my entries in the past have focused on me discussing change. But damn, you know what, I have not moved an inch past that whining and complaining. Change is hard. Recognizing those exposed parts of yourself that are weak is the easy part, figuring out how to change them is the hard part. I had thought that I was exposing myself through this blog. Unraveling, layer by layer, the intense walls of isolation and negativity that I continue to wallow in, while time keeps moving. This is not where or who I wanted to be at 21. Yet, I have been making the choice to stay here. Everytime I feel jealous and compare myself to somebody else, every regret I feel for things in the past, every hour that I waste avoiding facing myself, every conservation that I allow my own voice to be crowded out by others, every negative feeling that I allow to take over my day – so many things that I grip tight and hold onto. This is what prevents my progress. It's me. I hate to say that, but I consistently have worked to compromise and diminish myself and my happiness.

So CHOCOLATEDROP or R and I felt apart before we were put together. One night at the club, while we both were drunk and wanted to forget the mess of the past, I kissed him. I can't recall all the events of what happened between us, because for one, it all happened in the course of a week. Perhaps my inexperience in terms of relationships made that week more intense and painstaking than it should have been, but it still really affected me. After the club, I called R and confessed to him that I had feelings for him. He in turn told me that he definitely "felt chemistry" between us and that we should take the time to get to know each other more. I told him that I wanted to "cuddle," J. I ventured up to his dorm and met him in his room. While I sit on the bed, I relax and ask him about his day. He talks quickly and nervously, until he decides to join me on the bed and starts rubbing cocoa butter on my arms. Mind you, I was NOT ashy, so this was his idea of foreplay. From there we start to make out, and then we simply laid there for a minute, and I looked into his eyes. For that brief, 30 minute period, we didn't have sex, but felt such a close and sweet intimacy with him that was gratifying and amazing.

The second time we got together, I actually spent the night. We again made out for a long period, but this time it was more intense. Before he had told me to kiss him gently, but today, I felt the passion and force from his lips, and it felt great. While we kissed and caressed each other naked (yes, I actually got the boy to take off his clothes, a feat in itself), he told me "I feel so safe when you hold me." I have had a few random sex encounters, where I did more than I did with R that night. There was no intimacy, there was no passion, no feeling. With those anonymous hookups, I was almost always left feeling dirty or restless. With R, I felt close to him, and it felt so good, like nothing I had ever experienced before. To have somebody look into your eyes and touch you and make you feel that way. It's something indescribable.

But as fast as the flame between us was sparked, it fizzled out just as fast. What began as a simple text conversation over the phone on my Halloween contest, became a contest to see who could hurt the other's feelings first. Since we had gotten together, it had been a week since I had spoken to him, and if I had, I had to contact him, and he had every excuse in the book. Once it got to Halloween, I was hurt and confused. I was ready to start having that time with him where we could go get something to eat together, or watch a movie, or just hang in the room and act goofy. I didn't even need sex at that point, I just wanted to be around him more. But he pulled away. He said that when we kissed in the club that night weeks earlier, he was drunk. I was "chasin'" him and that I was a bad kisser and gave me some fairly strong impressions that I was not good enough for him and that he was not interested.

I was hurt. Here I thought something was building up, only to be rebuffed. Not only that, but what he said really got under my skin. I felt confused and angry because he was about to have such an effect over me and not even know or care. The connection between us was unbalanced. I don't think that we were right for each other, and I know that now. But it still hurt to lose somebody that I had a genuine connection with. I was specific advised not to get involved with R, considering what had happened earlier this year, but I did it anyway.