I Think I'll Be Okay: Part One of the Story of a Bad Breakup With Excessive Backstory

Eleven months ago, a week before Thanksgiving 2014, I met Drew through OkCupid. It was not love at first sight, I wasn't even completely interested in him. For the first few months, he was someone to talk to through the Holiday season. It wasn't until January 12th, the day Beatrice died, that I even considered meeting him in person.

I am going to tell you a little bit about myself and him with bullet points. All points are important to the story.

Drew:
•He lives about an hour and a half away from me.
•He is two years older than me, which means that mentally he is the same age as me if you believe that boys are mentally two years behind girls.
•I am not sure if age was a problem for him, but he sure brought it up a lot.
•He did not drive, which means that when we did meet, I was the one doing all of the driving.
•He suffered from depression for several years.

Me:
•I am incredibly insecure. I hate my body, and I am convinced that most people only like me because I have something to offer, not because they are attracted to me.
•I have two of the three types of anxiety, emphasis on social anxiety.
•I suffer from depression and have for my whole life. Seriously, you need only look at pictures of me as a child.
•I am attracted to brains. The fact that someone is aesthetically pleasing is not important to me when I'm looking for a partner. I just want to be excited and stimulated through conversation.
•I have had a best friend for years. We met in second grade and moved in together last month. We are basically heterosexual life partners.

Drew was my escape. He was someone I could talk to when I didn't want to talk to anyone else. He made me laugh, and he paid attention to me. As an eighteen year old with a make out friend being the extent of my relationship experience, I soaked it up. Looking back, he wasn't particularly interesting. He didn't make me think. He was comfortable.

Talking on the phone was splendid. We talked about everything. We talked about music and our family, jobs and food and friends and movies. And he complemented me constantly. Another thing you need to know about me is that I do not accept complements easily. They make me uncomfortable. On the one hand, I feel obligated to return the complement, but then I cannot for the life of me think of an original complement that won't make me sound like a freak. I often fear sounding like a freak.

I was honest with him, though. I told him all of my insecurities and that when I say it's not you, it's me, I really mean it. We confided in each other. I told him things not even my best friend knew about me.

You're probably wondering about Beatrice. She was my goat. A story like this will not do justice to how much we loved each other. I got her as a kid, and raised her as my baby. On January fifth, I moved in with my grandmother to care for her after her knee replacement. On the ninth, my dad brought home another goat as a companion for my baby. During the night of the eleventh or the morning of the twelfth, a mother and cub mountain lion, without even my three dogs hearing, killed my goat and her companion for sport, to train the baby to hunt. I feel as though it would gave been marginally better if they were hungry. But they just killed her and left. Having had Bea for five years, spending some of the most horrible and traumatic years of my life with her to be called one morning by my crying mother, I was utterly broken. Drew picked me up and put me back together. I will never forget how he helped me through that.

When he told me he didn't have his license, it was kind of a turnoff for me. I almost ended it. Three months in, I felt like it wouldn't be much of a loss. I'd just tell him that I just wanted to be friends, check back in when you get a car, and then I'd go back to OkCupid to find someone else. But I didn't. As the fat girl with an aura that said stay the fuck away from me like ticker tape running across my forehead, I was infatuated with how much attention he paid to me, and that he was constant. Consistent. He would text me good morning and good night every day. I would go days, up to a week, without responding to him and I would still get those daily texts. I smiled every time.

As much as I loved the effort, I told him that I would meet him only if he got his license. So I waited for five months, dwelling in a world of anxiety when it came to meeting him, but trying to focus on feeling better about myself so that I could be the confident girl he spoke with on the phone when we did meet.

During this time, I started a business and I started chain smoking. I was suicidal and self destructive and ready to take pills and drive off of a cliff. To be honest, not much has changed between then and now.

In June, he got his permit. I had some time off from my business of pet sitting, because I was sitting my grandmother's house (she was out of town for a month visiting family post-op) and I though now or never. I drove down and spent the day with him. We had coffee and then he took me to a movie. Our first kiss was the most awkward thing. I'm getting anxiety just thinking about it. I spent the next day in the fetal position regretting every decision leading up to that kiss. My best friend insisted I bring him up to meet her, ease the tension between us, and test the waters with how he felt about her-- one of the most important people in my life-- and her tonsil hockey partner, Paul.

So three days later, after I had had some time to calm down about the horrible atrocity that was our first kiss, I invited him up for a game of Cards Against Humanity and a movie on Netflix. By invited, I asked him if he was free so that I could drive down and get him. It was pretty awkward in the beginning. It calmed down when we started playing, then we went out on the patio for a smoke. My friend and Paul conveniently disappeared and Drew kissed me again and it was perfect. It was adorable. They reappeared a moment later and we fell into this great friendly conversation and I was so happy. I had a best friend, I had a boyfriend, and I was having fun. I wasn't trying to decide which cliff to drive off of for the first time in a long time.

Stay tuned for Part 2: I'm Not Over It.