text: I met Addison in German 102. He came in late, so he sat down in the seat closest to the door, which just so happened to be the seat right next to mine. I didn’t notice him at first until our professor gave us an exercise to complete and told us to work with a partner. That’s when I turned to my right and there he was. I remember my eyes growing wide and my blood pressure dropping. I know people talk about attractive people all the time and their reactions to them sound hyperbolic, but I swear on God this guy unbelievably attractive. His style was effortless, wearing a simple white V-neck and blue jeans and keeping his beard neatly trimmed. I turned pink when I realized I had been staring at his deep blue eyes for an obscenely long time and I saw him smirk as I darted my eyes away. I tried to convince myself that he didn't notice. For the months that followed I would become extremely anxious to get to my German class. I’d even get there early sometimes in hopes of spending just a little more time with him. I knew deep down I was being naive, but I didn’t care. My heart was fluttering and I was falling deeper and deeper and he had no idea. Eventually I became his go-to partner and occasionally we’d finish early and get to know each other a bit, which was the highlight of my day. He told me about his older brother, who coincidentally was also his best friend. He told me about his current two year relationship with his girlfriend who was from a small town in Germany, which was why he was learning German. We talked about music sometimes and he introduced me to Tame Impala. Eventually, I summoned up enough courage to ask him for his number under the pretense of “in case I have any homework questions.” I knew he had a girlfriend, so nothing could ever come of it, but even being his friend sounded wonderful. When you meet special people like that, you take what you can get. Sometimes we’d leave German class and walk to our next class together which had the same route. It was all so innocent and felt like it was straight out of a fairy tale. Once the semester was over, I was sure I’d never see him again. I mean, why would I? It was his last German class and let’s face it, why would he want to hang out with me? But I was insistent and dismissed those pessimistic thoughts. Once--with the encouragement of my best friend--I texted him inviting him to go to a German event that occurred weekly. I think if my best friend had never pushed me to do it, I probably would have never seen him again. So to her, I am eternally grateful. I figured I would invite him to it because there was going to be a lot of people around and I could play off my feelings for him. He ended up going. Female eyes followed him as he walked in and hugged me. I could feel their jealous stabs on my back wishing they were me in that moment. I was living. We mingled, we laughed, we drank and we enjoyed each other’s company. I learned about his recent breakup with his girlfriend and I made sure to let him know I was available if he ever wanted to talk. This is the part where things kind of get fuzzy because I don’t quite remember when it was that we started hanging out so frequently, but it’s like my memory ends after that moment and jumps towards the summer. So, I apologize for my incompetent long-term memory. Summer came around and I was going over to his place almost every day. We would watch movies, drink wine or talk for hours. Never in my life have I ever been able to talk to someone for so long, about so many things and be so happy to do so. Addison just had this way about him that made me feel like I was home. I spent so many nights curled up on one of the corners of his couch while he sat on the other. Sometimes he’d grab my feet and very delicately massage them. We’d talk for hours on end about all the things I was always too hesitant to talk about with anyone else. It’s really quite something when you find someone who you can have such meaningful conversations without much of an effort. I was never completely myself as I was when I was with him. Addison treated me well and complimented me frequently. A part of me would gush every time , but I wasn’t a fool, I reminded myself not to get too carried away. I tried really hard to stay realistic, but the fairy tale caught up to me and I eventually gave in. I believed him when he called me beautiful. I believed him when he said he had never met anyone like me and he was so happy I had come into his life. Addison was such a rare individual and I was ecstatic and honored to have even an ounce of his time. So, when he’d stop mid-sentence to tell me how beautiful I was, my lungs would collapse. I remember a time when he asked me to meet him in the parking lot outside of the architecture building on campus. This didn’t strike me as unusual since sometimes we’d park our cars there and walk around campus together, but what did strike me as unusual was when he started walking *towards* the architecture building. I asked him where he was going and he asked me in a calm, but playful voice to “just play along.” We got to the doors and took the stairs up to the top floor. Once we reached it, I asked him again what we were doing there since I knew that there were only classrooms on this floor. He put a finger to his rosy lips and grabbed my hand. I followed him through a passageway that I had never noticed before and in seconds we were standing in front of a fancy conference room. I looked at him inquisitive, but he avoided my stare. I watched him jump over a fence behind the conference room and then climb up metal stairs. I stood frozen because this really felt like we were trespassing and I was afraid that we would get caught. He motioned me over and whispered to trust him. Reluctantly, I followed and climbed the stairs, too. We were on the rooftop of the architecture building. There was so much space up there that it made me almost want to dance around like you would in a meadow of peonies. I peered over the edge and could see the white and red lights from oncoming traffic and the first sightings of the night sky. I turned over to see if he was enjoying himself as much as I was, but he was rummaging through his backpack. A smile drew over his face as he pulled out a bottle of our favorite red wine and looked at me. Then his brows furrowed as he realized that he had forgotten to bring glasses. I saw this, laughed and reassured him that there were worse problems than not having glasses and I took a swig from the bottle. He asked me to sit next to him while we drank liquid courage straight from the source. I wish I could remember what we talked about up there, but all I can remember was the wave of calmness I felt sitting next to him on the rooftop and drinking wine under the night sky. At some point he asked me for my hand and led me onto the dance floor. We danced quite silly at first making light of the situation because we were both secretly afraid of the intimate moment that was unveiling before us. But, eventually we gave into the moment and we danced slowly in each other’s arms. I looked up at him and he never looked more handsome than in that moment when the moonlight was shining so carefully on his face. The thought of me touching his body would cross my mind often. But, I never could imagine us going through with it because it was such a ludicrous idea. Little did I know that he had had those same thoughts cross his mind, too. And I remember that night vividly. I remember driving up to his place and him answering the door with a smile on his face. I sighed deeply and walked in and sat on the couch while he ran back into the kitchen to pour us some wine. Pink Floyd’s *The Dark Side of the Moon* was playing on his stereo and he asked me about my day. The night went on as it usually did with us drinking a little too much bitter grape juice and sharing a little too many secrets. But that night when I was in the middle of a sentence he leaned over without warning to kiss my lips. The kiss was brief because he pulled back to apologize for his lapse in manners. Words failed me in that instance because I could still feel how soft his lips were and how good they tasted on mine. His deep blue eyes met mine trying to distinguish whether the kiss was a mistake or not and when he saw my approving eyes, he leaned over again, only this time slowly. He lingered a few inches from my face and I could feel his breath. I couldn’t stand it any longer and met him the rest of the way. It was pure ecstasy. Suddenly I was twirling in a moving room, my skin glimmering as I soaked in sunlight beams. I fell into a rabbit hole, deeper and deeper until I couldn’t see the ground anymore, but I could breathe. God, I could *breathe.* Our chests fell and rose in unison and our hands wandered over each other’s skin. The bottled up feelings we both had for each other completely shattered and there was no turning back. Our breaths were getting heavier and he picked me up and took me to his bedroom. I read his skin like braille until my eyes closed and he held me in his arms. I woke up the next morning and turned to look at him sleeping soundly. If I ever have a near death experience, Addison sleeping is what’s going to flash before my eyes. A few days later he asked me to come over again. He didn’t smile when he opened the door this time and instead, he motioned for me to sit down on the couch. It had only been a few days since we had last seen each other, but the way he carried himself felt rigid and cold. He opened his mouth to speak and said he just found out he got an STD from his next door neighbor and I probably had it, too. I thought he was joking at first, but his face was motionless. “Your neighbor?” I asked. He nodded. Apparently they had been sleeping together the entire time and I was none the wiser. He talked for some time, but his voice was muffled until I made out the words, “You should see your doctor.” A few days later I got in to see my doctor and sure as shit, I had the same STD. Luckily for me, it was easily remedied by a few pills. I informed him of that and that was the last time I spoke with him. You’d think I’d be pissed off by something like that, but he meant so much to me that I was actually willing to overlook it, except he didn’t give me the opportunity to do so. He said he had been talking to this girl for a while, too, and he realized that she was the love of his life. He had told me that his spirit animal was a tiger a month prior and he concluded that hers was also a tiger, while mine was just a bunny. It’s fitting, I guess. I don’t really have that fire within me like he did. I shied away at most things and I ran faster from my problems than I did marathons. I guess you could also say I was weak and light-hearted. Maybe even naive. But I swear, I never wanted to be someone else more than in that moment. Sometimes the reminder of him sneaks up on me. Like this one time when my friend served me cold brew from a French press--the memory of him explaining the mechanics of it to me came flooding back and I had trouble finishing my coffee. Or once when I was walking to class when I saw a guy who looked just like him and I was overcome with excitement because I really thought it was him, but once I realized my mistake, my vision blurred as I tried to rub away the water building up in my eyes. Sometimes I’m reminded of him from the very first sip of coffee I take because of all the memories we made at Café Luce when he was here. But, for the most part, I’ve become good at desensitizing myself to reminders of him, but sometimes I catch wind of his unique personality and it surges through me because he was in everything. He still is in everything. I miss him almost every day and it’s an awful thing to admit when you’ve put up such a strong front all this time. I think a big part of me took these memories and shoved them so deep in my mind where the cobwebs lie as some kind of defense mechanism. But, the lesson I learned from this was when something as big as this happens to you, just let yourself feel things. It’s going to be an absolute shit-show at first, but it will be better in the long run for you to feel all those emotions right now and try to make sense of them over time. You may be tempted to ignore the feelings you’re having because you’re afraid you won’t be able to deal with them in a healthy manner, but holy shit please try to. If not, you’re going to end up like me writing a lame memento that no one is ever going to read. What therapy failed to help me realize was that you have every right to feel sadness just as you would happiness. Because ultimately, they’re both emotions and both equally important to feel at different stages of your life. After the sadness reaches its end you will feel anger and resentment and these, too, are normal and part of the process. When I reached this stage I was running five miles four times a week and sprinting for half of them from the pure rage I was feeling and didn’t know how to properly deal with. I ran and I ran for months until on one of those runs my legs fell out from underneath me and I crashed face first into the dirt road. Tears rolled down my cheeks and I bellowed out the most ungodly scream--not from the pain of the fall, but as a result of so much bottled up emotional pain I had. Addison damn near killed me. It's been several years since all of this happened and I still can’t understand how someone who said they loved you could just leave like that. I don’t think I’ll ever understand how someone could light up your entire world one day and then break every bone in your body the next. The worst part is that even after all this pain, I can’t bring myself to hate him. Or even resent him, although I really want to. I still love him and I think I always will. The thing is, the way you fall in love with someone doesn’t have to follow the same trajectory as what you saw in Disney movies as a kid. You can love someone deeply simply because their company burns a fire within you. You can love someone because they make you feel important... valued. The way you love people is never the same, either, because people have different effects on you and they come at different points in your life. Addison was my world. I wanted us to be happy together more than I wanted anything else and that in itself is the scariest thing I’ve ever experienced. Since Addison, I haven’t been able to truly be myself again. I’m still able to love, of course, but never as deeply and never as ignorantly. Because of him, now I actively look for faults in people, just so it doesn’t hurt me in the future once the cats out of the bag. I’m actively on the lookout for any sign of disloyalty or any indication that I’ll be burned in the crossfires and the second I see it, I pull out my toolbox and start building my 10 foot wall. I’m not sure if that’s a blessing or a curse because as a result, I don’t fall as deeply for someone anymore and therefore, don’t get hurt as intensely when the relationship fails. I do realize that it’s a pretty destructive way to view relationships. It’s almost like I expect a bad outcome every time so when the relationship inevitably fails I’m not phased.. But I also understand that by expecting the worst, I’m subconsciously resigned to the fact that the relationship is temporary and so I don’t give it my all. I can definitely see how that could contribute to the relationship failing. It’s a vicious cycle, but I don’t know if I have it in me to give someone my all again. Maybe someday in the future I’ll learn to let go of my fears and give someone the power to break my heart because it’s kind of beautiful if you think about it. As humans we only get so many years of life and to be willing to let someone be a part of those years is heartwarming. At this point in my life, even a broken heart sounds nice to me because at least then, I’d feel something. Feeling heartbroken is yet, just another feeling and it is equally important as feeling happiness. I guess the takeaway is that no matter how much someone hurts you, you shouldn’t let it influence you in your future relationships. Continue to be your soft-hearted-self and don’t let anyone ever try to make you hard because once you give into the pessimistic view of love, it will take a *lot* for you to snap back out of it. I’m afraid that some people have been hurt so bad that they never learn to love again because they can’t bring themselves to be that vulnerable a second time and rightfully so. But listen, if you keep doing that you’re never going to be happy because you’ll never be at peace in your relationship. You thinking that something will inevitably go wrong, will *make* something go wrong. Even though deep down you may be worried you’ll get hurt again, I think it’s worth the risk. While I am deeply saddened that what Addison and I had ended, overall, I am happy it happened. How’s that saying go? “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all?” Cliche as hell, but it’s a good one. So this one’s for you, Addison. The memory of you will live until my dying day. I hope you’re off somewhere sparking a change in someone else’s life, as you did with me. I will always care for you and I hope someday we cross paths again so I can thank you in person. \ Thanks for reading guys. I've been thinking about writing a book on the small things I've learned from life, as well as, detailing some beautiful and traumatic experiences I've had. However, I am uncertain whether my writing has what it takes. I would appreciate your opinion on the matter, as I feel anonymity makes people act in a more truthful manner.