text: I can’t even lie; my first thought when I saw him was that he was extremely cute, unlike a lot of the guys in my dumpy hometown. I knew he had a girlfriend at the time, so I forced that train of thought to shut down. But unfortunately, that’s not how life works out, especially not for me. We met at a mutual friend’s house when I had decided to try my hand at Dungeons and Dragons. Ezekiel had walked in, and I had to crane my neck back to actually look at him. After an extremely short conversation, I knew that he was intelligent, funny, and an extreme procrastinator. As he started the session with almost an hour of prologue, I saw just how much effort he placed into his passion projects. I had to leave early that day, but we had exchanged contact information so that if I had any questions, I could ask. He had been on online school during the preceding year, but he rejoined public school. Ezekiel texted me to ask about our school’s dress code, and we had a very awkward conversation. When school started, we found that we had a few classes together. Looking back, I realize what a nightmare we must have been for teachers; once the ice had broken, we talked constantly, both in person and online. When his schedule had gotten reformed after a few mishaps with credit transfers, we had even more classes together. And then his long-distance girlfriend dumped him. Ezekiel was understandably upset, so me and my soft heart tried to cheer him up. He bounced back after a little while, and one day in study hall, he informed me of his afterschool plans; Ezekiel was going to ask out my best friend, Sadie. Thus, began the aching slow descent. My first thought was that Sadie would turn him down. She liked someone else, only saw Ezekiel as a friend, and was still messed up from her failed relationship just months ago. I tried to imagine it anyway, and my stomach churned a bit. But I didn’t tell him that; I simply wished him luck, and then went back to writing my essay before the teacher could yell at us. Sadie turned him down, and I ended up having to explain why I had called it. Midterms leapt upon us, and amidst all the frantic cramming, Ezekiel and I planned for a whole group of our friends to hang out when we were all free. Out in the woods, we had a small bonfire, and Ezekiel and I ended up having to work hard to get that stupid fire going. The matches he always carried around were simply garbage, and we wasted half an hour trying to get those horrible things to light. In the end, a friend had to bring a lighter up. Ezekiel and I gathered the wood and kept the fire going since we both knew how to actually keep the flames alive. When the end of the school day came around, I had to leave to catch the bus, and to my surprise, Ezekiel volunteered to walk with the group that was heading back. He lived in town and could just walk, but I just put it down as the cold that was sending him. Our group ended up arriving about twenty minutes early, so we hung around the back of the school. Disclaimer: we are not thugs, that’s simply where the buses parked. Ezekiel seemed like he was dealing with some deep internal thoughts, so I chatted with some other friends. He walked up and asked to speak with me alone, hands nervously twitching as he did. Curious as to what he wanted, I agreed. We stepped away from the group, but when he started talking, someone walked over, and he clammed up. His attention slid to them, and although subtle, his movements became increasingly aggravated. I kept trying to reclaim his attention, but he clearly didn’t want to speak to me with an audience. After a few minutes, everyone more or less drifted away. Ezekiel finally responded to my prompting and asked me out. I was a tad shell shocked, but I said yes. We were an oddly perfect match. Our intelligence and creativity spurred the other person’s on, and we laughed easily. We pushed each other to be better and leapt onto the opportunity to help whenever the workload was a bit much. We played off our differences nicely, and our similarities made us all the closer. Our relationship was occasionally a tad spicy, but overall, we were very sweet, if a bit excessive on public displays of affection. Where our dates were far and few between, our conversations were certainly not. But after two and a half months, Ezekiel lost interest. He lied for an additional two weeks, keeping up the appearance of a loving boyfriend so that my first real relationship would be at least three months. The day after our three-month anniversary, he broke up with me. I was crushed. I had loved this boy with my entire heart, and I was so sure he felt the same. I struggled to seem normal around him for the next few days of school. Luckily for me, Easter break was that weekend. Then again, I couldn’t seem to move past all his lies. It was one thing that he had lost interest, I told myself, but another thing entirely that he had lied. I wrote out note after note, telling him that I couldn’t decide if I hated him or not, but honestly, I knew that I was simply struggling to move on. But these kinds of stories are a dime a dozen, aren’t they? A shy, quiet girl falls for the popular hot guy, and they go out for a bit before he ditches her. Hallmark, at least, redeems the guy, and the couple gets back together in the end. It never feels like a dime a dozen story when it’s your turn to play the fool though. I silently watched, two weeks post break up, as Ezekiel was thrust into a situation where two girls he had no particular interest in were planning to ask him out. I said nothing as he tossed an apologetic glance toward me before admitting that there was technically nothing holding him back. I quietly ate my lunch as he had a lengthy discussion with the friend who had warned him about which of the two girls he was going to pick. The classes we had together became a curse, and he was on my mind even when we were apart. I hated myself for it, and my self-esteem reached an all-time new low. But I was too stubborn to tell him that I was hurting, preferring to internalize all the pain I was in. I watched as he started going out with Maria. Although he swore to not do anything with her around me, much of our study halls were spent with me studiously ignoring the new couple as they spent the entire time flirting. Despite myself, I ended up talking to them both and even became good friends with Maria. I rearranged my finals schedule so that I would only have one test with Ezekiel and conveniently could not hang out. Summer began, and I was still stuck in a perpetual loop of missing him and violently trying to push him away. I tossed myself into my summer job, enjoying my time with a friend that I had not seen since the previous year. I watched as she texted him on my phone, drunk and flirting, and how he just played games with her. I saw when he broke up with Maria and started dating Kate before the week was over. Several of my friends texted me once they heard, pointing out how ridiculously fast he had gotten a new girlfriend. I felt like I was dangling over a pit with only a few threads to hold onto, but I didn’t say a word to Ezekiel. The few times I saw him over the summer were horrible. He was very obviously trying very hard not to cause me any more pain, but everyone else would ask him about his lady friend. Because of course I couldn’t live without any reminders. But I never said a word. After about two months, Ezekiel and Kate broke up. Within a week, he was dating Ella. He swore up and down that Ella was actually his soul mate, that their relationship was perfect, and a thousand other glowing reviews of her. I found it funny, as I explained to Sadie, that he had said so many of the same things about me when we had been dating. School started again, and mercifully, Ezekiel and I only had a few classes together. I found it was slowly getting easier to talk to him, but there were still way too many times that I felt my stomach trying to consume my soul when I was around him. Ezekiel learned from some of his coworkers that his first girlfriend had been cheating on him and was doing drugs and smoking. He told me that he was glad we were still on speaking terms. Life calmed down slightly as we all struggled under the weight of schoolwork. My time was consumed by drama club, his by his job and newest girlfriend. So naturally, everything began to crumble. Because that’s just how life works, I guess. Ezekiel was fired and threatened with a lawsuit so that he couldn’t rally the workers together to protest the working conditions. His girlfriend slammed into a depressive episode at the same time, and Ezekiel was clearly hopeless. History repeats itself unless we are smart enough to learn from our mistakes. I clearly am quite stupid. I took pity on my ex, hanging out with him and texting him whenever I could to try to cheer him up, but all he wanted was attention from his girlfriend. Under the weight of his lawsuit, her absence, a few family issues, and schoolwork, he began to crack and fall apart. Me and my soft heart hastily attempted to apply funny duct tape to each crack, but it did very little to help. I was falling apart too, but where a few people tried to patch up Ezekiel, no one tried to help me. I was struggling to lighten my ex’s mood, help a friend with her physics work, help another friend with girl problems, help yet another friend with guy problems, keep up with my own schoolwork and the drama club, as well still trying to get over Ezekiel. But I prioritized everyone else, telling myself to suck it up and deal with this pain. Normalize it so that I can keep going. Unsurprisingly, that didn’t actually work. Ella dumped Ezekiel. I helped him pick up the pieces of his heart and listened patiently as he swore to stop dating people. His first girlfriend started texting him again. Ezekiel was extremely wary, but he consented to talking to her. It’s only polite, he claimed, adding that he may finally get the closure that he never had. Well, I couldn’t argue with that. Boy, do I wish I had. Because next thing I know, he’s telling me that he is going to the winter formal with her, and they are going to start officially dating again. But he finally seemed happy. I made a joke about Maria to Ezekiel. Far from being amused, he asked if I knew if she was dating Eric. Completely sidetracked, I asked both Eric and Maria if it was true. They said yes, and I reported the news to Ezekiel. He wasn’t happy for them; on the contrary, he was angry. He claimed that Eric had ended up talking Maria into breaking up with him. I immediately told Ezekiel to not say anything to Eric; they were friends, and it would only start more unnecessary drama when we were all so close to graduating. He fell asleep during my scolding, and my anxiety got the better of me. I snapped, cursing him out and telling him to just do whatever he pleased, because he clearly didn’t care for anything that I said. It was a rather impressive rant, if I do say so myself. When he finally read it, there was no response. So of course, like the noble and brave soul I am, I avoided him the next day until it was impossible to do so. We had a lengthy discussion about why I had said all that, and he apologized for worrying me. Relative peace was restored. The drama club put forth a fantastic play. I felt like I could finally talk to Ezekiel like I would any other guy friend. Naturally, there was one more wrench that fate threw at my head. I noticed that whenever I sent him funny stories and jokes, he would have an underwhelming response. And even those lackluster responses faded, until he stopped replying entirely at times. It was extremely out of character for Ezekiel; he was very attached to his phone and answered almost immediately. The only times he didn’t were when he was asleep, working, or answering someone else first. But I didn’t question it; I just assumed he was getting tired of me. Which did not make sense because he talked to me the same way he always had whenever we were in person. One day in study hall, his girlfriend texted him while we were talking. His eyes widened slightly, and he announced that she didn’t like me because of how often I texted him. That she thought I was still “attached” to him. I gave her words serious thought and wrote yet another note to Ezekiel. On it, I explained that I was still attached, but I had finally realized that it was not romantic anymore. And it was so liberating to finally come to that conclusion that I have actually been able to talk to my ex like a normal person. It only took the better part of an entire year, but hey, better late than never. When I mentioned this to my other friends, amused, they offered a plethora of explanations. That because she was a cheater, she was looking for any signs that he was cheating on her, that she felt threatened by our friendship, or even that she felt I was just useless. I typically would have said something to Ezekiel, but I find myself unable to. If she is what makes him happy, why should I make him decide if he wants to cut me out of his life entirely for her sake? Besides, I know what kind of reaction I would get from her. I would be that ex that is trying to get him back or that is slandering the current girlfriend because I disapprove. And it is just not worth all that extra drama in my life. So, long story short, I dated a hot guy, and it only led to more pain than it was worth. Oh, how much easier it would have been if I had never loved him! But that is not how the heart works. So here I remain in this moronic dance of suppressing my opinions and minimizing communication with Ezekiel to reduce unnecessary drama. Will I escape? Probably not. Unless we completely stop talking after graduation or until he breaks up with his girlfriend, there’s no ladder I can climb to haul myself out of this ridiculous pit that is somehow my life. Which means, lucky me, I have two more months of semi forced conversation with who I once thought was the love of my life.