#onewhogotaway

There he goes now, out the door. And from my balcony, I can see him walking further and further away, getting smaller and smaller, disappearing altogether. And his name is on my lips, and I’m almost about to shout it out and call him back and start over. But the whistle goes off from the kettle, and my friends call me from downstairs to hurry down and the phone rings. The seasons are in their…

     On September 16th of last year, exactly today, right now (close its Sept 13th but almost close)….7pm….I had ended my class of Psychology. A three hour course, every Wednesday nights. I recall sitting at my typical seat, right by the wall, to the left of the teacher lecturing, sort of in the back, but more in the middle. I was happy. I couldn’t stop smiling. I remember, and I definitely knew why I couldn’t contain my joy that entire day. My days would begin at 5am and end around 8pm that same night because I had an 8am class and my last class didn’t end till 7pm. 

     Oh, how I would smile that day. That day, September 16, 2015 was the day I was excited to pick up some dude from the airport. He was also excited to see me, as I was too. We both were. We texted non-stop that day and couldn’t wait to see one another. My cheeks hurt from smiling all morning and afternoon.

     Once I was in my last class and ready to pounce out of there as soon as it was over, I texted him that I was so bored in class that to entertain myself I shall write him a letter about how I feel about him at that very moment. So, I did. I wrote him a handwritten letter while I was in class. I smiled. Butterflies rushed in my stomach and I couldn’t feel my cheeks. I wrote and I wrote an entire page. I reread it for any mistakes. It was perfect. Everything I wanted to say to him was on that piece of paper. I told him about it and he was so excited. He told me he couldn’t wait to read it because its what I felt at that very moment about him. He sent me kissy faces. Everything was swell. 

     I folded the note and put it in my pocket. Class had ended and I rushed over to my car to pick him up from the airport. I played happy music all the way there and couldn’t contain my excitement for the life of me. (Feels like it was yesterday or something). He called me once I did a couple laps around the arrivals terminals and I parked. I looked around and saw him skating towards my car. I got out my car and smiled. Went over to pop open my trunk and he put his things and grabbed a hold of me and gave me a huge kiss. (I was truly stunned by this excitement and whopping kiss, that I did not react to any of it only because it happened so quick). I laughed and we walked in my car and I drove us back to the east bay. 

     His idea was to get some Chinese food and eat at his place and just chill. We did. He planned to work the next day but with my persuasiveness, I got him to call in and have breakfast with me the next morning. He was excited to have done it and couldn’t wait to have a ‘famous breakfast’ date with me (no, not a real date, just a date set to have breakfast with someone who is obsessed with breakfast and coffee). We ate and discussed lots of topics and the food got us sleepy and we lied together on his bed talking. He eventually fell asleep and I got up without saying a word to him and walked over to his living room. Somehow I felt sad. I remember sitting on his couch and looking out his window, thinking ‘this will not last’. I pulled out the letter from my pocket and thought, ‘this letter can save us from being torn apart because I wrote all my feelings for him at a time where I was happy thinking about him, missing him, and wanting to see him.’ 

     I opened the letter and stared at it. I looked back into his bedrooms direction, hoping he wouldn’t be standing there. The entire apartment was dark. I looked around and thought, ‘This is it. I feel I won’t be here because I am happy, or I was happy before.’ I placed my folded letter by his lamp in the living room and grabbed my backpack and laptop and reached for the front door. I stopped. Looked back to his bedroom (knowing I was going to see him in the morning for breakfast) I walked over to his lamp and took the folded letter and ripped it to pieces and I threw it in his trash in the kitchen. I teared up. I walked out his apartment and went down his stairs. Slowly, walked each step, somehow knowing I wasn’t going to be going down these steps again. My heart sank. 

      Of course, during breakfast, everything fell apart right in front of my eyes when I was honest to him about hanging out with my friends for my exes birthday weekend. I saw him and I knew that hurt him. It hurt me but I couldn’t lie to him. I couldn’t be that girl who lies. But I knew, just like that feeling back in his living room, this was it. I somehow predicted the feeling but not how it would turn out. After that, everything crumbled. We spoke less. Saw each other less. Then nothing. Anger, long texts, messages, with aggressive tones. It was nasty. I felt defeated. Exhausted. Confused. Like I had lost a good friend. And I did. 

     Took me a year to write about this. A year to even reveal this feeling and what I did that night. My happiness was taken away by a mysterious dark cloud in the room. I knew I had feelings for this kid and it was good, great. Everything that is too good to be true comes to an end. That unknown feeling overpowered me and I didn’t do anything to stop it. It took over and I let it. Just like every time I felt happy about him, it was taken away by that same unknown feeling. I ripped a letter that had my entire feelings for him and I never gave it to him. I never tried to save us with that letter. I do know some things I wrote in that letter but that’s for me to know and you to find out. JK, y’all will never know. It’s a feeling I won’t ever get back. 

     Its been a year and I thought I’d finally share this with anyone in the world who ever reads this page. Know that I had a chance and didn’t take it because something, some energy, some mysterious gut feeling warned me it wasn’t time.

Why does every man seem to have “that one girl who got away,” who lingers ominously around the depths of his dating history?

Simple: because we’re men, and f*cking things up is what we do best – aside from lifting heavy weights, watching sports 24/7 and being ignorant of fashion (your sarcasm detectors should be ringing).

So naturally, our dating lives aren’t immune to the wrath of our (at times) chronic ineptitude.

Now, before answering the question of why all men seem to have some woman in their past who “got away” – and has haunted them ever since – let’s first explore what the term means.

Usually, we’ll use the phrase to describe an ex-girlfriend or someone we were once in a relationship with (note: past tense) – but have probably not spoken to, since. Hence, the whole “getting away” from you part.

Yet, in order for anything to get away from you, technically speaking, you must first possess it (very similar to the NFL’s fumble rules).

That’s an important distinction to make. I hate when people toss the term around lackadaisically, like that time they sat next to a knockout on the subway and failed to say a word.

See, she didn’t get away from them – they never really had her in the first place.

The one who got away isn’t just some regular girl – she’s a girl you know you probably could have spent the rest of your life with, had you done a couple things differently.

Maybe they were the finer points – like you didn’t call her enough, or you never really surprised her. Or maybe it was something big, something unforgivable like you cheated on her.

But, either way – if you’re no longer together with a girl whom you wish you could be – then chances are it was you who f*cked something up along the way.

After all, if it was you who got cheated on, I doubt you would still be yearning for the said cheater to come back into your life (although it definitely wouldn’t be the first time it’s happened).

A lot of times, whatever the specific reasoning, we’ll tend to let women out of our grasps due to a false sense of security with them.

While comfort within relationships is good, getting too comfortable within them (or anything else in life) can often lead to their demise.

As soon as you get overly comfortable with something, it’s usually not long before you start to take it for granted.

This is especially true for the people in our lives, specifically our girlfriends or former girlfriends, at any rate.

That’s why these women tend to linger in our minds long after our relationship with them has finished. It’s because we see things now that we didn’t see prior.

Generally speaking, we’ll only begin to realize the true extent of all the things we took for granted once they’re removed from our lives.

At the same time, we also might remember certain aspects of a lover that may be… stretched a bit from how they were in reality.

For instance, we may view one particular girl as “the one who got away,” but – during the time when we were together with her – we didn’t really appreciate her.

And this might be for good reason. Perhaps you might have argued often – or maybe you didn’t really like certain aspects of her personality – but once she’s gone, it’s common to lose sight of these things and harbor feelings, due to the loss of love (or “like,” or infatuation).

I mean, it’s never easy to lose anything in life, but when you’re dealing with people, it’s even harder.

In many instances, we’ll make mistakes within relationships when we’re young, but that’s part of being young: You live, and you learn.

It still doesn’t make it any easier to learn these lessons, and usually, the one who got away manages to slip away early in a man’s life – before we’re wise enough to handle things with care, so to speak.

Well, they say, “the first cut is the deepest” (or at least Sheryl Crow does), and that’s part of why we might mourn one particular girl longer than others.

It’s extremely common for a man to call one girl “the one who got away” because she was the one who showed him love or other intense feelings in the first place.

As a result, it’s also not uncommon for us to trace every successive girl we meet, or get close to back to our first instance of infatuation.

When a woman steps into our lives, it’s only natural for us to compare her to past women we’ve been with, even if we try not to.

Still, most guys have these women in their pasts, and while they might hurt from time to time, these are really only growing pains.

It’s part of the whole “dating game.” Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose – and sometimes, you might come across a really bad loss, one that tends to linger.

You can either mope about it, or you can use it as a reminder of how fragile relationships – and people, in general – can be.