In another life I would make you stay so I don't have to say you were the one that got away...

I don’t want to label anyone The One That Got Away purely because I don’t think anyone that’s been in my life deserves such an epic title. I guess I’m still holding out hope that if someone gets away in my future, it will be more deserving of the title than anyone in my past has been.

One came pretty close though. We’ll call him Rocky purely because the song that reminds me most of him is “Rocky took a lover” by Bellx1.

I’ve known Rocky my whole life. He was probably the first boy that was ever really my friend, even way back when girls and boys weren’t friends with each other. We grew up together from the age of 10, playing, hanging out, climbing trees and being kids. When we were teenagers he dated my cousin for a while. He and I also had a texting thing when we were 15. To be honest I don’t even remember, but he does. We drifted apart, going to different schools, hanging out in different crowds...

We got back in touch in my third year of college. We spent approximately six months texting each other and visiting each other’s work places every weekend when I was home. Flirting and joking and playing around. It was obvious to everyone around us that there was something there. I moved home for the summer and it took us until August. But wow did we do it in style.

Saw each other on a night out, danced all night, left in the pouring rain and on the night we had our first kiss, we had our first everything in the rain, in the mud, beside the river with the sounds of the clubs and pubs letting out all around us.

There were probably more downs than ups in the few months we made it last. In fact there is no probably about it. Looking back now, I remember much more bad than good. But the good came in small surprising bursts.

I think more than any other guy, he came the closest to breaking my heart. He, actually, is the beginning in my recent long line of “bad” boys who won’t commit and who never give me as much as I give them. It all started with him. I think I might have loved him. If not, it’s the closest I’ve ever been.

There’s probably something deep and meaningful to be found in that fact if I were to examine it hard enough. Before him, I was the heartbreaker. After him, I was the girl that fell for the player who always let me down.

Tonight, when we were talking, I told him that I’d never seen much evidence to suggest he was a romantic.  He responded by telling me that he didn’t know why he’d never been that way with me. When I suggested that maybe it was as simple as me not being the right girl, he said the perfect thing, just a year and a half too late.

He told me that he’d really liked me, but because he’d liked me he’d pushed me away, and that was why we didn’t work out.

He can have no idea how much sleep I lost wondering what I’d done wrong, wondering why he didn’t like me enough, was it because I was fat (he eventually got with a girl heavier than me), was it because I wasn’t interesting enough? Was the sex not good? Was I ugly? Why? Why? Why?

And now I know that it was him.

And maybe now I’ll trust myself enough to not always assume that if something doesn’t work out, that it was because of me.

People come in and out of your life for a million different reasons. Sometimes you’ll know straight away why. And other times, you might not figure it out until they aren’t around anymore.

It’s bittersweet that it didn’t work out with Rocky and I.

But he gave me an amazing summer and incredible memories. And tonight he gave me a bigger gift than he can possibly realise.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I loved him. And now he loves someone that didn’t scare him. And I am falling for a friend of his, who, funnily enough, will never love me back. 

And I can't understand why my heart is so broken rejecting your love

January 21st 

I wanted this blog to be all about me, as self absorbed as that sounds. I thought I could write about anything in my life, but that above all else, this was not going to be about a boy.

So far I am pretty sure all my entries revolve around Him in some way so I think that is one goal that can definitely be crossed off as having failed so far.

The truth is it’s hard to write about my life and not write about Him when he is still very much a part of my life, and is still confusing me at every twist and turn.

Last night he was asking me about my “hottie” friend that he saw me with during the week. Tonight he had me pinned to a couch tickling me and making me laugh and play fighting with me and finding every excuse in the world to touch me. He was also playing 20 questions with a girl via text.

Clearly an asshole? YES.

Therefore, clearly my type? YES.

I don’t want to be attracted to jerks. I really don’t. But they are the ones that I fall for again and again. So subconsciously at least, I like being treated mean.  Now I just wish I could figure out why.

I want the boy that will hold my hand and hang out with me and be nice to me but still be playful and make fun and do all of the flirty things I love. In a way, He is perfect at that, well at least sometimes. The problem is that he only ever has to be a fraction as nice as he is mean to me to keep me interested. I want someone that is going to be like that all the time. That will be consistently nice.

I can pretty much guarantee that the next time I see him, he’ll be horrible to me purely because he had so much fun with me tonight.

I haven’t forgotten the endgame here. I don’t want to fall for him any more than I already have. I haven’t forgotten that he is a jerk above all else, and I especially haven’t forgotten that the second I let my guard down, he’ll only crush me without a second thought or a trace of guilt.

So why is it that every time he is like this, I want to surrender? 

I’ve been missing way too much, so when do I give up what I’ve been wishing for?

It’s been nearly a week and it’s been a pretty low one at that.

Don’t really have too many words to describe it really. Spent most of Saturday night lying on my bed talking to a friend and wishing I could just run away for a few days and not tell anyone where I was going, just turn off my phone and keep nothing with me but my iPod and my journal.

Truth is I’m getting really sick of falling flat on my face. Not sure what else I can do about it but to try and change my patterns. I need things to be different.

I don’t know where I’m at
I’m standing at the back
And I’m tired of waiting
Waiting here in line, hoping that I’ll find what I’ve been chasing.

We must reinvent love

Yesterday, I had the absolute privilege to read “Rockettes, Rockstars and Rockbottom” by  Keltie Colleen, who, incidentally enough, is my complete girlcrush of the moment.

I’ve pretty much been stalking her twitter and blog for months now and to finally get to sit down and read the book was so exciting for me.

This is the girl whose blog I’ve been visiting every time I feel weak and want to text Him. This is the girl who just always seems to say the perfect thing at the perfect time that I need to hear (read) it. This is the girl who has inspired this very blog, and is part of the inspiration behind my mission to love myself before I love a boy. 

This is a girl that I realistically enough am never going to have the chance to meet, but though her words on her blog, and through the beautiful words in her book, I’ve come to think of as a most trusted friend.

In Keltie, I found a sort of kindred spirit. Reading about her loves, her mistakes, her heartbreaks and the wisdom she gained from each one is more inspirational than I can even begin to put into words. To paraphrase, at one point in the book she says something about how her type doesn’t work for her. Well in that case, I am her sister. Keltie loves boys in skinny jeans with a guitar on their back. Now I don’t have a physical type, but boy do I have an emotional one.

Looking back on pretty much every guy I’ve ever been with, I’ve tossed aside the ones that treated me like a princess, and relentlessly chased the ones that were so completely unavailable it wasn’t even funny. All a guy needs to win me over is a reputation as a player, a nice smile, and to be a charmer. That right there is my type. Boys can, and have, charmed the pants off me by doing nothing at all. It’s something I’m working on breaking.

My type doesn’t work for me.

I’m a hopeless romantic. Scratch that. I am a hopeful romantic. I am the kind of romantic that doesn’t think everything will be fixed once I find someone, just that maybe the bad things won’t be as bad with someone else there. The reason I go for the player is because deep down, I want to be the girl special enough to change them. To make them want me and only me. That’s always a tough blow for the ego when you realise that it isn’t going to happen, believe me.

I am a hopeful romantic. Even though I knew the outcome of her story, I still found myself wishing she and Dreamer could work it out. Wishing he hadn’t done what he’d done. Wishing he hadn’t thrown away someone as beautiful and as special as Keltie. If I believe in nothing else in this world, I believe in love stories. That one had a bittersweet ending. He screwed it up, she lost a lot, and for a while she lost herself. But in the end, through the suffering she got something so much more important. She got herself back. More beautiful and stronger than ever.

No one has broken my heart, not really. In the past year I’ve only cried once over a boy. Ironically enough, he’s the one that’s made me smile more than any other one too. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen with him. Right now I’m not letting my guard down. But what I do know, is that if I can carry myself off with even half the courage and grace that Keltie shows, I’ll be doing pretty well.

Inspired beyond belief.

Courage. Passion. Hard Work. (To quote Keltie)

I went broke believing that the simple should be hard

Well it's hard to change the way you lose

If you think you've never won

I’ve been relapsing a lot this week. The inspirational confidence has been a bit more like empty words. I came so close to being very silly earlier. In my mind I began to play the blame game with myself.

Most people are very familiar with this game.

“What did I do to make him not like me?”

“How did I mess it up when it was going so well?”

“Did I push too hard? Was I not patient enough? Did I scare him off?”

These, I imagine are very common questions and it would probably very easy to come up with a hell of a lot more similar ones. Am I the only one familiar with this usual conversation between me, myself and I? I doubt I am.

So here is the question. When a boy hurts me, or lets me down, or acts horrible for what seems like no reason at all, why is it my automatic reaction to ask these questions? Why is it my automatic reaction to ask myself what I did wrong?

Well in the blame game, I am tired of having only one participant. I didn’t do anything wrong. I gave him space, I kept it casual, I allowed him to come and go as he pleased.

For once I am going to champion myself rather than fight the corner of the guy who has wronged me. For once, I am going to say it as it really is.

He is the one that is wrong, not me. He is the one that told me he was interested then stopped coming round. He is the one that told me I was getting too attached after he spent nights holding my hand and spooning me as I slept. He is the one that repeatedly told me that he is not like every other guy just trying to get what they can from a girl, and then acted like EVERY OTHER GUY.

I’m standing up for myself. I will admit to my faults. I am impatient, I get frustrated, I hate waiting for anything. But, for him, I waited. He let me down anyway. So I am learning an important lesson from this train wreck of an experience. It is not always my fault. In fact, in this instance none of it is my fault.

Playing the blame game is a matter of confidence and self belief. Do you trust yourself enough to stand by all of your actions? Do you love yourself enough to know that his actions are not your fault? I’m getting there. I regret that things didn’t work out. I really liked him, and I still do. But I like myself more. Never again am I going to allow anyone to make me feel like their bad behaviour is my fault.

I am what I am and one day, someone will come along that will adore my impatience, that won’t run away because I expect to spend time with them, someone that will appreciate me, flaws and all.

The blame game is a bad habit to get into. Trust yourself more. Respect yourself more.

“Hey boy I really want to see if you can go down town with a girl like me”

I guess this is progress. At 11:11 tonight, instead of wishing for him to care, or to text, or anything I shouldn’t have to wish for, I wished that I will get over him.

It’s still a wish about a boy. But I think it’s heading in the right direction at least.

Because I like him so much, I’ve made so many excuses for his behaviour. Things which were really inexcusable. And it’s so easy to do too. Right now I’m picturing that night in his room. Or the night on my couch where even in his sleep, he reached across to hold my hand. 

What I am learning is that it is amazing what you will let someone get away with. I’ve always looked at my friends and marvelled at the fact that they get the most amazing guys. And now I realise it’s because from the very start, they have a tough love approach. “Treat me right from the beginning or not at all”.

It’s a policy I need to adopt, I think.

It’s one I think everyone has to adopt. You’ll never be treated right, if you let them get away with treating you wrongly.

I am intelligent.

I am fun.

I am easy going.

I am someone that any guy would be lucky to have.

And as for the “him” of this entry, he’ll realise it eventually. But I’ll be long gone. 

“Man, you should try to take a shot. Can’t you see my walls are crumbling?”

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04/01/11

I’ve got a series case of the lonelies tonight. The problem with a positive attitude is that there has to be cracks sometimes. It can’t stay perfect and flawless all the time. Nothing can.

For me the cracks always appear at night when I’m watching my best friend talk to her boy, or when I’m crawling into bed alone, hugging my laptop or iPod instead of Him.

I’ll wake up in the morning and I’ll feel strong. I’ll tell myself that I don’t need to see or speak to him at all. And I will really believe it. By the time I’m going to bed, I’ll be hovering over his number on my phone. Not even having anything to say to him, but wanting to talk to him nonetheless.

I used to be good at going to bed alone. Now that I know the feeling of waking up to a kiss on my shoulder, the feeling the weight of arms on my waist; now that I know the frustration of being kept awake because I can’t sleep with someone? Now, going to bed alone is the lowest part of my day.

Tomorrow I’ll be strong. Tomorrow I’ll be patient. Tomorrow I’ll remember that this is meant to be about me. Tomorrow I’ll remember that I deserve better than someone who won’t be here.

For tonight, I’m going to miss something I never really had. 

Push me ‘til I have to fly, I've shed my skin, my scars

03/01/11

When the clock hits 11:11, what do you wish for?

I find that as far back as I can remember my wishes have all been for or about a boy. Maybe that’s because for as far back as I can look, particularly in the past year, there has always been a boy on my mind in some way, shape or form.

The worst part is the boy himself has changed quite a few times.

I’ve been thinking about that fact a lot lately. This time last year I was smarting from the ending of something that had never been good or healthy for me. I should have been happy about that phase of my life ending but instead, I was pretty devastated. A few months later it was interest from a friend that I didn’t return, though I wanted a boy so I tried my best. I came home from San Francisco in August healthy, happy and rested. Within a week I’d met someone. That one is still ongoing, though to call it casual would be overstating it. 

Now I come to boy number four.

He’s been on my mind since October and doesn’t look to be going away any time soon.

I’ve only spent one night in his bed so far. He’s spent one in mine. We’ve held hands twice. We’ve fallen asleep on the couch once. We’ve fought twice. We’ve flirted more than I can count. We’ve kissed a thousand times.

I’ve written him off a million times already. I’ve taken him back a million and one.

Most of these times he doesn’t even know about. It’s all been in my head for the most part.

One thing I have learned this past year is a lesson that is one of the most important I think that I’ll ever learn. It’s a pretty simple one too, and yet I think one of the hardest things in the world to put into practice. To give and receive love, you must first love yourself. To get respect, you must first respect yourself. If you allow yourself to be treated with anything less than the respect you deserve, you’ll never get that respect.

I am a dreamer. I am a romantic. I am a naive romantic at that. I am in love with the idea of love. But the truth of the matter is that I don’t really know how to be in love. For all my great theories and ramblings on it, for all my ideas and philosophies, I’ve never really been in love.

The reason that I haven’t, I am beginning to realise, is because I don’t love myself. Not really. Sure I can say all the right things, I can tell you that I deserve the best treatment in the world, but I always settle for less.

This year, instead of making resolutions, I am setting myself one simple goal.

I want to fall in love.

Not with a boy. Not with a girl.

I want to fall in love with myself.

I want to look in the mirror and like what I see. I want to respect myself. I want to know deep within myself that I deserve the best, and I want to hold out for it. I want to love myself enough to never settle for any less than I deserve.

I want this blog to be about me. My thoughts, my experiences, my growth. This time next year, I want to look back on these entries and read about Katie. This blog will not be about a boy. This year will not be about a boy. I’m sure they’ll come and go, I’m sure some will even deserve mention here. But if I am going to fall in love this year, it’s going to be with me.

So how do you go about falling in love with yourself?

I for one am challenging myself. And if you’re reading this, I challenge you to do this with me.

Every day this year, I want you to tell yourself something you love about yourself. I want you to appreciate your own special brand of incredible. And I will do the same.

So go on, what do you love about yourself?