Okay, here goes. My name is Nicholas and I go to the College of Charleston in South Carolina. I have been seriously depressed ever since I got here.
I don't think I can start there though.
I'm 19.
When I was sixteen, I met a girl. I re-met a girl. Her name doesn't really matter. In this, I think I'll call her .... hmm... Delilah. If you read this, I think you'll eventually find out why. I met a girl, I play the violin and at the time I was in a youth orchestra that took a trip to new york. She started flirting with me and I couldn't stop smiling. Ever since I hit puberty up till then I was quite somber as my sister put it. But every time she smiled, I couldn't help but follow suit.
It wasn't love at first sight, but it certainly was infatuation. I was a very bad flirt. On the trip we played in Carnegie Hall and on a cruise after I gave her my jacket at she let me put my arm around her. We were out on the deck alone and she said "you aren't doing a very good job of keeping me warm"
That was the only 20 hour bus ride I ever looked forward to. However, I was soon disappointed, her family came with her and they flew back down. It made that bus ride all the more miserable.
CYS (the youth symphony) was on Sunday afternoons. I saw her a few more times and eventually started talking to her on Aim. I was pathetic, it was my first stab at a relationship, and I asked her out over Aim, i know I know, what a loser. She said yes, well, she pretty much told me to ask, but like I said it was my first real time. We planned a date, she said she was really busy most of the time, and the time I saw her at CYS she mostly spent flirting with other boys. I wanted to take her to black balsom knob in North Carolina, In my naiveté I guess I thought it would be a really good first date. She suggested lunch some time. I agreed willingly, and then, a couple of days before, she said that she thought we shouldn't. CYS ended for the year, and she no longer talked to me, meanwhile, at some point I had had a conversation with her little sister on Aim. And so while, Delilah, didn't talk to me, I talked to her sister. She had been going through boy issues and I was an invisible ear, even if I didn't have any practical advice. This was one of the most miserable times in my life. I cried compulsively, i was pathetic, It was like puppy love that made me very upset. I had finally known I could smile again.
I had hair down to my chest at the time.
I cut it.
I cut it to about 5 inches from almost two feet.
I showed her little sister my new haircut via facebook picture. She said that I was very attractive, it was a little weird. I had only eyes for ... Delilah. Well, then, all of a sudden Delilah thought she could date me again. Perhaps now I would be hurt and pissed and offended. But then, all I wanted was her and I didn't care what she did as long as she'd have me.
I ate very little on our first date, or on the subsequent ones. It was at a place in Downtown Greenville called "Smoke on the Water" I had some kind of sandwich, she had chicken. We went down into Falls park afterwards, sat on a bench. She kissed me on the cheek. Then she kissed me on the mouth, I kissed back I guess, I know I was bad, I had never been kissed before. We kissed on the rocks in the nasty Reedy River, but I didn't think about that disgusting water. When I say kissed, I mean, no tongue, just clumsy naive lips.
We changed our Facebook status that night to in a relationship.
I couldn't drive while we were first dating, so I would go with my sisters to Starbucks (where they worked) and wait hours for her to come pick me up, and she was always late, but I didn't care, I didn't care at all, she would have me.
She eventually told me that I needed to be okay if she broke up with me, I told her It would take me longer than most people but that i'd be okay, (I actually had no idea if i would ever get over it, looking back I know I would have, but at the time).
Eventually, we finally got to go on that date to black balsom knob, and I loved her then, I loved her, and she wanted me to say it, this was probably 4 months into our relationship. We were at her house a few weeks later alone, we were cuddling, I wanted to tell her but I didn't want her to say that dreaded "You too". We were cuddling and she told me that what she was doing physically was akin to the way she felt. I looked her in the eyes, and said "I love you". She said i love you too and pulled me close.
I had never really considered sex in our relationship. She wanted to wait until marriage and I just wanted to be with her. I mean, we didn't french kiss until two months into our relationship. In December while on the phone (we talked hours on the phone) she was ovulating i know now, she told me she wanted to have sex with me. I never considered it, then after that, it became difficult not to consider it. She changed her mind the next week. About two months later we did, it consisted of us being alone at my house and "Okay, come in, come in." "Ouch! Ouch! Out! Out! Out!" After that a day later we bought the morning after pill to make sure that didn't make her pregnant. We were kind of inexperienced lets say. A few weeks later we had sex with a condom, it ended up with her in the hospital. She has ovarian cysts and our activities caused one to rupture and hemorrhage.
I felt awful, she spent days in the hospital because of me.
Did I mention I have guilt problems?
A little while after that we had a pregnancy scare. Not really a real one, She did the text wrong and made it come back a false positive.
She promised God that she wouldn't have sex again until she was married as long as she wasn't pregnant.
We didn't for a while, It was very difficult, not because of the feeling, as I've grown older I know what missing that feels like. It was difficult because I loved her with all my heart, we were 17 and we talked about getting married on my eighteenth birthday (I was the younger of us). We loved each other in a way that I cannot describe, I know many people would write it off as first love, but I don't think that, I think that was part of it, but not the whole story.
One night, I told her that we couldn't be alone because I didn't think I could take it. She was really proud of me, we went back to her house, we had eaten dinner with her family, and while alone in her room, she brought in a bible and we I read to her:
Corinthians 13
Love
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
then we read wedding vows to each other, I meant ever word will all my soul mind and heart.
It was in those moments, and moments really before and after that, that I promised so much.
Sex did for us everything we wanted it to, we felt closer, our love just grew and grew.
I went to a boarding school, SCGSAH, which was actually closer to her house than mine. But that wasn't enough, I had promised this girl everything, I wanted to live with her, I wanted to see her when I went to bed at night and when I woke up the next day. For all emotional purposes, I was married to her, but it began tearing at me. "Weekend Wife" I couldn't stand it.
After a long while, I began to let my resentment at our situation spread. I was scared of that, I didn't want it to poison what we had, there were other things too, curiosities, never being with anyone else, but I honestly don't think those were my problems then, I think they could have turned into problems, but I don't think they were my motivations.
I broke up with her.
It was the most difficult thing I've ever done in my short life.
And I have never forgiven myself for it.
I had a couple of relationships after that, far before I was ready.
And one of them, I had sex with.
I've never forgiven myself for that either, the reasons why are complicated and I'm too mentally weak to go on about it now.
But, the important part is, I grew to hate myself.
Far too short a time after that other relationship, we tried again.
It was bad in so many ways, she was an insecure nervous wreck and I wasn't any better. It ended quickly. Then at the end of the summer before college we tried again and she broke up with me the day we moved down and she tried to come back and I refused.
Months went by of me being in a very dark place, and she got sick of being there the way she was, whatever that quagmire was. And she decided to leave, I was shocked into action. I asked her to come back to me. I was so desperate for her not to really leave. I started looking at wedding bands again of my own accord. I tried really hard to be a good boyfriend, as she put it later, it was kind of a honeymoon period. Then, she did something that hurt me very deeply. She had liked someone before during that quagmire, and while we were dating again, she dolled herself up for a party. She usually invited me to parties, I usually refused, but she didn't invite me to this one. She dolled herself up, I always told her I really liked it when she wears really dark make-up, mostly i think because she never did. She did that night, in a way that she never had for me, she tried on multiple outfits, asking me which one I thought was the cutest. I suggested what I thought.
She had been invited by the boy she had liked, and she went and danced with him.
I know it doesn't sound like much, but it really discouraged me, I had really been trying to make it work that time, I had been trying so hard, and I was so hurt by that.
I went back in my shell. I closed up again. She encouraged me to seek help, but I refused, I wish to God I had. We had Christmas, back home. And it was wonderful. I drew strength from my family and finally decided to go back and go to counseling services and perhaps even get medication for my depression.
It turned out, that this was too little too late.
She broke up with me again about two weeks ago. I feel abandoned, and I almost refused to go back to counseling.
I've never really had thoughts about self harm. But the honest truth is that I'm not sure that I can be with anyone else. I've tried, but I think that I would freak out if I ever got to the alter with anyone else.
In the end, I don't want anyone but her. I don't think I could marry anyone but her.
And if she got married to someone else, I would hope to be there that day and see her happy and to wish the best for her and her husband.
Then, I could see myself going somewhere where no one I knew or know would find my body first, and shoot myself.
Because of the promises I broke, because of the kind of man that I can no longer become, and because of the pain of that moment, I could see myself doing a horrible act like that. I really hope it doesn't come to that, and I hope more that I will be in a better mental state if that should come to be. And I'm doing everything in my power to get there.
I have another meeting with the consoler tomorrow, and then I'm going to go home and surprise my parents.
I am looking forward, and I need to get better before I can be good for myself or anyone I may be with.
Ring the bells that still can ring,
forget your perfect offering,
there is a crack in everything,
that's how the light gets in.
I cut my hair again recently, one way or another, this is the third time i've done so dramatically for her, that's why I'm calling her Delilah.
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