I'd Be Lying If I Said

"Am I not capable of love
That kind of love
That I felt when I was twenty one
Cause I'd be lyin' if I said
You're not my biggest regret
I wish that I could take it back."


Once upon a time, there was a boy. Once upon a time, this boy liked me. Once upon a time, I was young, stupid and scared. Once upon a time, I screwed everything up.

I keep telling every one that I don't really mind being single and that I actually prefer it. The thing is, I'm starting to feel the opposite. Being single gets harder as you get older. Especially when every one around you, every one you know, seem to be getting married and/or having kids.

A little over a year ago, I met someone. I'm not sure if "met" would be an appropriate term because we never actually met in person, but for the sake of convenience, let's just go with it. I think I've mentioned him in a previous post (It's not LoverBoy, who by the way, lives in a far away place now. Long story.). This guy, let's call him J42, and I met on Formspring. He claimed that he knew me through his cousin, who I went to high school with. It seemed a little fishy, I know, but I was bored so I went along with it. He knew a bunch of things about me, which at first sort of freaked me out. We got to know each other over the course of almost two months. He was very upfront about liking me from the start. I on the other hand, just enjoyed the attention. I'd never had a guy "like" me before so it was all very new and exciting for me but still, in the back of my mind, I kept thinking "Is this guy for real? Does he actually like me?". It didn't seem likely. That's how high my self esteem is. I briefly considered the possibility that maybe it was just one of my friends messing with me. They assured me it wasn't any of them.

He would ask me about my day, if I had already eaten and other little things like that and at first I found it a bit annoying but eventually, I found it kind of sweet. We liked pretty much all of the same things and whenever we had different opinions about something, well "we'll always have Muse".  Muse is both our favorite band. No matter how many things we disagreed on, we always had Muse. That's the thing I liked most about him, he never said things just to impress me and he was never afraid to disagree with me. We talked every night, sometimes until morning in YM and needless to say, I ended up falling for him (but I would never admit it at the time). I tried to act coolly, like he didn't matter to me at all. I even tried to push him away a bunch of times. At the end of the almost two months, we pretty much knew everything about each other, except he still wouldn't tell me his real name. Here I was, opening myself up to someone who wouldn't even tell me his name. I thought it was unfair. He wanted me to trust him and I wanted to, but he didn't make it very easy. All I wanted was for him to meet me halfway. If I was gonna fall, I wanted to be sure that someone would catch me.

Finally, he asked if I wanted to meet him in person. I said yes. For a while, I actually thought that I could be happy with this person. For a while, I actually thought that I could do it. That I could just close my eyes and let myself fall. God knows I wanted to. But I backed out the day before we were supposed to meet. I couldn't do it. I kept trying to make up an excuse about why I changed my mind but the simple truth was, I was scared. I was scared because it could have been potentially the start of something totally alien to me: an actual relationship. I don't know why that scared me so much. I would never ever forget what he said to me that night. I still remember every word of it.

"We have a chance at something special and you just threw it away. Well I hope you don't regret this decision. I'm done."


He never spoke to me again. It's been almost two years, but reading those words still hurt as much as the day I first read them. He was right of course. I did end up regretting my decision. I still do, every single day. I want to hate him for giving up so easily. I wanted him to wait for me, to fight for me. But I guess there's only so much a person can take. There are days when I would spend hours reading our old conversations on Formspring from start to finish, the rise and fall of our non-relationship. It makes me sad and I miss him terribly. I keep thinking about how things could have turned out if I went through with it. What if I weren't so scared back then? Would my life be different from how it is now? Would we have ended up together? That's the worst question a person can have in her life. "What if?"

Sometimes I hate myself for doing what I did. I threw away a perfectly good shot at love and happiness. I want to try and find J42 but I don't know where to start. I don't even know his real name. I wish I could go back to that summer and undo the things I did and do the things I didn't. I wish I could have another chance.

To J42, in the off chance that you might be reading this, I just want to say I'm sorry for screwing things up. I'm sorry for being scared back then, but I'm not anymore. I promise not to run away this time. If you still feel the same way about me, you know how to reach me. I'll be waiting. I miss you every day.