The Worst Year of my Life - Part One
Looking back, I think it’s safe to say that it was the worst year of my life. I don’t say that lightly, since my life has been pretty good. Everyone has a worse time in their life; a low point that truly feels like rock bottom. This particular year, 2015, brought about unexpectant change that I hardly saw coming. I was in a dying relationship when the New Year arrived, although I hadn’t figured that out yet. The first few months brought about the same dull beginning as the end of 2014 and I figured it was going to be another rather uneventful year. Relatively uneventful would be more accurate.
My girlfriend, Faith Ferris, had agreed to date me on January 15th, 2014. It was hardly romantic, the way I had asked. Standing in the musty hallway of a public high school that neither of us attended, after a low budget play, I awkwardly asked her if she would be my girlfriend. She agreed, and my first relationship was underway. The relationship started out awkward, mostly my fault by I would also put part of the blame on Faith. February 14th, just one day shy of our one-month anniversary, I presented Faith with her Valentines’ Day gift. I had spent most of the day before making a blue, origami, tissue paper, rose. It was homemade, clearly, but it was the sentiment that was supposed to bring up the rest. I wasn’t completely untraditional, as I also gave her some chocolates in a heart-shaped box. Faith, in return, gave me nothing. She claimed that she would give me a gift, to which, I never saw. If that doesn’t clue you in to how the rest of the relationship unfolded, then I don’t know what will. Shortly after the first day in April, I worked up the courage to hold Faith’s hand. We had never held hands before. So, when I finally fought my self-fighting demons and grabbed her hand, interlocking my fingers with hers, it felt like a hundred stars had just exploded inside me; for the rest of the seven second walk it took to get to her car. Not even then did I realized what sort of nightmare that 2015 would bring for me.
June 1st, 2014. My first day as a Junior Counselor and freshly graduated high school student. I had graduated the day before, my beautiful girlfriend telling me how proud she was and handing me a card, which spelled out how lucky she felt to be dating me. Now, the following day, I was sitting on rotting camp benches, about to embark on the most nerve-wrecking, self-questioning, self-doubting, three months of my life. I had signed up for camp because of Faith. I figured it was a good opportunity to spend the first summer with my girlfriend. I figured that we would spend lots of time together, maybe sneaking off to hold hand in the woods and gossip about our co-workers. I couldn’t have been further from the truth. Faith took her camp job very seriously. She made sure she followed every rule to the book and made sure she caught up with all her camp friends that she hadn’t seen for a year. Meanwhile, I almost got in my first fight with a co-counselor, barely into the first week. Maybe I was slightly ambitious, trying to spend the whole summer with Faith. She was my first girlfriend, maybe I was doing something wrong. The weeks drew on and I felt farther and farther away from the one person I cared for most. The summer ended standing in front of my girlfriend as all our friends said goodbye and cried. I hugged her and told her everything would be okay.
“I love you,” Faith said, her words as surprising as my entire summer had been.
How she had managed to figure that out, while almost going an entire summer ignoring me, well that is a mystery I’m sure that I’ll never solve. The fall arrived and things stabilized. They weren’t normal, don’t get me wrong. Faith still didn’t treat me like I was her boyfriend and gave me barely enough, just so I didn’t lose my mind. I loved her-the problem was trying to get her to love me the same way. As the year came to a bitter and cold end, I had more questions than answers.
The spring of 2015, the beginning of the worst year of my life, I enrolled in my first full semester of community college. I was excited, nervous, and interested to see how life outside of homeschooling would treat me. It was cruel. I found school easier than teaching chemistry to myself, in a home office because the material had surpassed even the knowledge of my teacher, also disguised as my mom. However, while school got easier, life got harder. Faith grew further from me and I worked even harder to win her back. I constantly tried to think of things I could change about myself just so that she would look at me the way I saw other girls look at boys they loved. Faith and I played on the same soccer team, I often came over to her house for dinner, and we, attempted, to carry a texting conversation every day. Finally, nearing the beginning of spring, Faith began to sign up for summer camp again. I had the opportunity to become the lifeguard and so I dove head first into what I believed would be a much different summer than the one I had experienced before. Maybe Faith, upon seeing the man she claimed she loved, shirtless and lacking many of the fine muscles that he should have had, on top of a lifeguard chair, that maybe she would realize that she really did love him. With everything she had. One can certainly dream. As summer rapidly approached, I began to worry that I was going to lose Faith once and for all. I knew that I had to do something drastic to show her just how much she meant to me. One night, while watching a movie in her basement, I quickly devised a plan. It had been in the works for weeks, I just hadn’t found the right time. When I was sure that Faith least suspected it, I quickly leaned down and kissed her. It lasted less than a second, with the rest of the movie sat in awkward silence and a guilty conscious on my part. It was the most embarrassing thing I had done in awhile and it was my first kiss. As summer began, and no more kisses following the first, I threw myself into trying to win my girlfriend back. With the help of a camp director, I tried everything to get some sort of reaction out of Faith. Finally, the end of summer arrived with no success and I greatly anticipated the end of camp and the exciting return to my normal life in this abnormal relationship. But I was not a quitter.
“Mr. Ferris, I would like to marry your daughter.”
Grant smiled, knowing this was the reason for the breakfast that I had set up.
“Do you love her?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied quickly, “and I want to spend the rest of my life with her.”
I thought the better question that should have been asked was, “does she love you?” but of course that was a question that neither of us could answer. If she didn’t love me, I was going to make sure she fell deeply in love with me.
“Faith is a difficult girl,” Grant replied. “Unlike her mom, I’m not sure she has ever prepared for this moment. She doesn’t communicate with us like we would like her too and we aren’t sure where she stands. Truth is, I would be honored for you to marry her. However, I ask that you give her one more year. Let her figure out exactly what she wants from life.”
Those words were hard for me to swallow but Faith was someone that was worth waiting for. So, I through myself into the last main week of camp, ready to figure out what Faith wanted with her life.
The day following the end of camp, Faith broke up with me.
“I think I just want to be friends,” she said quietly but confidently on the phone.
It wasn’t the words that hurt as much as the confidence behind them. She had been thinking about this for a long time now and I had no choice but to sit in my dark living room that I shared with four other roommates and listen to the breathing of the girl that no longer wanted me. That was the first of the four girls to shoot me down in 2015 and the first of two that truly broke my heart.
TO BE CONTINUED