Sorry for the long winded history, but I just need to reflect on a few things and would love some advice and input on these topics:
1) Should I have been more upfront about her nastiness? I often avoided conflict for her because I wanted to maintain my responsibility with her being so young and didn’t want to use my age to belittle her. But the more I think about it, I think I should have called her out on things more as a form of learning. And I did do that. But it wasn’t also just the age thing, but I have had a fear of conflict throughout my life, and in some ways I was scared of her. What the fuck? That’s weird. Her ugly side was certainly ugly, and I was hopeful it was just a stage. As someone who is naturally empathetic, I have to let go of responsibility for people changing for the better. Only they can do that. Be the change you want to see in the world. And I know – or confuse knowledge with hope – that it stems from these insecurities of hers. A product of her age. And I know based on our beautiful and romantic moments she is a wonderful soul. But she will make mistakes: she will get with shitty guys, get drunk, be hurtful towards people, and I just hope she learns from these experiences.
But then who am I to judge her ugly sides? I can be bitter, I can be vindictive, I can be mean, and these are things I want to change on. Who the fuck was I at 16? I would be an ultimate internet troll who would feel better about myself by making others feel bad. And here is where the compassion comes back in, and the hope that she grows out of this. I am still capable of all of this. But I guess I want her to cultivate self-awareness and realise that these qualities are only harmful for her.
2) I still have severe mistrust issues and regularly doubt everything she has said. I resent her for this. Did someone even touch her? Does she truly love? And lately I realised that I need to accept the anger and betrayal despite all of the issues. The emotions are there and suppressing them will only create further complications. I can rationalize all the age issues, all the insecurity issues, the fact our time was brief, but in the end I feel a state of betrayal. This comes in waves. Should I express this towards her and make her feel bad? It’s difficult to feel this anger and betrayal and still want to maintain, ultimately, a compassionate love for her.
And yet, in my past, I used girls purely for sex and manipulated my words and my story in order to have my cake and eat it too. Age and experience taught me this is not the best. But at the same time, I feel that I didn’t express the full extent of my hurt, and therefore she won’t have learned her lesson.
3) At first I thought I was going through the heartbreak more than her because she was the one that ultimately called it off. But lately she has been expressing her loneliness and her longing to just fall deeper in love with me, and hates the fact these age issues exist. I have tried my best to offer her advice and emphasise being thankful for our brief romance and that there is complete beauty in the world, and there is someone in this world that loves her for her. Everytime I help her or offer my heart, despite not wanting to, I feel I go back to step one in the healing process. She feels comforted to know we are sharing the pain together, but letting her know this makes me feel worse and the fact she is feeling better from it. It seems like a drug fix for her.
Selfless love should not want to see the other hurt.
4) And when she says “I miss you”, I begin to wonder if it is not so much me she misses, but the concept of me. Or the concept of love. And I wonder if goes back to my insecurity issues that I am not deserving of love. What is the difference between I miss you out of love and I miss you out of loneliness? Can both co-exist? Should I resent her if it is only the former? I want her to love me, not just need me when she is feeling lonely. I feel there is selfish and I feel used. And if it is loneliness, no doubt she would be messaging other guys. But at the same time, I too feel lonely. And no matter how much I want to just feel selfless love for her, I am felt with waves of selfish love. I want her to be there with me to make me feel loved. To make me feel special. So it would be once again hypocritical to resent her for having feelings of loneliness (especially at her age). I just hope that she truly loves me for me. Even if it is at 17 and probably just a teenage crush. I just hope I have had a positive impact on her life. And am I truly in love with her, or in love with the idea of love? Can both co-exist? I look at her independent of my huge heart, and ongoing desire to love, and there are so many qualities of her that are so beautiful. Her appreciation for things that so many people overlook, her dark sense of humor, her ways of thinking. And I guess nobody is perfect. But I cannot deny I fell in love with the romantic idea of love, and we both loved this, and that is what made the dream so magical.
The last thing I said to her was this, two days ago: “It breaks my heart to know you are hurting too. If I could take your pain along with my own, out of my selfless love, I would. It breaks my heart I have to cease affectionate words for both our sakes. And it breaks my heart that the only one that I truly want to heal my pain is the only one that cannot.”
5) All of this has been so complicated. I wouldn’t trade anything at all for the dreamlike magic I felt around her. Until she came into my life, seeing two people be romantic each other was always like watching between a screen or listening to someone speak a foreign language. I could appreciate it, and want it, but I could not directly empathise it. Now I can empathise with the love that I finally got to express onto someone, as opposed to unreciprocated love; I can empathise with the heartbreak; I can empathise with betrayal. All the songs about love and heartbreak make so much more sense. And in this way, it is a beautiful sadness that I am feeling. I have learned a lot from this, and I am going to keep hurting, but I know I will come out of this better. I know being with a girl of her age and maturity levels was never going to work, and I was in denial about many things, but I needed this. I am not a bad person for falling in love with someone so young because I cannot deny our connection, but I know culturally and individually it would have been too hard on both of us.
Will we reconnect? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe I will realise that her bad qualities are more than just compensations and we were not meant to be. I just hope I helped her because I feel that she lets seldom people in, overcompensates, and I am glad we got to experience something magical together – even if it ended in heartbreak.