Heartbreaker

Last week, one of my twitter buddies asked her followers how many hearts they’d broken in their lifetime. She stated that, to her knowledge, she’s only broken 1.5 (that .5 is questionable, she says). I thought about my body-count in the realm of love, and I can only recall one (that I know of), but that one instance was pretty hard on me. Ironically, it was around this time that year that it happened. Let’s hop in the time-machine and travel back to Tallahassee, FL, circa September-ish 2000…

It was early in my first semester at FAMU. I was making a routine trip to the mail room on a Saturday afternoon (when you’re a broke, hungry college freshman, you tend to check your mail like clockwork). I was pleasantly surprised by one particular piece of mail I got that day. It was from a young lady from my church back home. We’ll call her “T”. Here’s a little background on my relationship with T at that time:

I met T sometime earlier that year, though I can’t say exactly when. What I can remember is that I began to develop a crush on her sometime between mid-Summer and the beginning of my freshman year. The situation was one I was all too familiar with: I liked a girl who didn’t like me back. We were friends, but I could tell that she wasn’t really feelin’ me. As the time to head off for college drew closer and closer, I began to think about the possibilities of finding a potential girlfriend. I’d heard that the female-male ratio at FAMU was ridiculously lopsided. For someone who had never had a girlfriend up to that point, it was music to my ears. I’d heard that the ratio was anywhere from 3 to 1 all the way to a most likely exaggerated 10 to 1. Either way, it made perfect sense for me to wait until I arrived in Tallahassee to make any serious moves in the relationship department. However, I learned the hard way that no matter what you decide on in your mind, it’s hard to keep what’s in your heart from overflowing into your actions. As much as I tried to dial down my interest in T, she could still tell that I liked her. However, that didn’t change how she felt about me. Or so I thought…

Ok, so back to my special piece of mail. I opened the envelope to find a letter from T. This wasn’t just any old letter, mind you. She had written it on notebook paper, but only used the middle third of the paper. She cut the paper out and pasted it onto yellow construction paper, and used various colors of markers to draw hearts, stars, butterflies, and other lovey-dovey, girly things all over the paper. Due to all this, what would have been a 1.5 page letter was stretched out to a 4-page letter O_O. I can’t remember the exact words of her letter of course, but the “Cliff Notes” version would read something like this: “I didn’t like you when you were here, but now that you’re gone, I like you.” I was both elated and peeved about this at the same time. I was happy that someone I liked finally liked me back, but was annoyed that she didn’t begin to like me until I lived a four-hour drive away. Oh, how love has a strange sense of timing.

T also mentioned in her letter that she would be writing me a lot. This, my beloved readers, is a perfect case of “You think you know, but you have no idea.” Trust me when I say that there is no cockiness or arrogance involved in what I’m about to say, but the amount of letters (yes, this is the year 2000 when we hadn’t quite completely abandoned the concept of the hand-written letter) and e-mails I got from T bordered on obsession. I’ll give you guys an example of just how deep this thing went: I was on the infamous Blackplanet.com (the Myspace of its time) back then. I had numerous friends and had doctored up my page with all types of photos and animated GIFs and such, and I was a regular in the chat rooms. Shortly after T’s initial letter to me, she joined Blackplanet as well. However, every time I went to visit her page, no matter how much time had passed, she’d done nothing to her page. No bio, no profile pic, no background change, no nothing. Her page showed she had only one friend: me. I was the only reason she had joined Blackplanet.

While I did enjoy the attention I was getting from her, and relished the fact that someone actually liked me back, I knew in my heart that I didn’t want to start my first relationship ever with someone who was close to 300 miles away, not when there was the possibility of having someone closer. Yet, I still had feelings for her and was attracted to her, and didn’t know how to suppress that in my interactions with her. I’m ashamed to admit that I allowed my actions to lead her on to think that we were going somewhere. After a few weeks passed, I began to give this situation some deep thought. I didn’t feel right about it. That weekend, I returned home along with my roommate, his girlfriend, and several of her girlfriends for the annual FAMU vs TSU classic. I had bought T a ticket to come to the game with us, but for reasons I can’t remember, she wasn’t able to make it (I can remember, however, that ma dukes wasn’t too happy about it and felt she could have made more of an effort to come, but I digress). While I was at home, I talked with my dad about what I was feeling. He gave me some advice that I held on to up to this day; advice that I think all men should heed to. He told me that a big problem that many men have is not being up front about how they really feel, and that I should let her know what was going on with me at the very next opportunity.

I took my dad’s advice to heart. The next contact I had with T was when we were chatting on Blackplanet (in retrospect, I realize that this was a pretty whack way of going about it. Honestly, I really can’t remember if I purposely started the conversation there out of fear of conflict, or if I went for it out of convenience since I just happened to see her online. Anyway, the current version of me would have called her). I tried to ease into the topic, and I can’t remember how I started it off, but somehow T knew exactly where this was going. The conversation went downhill from there. She was upset, to say the least. Her parting words will forever be etched in my memory: “Let me get off of here ‘cause I’m not about to sit up on this computer and cry.” I left that conversation thinking to myself: “What have I done?”

I couldn’t stand the thought that I had broken someone’s heart; that I had lead someone on. I had always seen on various talk shows how men got a bad rap for cheating on women, dogging them out, and otherwise mistreating them in relationships. I had vowed to myself that I would never be “that guy,” that I would never give a woman any reason to think of me as a “dog” or “cheater.” Before I knew it, I had done just that. I felt horrible about it. It felt like a breakup, and we weren’t even together. If I didn’t already feel bad about it on my own, T made extra sure that I would. Over the next week or so, I continued to get emails from T, but they were no where near as pleasant as the ones she sent before. She told me how she used to have a picture of me in her wallet, and when others asked her who I was, she’d reply that I was someone who’d be “very close to her” very soon, but since our conversation, she had taken it out. I thought to myself, “Why even mention that now?” She also went on about how she thought I was different from other guys, but I proved her wrong. Feeling depressed about the situation, I called my mom and told her everything. Mom acknowledged where I messed up, but told me that although T was sincerely hurt, she was being immature and manipulative about the situation, trying to get me to feel as bad about it as she did (hey, it was working). She assured me that I really wasn’t like those other guys, and that I did the right thing once I realized that what I was doing was wrong. I wrote T back, telling her the same thing. I told her that “other guys” would have continued to lead her on, possibly even cheated on her while having another girl locally. Needless to say, Mom’s words were very timely. I felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders after her pep-talk.

So, there it is, my first and only time breaking someone’s heart. I learned a few valuable lessons from it. I learned that I have to keep careful watch over my words and actions when hearts and feelings are involved. I also learned to be very clear about my intentions when it comes to relationships so that I don’t give any false direction or hope. Finally, I learned how to not allow a woman to drag me onto a proverbial “emotional roller-coaster” with her. As for my own heart, I have chips, bruises and few fumbles here and there, but for the most part, it remains in-tact. Hopefully, I’ll be smart enough about who I allow to hold it so that it won’t sustain any unnecessary heavy damage.