For years now, I have tried to hide the biggest part of this story, because even though it's 2017 and everyone's social lives depend on a good Wi-Fi connection, I've been afraid of being judged because I sure have been judging myself since it happened.
There I was at 15 years old, with very poor self-esteem, giving my heart to whoever called me "pretty" — first red flag. There he was, 1,800 miles away — second red flag — at 19 years old — third red flag. Now, we're gonna call him Enrique: Colombian, mostly Catholic, around 5'9 ft tall (or that's what he said), an engineering major, obsessed with video games and soccer...but he had me at Colombian.
After long conversations about life, and falling asleep on Skype together in many occasions, we found out that we had a lot of things in common; for example, we both had been unlucky with love. He had just ended a serious relationship of 3 years and I was madly in love with my best friend at the time, who I saw falling in and out of relationships with many girls but didn't have any interest in me, which only added more to my insecurities. Months later, Enrique decided to ask me to be his girlfriend. By this time, I was pretty sure I was in love with this guy, and without hesitation, I said "Yes!" Of course, it didn't take long for people to start asking questions: "So he's in Colombia?" "When are you going to see him?" " "Have you guys even met yet?" To which I didn't have an answer. I was embarrassed about the fact that people thought it was all just fake; even some of his friends would message me and tell me I was a catfish. My best friends even told me, "How do you know that he's not cheating on you? He could very well have another girlfriend in Colombia." But I decided not to listen — fourth red flag.
The relationship went on longer than everyone expected. After coming back from a school break, my friends asked again, "How can you still be with him? You don't even know him." So I decided to make up a story and tell everyone that he came to visit me during the break. I said that we had fun and that what we had was real. I didn't think much of it when I said it; I lied to defend our love from what others had to say, and that's okay, right? He never knew about it. "Don't listen to them, they don't know how your relationship works" — I said to myself — "He loves you." And even though I tried to ignore all those things people would say, I couldn't help but think, "When will I see him? It has been a year now and none of us have made any type of effort to see each other."
The worst thing about long distance relationships is that they take a lot more effort than regular relationships. I'm not saying relationships, in general, aren't difficult to handle. When you are missing all those things that make love simple like holding hands, hugging or just hanging out, you have to compensate with a whole lot of time, words of affirmation, genuine one-on-one communication, and many other things. With time, the imminent happened. As we both got older, our responsibilities in our personal lives grew. He was in his sophomore year of college, and I had just moved to the United States and started my junior year of high school. The arguments, the lack of communication, the misunderstandings and the jealousy just got the worst of us.
Through our second year of the relationship, I decided to say what we both had been thinking: "This is not working." I would be lying if I said it didn't break me completely. Throughout the entire relationship, I was still very insecure. The fact that the only boy that actually had true feelings for me was so far away killed me. He didn't take it very well.
To this day, I continue to tell people who ask about my past relationships that we did meet that summer. Until now.
This experience taught me many lessons about relationships and love, but most importantly, it made me realize the person that I was: clingy, desperate and unaware of my self-worth. I promised myself that I would love who I am before loving anyone else again. So far, so good.
