I want my teddy bear back. I know I will never get it back, and that I never should, but it sure would be fun getting it back. I would give it to my friends and it would become our group/clan's sigil, and have it serve as an apology for all the times I didn't choose them. My friends and I would ram down her door and rush up the stairs, havoc ensuing upon arrival. I imagine cheering as I throw Gort, the 53" plush teddy bear I bought her, over my shoulder and run out of the house. I think I might blast Runaround Sue, by Dion, on my speakers as we ran down the street. I might leave money behind, say I am buying back my gift so I am not completely in the wrong. But if I don't, I think I would be able to subdue my conscious with the argument that she broke relationship rules first.

I have fantasized about this a couple times, but I know I will never really do anything to get her back. There was this one time I thought I did, when I saw her with her boyfriend, and another friend in the hallway. And the guy kept trying to get some laughs by saying hello to me; eventually I just turned to him and told him good luck, but turns out it was actually one of her boyfriend's friends so I just looked like an idiot. That is the extent of my pay back however, which is good, because that is how I am going to go back to who I was. In the past, my identity could have been categorized into two, non exclusive, parts: the good guy and the good boyfriend.

At my old school I was a jerk. I was not a good person, I didn't care about anything, and I hated a lot of people. There was still the good guy in me, but he only came out during my volunteer time (working for special needs kids), and for one month every year at summer camp. When I switched schools going into 9th grade, I had to chose between the volunteer/summer me or the other side of me, so I chose the nice guy. I was nice to everyone, held the door open, was there for people when they needed me, and most importantly I was a good friend.

The thing about all the times I was nice is that there were girls, where as at my old school, there were all guys. Probably the reason I try to be a nice guy is for the girls. For a longtime I convinced myself that I wasn't good at anything, but if I could be a good guy, then I could be a good boyfriend if I had the chance--and that kind of became my identity. I spent years at camp, my freshman year, and the first couple months of sophomore year convinced that being a boyfriend was the only thing I could ever be good at. The thing was when I finally got the girlfriend and the second part of my identity, I could feel the first part of my identity being ripped away. I spent so much time trying to be the perfect guy for the girl, that I couldn't be there for my friends, and every time I had to chose between them I had to choose her or else I was losing the one thing I was good at. She controlled who I was and drained me. Even when I was with my friends I was attached to my phone for her, like a tether, and I would almost always leave early. Every time I managed to summon up the courage to choose my friends she held it over my head. I would get stuck in these phases of emptiness where I was no longer the good boyfriend and I had lost too much ground to be the good friend. At the end, after everything had happened (including the ten month relationship and the break up) my self esteem was demolished and I was left wondering how I messed up being the good boyfriend.

In a way I got lucky, because she put me in a place where I had to break up with her, and I am not sure I would have done it in any other case. Of course I didn't feel lucky at the time, I felt more empty and pissed. Most emotional break-up stories are about the break up, but that isn't what I wanted to talk about--although believe me there is a story. In all honesty I just wanted to rant, and if this article is ever somehow published, I didn't want to piss her off. It is a good thing that I don'want piss her off though, because a good person shouldn't want revenge, and if I am ever going to get my identity back, I am going to have to start back at part one.