You name him, I’ve dated him. The overly attached, mildly obsessive emo kid. Check. The self involved, my-shit-don’t-stink Pre-Med. Check. The anime loving, World of Warcraft playing uber geek. Check. Then came the Marine. Well… the soon-to-be Marine.
We went to high school together, but he graduated a year before me. He actually dated a girl I was really cool with in high school, and for a split second I felt guilty about dating him for that reason. But hey, I hadn’t talked to her since graduation, so he was fair game, right?
We started hanging out in April, and I knew from the get-go that he was leaving for boot camp by the end of May. But I figured that in the meantime, we could go out and have some fun, write letters to one another (how 1940s retro-romantic!), and maybe when he came back on leave we could go out on the casual date.
He was amazing. He made me laugh harder than anyone had ever before. He was into the same things I was. He was an amazing kisser. He held my hand everywhere. He looked me in the eye when talking to me. He was amazing in bed. Actually, he blew my mind. He was a gentleman. He opened doors. He paid for things. He told me I was beautiful. He told me I was different from any girl he ever met. I would fall asleep on his chest to wake up, finding him looking at me with a look of utter happiness.
Needless to say, I fell quick. And hard. He asked me to be his girlfriend. Knowing that he was leaving in a few weeks, I was a little hesitant. I didn’t say yes… but I didn’t say no either. He seemed cool with my response. “We’ll just see where we are before I leave, and then we can decide where to go from there,” he said.
Then the shit hit the fan. The condom broke.
[Side note: I promise if this has happened to you, that you are not the only one. It is the shittiest feeling in the entire world, and every future plan that you had, every thing that you had been working so hard for all runs through your mind at once. It could all change at that very instant]
I was catatonic. I just sat on the couch and stared. He rubbed my back, he kissed my forehead. “I didn’t plan for this,” I whimpered. “You didn’t plan on me either, but we turned out good,” he responded. We drove to a 24-hour pharmacy and he shelled out fifty bucks for the morning-after pill. He took care of me. He stayed with me until I calmed down. He cried. He told me I meant the world to him, and the only thing he wanted to do before he left for boot camp was to spend every waking minute with me.
A few days later I got really sick. I was on the floor of the computer lab at school, crying in agony, when he called to check up on me. He skipped the rest of his classes for the day to drive me home. He went to CVS and got me supplies and medicine and tucked me in. He took care of me again. He was amazing.
That weekend he got the stomach virus from hell. He looked like shit. Pale and clammy. I tried calling him a few times and sending him texts to see how he was doing. No response. This had gone beyond him being sick and not feeling well enough to talk. This was hurting my feelings. Maybe I was being a bit neurotic but after a few days I was fed up. I called him and told him I needed to talk.
He told me I was annoying. And a badger. And that I came on too strong. How was I the one who came on too strong when he was the one who wanted to spend “every waking minute” with me? He took care of me when I was sick, and I was merely trying to do the same for him. Yet I was the annoying one? It made no sense to me.
“I was trying to show you I cared, and I wanted to take care of you like you took care of me, what did you expect from me?” I yelled in pathetic, little-girl desperation. “I didn’t expect anything,” he responded. I was heated. “You had to have expectations… you wanted me to be your girlfriend!” Silence. “Yeah, I did. And you said NO.” So that’s what this was about. He felt rejected. How childish.
I wish we could have worked it out, but he’s leaving for boot camp in a week. I decided that I wanted to smooth things over. I wrote him a really sweet Facebook message about how I know he’ll do great in the Marines, and how I wanted him to leave with us on good terms. His response: the very mature action of blocking me on both Facebook and Instant Messenger.
I’m still trying to figure out what happened. Did the whole morning-after debacle scare him? Did me not accepting the commitment of being his girlfriend offend him? Was I really an annoying psycho-bitch? I still don’t understand this boy at all. But I’m not going to let it get me down. I know that I was the bigger person in this situation. I know I am a caring human being with enough love in my heart to mediate reconciliation between Heidi and LC. And maybe, because he was leaving, that’s what freaked him out.
In retrospect, I’m glad this happened. I’m glad I found out he was a douche bag that’s incapable of dealing with his emotions now, instead of waiting around for months for him to come home on leave and find out then. Moral of the story: Never date a Marine. They’re nuts.
Jessica Geoghan
Philadelphia, PA
jageoghan@gmail.com