Turning Back Tuesday's

Please forgive me...I've been a horrible poster/reader/commenter this past week. What can I say? I suck!

So...about Mark.

He gave me his email...I wrote him. A series of instant messages followed. I couldn't tell if he was as "in" to me as I was to him.

Christmas break rolled around, and I decided I was going to make my move. I told him I was having a Christmas party...and I was so smooth, that he was the only guy I had invited. It was innocent, and fun. Drinking was involved (of course, DUH!) and before I knew it, our lips were entangled and my goal was accomplished.

He was mine.

I was so happy with our relationship. This was my second actual semi-serious boyfriend. His family was great. His friends were meh. Our relationship was met with challenges since I was going to school 2.5 hours away...I won't lie, I actually drove to the cities drunk because he was going to a strip club, and I had zero self esteem to handle that or control my actions.

I digress.

The classic thought "if I knew then what I know now" haunts me when I think about all of the silly things Mark and I mixed words over.

Did I mention Mark is completely opposite of me? He is very introverted and apathetic. I am very extroverted and sympathetic. He would prefer to sit in his room for 8 hours straight playing computer games. I prefer to go to the movies, meet friends at the bars or talk about nothing for hours. He feels like the world hates him. I love the world and everything it has to offer.

Almost every relationship has its negative stories associated with it. As frustrated as I am about our tainted history together, he really is and was an amazing guy.

On a college student's budget, he surprised me by renting a hotel room, getting my stuff into the room, setting up a romantic setting with a burned cd filled with romantic love songs, and completely sweeping me off of my feet. There hasn't been a man since who has done something so amazing for me.

A year and a half into our relationship, Mark and I sat down to have a serious talk. Things had been ugly between the two of us. It was almost as if our relationship tensions mimicked that of an unhappy married couple who had been wanting to divorce each other for over a decade. He looked at me, and told me he had something to tell me, but couldn't figure out how to say it.

To this day, I still think he was going to tell me he was gay. I don't know why, but if you could've seen the look on his face...

He told me he had become un-attracted to me because of my weight. I had gained the freshman 15 (ok, so maybe it was 20), but I wasn't grotesquely overweight. I was completely crushed. Maybe the look of fear on his face was his poor attempt at being sympathetic. He knew his words would crush me, and they did.

I told him to leave, and he did. That was the beginning of the end for Mark and I. From that moment on, what we had was broken. There wasn't a remedy to resolve our issues. We tried being friends with benefits. We tried just being friends. Our issues continued to circulate around dysfunction.

The night I had told Mark that I was pregnant, he stated the obvious thing to do was to have an abortion. He literally spelled it out. The baby wasn't his. I had been dating another guy (who I'll fill you in about later...). Maybe this is me making an excuse for Mark, but he is very analytical, and feared the costs of raising a child would break me. He knew I wasn't going to have support. I set him straight, gently reminding him that I was a strong person. Mark was actually in the hospital room when I delivered baby boy almost two and a half years ago (Marks face was a shade of white that can never be reproduced..I still chuckle when I think about it!).

My friendship with Mark ended a little over three months ago. He's still a great person, but had unresolved resentment towards me. He would bottle this resentment and explode at me (in front of baby boy) once every six months or so. I had warned him that I wouldn't tolerate behavior like that in front of baby boy...maybe he didn't think I was serious. Labor day weekend, he exploded at me in front of baby boy, and we haven't spoken since.

The story of Mark makes me smile, but also makes me cry. I can say with utmost certainty that I've grown a lot because of Mark (in more ways than one...haha, I'm funny!). I've also learned a lot from him, and for this, I am grateful.