Open-ended boy

[On the night when memories rushed back]

I sometimes feel like I'm such a walking cliché. Being a commitment phobic doesn't make me seem edgy, more different or more complex. It's a fact, one that I have had doubts about. However, I've just been called out on by my best friend tonight. He told me that he's getting concerned about how I seem to be falling into an easy habit of making out with everything that moves when I'm a bit stressed and need some place to re-channel that negative emotion . As a girl who just reaches her 20 and in college, that's probably normal. But after hearing he said that, I have realized that it has become a lifestyle, one that is kind of hard to break.

I believe in amazing love songs, cry at the sappiest ending in films, write about relationships as a creative outlet. I sometimes want to be a writer when I'm older. These are signs that point to the road of 'romance'. So why then, do I not let myself believe and fall all the way in?

I have fallen before, let my guard down, with a slightly emotionally unavailable guy I met at school. I have fallen before, for someone who was bad for me. And I have tried to fall for someone who was nice, who was constant, but I ended up running anyway. I have recently fallen again, for a guy who lives halfway across the world, one who I may not see again for a few years.

We've known each other since we were in 10th grade, and we keep re connecting different parts of 'us' (if I can even call it that), whenever we can. Our conversation flows. As time goes on and we try less and less, it becomes a shock to finally meet again, and to learn how much we have both changed, both physically and emotionally, and how comforting it is to realize that we're the same kids we've always been.

So from then we begin a two day commitment. Dinner,  lunch, movie, phone calls, texts, etc. We kissed for the first time, and he kisses just like I hoped and wanted him to, and somewhere along the line, the commitment phobic began to give pieces of herself she never really did.

Then everything just fell apart again. My commitment phobic came back, and I turned away. Or it was his this time? I wonder. We both turned away from each other. I had a harder time getting over this than I thought I would be. It brought the cynical side of me out, and I became even less emotional, less attached, and more reckless that I have ever been. I've become the "guy" lady who flirt and make out with "everything that moves" and that can strike up a decent conversation or put up some good dance moves.

Then he came into my life suddenly with a wake up call,

I don't like commitment, I get scared of giving someone parts of me that they could break. I don't like admitting to feelings, even though I have a lot of them. So while I'm smiling at the fact that this could be left open ended, I am telling myself that there's no way we'll maintain this skype-facebook flirtation for long. I am an optimist for life but a terrible cynic for love.

I know that he'll be at the back of my mind for a while, so while I do my 'single girl' thing, maybe there'll be a fraction of me that would feel like I'm cheating on someone who is halfway across the world.

I might just allow myself to fall someday, if not with him, then someone else. But him, my 'open ended boy', has taught me, in the span of two days, that maybe falling (if not cautiously) may not be such a terrible thing to endure.

It's almost a year, boy.

[az]