It may not always be so.

There was this guy I loved for a long time. Of course I didn’t really love him because when you meet someone when you’re young you don’t know anything about anything, especially not anything about love. And he was a typical college guy. The problem with that is that like most typical college guys (or just typical guys) he didn’t know what he wanted, so he decided he wanted everything. He wanted everything and nothing and didn’t know how to go about getting either without hurting or lying or cheating on someone else. It’s like he was two people: one, duplicitous, the other decent.

Sometimes I don’t know if guys ever really know what they want aside from a steady influx of burritos, baseball and beer; but at one point this guy made it very clear that he wanted more than that, he wanted me. But we always ran into problems because everything always seemed to happen on his terms. Not because that’s the way I like things or because I didn’t have any terms of my own, simply, it’s how he ran his life - without much regard to anyone but himself. The bad side of his two-facedness always seemed to be winning out - and the irony is (and there always is irony) that that was one of the things I liked most about him.

And then you’re in it. You find yourself in something you can’t get out of, liking someone you almost can’t stand, feeling as though you’re suddenly submerged in water and don’t know how to break through to the surface for air. You find yourself trapped. I was trapped. Trapped on my side while everything had to happen on his - when he wanted to talk, when he wanted to hang out, when he wanted to call back, when he wanted us to be together. And he was always upset at me for one reason or another – either for not loving him enough, or loving him too much.

But it’s difficult to love under someone else’s conditions, on someone else’s terms. Sometimes, all you want to do, all you need, is to simply let love be. And I figure that if it can’t (and even if you figure too late) then it’s not really love at all.

There was this guy I loved for a long time.