are we dating or not? bcuz i sure don't know

As I sit across from the hot boy who is reading In Cold Blood by Truman Capote (a personal favorite of mine, check 1 off of my imaginary list I have in my head), wondering what his smart bookish like body would look like with his shirt off, I thought about the boy who has my heart. As this random guys naked body was flying across my mind like the  rain against my face as I try to commute to work, I physically cringed. I don’t know why but it made me feel kinda gross. I started to think if this guy actually flirted with me, which he didn’t, he was too focused on Capote’s daunting words to even notice my blank stare. But what if, what if he had come up to me, and flirted it up, maybe even asked for my number. I mean if I met him at a bar, I bet he would have already tried to kiss me by then. I thought about this, and then what I would do. I knew immediately I would turn him down. Now it’s clearly not because I didn’t find him attractive, or that I am in some serious committed relationship halting me from straying, or any other reason someone would turn down a perfectly adequate looking boy who shares a fondness for a certain book. But it was because when I like someone, when I really really like them, the idea of any other body, any other lips, even flirty conversation sometimes, simply disgusts me. I guess disgust is a little, one would call it, dramatic. I am merely shut off from that world of nameless bodies that might be looking for romance in me or more realistically to get in my pants. That being said his blonde swoopy hair and red knit sweater and those smooth hands did peak my interest... for a second, but then I jumped back into my over analytical mind and most likely my face turned into one of discontent even at the idea. 

Even when I first plunged into this tiresome world of dating, I was always a one man kinda girl, regardless if there was commitment or not. Maybe this is from seeing people in my life that are very close to me get cheated on, or maybe it’s because the first person I ever loved  cheated on me downstairs of a house party all while I was upstairs, in the room above the shaking bed. HA, but who really knows where this mindset came from, but it’s here, and cheating to me will never be an act I can condone. Now don’t get me wrong, everyone who knows me, knows that I am a FLIRT. But let me be clear on my opinion, flirting and cheating, are not interchangeable, okay? I love flirting, and most likely always will. I can see myself being  all flirty even when/if I ever get married. But when it comes to the person I like, or maybe the person I am ~seeing/dating/LOVING~ I see only them. As much as I may flirt with arbitrary people or notice a sparkle in some boys eye on the train, I am still a one guy kinda gal. So the idea of kissing someone else, having that good ol’ sex with someone else, while emotionally involved with another person, is not something I want nor can do. 

So this boy, the one who ~has my heart~, lets just call him my crush, yeah, my crush, because I wouldn’t want him to think he’s special or whatever, or have a bigger head than he already does about my feelings towards him. The other day he quite literally said he had the upper hand (now out of context this makes him seem like a real dick, but I swear he isn’t). I mean like yeah OKAY we get it, I am so head over heels for this guy, we all know it, whatever, fuck him. But anyways, my crush, lives miles and miles away, a heart aching distance to say the very least. And we didn’t do that whole annoying “let’s stay together, and date and blah blah long distance” thing. We are doing ~our thing~, which I think is awesome and amazing, and I like it. I mean granted I wish that we could be in the same state and actually do that whole bullshit boring girlfriend/boyfriend thing, but we can’t, but thats okay. Even though we aren’t in that crazy high strung relationship thing that people do, I still don’t plan on kissing other boys. I mean that may just be me, but like I said when I have a crush my eyes are just on him or her. As much as my body wants to be thrown onto a bed, clothless, by any guy who I find cute enough who’s name I probably won’t remember, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Wow look at me, so high and moral hahah… I am kidding…

I mean I don’t owe anyone anything, even my crush who is a sweet gem of a human, but it’s true I don’t, but I just couldn’t get myself to do that. When I like someone the idea of sleeping with someone else, kissing someone else, the whole shabang is truly out of the question. But okay, bringing up my ~crush~  and our situation, whatever it may be, isn’t to shit on it as I continue this rant, because like I said I am actually enjoying whatever it is we have going on, but it did get me thinking. Because at first I was very confused about what we were/are/going to be/not going to be. I don’t know man, my mind overthinks everything, needs to know the dirty details, and all he gave me was “I like you”. Isn’t that all I really need to know? NO it’s not (even though I’m trying to be more ~relaxed~ about it all, I swear). The situation then got me thinking about limbo. Limbo in the dating world to be more specific. I think we all have been there, we all still might even be there, and it seriously sucks. 

In the past I have ~dated~ (very loose term) these boys who love love love limbo. Limbo is basically getting all of the perks of a relationship, without the commitment or burden. I remember this one guy I was seeing, we literally would spend like 4 nights out of the week together. We would get drunk, hook up, watch movies, cuddle, make breakfast, the whole thing. This though, was only contained to his smelly old apartment. The second my foot hit the pavement out of that two story walk up, I no longer existed to him. He would take hours to respond to my texts, if he even responded at all. He would always be the one making the plans to see me, and everything was always up in the air. It would be Friday, he would say he wanted to see me that night, make no actual plan, so I would be completely out of the loop, waiting for a text from a boy (which I hate that I ever did),  then he would booty call me, me run on over to his place or him come over to my place (finally) and we would spend the whole weekend together. See that’s the tricky thing. It wasn’t just a booty call, I have had booty calls and been a booty call and that is entirely different. This involved intimacy. Once he was away for a weekend and literally brought me gifts, because he was “thinking about me” (bullshit). When we were together it was perfect, he would show me music, rub my back, we would shower together, do all that cute shit, but like I said the second the door opened and one of us left, we were nothing but two bodies that seemed to not have just been on top of each other for the past 72 hours. It was mind boggling. How could you go from showing me all this affection, telling me how much you liked me, then acting as though I was just another booty call. I get not wanting commitment, I do, commitment scares the shit out of even me who loves the idea of romance and all things love, but to be fine with living in this limbo makes no sense to me. Maybe that’s because I overthink everything, so maybe this is just a problem for me, but it really irks me. Most of these limbo living boys are afraid of commitment, so the second you even try to get some grasp on whatever it is you two are doing, they flee. Back to that boy I was talking about above, I tried to understand a little more clearly what the fuck we were even doing, and of course, on the spot, no joke, right then and there, he ended things, “I can’t do this, this is getting too much, this was supposed to be fun”. Fun? Was it? So when you sat there literally crying into my lap about something your daddy said that made you feel small, was that fun for me? No. IT was not. But I had some hope that you cared about me the way I cared about you. I was wrong, clearly. I mean of course, that weak little sad boy came back the second liquor touched his tongue, but that’s not the point. The point is, that each one of these boys, who kept me in limbo, made me feel like I wasn’t worth it. I always thought that yeah I mean this makes sense, I am not the girl that they date (obviously), or the ones they are serious about, I am the girl they cry to after a bad drunk night out, the ones they take bubble baths with, the ones they watch movies with on Sunday afternoons, and fuck until crazy hours of the night, but not the ones they date. That was my conclusion. But no. NO NO NO. I had it all wrong. For the longest time I tried to fake my emotions for these daft pretty boys (s/o to Josh), all while accepting the bare minimum, only to be ~dumped~ when things got remotely serious. I let that happen. I lowered my standards but also the standards on myself. I continued these bullshit relationships and these boys thought it was acceptable to treat me that way, because I (though hating it) didn’t stand up for myself. Some of these guys seemed really special, my heart only wanting love, would paint them to be guys I couldn’t live without. But realistically they were just emotionally stunted, wanting attention but not anything real, insecure, people who need to work on themselves. I got that line a lot from these boys, “I just need to be alone, to work on myself” and you know what, they were right, please please please be alone and work on yourself, you sure as hell need to. But that being said, I did too, I was so down on myself after dating shitheads that I  truly thought I didn’t deserve the happy ending, the romance, the flowers, the boy telling you he loves me when he looks into my eyes on a summer night. But I do, we all fucking do.

I of course am no expert on love and relationships, or dating and all the games and drama that comes along with it, but I am finally at a place in my life where I no longer plan to accept what I have in the past, including but not limited to the world of limbo. For the longest time I was being loyal, and nice and sweet and giving my all to boys who looked at me as some temporary fix to lonesome nights.  I don’t want to feel ashamed for liking someone, for having feelings, for getting that warm fuzzy butterflies swarming my chest when he looks at me giddiness. I want to be able to text him and not ~play it cool~, I don’t want to act aloof when all I want is to run up to you and kiss you right on those peach colored lips. I want to be able to show my love and all of it, to the person that I fucking love. That’s not crazy, that’s not too much, that’s how it should be. I wonder if this is just how relationships are now and will continue to be, constantly holding back how we feel in hopes that the other person doesn’t leave or get scared, or will it ever end? In my limbo-esque thing I’ve got going, ya know with my crush, it’s not really limbo. I don’t need labels to know someone cares about you, but commitment, energy, and effort, that’s what matters. I have that with his dumbass, I don’t need a title or the world to know what exactly we are to each other. We know that and that’s all that matters. To have someone care about you and show it, really is what’s important. With my limbo loving boys from the past, they may have truly cared about me, sure, and boy did they love to say it, but they never ever showed it. It was always a “ I care about you more than you’ll ever know” type deal. And it’s like, do ya? Do ya really? Because it sure as hell seems that way though you only acknowledge my existence when I am naked under your pale blue sheets your mom picked at for you.  These guys think that sex, tearing my pastel lacy top and throwing it onto their floor, pushing bodies against beds, kissing our necks to leave a little mark , tugging at our hair while moaning our name is romance, is caring, is love. It’s not. Sex is the easy part, and somehow these guys mess even that up. Romance, caring, love, though we are made to believe comes with price tags, and bouquets, with dinners, or trips to Paris, is way simpler than that. It’s walking into a room and smiling when you lock eyes, it’s holding hands even on a hot sweaty day. It’s sharing secrets, bringing soup when their sick, it’s calling just to say hi, or ask how their day was. It’s letters in the mail, sealed with sore hands on endless lines of torn pages from old notebooks. It’s pushing my hair back while we sit and watch the sun go down. It’s wiping tears off of cold red cheeks, it’s kissing foreheads before it all turns dark. It’s time and effort, it’s showing you care in all the small little ways. I know that this limbo, this dating world we all experience may never be ideal or fixed, and these boys who treat us like we are nothing, who treat their skateboards with more care than us will live on and on, but I, and all of you cute ass humans need to stop letting people treat us less than we are. Show the person you love that you love them, show how much you care to that one person who is always on your mind, and to that skater boy who only texts you when he’s drunk and lonely, who likes to keep you in limbo forever and ever, well, you tell him to fuck right off, because you are WAYYYY better than him and his stupid hat that is too small for his big ass head.