My Fairy Tale – Part 4

(Part 1, 2, and 3, if you missed them)

Bear with me, this part might get a bit long as it will cover roughly 5 years or so.

The following summer (2001), the youth went together as a group to CreationFest.  The Favelle brothers had taken to volunteering each year as stage crew staff and were camping at a separate part of the campground with the other staff.  I tried to find them once, and saw their spot swarming with girls and thought, I don’t have a chance.  It didn’t occur to me until much later how much of their free time they spent at the youth group’s camp.  They were constantly being chased off by the chaperones who advised them that they had come on their own, so they didn’t get to eat our food or have our water, etc..

And while I hadn’t thought of any other guy all year long, I began wondering if it was a lost cause, waiting around for him.  I figured I was just setting myself up for failure and disappointment.

So I found myself praying.  I didn’t want to be some boy-crazy lunatic who couldn’t be complete without some eye candy by her side.  However, I didn’t want to be lonely and I was only just figuring out that maybe I would like to get married some day after all.

I prayed that God would either bring someone into my life by the end of the summer or I would just have to accept the fact that I was meant to be single.  It’s funny, but just like wishes, you have to be careful what you pray for.

Enter a young man who I had once gone to [private Christian] elementary school with.  I hadn’t intended for anything to happen, but he commented via ICQ (oh my, how long ago was it that ICQ was relevant?) about going all the way into town for the PNE to meet up with him when we lived in the same town.  I unexpectedly found myself with an appointment to meet up with him at Tim Horton’s, so I grabbed my best friend and we waited.  And when he walked in, he had long hair (man, was I ever a sucker for guys who looked good with long hair! – wait, was? still am!).

And that was the beginning of an infatuation that led to a relationship that lasted pretty close to five years.

It was one of those relationships that was mostly bad but seemed really good at the time.  I won’t go into too many details here, but I will say that the byproducts of this relationship involved isolation from some of my best friends, and we stopped going to youth, although we still went to church on Sundays together.

It ended because he was too complacent.  When I moved up north, close to where his mother had been born, there were promises of keeping in touch and coming to visit.  He was still in school, studying to be a teacher, so I didn’t see him from September until December when he came up just after Christmas.  Not one phone call in between.  So, I bought him a $20 long distance calling card for Christmas.

More promises to call, to keep in touch.  Well, living in a northern community where just about everyone was related, one way or another, to everyone else – you discover that there isn’t much room for outsiders, especially outsiders from “big cities” like Vancouver, especially outsiders who don’t drink alcohol.  So, I put all my spare time into a MMORPG, where I ended up complaining big time about the boyfriend.  Six months after Christmas and he still hadn’t called once.  The extent of our relationship was the following chat via online messenger:

Him:”Hi, how’s ur day?”

Me: “Fine.  How’s yours?”

Him: “Fine.”

….

…

Him: “gotta run.  luv u”

Me: “Bye…”

And I began an emotional affair with a man in the states through the MMORPG.  Two weeks into this emotional affair and I decided I needed to end it with the boyfriend.  After almost 5 years.  The next time he logged on, I asked if he could call me.  He couldn’t, I said it was important, he asked if I could just message him before he had to log off in a few minutes.  I said really?  And so, I broke up with him over an instant messaging service.  On Father’s Day (2006), actually.

Funny thing, after we broke up, he finally called.  In the end, he came up to visit for my birthday about a month later with intending to win me back.  I know that I hurt him, but when we finally saw each other in person again, he let out a few secrets that he’d been keeping from me, further illustrating to me that I couldn’t continue in that relationship, no matter how sincere he finally was.

 

Part 5 – find it here!