Nice Guy

I believe people who say Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, have no idea what they’re talking about. I don’t believe anyone would say the same if the context was about taking drugs or harming oneself. Yet for some reason it is perfectly acceptable to use the sentence in the context of love.
This brings me onto my next dilemma… Love. A word used so often these days it seems to have lost most of the meaning behind the accursed word. Best Friends often say they love each other, people often say they love their pets or their belongings, it seems nowadays if you feel any sort of attraction to an object or person this feeling would be arrogantly mistaken for love. So it now stands to reason that if someone were to really love someone else then even saying the words “I love you” would now have such little meaning. At least that seemed to be the case in my situation.
After hearing what I've had to say about my feelings towards love you might guess that I have a certain disdain for the emotion, you would be completely correct in your assumption too. So I hope you understand the magnitude of the situation when I say I really loved her. I used to laugh at singers writing their lyrics about love and scoff at the poets who poured their hearts out onto paper, I always used to think that they only said the words that the reader or the listener wanted to hear. But I soon came to realize that it was those same words that have placed me in this unfortunate position I am currently in.

Two years ago to the day was when I meet her, such a simple encounter I’m sure she thought nothing of it. I’m almost certain she was used to people approaching her so I assume she was well prepared. I on the other hand never did anything as reckless as I happened to do on that day. I brought up all my courage and I asked her, her name. It seems pretty simple doesn’t it. Something so trivial shouldn’t affect any normal person, yet there I stood waiting for her to get closer so I could muster up some courage and ask her. I stood there making bets inside my mind, such things as “If she stops in front of me then I’ll ask her name and her number” and “If she passes me completely I’ll just go home and try to forget her”. How I wish she walked past me that day, instead she stopped a few steps in front of me, meaning I was only asking her name. Once I mustered up the courage to ask her she seemed happy to oblige my request. She even gave me her number which for any normal situation would mean she also saw something in me too.
I hit the dilemma of how early should I message her, being less adept at this situation I felt the waves on anxiety crash down on me. But after sending that first terrifying message She replied with such haste I almost couldn’t believe it. The days to come were glorious, I felt like for once in my life someone actually wanted to talk to me, actually wanted to know about my day and show emotion to the good and bad parts. I quickly fell for her and three weeks after knowing her I knew I was falling in love. Even saying it felt ridiculous, Every feeling I had felt so cliche but I didn’t care. She was the only thing that could have my concentration. My workflow all but ground to a halt, I easily went a day without eating food because I was too preoccupied with when the next message from her was coming. Nothing could have prepared me from what was to come.
I was delighted to get a message from her asking if she could call me. This wasn’t the first time we had spoke on the phone but hearing her voice talking to me and me alone gave me a satisfaction that couldn’t be gained anywhere else. I hastily canceled all my plans with anyone I knew and prepared myself for the phone call. I say prepare myself because I actually had to prepare myself. I would need to calm my heart rate as the knowledge of speaking to her increased it tenfold. I had to run over how I would answer the phone several times as I was worried she would judge the way I answered the phone. It was all in vain though as I sat waiting for the phone call for 2 hours, it seemed although I had been anxious and sacrificial of my time. She had not.
She finally called me and to my great surprise began quite quickly to talk about sex. I had not prepared myself for this and just quietly listened on to her as she spoke more about this alien subject. It soon became apparent that the worries of sex did not involve me. For you see as I sat and waited heart racing and mouth drying, she was with a man which she had know for as long as me. It seems that this man and her were about to have sex but she panicked at the last second and called it off. The reason for the call was to ask me if she should have gone through with it.
I wish I could put into words the feeling tearing around in my chest at that moment, as she spoke on, life around me ceased to exist. I am grateful I was sat down as I know now that my limbs were likely nothing more than useless sacks of meat. The conversation went by like a blur, I gave hollow comforting words desperately trying to contain the emotions welling up inside. She soon finished her speech quickly thanked me and hung up, this left me alone with my thoughts. I truly couldn’t understand the situation, had I done something I didn’t realize? She had known the person as long as she had known me. Could it be that I was nothing more than a friend to her. Thinking back now with a clearer mind this was completely logical. Every person of the opposite sex that knew me only wanted me as a friend. I was the Nice Guy, the guy they wish every other guy would be like. They would always say “I wish I could find a guy like you”. I guess women will never understand the weight of that sentence, I literally means I wish I could find an attractive guy with your personality. We are after all only animals, another painfully ridiculous saying is to not judge a book by its cover. Now I am well aware physical attractiveness is most always the main factor in looking for a partner, men are no different in this fact. Yet being on the poor end of the attractiveness spectrum always seems to make this fact hurt more than it should.
So after that day I foolishly thought to myself that perhaps given time I could make her see me for who I really was and one day in my wildest dreams she could begin to develop feelings for me, even if they were a fraction of what I felt I knew that would be enough. This carried on until recently, I’m not sure what made me stop but I think I was probably the instance that occurred two weeks ago. I was lying in bed after working an extremely long shift. I always took extra hours when I knew she was with some man she had met recently. It helped me take my mind of the ridiculous reality I had foolishly embedded myself into.
I hear my phone buzz and dutifully I turn it on to see a message from her, she asked me to pick her up as she has no way of getting home. As a well trained hopeless disaster I get into my car and drive to the location she provided. As I arrive outside she messages me saying she’ll be about 10 minutes. To this day I’m unaware if she knew that I could see into the room she was in. I can still see their silhouetted bodies the way they moved in time with each other, the way her arms wrapped around him like they were some long lost lovers. It seems that any fears she had of sex that she told me about two years earlier had all but evaporated. The scene turned my insides, I had to leave and drive around as I couldn’t bare it any longer. I pulled into a small car park and threw up whatever I had eaten that day, and what seemed to be every other day for the past week. I got another text asking where I was so I dutifully returned to the house and picked her up. Just looking at her brought dangers of more food coming back up, there was some sort of battle happening inside my chest and it felt like my throat was made out of shards of glass. The worst thing was she didn’t say a word. Nothing, not even when she went to leave when I arrived at her house. The pain was too much and in an insane twist of person I got out of the car and strode towards her. As she turned and I saw her face close up it all became too much.
I broke down in front of her that day, I laid everything on the ground at her feet and I broke my heart in two and offered her the biggest half. She only replied with one word, that word which will resonate inside my brain for the rest of my dwindling life. She called me a bitch.
I find it quite humorous that men have to show bravado to be considered a man, I was called a bitch for showing an emotion that transcends testosterone filled actions. The word said wasn’t much for some people, most people would wonder why it affected me so. But it wasn’t primarily the word which struck home it was the person saying it. My life had been dedicated to her, my existence had been owed to her and everything I felt and did was for her sake.
Since that day I have felt nothing. People drink and resort to drugs so they can numb the pain they’re in, yet I turned to them to help me feel something, nothing worked. Alcohol brought nothing but vomit, drugs just helped me sleep. I only ate to survive since food no longer tasted of anything anymore. My life no longer had a purpose.
All my life I had a goal, to finish high school, to graduate university and to get a job. There were no goals for me anymore, she was my final goal and nothing could change that. So I lived on, an empty shell of nothingness. And now we finally arrive at me today.
It’s difficult to record these words, the rope is quite tight around my neck you see. Maybe in this final moment as the life escapes my body I can feel something akin to emotion. I don’t expect to see my life flash before my eyes, even if it did I would only see her. She became my life and ironically became my death.
I wonder if she’ll think of me, when the news report my death. Will she remember the words I said? Will she remember the pain I felt for her? Maybe one day when she finds a man who will love her for the same reasons I died for. Maybe then will she remember me, maybe then she will feel a fraction of what I felt for her.
I’m sorry I couldn’t be a real man and not show my emotions. I’m sorry I couldn’t keep it bottled inside me anymore.

I’m sorry I couldn’t be stronger.