At Arms Length

AT ARM’S LENGTH
By Patrick Ward

Back in high school I thought everything would work itself out one day. I figured I would meet a girl, fall in love, and live happily ever after. I was ready for my first great love. That almost happened when I was 19 and moved out to Boston. I met a girl named Kristy; she was everything I could have ever wanted in a girl. She was smart, funny, pretty, and she could be stubborn like me. Her parents even liked me. I asked her out and we dated for a year. We fell in love with each other. Everything was great, me and her would see each other every day and spend hours talking and hanging out. We couldn't stand to be apart from one another. We spent every second of every day waiting for our time together.

I was certain that she was the one. She would be the girl I would spend the rest of my life cherishing. I proposed to her on our one-year anniversary and she said yes! I was the happiest boy alive. I felt like nothing could stop us from getting married and spending the rest of our lives raising a family together. A month went by and it was now right around Thanksgiving. I got put onto the nightshift at Best Buy, where we both worked, to deal with all the merchandise coming in for the Christmas season. The month stunk, because we couldn't see each other since I worked all night and slept all day. That's when things changed. She got mean all of a sudden. It seemed like to her I was just a micron better than the dirt that gets tracked in by a dog on a muddy day. She wouldn't return my phone calls or make time to see me at all.

I had always trusted her, but the way she was acting made me a little worried. Then I started hearing rumors from people we worked with about her seeing another guy. I quickly denied that she would do that, but I was still left with doubts in my mind. We barely talked for that whole month up until Christmas Eve of 2000, because of my work hours and her sudden disposition towards me. She came over to watch some movies with me, but we barely talked. It was just as quiet in my twenty-square-foot-room as it was in Harvard’s multi-storied library. I could tell that she was nervous, as she would quickly look out the windows almost as if she was waiting for someone else to come. She was also checking her cell phone every five minutes, which was a bit suspicious. This made it very clear to me that she didn't want to be there and that something was going on.

By that time I had gotten so frustrated that I couldn't take it anymore. I confronted her about the rumors of seeing someone else. She looked at me with tears in her eyes and didn't say a word; she didn't have to. I put my head down between my legs, because I felt like I was going to throw up: my whole body turned into Jell-O; I could barely move; then I started crying. She just got up and walked out and never said goodbye.

When I finally collected enough strength to get up and walk around, I went straight to my room. For about a minute I just stood there: trying to decide if I should stay or go back home to Chicago. I began packing my things into my car that Christmas Eve. I knew if I waited any longer I would end up putting myself through more doubt, pain, and misery. Everything I brought to Boston got packed into my LeBarron. Everything that I got while in Boston; I just left there in order to help me forget about her. I looked back at my apartment when I was walking out for the last time. There was a log in the fireplace, still smoldering from a fire that had gone out not too long ago leaving the smell of the burning hickory wafting through the cold air. That night I left right around midnight and drove straight to my grandma's house in order to make it home in time for Christmas dinner. It was good to be home.

I had a few more girlfriends between Kristy and August of 2003 by the time I met Leslie at a Guster concert in Detroit. She was and still is great, just because she is who she is. She is so easy for me to read, but she still keeps me on my toes and keeps life interesting. Leslie saw through my bologna. She made me feel great about myself and I did the same for her. We were two peas in a pod: as weird as we both are. We complimented each other very well, resulting in us saying that we have “mutual weirdness” for each other instead of actually using the words “I love you.” Even though we both knew what we were feeling.

I would drive down to Cincinnati, where she went to school, to see her every other weekend. We'd sit up and talk till 4 a.m. each night, about everything and anything. Because of her I was finally letting someone else into my heart. We were as happy as any two people could be, but I got scared that she'd end up hurting me. She was getting too close for comfort and I broke up with her. But too close was just what I needed. She could have been the girl that broke up my vicious cycle of break ups. Instead I went and hurt her to save myself. Which isn't like me at all.

She was one of the best people I had ever met and I did it to her too, I pushed her out of my life. At the time I didn't know why I did it, but she can see through my bologna and called me on it a month later. I had never told her how I was feeling when I ended it with her, but she knew and told me flat out, "You're scared to let people get close to you in fear that they'll wind up hurting you." She was exactly right; she knew I was scared of being too close to her when we broke up, and that she never did anything to deserve being dumped. I had never made the connection between my being scared of getting close to people, but she did.

It is now late in the year of 2004 and I’m surrounded by girls that I will probably never see anymore after school gets out. It seems like the cycle will continue, at least through school, even though they are all great people. Kristy from Boston is a long, distant, bad memory. I’m starting to forget that she even exists. I don’t care what is going on in her life, nor do I care to find out. Leslie, on the other hand, is still a great friend that I can talk to about anything and everything. She has helped me realize that this fear will more than likely be with me for the rest of my life, or until I find a way to break the chain that is making me hold my heart--at arm’s length.