My first girlfriend

I'm finding it fascinating to read these old journal entries and as I continue into the entries of that first year together with my now ex-husband, I am intrigued at how often I mention my first girlfriend in those days and how frequently I still communicated with her.  So I took a break from continuing on into the fall of 2002 and went back further in time to 2001 when I dated her.

I was already dating her for a couple weeks when my journal entries start in mid-July of 2001 so I don't have a contemporaneous record of how that relationship started.  As you will see, I also have no contemporaneous record of how it ended but there is quite a bit from the middle.

I started that summer of 2001 seeing a therapist and trying anti-depressants again.  I had always believed my mental health treatment was just in high school.  But there are references in later posts to the fact that I came back home for the summer after my freshman year of college very depressed and sleeping all the time and so I sought treatment.  I wish I could find a journal from my freshman year of college.  I had thought it was a really good year but if I came home that depressed at the end of it that probably isn't a fully accurate picture of the year.  

I include this information about my depression to give some context to the mindset I was in when I met her.

Right at the very beginning of dating my now ex-husband, I did reminisce a bit about how I connected with my first girlfriend and got encouragement to continue not shaving my legs.  So you may have seen that reference in this post.  My sister and her boyfriend (now husband) were the ones who invited me to join them and her at a park.

When I read my entries from the summer of 2001, there is an intensity to how quickly I decided I loved her and expressed those feelings which isn't all that unlike the intensity my ex-husband demonstrated in the beginning.  The big difference though is that there wasn't the same future talk.  She and I weren't thinking all that much beyond the next date although as the summer got closer to the end, I did express some uncertainty at leaving in the fall.  She always waved off those concerns as something we'll figure out when the time comes.

The way I describe her, I get the feeling she was the grounded one in our relationship.  She slowed me down.  And she communicated very clearly about what she did and did not want.  She was consistent even when I wasn't.  You can see some of my avoidance tendencies coming out in some of these entries.  Note, she was a friend on this platform (she is the one who introduced me to it) and so could read any entries that I didn't mark private and that is why it sometimes looks like I'm writing directly to her.

July 31, 2001

A special note to my girlfriend. I'm sorry I've been a little distant lately. I just need a little time to myself. I don't know if I am going to be able to see you before you leave. But I'll try to call or something tomorrow. I love you.

August 2, 2001

My mind has been on my girlfriend all day. I just don't get it. Someone thinks I'm absolutely wonderful. Someone who believes I'm worthy enough to spend every minute possible with. Someone who not only notices but also worries when I disappear for even just one day. Someone who has brought out the best in me. I've never felt better about who I am. Someone who I am always happy around or at least comfortable and relaxed.

Yet through it all, I doubt. I doubt that I could possibly know what love is. I doubt that anyone could love me like that. I doubt that any of this really could be real. I doubt whether I can love her as deeply as she loves me.

I don't want to screw up what could be the best thing that happened to me my entire life, but I can't seem to eliminate these doubts. I don't understand where they are coming from.

It's interesting that with my ex-husband I also doubted whether I could ever love me as much as he loved me when in reality my perceptions of love didn't quite match reality.  I wasn't giving myself enough credit and I was giving him too much credit.  I wonder if some of that was true here with my first girlfriend, not that she was like my ex-husband but more that maybe I was inflating an early love that needed time to grow.

August 20, 2001

My girl is so frustrated that I can't even trust her, just like that. I'm beyond upset with myself. How could I let all this happen? Or better yet, how could I have not let this happen? I knew damn well I wasn't ready, yet where would I be if this all hadn't happened?

As an unrelated side note, this entry from August 22, 2001 is a bit ironic considering I married a man obsessed with cars who put them above people and relationships.  I wrote this almost a year before I met him.

What is with people and things? I have a tough time understanding why "things" are so important, for instance a car. I always respect and take care of things but I don't put them above people, relationships, love, life...etc.

But back to my first girlfriend, when I returned to my dorm room in college for the fall semester, I wrote about feeling like it was home and so good to be back.  It's fascinating that two summers in a row, I go back to college after an intense romantic relationship and although I miss each of them, I feel more at home away from them.  And I should add that both summers leading up to a new school year were filled with new roommate drama - homophobic potential roommates who refused to room with me, which makes it even odder that I would view this as "home".   It's like I felt a relief from my emotions.  I'll write more about that returning to college in 2002, the year I met my ex-husband in a part 3 post about the red flags I missed.

Something that strikes me as very odd is that I never wrote about the breakup with my first girlfriend.  There are entries more than six months after it happened where I reference it and even wonder if I made the right decision in breaking up with her.  And there is a reference in late October to the breakup being the first in a series of struggles as I spiraled downward.  But in September of 2001, there isn't a single reference to breaking up.  I only know it happened that month because on September 29, 2001, I write, "I'm stepping out on a limb today. In an hour and a half a girl I met online is picking me up."  I went on two dates with this woman I met online.  And then on October 7, I write that  "I love the fact that I can still be friends with my ex-girlfriend. I will always love her as a friend."

One thing that is very clear is that this relationship with this first girlfriend really brought me out of my shell and helped me drop some of the masks that I had worn for so many years.  This was my first chance at really stepping into me fully and I loved the freedom of just being me and learning how not to worry about who would or wouldn't accept me.  Although I still retreated back to wearing masks often and internally agonized over my identity and the way friendships changed.  At one point I wrote about how the masks melded into the real me to create a new me.

There was a sense of joy that had been missing, an optimism that had replaced so much pessimism.  And there was a messiness as I struggled with the collision of my identity with religion, society, family, etc. that continued into 2002 - I wrote a little about this earlier this week.

I got a good laugh when I read that on September 9, 2001, I made lasagna for my whole dorm wing.  I invested so much energy in that many people at once, many of them people I didn't really know yet.  And I got so much out of it.  I wrote,  "I met so many people. I was a social butterfly. So far from how I usually act. It was close to one when I finally got back to my room."  Maybe there always has been a very social piece to me that has just been buried more often than not as my energy has been re-directed elsewhere.