Mistakes

This is post is a bit off topic concerning the church, but I feel it has something to do with it in my ever so twisted way.

I’ve been seeing this guy as of late – since September. He’s three years older, a senior at my school. I started seeing him because the room situation I was in was pretty impossible. My best friend and I decided to room together for a second year, even after the first year didn’t go so well. I got sick and she broke her foot, and the tensions in the room were unbearable. We fought all the time. So this guy, I’ll call him Derek, showed back up in my life and offered me a place to stay. I’d stay with him four nights out of the week usually, snuggling and kissing and talking. It was a bad idea, I knew it then. It used to be against what I believed in a way. I used to believe sleeping next to someone is something that should be saved for marriage. Actually, I think that now, but between September and now, I thought differently. Well, as is no surprise to myself in hind site, you can only sleep next to someone for so long before going to far. I lost my virginity to him in November.

It’s been a whirl wind since then. I felt guilty at first, but I think it was mostly old voices in my head telling me I shouldn’t be doing this because I wasn’t a good person. I shot those voices down pretty quickly. Funny, my church and youth leaders always made sex outside of marriage sound very unfulfilling, but honestly, I had a lot of fun with him. I felt really close to him. We began to care about each other more and more.

I know now it was wrong, it was too fast, it wasn’t as real as it could have been. We’ve been on and off for about a month now – since I thought for a few weeks that I might be pregnant. I compromised so many of my beliefs for this guy and took the morning after pill, basically just not admitting to myself what it was doing. Now, I really am opposed to it, since I’ve done research since then and know what it does. But it freaked us both out and he suddenly stopped having time for me. I needed him and he wasn’t there. I grew so angry. I finally got his attention when he glimpsed my anger (I usually don’t let people see it at all). He came over, we talked, we talked a lot. We came to the conclusion that everything had happened so quickly, that we cared a lot for each other, but right now, we aren’t ready for this kind of relationship. I think sex should be so much more than it was for us, and I had lost sight of that. He doesn’t know what he thinks. Three years my senior, and I’m telling him he needs to grow up, find himself, figure out what the fuck he wants before he can ever be with a woman. And I need time away from him, I need space, I need to be free to date, maybe find a guy who really respects me.

It lasted a week before we were back in bed. Then we talked. And I took my number out of his phone, told him it had to be over for a long time, told him I needed him to get out of my life for a while, told him I loved him, but I can’t do this to myself. I’m trying to figure out too much right now, concerning myself, concerning God, concerning family and where the hell church might ever fit into that, and I don’t have time to be in this kind of dysfunctional relationship with him. I walked out. And now he’s everywhere. I can’t get away from him. He doesn’t live in the same part of campus I do, and he’s hardly ever been to my dorm, but now he’s here all the time.

I think things like this are tests sometimes. I need to focus on God and my life for a while, and now I can’t get away from the guy? I’m honestly grieving the loss of my virginity, because I know it was a mistake I shouldn’t have made, a mistake I wouldn’t have made had I been thinking clearly at the time. And he’s everywhere.

I don’t pray as much as I used to, but I feel like every time I lift this up now, every time I ask God to help me out with this, to make it easier so I can figure shit out, I run into him, I see him somewhere, he calls me . . .

I’ve screwed up. I know that. I finally am realizing my screw ups again, and I’m realizing it outside the realm of churchianity. I’ve learned that there are reasons for these boundaries God’s got for me outside of “the pastor said the Bible says not to do it.”

And, oh, sex, it is so worth waiting for. I can honestly say that now, from experience, for whoever might be reading this – just wait. I wish I felt comfortable enough with my mistake to tell my little sister, to be honest with my family and tell them I get it now. I’ve ended up learning most things the hard way now, because I left all my beliefs and the basis for them so long ago. For anyone who doesn’t have to learn something the hard way, take my word for it, it is worth waiting for. It is special. It is fulfilling at the time, but I can only imagine how amazing it would be if I knew the person was still going to be there in a year, in a month, in a week, tomorrow . . . I never knew with Derek, and now, I need him to be gone, and that hurts more than anything – that I’ve grown to care about this guy, maybe mostly through the sex, but I care nonetheless. I’ve been more intimate with him than anyone else, and it’s time to say goodbye for good.

Here’s to being single for a while. Here’s to finding myself again. Here’s to figuring out who this God I’m looking for is and how I can look for his footprints. Here’s to learning from mistakes.

God, help me figure this life out a little bit more.