College, you know that place you go to grow up.  I made it there.  Some school was fooled just long enough by my pathetic excuse of an application to accept me.  I never took the grand tour. I never tested out the cafeteria food.  These people didn’t even know I existed until they sent back that acceptance letter.  She was going there too, my friend Molly, who I did not go to high school with.  We roomed together.  The rumor is right. NEVER, let me repeat that, NEVER room with someone you know.  We destroyed our friendship freshman year. College was new. College was a fresh start.  College was a way for me to forget about Dan. Forget about how fucked up I was.  It was a way for me to become Nicole again.  I wanted to go somewhere where no one knew my name.  Freshman orientation was lame. The only good part of it was meeting this girl named Katie. She played softball as well.  Little did I know that she would become one of the best friends that I ever had.  Molly blew me off.  Somehow that really didn’t surprise me.  I came to college to know no one and that was how she treated me those first few days, like I was a no one. I tagged along though, on all of her little people meeting extravaganzas.  I met the leadership kids, the kids who were into speaking Chinese, a few baseball players who lived a floor below us, and also the football players who she had met when she moved in early.  They also lived a floor below us.  Sam and Chris were their names. Sam was from Pennsylvania. Sam knew some upper classmen and Chris, AKA Carter, was from Boston.  Every weekend from then on out we made our way to room 106 in the upperclassmen dorms.  The building looked like an old motel with a balcony and four floors.  Six boys lived here. I fell for the dumbest one.  Derek, Derek was tall. He had big blue eyes and a smile that could break your heart.  He tried to pursue a relationship.  This was my first away from my home relationship and was unsure as to how these things work since I had never had sex and never randomly just hooked up with someone I didn’t really know.  I took things slow. He didn’t appreciate that.  Something about him was familiar.  It was the first boy who was attracted to me since Dan and so I went for it.  It lasted only a few weeks but fall break happened in September.  Dan shows up in my driveway hours after I return home.  He kissed night.  We went for a walk.  He held me tight like he used to.  He held me like he was sorry, which he was because he had messed up things with us.  I had second thoughts about him, but I still remained so reserved. He had come to visit me at school one time.  Randomly showing up in front of my building in his paint stained clothes, he was unbelievable.  He was also tan.  He took me to dinner and kissed me that night too.  I never told Derek about that, even though we never officially dated I felt a little guilty.  After fall break was over I went back to school.  I unpacked my junk and made my way over to 106 once again.  I looked at Derek and realized that I liked him because he was Dan.  He kissed me like he did, he held me like Dan did, the little things that Dan once did Derek did too.  Derek played guitar and loved Pink Floyd and Kurt Cobain. Derek talked to me and told me he loved me.  Derek told me it was alright that I didn’t want to sleep with him. I believed it until I got a random instant message saying that he has been so ok with my virginity because he has been “getting around” with other people.  My heart sank a little.  This is why I never got close to people.  I am the kind of person who needs to feel comfortable and ok with myself before I can give myself to someone else.  Rage filled my body because I realized that I had made the same mistake not once, not twice, but three times.  I had let the past seep into my present and control my life.  Derek was the final nail in the coffin of Nicole and Dan.  I realized that being lied to was not what I wanted out of a relationship and decided to get out of it all together.  Avoiding Derek was a hard thing to do.  Marietta College was a small campus and he just so happened to be everywhere I was.   Plus, the weekends were spent in 106 as usual and the whole situation was just flat out awkward.  One weekend before we made our ritual trip to 106 we were all sitting around in Sam’s room.  There was this boy.  I had noticed him at the football scrimmages. I hate the game of football, but I always enjoyed the boys in tight pants.  I can’t help myself.  I have a thing for jocks, especially football players for some reason. This boy, I needed to talk to.  I don’t know what it was about him, but I wanted to be next to him.  He came back with me that night.  I woke up the next morning with an unbelievable head ache and a boy who I barely know still asleep next to me.  The first word that came to my head was FUCK!  Its not that I was too drunk to remember what happened the night before… I just don’t think I thought it was real.  There was an instant connection.  I remember everything feeling right.  I turned the TV on and the turned the volume down.  I didn’t want to wake him.  My roommate walked in with more than one of her friends and things quickly became awkward.  He placed his arm around my waist and suddenly things were ok.  After that morning talking wasn’t something we did on a regular basis.  We would get drunk and stay with one another.  Then finally things fell into place.  Andrew was incredible.  I fell hard and fast.  He was quick to tell me he loved me.  I knew about that.  I didn’t want to hear any of that just yet but he was convinced that he was in love.  After a few months of dating I too felt something I had never felt before.  I was very much in love with this boy.  Four months later after starting and suddenly changing my mind.  I slept with the boy I was deeply in love with.  He talked to me about marriage.  I was a little freaked out because I thought girls were the ones who spoke those words.  I thought men didn’t do commitment.  He did.  I was suddenly relieved. I slept next to him every night for the rest of our six months at school. He would take my hand and lay there with me. He would kiss me on the forehead and tell met hat he had never in his entire life been happier.  He would tell me that he knew that “we” were something to hold on to.  Every night he would whisper softly in my ear “I love you.”  He would unlock his fingers from mine and run them down my face as if it would change by morning.  He would move the hair out of my face and kiss my forehead and remind me again that I was perfect in every way possible.  Every night I would close my eyes and just fall deeper and deeper and ask myself if this was real.  Every night his big blue eyes looked after me as if the night would steal me away. Every night he would press me against him. He held me like he would never let go.  Every night I fell asleep to his breathing.  Some nights I couldn’t sleep, some of the time it was because we were too big for the small bed provided by the college but other nights I would just stay up and watch him sleep. I would turn to the right and stare at him curled up like a small child. His peacefulness would always make me smile.  To me he was perfect.  I would watch his chest move up and down with every breath.  He talked in his sleep, and his mumbling soon became normalcy to me.  I was in love.  I was head over heels, his and her towels, in love with this boy.  I had given up on love. I had watched my parent’s marriage fall apart at the seams for years.  I always wondered if they felt like this.  If they would randomly not sleep and watch one another lay in bed so peaceful and thinking that this one person was just too beautiful, too perfect for words.  I wondered if this is what all of those love songs are about. 

Him… Four months later and here I am in shambles still. Millions of thoughts ran through my head day in and day out. Thoughts like “I don’t know what it is about him. I don’t really understand why. Why are you doing this to me? Why, when I'm the one who ends this, am I also the one who's not okay? Please take away this empowering grasp you have over me. For months I've been struggling to break out of this. For months I've been losing so much of myself. Not a day goes by where I don't stumble over wishing I had never met you. I've tried so hard to be everything you need. I've unraveled, exposed and sacrificed all for something that will never give itself to me. Why do you not want the one thing that could be right for you? Why do you deny the one person that is willing to change you for the better? Is that not what you told me you wanted? Here we are seniors in high school and you are solely thinking of you, your wants, needs, wishes.  How come it was so easy for you to live?  After I was so broken, there was still something that attracted me to you.  I wanted so much to be with you.  Why was that so hard to understand?”  I woke up thinking all of these thoughts for the next 10 months. We never accept the things right in front of our faces, perhaps because we cannot actually see them. All I wanted was for him to see me… I thought day in and day out “Please see me. All I've ever wanted was for this to work out. With most steps we take, it seems like it will, but your past is constantly pulling you back. I want to tell you, you can't live in the past and she doesn't deserve you. You've got to grow up, you need to stop lying. And I have, thousands of times before but still it remains the same...that you stagnantly stand without change. I'm just as faulty as you for the fact that I'm playing puppet to you. I can't cut my strings, I just can't.”  I woke up thinking all of these thoughts for the next 10 months, ten very long months.  “You treat me worse than anyone else; you lie to my face incessantly. You throw me around and toy with me, though I've not broken yet. I am worn out. Even when it seems timely, the closure of us keeps stalling to start. I'm not enough for you, as you aren't for me. I'm not enough to make you alright and you aren't enough to be what I need. I only think I need you. I only think these things, yet they aren't the truth. Give me the truth, I do need. At the least, it's what I deserve from you. Through the silence, I know... I wish I had never met you.” My thoughts jumped from day to day.  I had no idea why this boy had such an over powering affect on my life... We had so much history…There he was.  That kid. That one, you know the one who drove me insane.  That kid who almost got me in serious trouble for saying I wanted him dead.  That kid who used to push and tease me in the halls.  That kid who grabbed my face all the time in math.  That kid who burnt me that blue and silver CD.  That boy who decided to put every New Found Glory song ever on this blue and silver CD.  The one who said listening to rap is a waste of your life. Rock was real music. He is the one who got the girlfriend who held hands with him in the hallways.  He smiled at her like he loved her.  She was the one who smiled at him like she would never let him go.  They’re relationship seemed like one of those pathetic fairy tale romances.  It was far from a fairy tale.  After just a year it ended… partially because of me.  He was the one who flirted with me in that class.  He was the one who asked me for paper all the time while she was sitting next to him.  He set himself up for disaster.  He was the first to IM me. It was hard to take the compliment when he told me I was beautiful.  His spelling was always atrocious, but I believed it. He came to dinner with me and my friends.  He drove me home.  He treated me like a queen that night.  He came to my house.  He introduced himself to my dad when I wasn’t home. He delivered his small gift of a golf ball with a rocket on it, since that was my softball nickname.  He talked to me for three hours about life and love and losing. He was hooking me and reeling me in.  I always put a wall up and he was running right into it.  Trying so hard to break it down, but gave up and moved on to another girl.  Brittany was the new girlfriend.  She and I were friends and I quickly backed off. Their relationship was messed up beyond belief.  She was changed.  It ended after a short 6 months, again I think because of me.  He became my best friend.  We had classes together. He called me after she cheated.  He cried on my shoulder in that parking lot.  He called me for advice.   He asked me to help make her a bear. He called me to pick her out cool cherry chapstick.  He asked me to kiss him. He was the one who was unsure and wanted to know if it was real.  I refused because I would never help him cheat on someone, especially her. He came and saw me drunk and high and whatever else he was all of those nights.  He was the one who took me home.  He saved my life that day in the rain. The three others who were smoking and laughing in the back seat didn’t even know what happened. To me they were invisible anyway. He was my very best friend.  How could I help that we talked. I bought every line every word until he had me, all of me.  I couldn’t help but love him.  He was something else.

I looked one more time at myself in the mirror.  There I was in my john deer fitted t-shirt and my black framed glasses.  I brushed my hair out of my face so that it fell right along the side of my cheek.  I looked out the window that was fogged up, it had rained. There he was.  He pulled into my driveway like a bat out of hell.  He was driving his moms white grand am.  I know nothing about cars but he claims it has a V6 engine, which I guess makes it a faster car.  I got off the couch, told my dad good bye and walked out the door. He rolled down his window and the loud sound of motley crew quickly escaped. He called me a nerd the second I shut my door.  I smiled and settled into my seat, he said hello, and began to back out of my driveway, slower this time.  We got to the theater and he took my hand.  We weaved in and out of the people.  We were always late. After the lady who sold us our tickets told us that we were just the cutest couple she had ever seen, we found a seat. I looked at him.  There he was.  This boy, after everything that had happened, was mine.  He placed his arm around my shoulder as I rested my head on his.  He pushed my hair from my eyes and told me that even though I looked like a nerd I was beautiful.  He never let go that movie. He was always close to me.  I didn’t want him to leave.  He made me feel like I was so special.  After the movie ended he took me home.  He kissed me on the cheek and said good night…All I could do was hope for the best.  After prom I didn’t really think that things would ever be the same.  He and Brittany had still been screwing around and that hurt.  That hurt like hell.  He came to my friend’s funeral. He put on an act.  He left his phone on the couch that night at Adams.  I could have gone through it and found out all of these things and saved myself a lot of time and trouble, but I trusted him.  I gave him my whole heart and only received half of his.  I should have known after we went to Geauga Lake that day. After many days of disappointment and apologizes things went back to how they were.   The next months were like out of a fairy tale. Finally, we had a title. Summer was here.  We took late night walks, had heart to hearts, and went to dinner, and a few movies.  It all seemed so surreal.  I was hooked on words he had strung together.  He would look at me like he never wanted to leave me.  I bought every line. I hung on every word.  This boy loved to smoke, Marijuana mostly.  While he and Mary Jane went on more dates than he and I ever went on I was still determined to change, fix, and inspire him to be something better.  To relieve him of this title before we went back to school.  I wanted to show him off as someone who loved me and was willing to sacrifice something he was clearly addicted to for that.  He was also a nicotine addict.  I wasn’t a smoker but I didn’t mind that so much.  The summer nights seemed endless, but like all nights the clock struck twelve and we were rushing home to beat curfew.  September quickly came and our perfect summer romance ended.  School started and there he was this other person. He was loud, a trouble maker.  He fell back into his old ways.  I still over looked the fact that these things happened because I knew him… I knew he was, different.  Homecoming happened and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect night.  We danced. He swept me off my feet.  He kissed me hard like no one could ever come between this thing we had.  He looked handsome.  Dan had an obsession with old rock and roll and guitars. He quickly got me hooked.  Every rock and roll song quickly became a part of my life.  Especially Warrant, Heaven.  That was our song.  It was number six on my blue and silver CD.  He told me when I got that stupid CD to listen to it.  It reminded him of me ... I don’t know how, but I grew to love that song.  Our break up was cliché’. It was a typical guy breakup when they say, well I love you but we’re going to go to college and things will only get more serious and harder to end if we keep this up.  Although my heart was shattered into a million pieces I tried to hold myself together as I listened to him on the other end of the phone.  I was hysterical that night.  I laid there stared at the ceiling and wondered why I hadn’t done something different.  I blamed myself for everything. I missed him.  I missed him for the next six months… he could have had me so easily if he would have just opened his eyes a little.  I left him a flower before I left for school.  Thinking maybe he’d get the picture that it was for him from me.  I wasn’t expecting anything in return. I just wanted to let him know that he was in my thoughts and that I wished him luck. 

Him… Four months later and here I am in shambles still. Millions of thoughts ran through my head day in and day out. Thoughts like “I don’t know what it is about him. I don’t really understand why. Why are you doing this to me? Why, when I'm the one who ends this, am I also the one who's not okay? Please take away this empowering grasp you have over me. For months I've been struggling to break out of this. For months I've been losing so much of myself. Not a day goes by where I don't stumble over wishing I had never met you. I've tried so hard to be everything you need. I've unraveled, exposed and sacrificed all for something that will never give itself to me. Why do you not want the one thing that could be right for you? Why do you deny the one person that is willing to change you for the better? Is that not what you told me you wanted? Here we are seniors in high school and you are solely thinking of you, your wants, needs, wishes.  How come it was so easy for you to live?  After I was so broken, there was still something that attracted me to you.  I wanted so much to be with you.  Why was that so hard to understand?”  I woke up thinking all of these thoughts for the next 10 months. We never accept the things right in front of our faces, perhaps because we cannot actually see them. All I wanted was for him to see me… I thought day in and day out “Please see me. All I've ever wanted was for this to work out. With most steps we take, it seems like it will, but your past is constantly pulling you back. I want to tell you, you can't live in the past and she doesn't deserve you. You've got to grow up, you need to stop lying. And I have, thousands of times before but still it remains the same...that you stagnantly stand without change. I'm just as faulty as you for the fact that I'm playing puppet to you. I can't cut my strings, I just can't.”  I woke up thinking all of these thoughts for the next 10 months, ten very long months.  “You treat me worse than anyone else; you lie to my face incessantly. You throw me around and toy with me, though I've not broken yet. I am worn out. Even when it seems timely, the closure of us keeps stalling to start. I'm not enough for you, as you aren't for me. I'm not enough to make you alright and you aren't enough to be what I need. I only think I need you. I only think these things, yet they aren't the truth. Give me the truth, I do need. At the least, it's what I deserve from you. Through the silence, I know... I wish I had never met you.” My thoughts jumped from day to day.  I had no idea why this boy had such an over powering affect on my life... We had so much history…There he was.  That kid. That one, you know the one who drove me insane.  That kid who almost got me in serious trouble for saying I wanted him dead.  That kid who used to push and tease me in the halls.  That kid who grabbed my face all the time in math.  That kid who burnt me that blue and silver CD.  That boy who decided to put every New Found Glory song ever on this blue and silver CD.  The one who said listening to rap is a waste of your life. Rock was real music. He is the one who got the girlfriend who held hands with him in the hallways.  He smiled at her like he loved her.  She was the one who smiled at him like she would never let him go.  They’re relationship seemed like one of those pathetic fairy tale romances.  It was far from a fairy tale.  After just a year it ended… partially because of me.  He was the one who flirted with me in that class.  He was the one who asked me for paper all the time while she was sitting next to him.  He set himself up for disaster.  He was the first to IM me. It was hard to take the compliment when he told me I was beautiful.  His spelling was always atrocious, but I believed it. He came to dinner with me and my friends.  He drove me home.  He treated me like a queen that night.  He came to my house.  He introduced himself to my dad when I wasn’t home. He delivered his small gift of a golf ball with a rocket on it, since that was my softball nickname.  He talked to me for three hours about life and love and losing. He was hooking me and reeling me in.  I always put a wall up and he was running right into it.  Trying so hard to break it down, but gave up and moved on to another girl.  Brittany was the new girlfriend.  She and I were friends and I quickly backed off. Their relationship was messed up beyond belief.  She was changed.  It ended after a short 6 months, again I think because of me.  He became my best friend.  We had classes together. He called me after she cheated.  He cried on my shoulder in that parking lot.  He called me for advice.   He asked me to help make her a bear. He called me to pick her out cool cherry chapstick.  He asked me to kiss him. He was the one who was unsure and wanted to know if it was real.  I refused because I would never help him cheat on someone, especially her. He came and saw me drunk and high and whatever else he was all of those nights.  He was the one who took me home.  He saved my life that day in the rain. The three others who were smoking and laughing in the back seat didn’t even know what happened. To me they were invisible anyway. He was my very best friend.  How could I help that we talked. I bought every line every word until he had me, all of me.  I couldn’t help but love him.  He was something else.

I looked one more time at myself in the mirror.  There I was in my john deer fitted t-shirt and my black framed glasses.  I brushed my hair out of my face so that it fell right along the side of my cheek.  I looked out the window that was fogged up, it had rained. There he was.  He pulled into my driveway like a bat out of hell.  He was driving his moms white grand am.  I know nothing about cars but he claims it has a V6 engine, which I guess makes it a faster car.  I got off the couch, told my dad good bye and walked out the door. He rolled down his window and the loud sound of motley crew quickly escaped. He called me a nerd the second I shut my door.  I smiled and settled into my seat, he said hello, and began to back out of my driveway, slower this time.  We got to the theater and he took my hand.  We weaved in and out of the people.  We were always late. After the lady who sold us our tickets told us that we were just the cutest couple she had ever seen, we found a seat. I looked at him.  There he was.  This boy, after everything that had happened, was mine.  He placed his arm around my shoulder as I rested my head on his.  He pushed my hair from my eyes and told me that even though I looked like a nerd I was beautiful.  He never let go that movie. He was always close to me.  I didn’t want him to leave.  He made me feel like I was so special.  After the movie ended he took me home.  He kissed me on the cheek and said good night…All I could do was hope for the best.  After prom I didn’t really think that things would ever be the same.  He and Brittany had still been screwing around and that hurt.  That hurt like hell.  He came to my friend’s funeral. He put on an act.  He left his phone on the couch that night at Adams.  I could have gone through it and found out all of these things and saved myself a lot of time and trouble, but I trusted him.  I gave him my whole heart and only received half of his.  I should have known after we went to Geauga Lake that day. After many days of disappointment and apologizes things went back to how they were.   The next months were like out of a fairy tale. Finally, we had a title. Summer was here.  We took late night walks, had heart to hearts, and went to dinner, and a few movies.  It all seemed so surreal.  I was hooked on words he had strung together.  He would look at me like he never wanted to leave me.  I bought every line. I hung on every word.  This boy loved to smoke, Marijuana mostly.  While he and Mary Jane went on more dates than he and I ever went on I was still determined to change, fix, and inspire him to be something better.  To relieve him of this title before we went back to school.  I wanted to show him off as someone who loved me and was willing to sacrifice something he was clearly addicted to for that.  He was also a nicotine addict.  I wasn’t a smoker but I didn’t mind that so much.  The summer nights seemed endless, but like all nights the clock struck twelve and we were rushing home to beat curfew.  September quickly came and our perfect summer romance ended.  School started and there he was this other person. He was loud, a trouble maker.  He fell back into his old ways.  I still over looked the fact that these things happened because I knew him… I knew he was, different.  Homecoming happened and I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect night.  We danced. He swept me off my feet.  He kissed me hard like no one could ever come between this thing we had.  He looked handsome.  Dan had an obsession with old rock and roll and guitars. He quickly got me hooked.  Every rock and roll song quickly became a part of my life.  Especially Warrant, Heaven.  That was our song.  It was number six on my blue and silver CD.  He told me when I got that stupid CD to listen to it.  It reminded him of me ... I don’t know how, but I grew to love that song.  Our break up was cliché’. It was a typical guy breakup when they say, well I love you but we’re going to go to college and things will only get more serious and harder to end if we keep this up.  Although my heart was shattered into a million pieces I tried to hold myself together as I listened to him on the other end of the phone.  I was hysterical that night.  I laid there stared at the ceiling and wondered why I hadn’t done something different.  I blamed myself for everything. I missed him.  I missed him for the next six months… he could have had me so easily if he would have just opened his eyes a little.  I left him a flower before I left for school.  Thinking maybe he’d get the picture that it was for him from me.  I wasn’t expecting anything in return. I just wanted to let him know that he was in my thoughts and that I wished him luck.