The beginning and the end

So here's the story that changed every aspect of my life (sorry, I basically wrote a book).

Around the beginning of October of 2010, I met this boy that went to my school. Now, before officially meeting him, he had caught my eye. I remember very distinctly sitting at a table with a friend, this special boy walked by and my first thought about him was, "I can't decide what I think of him." I remember exactly what he was wearing the very first time I saw him... so clearly I knew what I thought of him, even if I wasn't conscious of it.

He was tall... normally I liked shorter guys. He had strange fashion, but I liked it. Normally my type is the, "Zac Efron" type... this guy wasn't that at all. But something about him stuck out to me... and I couldn't put my finger on it.

Anyway, homecoming came along and I was hanging out with a couple of my friends who just so happened to be friends with this boy. He was super funny, goofy, outgoing, and just ridiculously social. He had actually introduced himself to me earlier in the year (twice), but he didn't remember meeting me (twice). Well, after homecoming, the girls that I was hanging out with invited him to hang out with us as we went to McDonald's and to the playground behind it. That was when our friendship began. He immediately took an interest in my life. He was so easy to talk to. Normally I don't have an easy time talking to guys. Something about them always scares the crap out of me. But this guy was different. He was sweet, kind, caring... and I just knew that I could trust him.

So our friendship sort of grew from there. It was an extremely fast friendship. I know that I liked him before I was willing to admit it to myself, but I didn't want to admit it, because once you admit something like that, then you begin to act weird and mess everything up. So no, I didn't like him. That's what I had to tell myself at least.

Then Halloween came along and he got invited to go trick or treating with the group of people that I was going with. He was clearly more interested in talking to me than anyone else. But I refused to pay attention to that. I just decided that I would enjoy my time with everyone. Then as the evening progressed, this boy left and I stayed with the group of people, but they began to irritate me so I left before I got too mad at them.

So I signed onto facebook, decided to "like" the band "Of Mice & Men." then I received a new message on chat saying, "YOU LIKE OF MICE & MEN?!"and from that, a conversation that I had never had with anyone before ensued. This boy and I talked for several hours after that. I shared with him my deepest secret. A secret that I had never shared with anyone else. Ever. Not even my best friend. But I knew that I could trust him with it. I knew that I wanted to tell him. And I knew that I really, really, REALLY liked him. He was unlike any guy that I had ever talked to... and I liked that.

After that, he and I hung out quite a bit. We texted all the time. We shared things with each other that no one else knew about us. Throughout this process, he knew that I liked him and he hinted around that he liked me too, but he had just gotten out of a relationship at the beginning of the year and he wasn't sure whether his feelings were real or if they were rebound feelings. He told me that he wasn't ready for a relationship and that he wasn't mature enough for one. He told me that he had promised God that he would take a break from girls until at least his sophomore year. Now, this sort of devastated me because I liked him so much... But he seemed so godly and like honoring God in his relationships was what he longed to do most. Which I respected and I decided that, "You know what? As much as it sucks to have to be just friends with this guy when I want to be so much more, he's worth waiting for." So I just enjoyed the friendship.

Around Christmas break, we got into this weird fight thing because he confessed to me that he did like me but he didn't want to date me... and that he had known the whole time that I liked him. Which isn't a huge deal, but he treated me in certain ways that are really inappropriate if you don't like a girl but you know she likes you (meaning, he led me on hardcore. Cuddly and stuff). So I didn't really talk to him for the entire Christmas break of 2010. Finally he apologized and promised me that he wouldn't treat me that way anymore.

That didn't last. He was just as flirty as ever. Just as cuddly. But I still liked him so much that I didn't want to say anything about it. I just chose to accept that he didn't mean anything by it and move on. Well, one day I was in his room for open hours and we were watching a movie together... and he held my hand. Obviously that made me so happy and I was so excited because I was so crazy about this guy and he was already my best friend. That was around February 18th of 2011.

So, March 1st, 2011 came along and this boy and I were in the student center playing pool together, which we did all the time, and he scratched the ball in what seemed like a ridiculously intentional manner. So I told him so, and he was on the ground laughing. I was really confused why he was laughing so hard, until he got up, walked over to the pocket, and pulled out a note with my name on it. He had written me a note telling me all the things that he liked about me and asked me to be his girlfriend. It was so sweet and romantic. I still cherish the memory.

Well, that was the beginning of our relationship. I had never had a boyfriend before so I wasn't really sure how it all worked... but I was sort of getting the hang of it. But as I stated in an earlier blog, this boy had had a traumatic experience with his father that caused him to be afraid of telling the truth. So when we had gone home for spring break, he asked me if I was okay with him hanging out with his ex girlfriend. I wasn't really okay with it because I knew that they had gone way further physically than they should have, and because of that there were emotional connections that just couldn't be broken. He told me that he had already made the plans but he wanted to know if I was okay with them. I said that since he had already made the plans, that he should just hang out with her and then not do it again. He said, "No, I'll just cancel the plans, it's not a big deal! :)" So, I was happy! I thought that was a very mature and honorable thing to do, especially since I had not asked him to do so.

Well, once we got back from spring break, we were hanging out and he confessed to me that even though he told me he had cancelled plans, he really hadn't done so. That was the first time that he had lied to me since we were dating. And it wasn't the last.

There were many other stories that were about as similar in severity as that one. All of them get me so badly because if he had just been honest from the start, I would not have gotten mad at him. But as soon as he lied to me abou things, I just felt betrayed and hurt. I couldn't trust him at all.

There were two major lies that this boy told me. Here's the first of them:

This boy loved going to the club. He loved to dance and be goofy. I am reserved and not super big on the idea of clubbing. With that being said, he asked if it was okay with him if he went without me. I told him that I was absolutely not okay with him going to the club and dancing with other girls. To me, grinding on other girls and letting them grind on you was the same as cheating. If it looks like having sex, then it's cheating. Even if he didn't consider it to be cheating, he knew that I did. Meaning, if he did it it would be a direct betrayal of trust and the same as saying, "I don't care if it hurts you, I want to do what I want to do... I'll just hide it from you." But he said he was just going with a guy friend and they were going to just dance around and goof off together. So I said that I trusted him not to do anything stupid and he went. We'll pause that story right there for now.

Throughout the rest of the school year and the summer, I discovered that this boy had a lust problem. Pornography, bad movies, bad places, bad pictures, etc. He struggled with it. That was really hard to deal with. I was super insecure, which made it worse. I hadn't had the foundation of placing all of my value in Christ rather than this boy, so when he began to look towards other women for sexual gratification, it made me feel worthless and like I had no value. Rather than doing what I ought to have done, which would be seeking out God and placing my value in him and trusting him to work in the boy's heart, I decided that I should probably just make sure that he got the gratification from me. Obviously lust is a heart thing though. So it didn't matter how much I did to try and be enough for him, his heart was still in that dark place and he wasn't trying very hard to get out. My biggest regret is the fact that by trying and being the only gratification that he needed, I really ended up making the problem worse because he would get all hot and bothered by something that he had looked at, and then I would promptly reward those lustful thoughts. Knowing how negatively I affected his walk with God haunts me at night.

But anyway, he had this lust problem and he had this lying problem... the two of those things combined really caused me to feel very hurt, betrayed, neglected, and just altogether... I don't even know how to describe it. But I was disappearing. I wasn't the happy Kaitlyn that I used to be. Every second of every day was spent trying to be enough for this man that I loved so much and then finding out yet another way that he had betrayed my trust and hurt me.

Our relationship quickly became one fight after another. I didn't trust him which made him angry, and he wasn't trustworthy which made me angry. It was a vicious cycle. But throughout it all, we loved each other so much more than we could even put words to. It's really tragic all the way around. We were best friends before we dated, and we were still best friends while dating... but we had made enemies out of each other. Our relationship wasn't about two people growing in Christ, it was about two people who didn't want to be without each other, but who couldn't stand being with the other.

That all happened during the summer. Around two weeks before the 2011 school year began again, I found out yet one more way that he had lied to me, so I broke up with him. I had acted rashly and what I had thought was a lie really wasn't, but he had been lying to me so much and betraying my trust so often that I couldn't see that until the thought of being without him crashed down on me. He begged me to give him another chance, and promised me that he would be truthful and seek help for his lying and lust problem. So I told him that I would give him another chance. He felt as though he needed to make some confessions and most of the confessions I could deal with. All but one.

Press play on the story I began to tell up there ^^^^

Turns out, he had danced with a girl at the club. He had tried to tell me that she was just dancing in their area and was like, 5 feet away. But that lie quickly deteriorated into the truth. That's when I snapped. He had lied to me so many times, he had looked at inappropriate things so many times, he had been too flirty too many times, and he had blatantly checked out too many girls right in front of me too many times... and I had maintained (most of) my composure through it all... but finding out that he had blatantly done something that he knew I considered cheating (and I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the bible it says something about how if you're not sure if something is a sin and you do it anyway, it wasn't done out of faith and is therefore, a sin... so I feel like that same principle may apply. I considered it cheating, so it was cheating just for that reason). And I became the crazy psycho bitch of a girlfriend that so many people make fun of. Now, I know that there are those girls out there that literally have zero reason to behave that way... but having gone through what I've been through, I'm slightly more sympathetic to them. I became super controlling because I just wanted to know what he was doing and who he was doing it with at all times. I somehow managed to convince him that youtube was an awful thing and he gave it up... which led to more fights when I found out that he had used it. There were many other crazy things that I did or demanded that I'm so completely not proud of. And I know that his actions can only influence my behavior... but because I had not placed my value in Christ, his actions made me feel worthless, and I felt like I had to do all these psycho and controlling things to keep him honest and faithful to me. The problem is, all of the things that I did to try and keep him in love with me, really just pushed him away.

Eventually, he began to tell me really hurtful things. That he didn't take me seriously, he didn't like to be around me, he thought we talked too much, he didn't value my opinion, and that he didn't care what I thought, he needed his best friend's opinion on everything before he would make a decision with me. We would get in fights, and rather than dealing with it, he would just yell and tell me I was being stupid and hang up on me. One time he hung up on me in the middle of a fight and turned off his phone for a whole weekend and refused to respond to my e-mails. He became extremely emotionally abusive (but the signs were there even before we began dating... I was just so blinded by my feelings for him) and he was no longer treating me in the kind, sweet, gentle way that he had treated me before. It got to the point where if we were hanging out, he would have a bad attitude towards me, or we would do...bad things... together. I basically became a body to him. But it was the only time when I felt completely loved by him. He was convincing when he was seducing me. He would show me the man that I had fallen in love with. I think that's the reason I did that stuff so often... because I missed the way he looked at me when he was in love with me. And even if he was only giving me that look to get sexual gratification... to me it was worth it because I just wanted to feel like he loved me and ONLY me again.

Then things happened, he kept treating me horribly, he told me that resolving a fight with me wasn't worth his time and he refused to answer his phone, so I called and left a message telling him how that made me feel, he took it as me breaking up with him... which I wasn't... and he refused to get back together with me.

We were broken up for 3 months, during which he was an even worse ex boyfriend than he was a boyfriend. But during that three months, I was able to get myself where I needed to be with God. I placed my value in Christ instead of in this boy, and when I did that. I realized that everything that the boy was struggling with had nothing to do with me and everything to do with things in his past, and things in his heart that he had not surrendered over to God. And I forgave him. Completely. I had so much trouble forgiving him while we were dating. I just couldn't do it. I was angry and it was easier to be bitter at him than to let myself be vulnerable to this man who kept hurting me. But while we were broken up. I forgave him. I surrendered my bitterness to God and accepted the Lord's forgiveness for the things that I had done while dating this guy, and I was truly forgiven. I did some terrible things. Things that are completely not in my nature to do. And if God could forgive me for that, then who was I to hold these grudges? So I let it go.

Eventually the boy and I tried to be just friends and catch up and stuff, but that didn't work out so well and we began dating again. I had a new resolve to be completely different than I had been the first time around (which was pretty easy, seeing as who I had been the first time around wasn't even myself) and to just start completely over where I trusted the boy not to break my heart. I jumped in wholeheartedly and I didn't guard my heart at all. Big mistake. It is very very VERY difficult to backtrack once you've gone too far in a relationship. So when the boy and I got back together, I told God that the relationship was in His hands. I put the sexuality, the distrust, the unforgiveness, the insecurities, all of it. I put them all in God's hands and said, "Lord, I can't do this on my own and I need you in control of all of these things." And I promised Him that it would be different. But like I said, it's very hard to backtrack. So I reached into God's hands and I pulled out the sexuality. "Just for today" I told myself. But when I did that, it was as if God was like, "No. If you want that back, then you're getting the rest of it back too." So I was flooded with the insecurities. So, I made a stupid decision to look through his history. It was foolish and stupid and it was a lapse into the insecure Kaitlyn that I had been before. But it only lasted for about five seconds before I was so overwhelmed with guilt that I had to close his computer because I knew that he had a password on it, so even if I wanted to look again, I wouldn't be able to.

But while I was looking on it, there was something there for me to see. He had attempted to look at pornography. Now, to me... that moment was a huge sign of how far I had come. I mean, I had looked at his history, which was a sign that I still had a long way to go, but the fact that I could see that he had tried to look at porn, forgive him almost immediately, feel more terrible about invading his privacy that angry at what I saw, and still hang out with him that evening and act like everything was fine... and not only that, but everything WAS fine... proved to me that I really did love him and he really was worth it to me to work through his struggles alongside him. In a way of love. The way I should've done it from the very beginning.

But I told him. He asked me flat out if I had done it and I refused to lie. He broke up with my by literally running away from me and sending me a text saying that he didn't want to talk to me again. Then he promptly deleted and blocked me on facebook. He sent me an email telling me that he couldn't be with a girl who was so curious that she would break ethical boundaries to figure something out (mind you, before he even knew that I had looked through his history, he told me that he had tried to look at porn because curiosity had gotten the better of him... to me that is the most hypocritical thing I've ever heard of). and he told me that anything I sent to him would just be deleted. He refuses to give me closure, he refuses to talk to me. In fact, he said hi to me today for the first time in a month...

Just all of it is really messed up. We got into one fight and he told me that "we were well on our way" to becoming like we were before. He said that we fought just as often. Except before, we were fighting every time we hung out. And not just little tiffs... they were HUGE fights... this time around, we got in one fight because he broke a promise, and the second the day he ran away from me.

So, I don't know what to say or do about it. I love him dearly. While we were broken up the first time, I knew that I had done so many things wrong and I had given them over to God and I am a completely different person than I was before. He didn't give me the chance to show him that this time because he was just so primed to see the worst in me. He couldn't see how much I've changed or that I had truly forgiven him. I don't know. All of it just makes me sad because I love him more than I love myself. But I know that God is working some things out for me. He is either protecting me from what the boy really was, after all, his emotionally abusive tendencies had not subsided in the least during the three months apart, or maybe God is separating us for a time while He works on our hearts individually. Either way, I have to give it up to God and just live as though the boy and I are never going to be back together.

That's the thing with break ups. As much as they suck, they are preparing you for something even better. And there's no guarantee that the something better isn't going to be the same person just at different places in their lives. And there's no guarantee that the person you are in love with isn't going to grow up and be married three different times because they just can't have a successful relationship.

The point is, God is good and has your best interest at heart. He isn't going to make your life easy and problem free, but He's going to give you a life that only has the kind of problems that are perfect for your spiritual growth. You just have to follow God. He knows exactly what He wants for your life, so rather than trying to do it all on your own, you should just turn your life over to God because He's the only one who can make it turn out the way it's supposed to.

So while I allow God to mend my heart after it received the beating of it's life, all I can do is trust God and hope that in the end, His plan will be completely worth it in the end. Which it will be, so there's no way I can lose, here. :)

With all that said, if you're in need of some encouragement, click here. It's a really awesome blog that I stumbled across. :)