In honor of it being Thursday, and social media completely controlling what we post up from the past specifically on Thursdays, I am going to post a narrative I had written for one of my professor’s classes back in 2011. It is about myself going through a heart break, and the tolls that it took on my body, and my mind. I look back on it from time to time and think to myself, “wow, I certainly have changed like I said I wanted to.”

This is a very personal story about myself, one that helped shaped me in to who I am today.

A Kiss Is a Lovely Trick

Depression is not something anyone would ever think I would suffer from, but sometimes love does that to people.

Love, a word having numerous meanings, but all of those meanings are lost to me. I loved once, at a young age where I don’t believe that it was just “puppy love”, where at the age of 19 it normally is.

I’m an emotional person to begin with. I am very insecure to the point that I don’t think I am funny, I don’t have a pretty face, and I could lose a couple of pounds. Because of those insecurities I never thought anyone would find me attractive. But one boy actually took an interest in me, and swept me off my feet.

Who would have thought that the same boy would be the cause of my depression?

I already went to the gym five days a week, working on getting a beach body for the summer, and kept to my routine as an outlet to keep my mind off of things. I would normally spend one hour at the gym for my entire workout routine. 20 minutes on the elliptical for my cardio, 15 minutes on the leg press, and another 15 minutes on the abdominal machine, and would finish my workout with a 10 minute run on the treadmill.

However, I would find myself being at the gym for two hours, sometimes three, without realizing how much time had actually passed.

It’s not that I didn’t want to eat, I just couldn’t. When I looked at food, I didn’t do anything for me, it didn’t make me hungry. I would watch everyone else eat and if they offered me a bite, I would pass. Every time dinner was put on the table at home, and my mom would call up to me as I lay in bed staring at the ceiling wondering what it was that I did wrong for him to crush my heart in to pieces, I would just say, “I’m not hungry”, “I had a big lunch at work”, or “I already ate.”

The funny thing is I never felt my stomach growling, warning me that I was hungry and my body was running low on fuel.

I never thought that love would lead to this kind of pain, but that’s how I knew it was love.

Ironically enough, I was already in a relationship when I first met Andrew. It’s normal to find someone attractive when you are already dating someone else, just as long as you don’t act on it.

Andrew was different. Something about him just took my breath away, and he made it clear he had the same interest. He drove a nice car, was a volunteer in the fire department, and was physically attractive. I was smitten by him.

It’s normal to make mistakes. But if mistakes lead you to other things, or people, that make you happy then is it really a mistake?

I have no regrets acting on my impulses, because it led me to someone who became my best friend, and my first true love.

I left the boy I was with to pursue Andrew, not knowing if it was going to turn in to a relationship, or anything close to it.

I was in my sophomore year of college when Andrew and I officially started our relationship, right before Christmas break. I was so excited to call him my boyfriend, and got chills every time he introduced me as his girlfriend to his friends. We spent all of winter break together, learning about each other, caring about each other, and falling in love with each other.

Many say that we were crazy to drop the “L” word so early in our relationship, but I am a believer in the saying, “when you know, you know.”

I still remember the night it was said. It was a short 20 days after we officially started dating, but it just felt right. New Year’s Eve, the ball was about to drop, you can see your breath in the winter air. We weren’t in any parties; we were in each other’s arms on the street when the countdown started to midnight.

10…9…8…we couldn’t help but smile, 7…6…5…the laughing were as if we were children, 4…3…2…hugging each other, as if we were never letting go…1…0…my very first New Year’s kiss, and with that kiss came the very first “I love you,” and with that I was his.

Moving back to live at school after winter break ended was hard to do, but that’s because I made him my world. I revolved everything around him.

That’s when the arguments began, which is normal to happen in a relationship because everyone has arguments, and butts heads, and have disagreements. I didn’t know how to handle them because we were one hour away from each other. But then he would surprise me at school with a bouquet of my favorite flowers every time, and things were better again.

I felt like he was the one who I was meant to be with.

I couldn’t wait until summer vacation because then we would be together all the time and we were. I had a real life summer love, just like the movies. But like most movies, at the end of the summer, someone moves away and then everything falls apart. Andrew didn’t want me to move back to school at the end of the summer, so I made the sacrifice to stay home and commute to school three days a week.

I wasn’t focusing fully, I skipped days at school to be with him because he wanted to be with me throughout the day, even though the days weren’t productive and we would just lie in bed together and watch television.

My parents would ask me why Andrew stopped coming over. I would lie to them and tell them it was because I couldn’t focus at home when it came to doing homework and that is why I spent all that time at the fire house, which was a lie.

Not only was I losing focus on school, I was losing a lot of friends. Since Andrew and I were together every day, I didn’t make time to spend with my friends, and it didn’t help that he didn’t like my friends. The only people that he and I would make plans with were his friends because he liked spending time and going out with them. I also liked spending time with his friends because his friends then became my friends.

I would bring it up to Andrew that I did miss hanging out with my friends, and each time I did it would turn in to an argument because he didn’t like them, including my sister. It never occurred to me why he didn’t want me to go out with them, but it all came down to trust.

He didn’t trust me, he didn’t trust my friends because six months into the relationship, I made the mistake of cheating and betraying his trust and he blames my friends for letting that happen which I could understand.

People make mistakes.

Two years of arguing, breaking up, making up, and being head over heels in love with each other, back to arguing was the result of the choices I made. Love is an emotional rollercoaster, and I was sitting in the first car without my seatbelt fastened.

After a while, my friends stopped asking me to come out, and spend time with them because they knew my answer ahead of time.

It was the summer going in to the third year of our relationship. I was out to dinner with one of the mutual friends I met through Andrew because we were arguing again, over something stupid I’m sure, and he was at a house party with a few of his friends who were trouble makers, and whom I didn’t trust. I was texting one of the girls there just to check up on him and see if he was doing anything stupid.

Three minutes after sending the text message, I receive an incoming call from Andrew.

“Kristin, why are you checking up on me? Cut the (explicit). I’m done with you and your bulls**t! We’re done!”

Just like that, in that instant my heart was shattered in to 1,000 pieces. This person who was number one in my life, who I made my entire life, my world, my everything, was gone in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t have my own friends’ shoulder to cry on.

I didn’t know what to do. I had no idea how to react. I was already on my way home from dinner, and had to pull over on the side of the road because I was having a break down. I never gotten physically sick to my stomach over being upset before, I was scared that I had gotten sick on the side of the road. I had to call the girl I was just out to dinner with to come with her boyfriend to drive my car home.

It’s true that I care too much and get attached too easily, I admit, and don’t expect much in return, just to be cared for back. When Andrew showed that care back after each fight, I knew that this wasn’t just some silly “puppy dog” love.

I was told once, “some people care too much, but I think it is called love,” and I believe this was the real thing.

Never in my life have I thought I would go through a depression due to a boy, and that depression would lead me to lose friends, an education, and over 25 pounds. I felt like giving up, and feeling like giving up is natural in heartbreak. But in order to overcome it, we are supposed to stay strong and never give in to the overwhelming desire to call it quits. However, I did want to call it quits. I had no desire to try and feel happiness.

At my lowest weight I reached 105 pounds the unhealthy way; not eating, and over-exercising.

Food was unappealing to me. It didn’t make me sick; I didn’t want to throw up if I did eat. All I felt was pain.

I got in contact with the friends that Andrew denied me the right of having, and they welcomed me back with open arms and shoulders to cry on.

They saw how much weight was literally falling off of my body to the point where you can see every bone in my body, and they wanted to help any way that they could. They tried force feeding me whenever we went out to dinner. The only thing at that point that made me full and feels whole again was alcohol.

I turned to liquor to fill the gap in my heart and my stomach. My conscious was never in the right state of mind. It never made me feel happiness, and it never made me feel like everything was going to be okay because deep in my heart I felt like everything between him and I were going to work out.

I was unofficially diagnosed with anorexia nervosa.

Anorexia nervosa is defined as an eating disorder that makes people lose more weight than is considered healthy for their age and height. Persons with this disorder may have an intense fear of weight gain, even when they are underweight. They may diet or exercise too much or use other ways to lose weight.

I wasn’t trying to lose weight and I didn’t have a fear of weight gain. I don’t agree that I should have been diagnosed with that illness because I wasn’t forcing myself to not eat.

All I ever wanted to do was please Andrew, and if I didn’t make him happy, then I became very unhappy with myself. I didn’t make any time for myself though, I made everything about him. I should have never let someone else, especially a boy, control my life. I lost control of something that everyone should have control over. I lost control over myself. What I did wrong was not be selfish enough.

I would be lying if I said that I don’t think of him from time to time. I question what I could have done to make him make a life-changing decision for the both of us and what I could have differently to save the relationship that we had. These thoughts usually crash in to my head when our song comes on the radio, or when a DJ plays it at the club. It’s crazy how one song can take you back to a time full of memories, and you find yourself reflecting on how far you have come since then, and that song that you shared becomes just another song on the radio.

I am more selfish when it comes to me, and I do not revolve my life around someone else.

I am back to being a normal weight for my age group, and my height. I still attend the gym on a regular schedule, and am eating healthier. I wouldn’t say I am completely happy with my life, but I am happier than I was one year ago knowing it was going to be a long journey back.

This is my life, and I am in control of it.