meet "chet"

***Pre warning this is a long ass post, and will probs be the longest I will ever post on here ~promise~***

Have you ever gotten drunk and felt this burning desire, this uncontrollable inclination to text your ex or an old fling or current fling, or anyone you probably should just leave alone until the liquor is no longer circling your blood system? This question is subpar because I already know the answer to it, and its obviously YES, because who hasn’t made this drunken blunder? Well, I am a notorious drunk texter, the second liquor even presents itself in a room let alone comes remotely close to my glossed up lips, I go all “this is the absolutely perfect if not ONLY time to admit to everyone how I feel about them sob sob cry a little”, and its like NOOOO drunk Tessa, you are WRONG. Drunk Tessa though, has a mind of her own, drunk Tessa doesn’t listen to the normal intuition that I have when I am sober (or think I have). The other night, I was hanging with some old friends and some new ones, and talking about no other than love. I recently got out of a ~relationship~, which I don’t even know if you can call it that, but as I look back on it, thats definitely what it was. I was seeing, lets call him “Chet” (mainly because I have never actually met a guy named Chet and I think I would giggle just a bit if I ever do, and because the real guy is the exact opposite of any douchey guy named Chet). Chet came into my life suddenly, as if he was just always there. We became friends, already having mutual friends we both hung out with, so it was quite easy I guess you could say. Chet was this happy guy, always with a smile on his face. He reminded me of the first day of summer, you step outside in shorts for the first time, your pale neglected legs wince at the feeling of the heat on them after being covered all winter, and you sit there watching the blue sky flutter with small white clouds and the sun shining directly on your warm body, that was Chet for me (as lame as that may sound). He was just so happy, it hurt almost, I always wondered how someone could always be so damn happy all the time. Not that I wasn’t (lol) but I was definitely not Chet happy. I couldn’t walk around on clouds and have a smile plastered on my face at all times. We got to know each other more and of course he had moments of sadness, he was human, but overall Chet was able to see the world in a way I couldn’t even imagine. Everything was special to him, everything was beautiful. He would be folding his clothes, before putting them away, touch a t-shirt so delicately, and somehow find beauty in that old shirt his mom probably bought for him back in High School. I am not a negative person, necessarily, I am just not a positive person all the damn time, but Chet was showing me what it was like to feel genuinely happy and appreciate and see all the ~worlds wonders~ the way I wish I had always seen them. We started “dating” I guess you could say, we would go on dinner dates, and watch movies, have sleep overs, get drunk off of cheap red wine, and do laundry together. He was an artist, and I, a writer, so we would sit on his twin size bed, silent with a notebook each in our hand, him drawing a faint picture of me, and me writing a poem about the love that was slowly but surely forming in my heart for him. On weekend mornings we would wake up, with the sun shining through his third story Boston apartment, and he would play me a song on his guitar or piano. My favorite was when he would play “Can’t Help Falling in Love With You” by Elvis, because one, it’s one of my all time favorite songs, but also because it’s exactly how I felt, that I truly couldn’t help but fall in love with this guy. The point of this post, is not to tell you every detail of Chet and I, or lack of details of our sex life, but to explain what I learned from this so called relationship. Eventually, like everything, Chet and my fleeting romance came to a sudden close. He ended things, not me, not because of anything I did (at least thats what he said), but because of his own human emotional issues he had to deal with. He did nothing wrong, absolutely nothing, he was always kind, even in this “break up” moment, and even so, it still hurt. He walked out of my apartment, and realistically out of my life, closing my squeaky bedroom door, and I sobbed uncontrollably into a glass of chardonnay and puffy white pillows. I didn’t understand why I was so upset, why my heart felt like he had just thrown it down a 50 story building and it smashed into small little pieces, that would never be recovered. I am one to be dramatic, sure, but this feeling fucking hurt. Watching him walk away and slightly glance back with a half smile on his face, fucking hurt. I wanted to race after him, I wanted to hug him and tell him not to leave. I wanted to tell him I would be there for him in whatever he was going through, but I didn’t, obviously. I just sat there and cried. The next day I had a flight with my friends, straight to LA for our spring break. Like I have said in my “about me” section as well as in my life in general, I am not one to show much emotion, if I’m sad, I’ll simply say “ha yeah i’m fine” with a smile, and that will be it. I don’t like people knowing when I am hurting, I don’t want them to coddle me and try and make me feel better. My emotions, are for me, and thats it. So I met up with my friends at the airport, and tell them the news of mine and Chet’s breakup. At first everyone has those sad puppy eyes on their faces, ready to hug me and console me and tell me everything will be okay. Then I tell them, even though I am lying through my teeth, that I am in fact totally okay with this. Not only that, but I plan to “hookup” with as many people as possible, on this vacation. That confidence that jumped out of me was believable, and so in turn my friends said, what made sense to them, saying “well at least it wasn’t like a year long relationship, that probably would’ve been way worse”. I laughed, agreed, and ignored the implications of this comment. The next week, I did in fact get my hookup on with a guy (but thats another story), and felt fine, completely fine, I swear I was FINE. Okay, yeah , I wasn’t fine. I mean, I thought I was, Chet and my time together was brief, only a few months, I couldn’t be heartbroken! Right? WRONG. I was. After leaving LA, coming back to Boston, I had to see him in a social situation. It was our friends birthday, and so I was prepared to not only look my best, but also brag about my LA romance. I get there, see his smiling face, his face that looked like he didn’t care one bit about us ending, and everything in me came crashing down. Of course I hid this, I was polite, I danced with everyone, pretended to have an absolutely great night, but inside it was killing me. It was killing me to see him there, happy as ever, to see him dancing, and not with me, to see him and not be able to kiss him or talk to him like I used to, to not end the night in his small ass bed cuddled up in one of his “beautiful” t-shirts. I ended up leaving and crying alone, blah blah, being all sad, and THEN my drunk ass decides to text him. I say “can we talk”, he says yes, and then I try to get him to come over, he says an obvious no to that, and says we can talk during the week. WELL the week comes and I get no texts from him with a plan to meet up to talk.. I mean granted soberly I had no damn clue what I even wanted to say to him, I didn’t even understand what I was feeling until the next time I get drunk. So like I said, the other night I was hanging with some old and some new friends talking about love, like I always do, and as I was doing so, I thought about Chet. I thought about what my friends had said "and how it wasn’t a year long relationship blah blah bullshit, and I realized something. I fell for Chet in a way I never had before, he was special for me, I fell for HIM, not because of sex or physical intimacy (like every other person Ive been with), but because of who he was, and how he made me feel. He was so curious and appreciative about the world, he made me want to see things the way he did, he made me want to be happier and healthier as my own person, the way he was. Despite this encounter being somewhat brief, it still meant so much to me. And as I was talking about love to strangers the other night, while on my 2nd glass of whiskey, it made me realize that these small love affairs we experience, that aren’t years long, that don’t have the facebook official title, or the sappy instagram posts, or the bring you home to meet your parents ordeal, mean just as much as the ones that do. The week long love that you know you’ll never see again, or even the weekend you meet some mysterious yet wonderful person, and spend over 24 hours talking to them, fucking them, being with them, these still mean something. I guess I am realizing why Chet leaving me hurt so much, why it still hurts, and why I felt the need (as you can tell from the picture above) to text him that I was upset with him. I think I almost like the small love affairs even more, yes you are aware of their impermanence, but they are still so powerful. Even though it might hurt after the moment is over, at least you can say you felt a kind of love, you felt a kind of connection with another person that you don’t always get. I can stand there in front of someone, knowing I am leaving in the morning, but I will still put my all into it. I will feel every emotion I possibly can, let it happen, holding nothing back, because it is so worth it to be able to feel these things. I have had heartbreak, sure, many times even, this whole Chet thing still fucking hurts, but at least I know I have felt a sort of love with this person that cannot be replicated, that can barely be explained, and thats more important to me than the brutal aftermath of sadness and ice-cream and crying to that Elvis song in my bed alone. Something I am learning is that we should just love, and love as much as we possibly can, we shouldn’t be afraid to let go, to get attached, because man is it worth it. Heartbreak may suck and be painful but I would do it over and over again if I have the chance of feeling love and feeling a human connection that not everyone can say they have. I may still be hurting right now, but I look back at Chet, and I am so thankful I had that experience, I am so thankful I met him. I told him I was upset with him, but not because of anything he did, but solely because I miss him and what we had. I almost wish he did something wrong so I can justify me being upset. But instead of lying and saying I’m fine, I am going to say I am not entirely fine, my heart still hurts, and I am upset that I still care and think about him, but I am not upset that I let it happen. I am not upset that I let myself fall for this guy, and get attached to him. I hope that one day he will let another person in, and fully feel love, the way I felt with him. But okay, enough sentimental garbage (aka the stuff I’m obsessed with), I am going to go have an afternoon tequila shot, and hopefully not get drunk and text people I definitely shouldn’t.

<3