Coming Full Circle

About 10 years ago, I was on the badminton team for the university. One day at practice, this gorgeous girl is just sitting there. Even though I had a girlfriend, I decide to approach her. It probably wasn't the most ethically decision, I didn't really think at the time there was any intent other than harmless chat.

Shortly after I would find out she was dating one of the guys on the badminton team. So I kind of left it along, but little did I know she would attend many practices and tournaments in future. I have to admit, that I got pretty excited when I saw that she was there. As I write this, I kind of sound like a jerk, considering at the time I was dating my now ex-girlfriend for a few years, who was away at university. But honestly, I can't think of too many instances where I'd be so excited to see somebody. Our friendship quickly grew, and we started getting closer and closer.

In hindsight, I was falling for her. My ex-girlfriend was always away, and she was extremely possessive at the time, and of course wanted nothing to do with my life and expected me to fold into hers. Whereas this girl, I was spending a lot of time together and she was hanging out with my friends and seemed genuinely interested in me. And the thing is, she knew fully well that I had a girlfriend, they did in fact meet a couple of times.

I was living in this huge moral dilemma filled with guilt. The whole badminton team thought I had broken the guy and her up. All my friends at school thought that she was my girlfriend (since they never met my actual girlfriend at the time). And some members of my family (mom in particular) really liked her a lot. I'm sure my ex had suspected something. The toughest thing of all was, all parties thought she liked me a lot.

Eventually everything came to an abrupt end. One day she was hanging out with me at my parents' house. Nobody else was home, and we were in my bedroom just chatting. It was time for her to go home, but she didn't want to... so she threw herself on my bed. At that very moment, I freaked out and told her she had to go home. I didn't call her for days. She eventually reached out and was really mad, and rightfully so. She didn't understand what I was going through. I told her we couldn't be friends anymore, and explained everything, except how I was feeling. She was upset and I was sad, but at the same time, I couldn't keep it up anymore. I had to choose, and I decided to stick with the girl I was technically with. It seemed like the stand up thing to do. I guess this might be one of the biggest regrets that I've ever had. While I still agree that my choice at the time was the moralistic choice, it probably was not the best choice emotionally.

Fast forward to present day. So I've been having a pretty rough 2012, as per my previous post. So I have my expiring eHarmony account, with one week left, guess who shows up as a match. Was I ever shocked. I wasn't too sure what to do with it. I didn't know if she was still upset. Or even if she would still remember me. After consulting a few sources, I decided to send her a message. She replied back fairly promptly, and to my surprise, not bitter. We exchanged a couple emails back and forth over a week. After talking to my mom, who went on to give me quite the lecture, I decided to ask to meet.

We met up last night, and she hadn't changed a bit. The first 5-10 minutes were a little awkward, but pretty soon we found out conversation groove. It was almost like old times again. I have to admit, I was pretty excited. Somewhere during our conversation, she made it quite clear that we were just friends meeting and it wasn't a date. While I found this deflating, I was just glad to be in her company and she didn't want to rip my arm off.

We ended off the night with the typical "we should do this again sometime". In this case, I definitely meant it. I can only hope that she did too. I'm doing my best not to look into things too deeply. It's completely possible that we may never see each other again, unfortunately it's something that I'll have to accept. It's something that I had accepted years ago up until a couple of weeks ago. So I don't know why it's so difficult to re-accept it now. Perhaps it's something that I accept, but will always regret.