Day 29 of 100

I’m pretty sure my heart would never mend.

I was a senior in high school, captain of the swim team, which was the third sport I had played including football and wrestling. My swim coach used to say I swam like a football player, and my football coach said I played like a swimmer.

Yeah, I have no idea either, other than old men trying to make a young man feel bad about himself. The late ‘80s were dope.

I loved swimming, and more so, I was pretty good at it. Not great, but not bad either. My best friend swam, and he started dating a woman on the swim team and I started to hang out with her best friend.

The four of us were a tight group. At least that’s what I thought. We swam together, hung out together, I knew I wasn’t really dating, but it felt like I was. After all, I was 17 years old with all the dating experience of someone much younger than me.

Everything was great, until her first boyfriend came on to the scene. I believed in my core that I had no chance if he ever made a move, and so, in the most dramatic way possible, I wrote a letter telling them all that I was out of the friend group, and that they had crushed me.

Melodramatic kid, wasn’t I?

It took a long time for me to get over that situation. I constantly questioned myself and beat myself up for not taking a chance to tell her how I felt. I wonder if anything would have been different.

Years into therapy, I was talking to my therapist about that situation, and he put it in perspective. I was able to forgive myself for being a fearful kid who didn’t know how to express himself.

Now when I look at that picture I think about everything that kid has endured over our life, and I realize that I am pretty proud of myself for where I have ended up.

I still can’t tell people how I feel and emotions always are kinda scary.

But I am still melodramatic as fuck. So I got that going for me.