Someone Like You

You know what's exhausting? Disappointing people without being able to do a single thing about it. The same person has been pursuing me for three years. I tried being gentle, I tried being subtle, I tried being absent. Still, they're persistent in a way that's hard to avoid. It's not that I find this person undateable or not-for-me. You have to know that we are so similar and he makes me laugh harder than anyone in the world. It's rare that someone is able to be that for me -- usually I'm the one that brings this quality to the table. But I can't date him. And there are several reasons for this. I realize that these are the topics you leave for your journal, not your blog; but I'm convinced that my audience is rather small so I'm not particularly worried. :)


Reason 1: I don't want to feel even slightly inhibited while I'm playing in Europe. I don't plan to meet anyone, nor will I be looking; but I'd be going with 20 other Sooners. Four months is a long time to be away from someone and still feel obligated to check in or, supposing I do meet someone, feel like I can't/shouldn't pursue that. You may be wondering why I didn't date him sooner, given that we've been talking for three years. The answer to that is multi-faceted. He's younger than me, we live in completely different worlds, and we value different things in the people we want to date. I feel like both of us have some growing up to do in different parts of our lives and I really don't want to be someone else's guinea pig.


Reason 2: How do you tell someone that the way they feel about you, you have spent all that time feeling about someone else? I've tried to think of a million ways to say that and there's no easy or gentle way to do it. Although I feel like I've done a decent job of avoiding leading him on, it's inevitable that he feel that he was lead on. To him, he probably feels like he's wasted three years of his life waiting on me to come around when he could've been dating other people. When it comes down to it, I know exactly how he feels; but it's always been someone else for me.  It's heartbreaking and it's infuriating. But that's what it is.