The Free Agent

Hey yall! So, I think I’m ready to get into the next “installment” of this whole relationship thing. These last two are a little more emotional to me, and so may be a little longer (as they are more involved). Bear with me.

Anywho, we are going to call this next man up “The Free Agent.” There are a few ironic reasons that he is named that, but most are too specific to be brought up here. Basically though, when you think of a free agent, you think of someone who is available to everyone, pretty much able to deal with whomever they want without obligations. So the name fits. Not that he was loose with it, but… you’ll see.

So, I met The Free Agent shortly after I crossed into Deltaland, and he had just crossed into his fraternity as well (frat will remain nameless, lol). I wasn’t looking for anything serious, and I’m sure he wasn’t either. We were having fun, talking, whatever it’s called nowadays. Slowly but surely, I began to develop feelings. And I felt like there was at least some kind of reciprocation. We kept in touch via email while he traveled that summer, and he even called from overseas a few times. I was not delusional enough to think that he felt what I felt, but I thought I was safe in assuming that he felt *something.*

So, we are floating along, living life, and my assumptions about the nature of our relationship keep building. However, things seem to have been brewing behind the scenes without my knowledge. One of my linesisters was dating one of his linebrothers (the Greek thing is, like, ALWAYS an extra hitch thrown into relationships when all parties are close to one another), and informed me that actually, my place in his life was one of “friend with benefits,” and not anything more serious, as I had assumed. Let me state that I NEVER deluded myself into thinking that we were in some kind of stable relationship, but FWB was not something that I EVER intended to be. So, I ask him about it, and I’m pretty sure that he denies it. It’s been about 4 years, but I’m pretty sure that that is what happened.

Throw in a few more glitches of a similar sort, and you can kind of see where we were going. However, I was willing to go with the flow because I had not stated my desires of stability and something concrete. Then one night, we have an argument about something, that I’m sure was stupid, but important enough to argue about at the time. We talk about it, and I think, ok, I’m kinda pissed, but not enough to make a huge fuss. We kind of make up, and leave it there. The next night, his chapter has a house party, and of course, my linesisters and I are in attendance.

So I am at the party, trying to engage him in conversation, and he is being a little distant, and I figure we both could use a little space since we had just had a fight the previous night. Plus, I noticed this chick looking at me every so often, and was really trying to figure out what was going on. But I decided to ignore her too.

So, I’m sitting there, drinking, and getting drunker without realizing it. I see him chasing around this same chick that has been staring at me off and on throughout the night. Intuition started misting in, but was thwarted by the alcohol, lol. So, after awhile, I stand up, and immediately realize exactly how much I had been drinking. (Tipsyyyyyy…. Lol) So, I start looking around for him. He’s missing. Then I notice that the random chick was missing as well. To make an even longer story short, they are missing, together. In the basement of the house. Doing things that I don’t even want to think about right now. Like, literally, right below my feet. And everybody knew it.

I was hurt. MAJORLY embarrassed, because everyone knew. And felt completely and totally disrespected. I feel that even if you are not monogamous with someone (which I actually thought we were), it’s such a slap in the face to do something like that to them. I literally felt like someone was carving me open at that moment and smashing my heart to pieces. I can’t think of an appropriate analogy, but yall probably get it anyway.

So, there’s a confrontation (me and him), he denies doing anything, but says that even if he did, that we were not monogamous, so I shouldn’t feel any type of way about it. That we weren’t monogamous so that we both had the freedom to do what we wanted. And later that weekend, we decided to just end things altogether and move on.

I talked to my mother about it afterward, and in between my random bouts of tears, I told her that it hurt so much because I thought that I loved him. I had actually not realized that fact before I said it, but I realized then that it was true. To this day, I am not sure that I loved him, but I know that I was at least falling. And it hurt even more to discover a feeling like that after the irreparable damage had already been done. It’s like in the song “Allure” by Jay-Z:

“Or even the worst pain is the distress
Learnin’ you're the mistress only after that love gets slain
And the anger and the sorrow mixed up leads to mistrust
Now it gets tough to ever love a-gain
But the allure of the game, keeps callin’ your name”

(And the last line of that is the reason that I didn’t just throw in the towel on love and relationships then and there.)

Anyway, the story does not end there, but my lesson did. I have never assumed anything in a relationship since then. It makes me need everything spelled out . I can’t not know what is going on, because I know I catch feelings early. It’s what I do. But for my heart’s sake, I won’t allow myself to act on them without explicit reciprocation.

But for the record, we have since made up, and I even count him among one of my friends. TO this day, we keep in touch fairly consistently. Sometimes I think back and get hurt because he still has not to this day admitted to or acknowledged exactly what happened. But he was there to listen to me when I was going through craziness with a close friend, and I have learned to forgive. Forgetting is a little different, or I wouldn’t even be able to write this. Those were my lessons. And I hope I was an apt student.