30 Day Challenge: Day Tatu

Day Tatu: First Love

{Tatu = Swahili for 3}

Let's be clear about this.  My first real life love were worms.  I loved everything about those creepy, crawly little buggers.  Like I've told you before, I was a weiiiiiiiird, weird kid.

My first human love, I'm talking head over heels, kind of makes you want to hurl love was Nicholas.  {Don't tell Jonathan Taylor Thomas or Leonardo DiCaprio about this... they are likely to be devastated.}  We met at a very strange time in my life.  College.  Freshman year.  At the Delt house.  I was drunk for the whole first two-ish years of our bizarre relationship.  It was on again.  It was off again a lot.  There were very few healthy aspects to what we had but I loved it.  To say our relationship was volatile would be like saying Lindsey Lohan dabbles with drugs.  While it was/is very obvious, it is also a tragic understatement.  We fought ALL. THE. TIME.  Big fights.  Little fights.  You name it.  We did it.  I was convinced Nicholas wasn't treating me like he should be but it went both ways.  I was crazy about this boy.  {Ha, boy.  He used to get SO mad when I didn't call him a man.}  Literally.  I had never / have never / hopefully will never act like I did with him to anyone else in the world.  I was quite whore-id.  Emphasis on whore, obvi.

Nick is great.  And I am, obviously, fantastic.  But together?  Not so much.  All of my friends would tell me this.  A lot of his friends would tell me this.  There was a very intense pull between us.  I couldn't stay away from him too long.  I can't tell you how many times I cried because he hurt my feelings or how many times I deleted his number from my phone {even though I had it memorized}.  I swore him off on at least a monthly basis.

It wasn't all bad, though.  Nicholas and I invented day-ghts.  What is this, you ask?  It's quite simple.  It's an all day date.  We would go to Whole Foods - that's not the name of it up in Knoxville, but I can't seem to think of the real name.  He'd grocery shop for hours.  I'd walk around people watching, then we'd go get something to eat and head home to watch a documentary.  The documentary was his choice, not mine.  It would always be about something that bored me to fucking tears.  Occasionally he'd let me watch my tv shows.  I'm sure he hated it just as much as I did watching things about how the Earth rotating.... zzzzzz.   Sorry, I fell asleep at the mere thought of those shows.  The sweetness would last a few days, then we'd get drunk and all hell would break loose.  I'm leaving out a lot of the embarrassing things we used to do {silly/sweet embarrassing} because I know he reads this and I know people that know him read this and he would lose all street cred if people knew he wasn't the ass he tries to come off as.

But Nick was there for me through a lot.  A LOT.  We still talk every now and then but it's weird to not be as close as we used to be.  For me, anyway.  It's crazy how it's been years since I've seen him and he still knows me better than almost anyone.  It's scary, actually.  Regardless of everything we put each other through, I will always love him.  I miss him and I miss his family {Big Al in particular.  Big is what a man should be... maybe we'll talk about that more another day}.  Since I've moved back to Memphis, Nicholas and I have time to reflect and apologize to each other for being so bad to one another.  He's come to realize that you can't do what he did to me and expect anyone to stick around.  I've realized the same thing.  Growing apart hurts.  Growing up, on the other hand, makes it somehow worthwhile.  Writing this post made my heart a little sad.


Side bar:  After originally posting this, I went through and read some of the blogs posted by other people doing the challenge.  I went through the first TWENTY and had to stop.  Am I really one of the only ones NOT saying J to the Esus or my dad or babies?!?!  Yowza.  I may be in with the wrong crowd.