To let yourself be Used for the sake of Love...
I'm going to do my best to abridge here, though it's not my finest quality, I will say that much. (You will see what I'm talking about...I have a bit of trouble distinguishing which details are most relevant so I include them all)
Basically, starting my freshman year in high school, I was the top student in my class. I was several years ahead in Mathematics, taking AP calculus, and taking all the hardest classes the school had to offer. I was very involved in extracurriculars, and through first semester of my sophomore year, I maintained this leadership role. (lead in school play, etc.) After that, (I was a late bloomer) puberty hit, and I started to develop some hereditary health problems. They worsened and worsened to the point that my attendance was so low, I had to drop most classes, be registered as a student with a disability, and I was removed from most of my extracurriculars. My self esteem dropped from such an immense height to such a low place, that life felt helpless.
I met a girl after this time (my Junior year), as my life as I knew it, and all the criteria over which I valued myself fell to pieces. The girl was absolutely beautiful, very motivated, but shy and awkward and quiet. At the insistence of mutual parties, I began talking to her, and opening her up, and before I knew it, she was talking to me every free minute she had. She was two years younger me, and the closer we became, the more I saw her as a sister. However, I did not realize that she saw me as something significantly more, and during a trip wherein we had to spend 4 days together, she started making moves. I was confused and uncomfortable at first, but eventually I realized that I liked her as well.
We started dating then, and as she had a bad homelife, but desperately wanted to succeed, I began to help her with her schoolwork. She was already in the hardest classes due to her desire to be impressive, but she was struggling to a degree, and her destructive father was making it more difficult. At first she asked me for mild editing, or brief help, and I gladly obliged. Around this time, I was still struggling to be in the classes in which I belonged. But due to my shaky attendance record, teachers of classes like AP english told me I woudln't be able to keep up. I protested, cried out "discrimination," etc, but the faculty banded together and essentially made my difficult situation worse. Because of this, when my girl began asking me to write entire AP english papers for her, my desire to prove myself overran my common sense, and every time she would receive her consistently 97% or higher papers, I would feel proud. I did entire take-home AP calculus tests for her, and helped her with any work I could. Meanwhile, I was falling further and further behind in my classes and amassing tremendous amounts of Incompletes. (They coudln't fail me since I was now registered as a disabled student)
By the time my class graduated, I had 12 incompletes, largely due to the health problems combined with resulting depression. When my girlfriend reached her senior year, she began making me write her National Merit speeches for her, college essays for her, and though I may have felt bitter while doing it, as soon as I got the "I love you so much! you're so great! You saved my life!" etc, from her, it all melted away. When I coudln't meet a deadline she had due to unexpected health problems or other complications, she would get really upset, and I'd sometimes find myself staying awake til 6 AM doing her work just to calm her down, so she would tell me she loved me again.
She had a college admissions adviser because her parents are fairly wealthy, and when her essays woudl be critiqued she would get comments like "i'm not feeling your emotion in this. It doesn't really tell me about you." I took a trip all the way to New York where she was meeting her adviser, and privately rewrote her essay for 6 hours until the next day in the next meeting, the adviser said "wow, this is so much more introspective! I'm impressed." The irony, of course, is that introspection comes from a self-evaluation, whereas her essays were written by her far-more-eloquent boyfriend, from her perspective, and thus, in actuality, were the antithesis of "introspective."
She received admission into Stanford later that year. Since we're from the midwest, that equates to about a 2000 mile distance. She promised me she loved me and would never leave me. Promised that she realized the sacrifices I made for her, and would never forget them. Promised that the allure of a non-restrictive lifestyle would not lead to any disrespect of me. 2 years after I should have graduated, I finished my incompletes. I had enough credit to advance a couple semesters in college, but I'm still very behind and attending a state school.
I had been buying her expensive gifts, assembling thoughtful care packages for her, telling her I loved her and I would be there for her if she needed me. I visited her once, and the trip was amazing. However, I had become a little clingy, and a little possessive due to an incident one year prior where she broke up with me due to a crush on another guy, and realized her mistake within a few days and begged for forgiveness. But it left a scar. I was working on building my trust again, when all of a sudden she told me that we fight too much (we had been fighting a lot because she would go out, get completely drunk, and then not call me til late at night the next night, so I would often wonder what happened and would be afraid both for her, and for my relationship. We would also fight because I would listen thoughtfully to her trivial problems, and yet she would tell me that my problems with depression and more were too much for her to handle. She was never there for me.) and that she was breaking up with me. She took it back 3 weeks later and told me I was the only one for her and she had been taking me for granted, and that she would work to make my semester at least a fraction as amazing as I had made the last 3 to 4 years of her life. 2 weeks later she retracted this, 2 days later she was grinding with other guys on the dance floor, telling me she didn't' love me anymore, and telling me it's over. She is already pursuing someone else. Here I am, and yet, with all the brains I have, I was unable to see this coming.
I will be graduating late, and I will be fighting an uphill battle to gain positions that would come easy for Stanford grads. She was a very motivated student, but she would never be at Stanford had it not been for me. Everything she promised me was a lie, and I was used for 4 years straight at the expense of my own progress. I thought it was worth it because we would be there for each other forever; that her success meant my success and that was what was important. I was wrong. Why did I do all of this? Once again, She's beautiful, she was with me when it seemed I had nothing going for me, her problems distracted me from my own, and I wanted to live vicariously through her successes since I hadnt' achieved my own. I'm heartbroken, and I cry every day over someone who never really gave me anything. I cry that I was so naive and idealistic. And I cry that the girl to whom I gave a personality, gave a better life, never gave a damn about me in return. I'm telling this story because I know people often fall into these sort of traps, and I'm hoping this can help someone else realize they're in a destructive, uneven, and unhealthy position. Thanks for listening (if any of you did.)
