Love... It's Complicated

People develop faster than others. We all take a pace with learning new knowledge. I walked into chapter 15 of my life, realizing I didn’t know much about love. I knew the simple things of love: caring for family members, showing gratitude towards friends, and spreading positivity with every step I took. Even though a lot of times I didn’t take those routes with certain situations, I could still say I knew a bit about the word “love.” However, before I turned 15, I never knew how complicated love can be, nor did I realize how I could let myself be subject to such pain.

After the summer of ‘14, I was introduced to high school. There were two big regrets to this change: waking up earlier and having more homework. Already feeling stressed from my three years of middle school, I didn’t necessarily feel prepared for high school like other students in my grade. I walked into high school with a lingering reputation of being bashful, but speaking when I pleased to. A little part of me hated the fact that I had the reputation, but the bigger part of me was tired of caring what people thought because I knew I wasn’t changing for anyone. Now, at 18-years-old, I stayed with that vow.

Like middle school, we had a homeroom before any of our classes started for the day. But the difference was that we had more freedom to be on our phones when we pleased. It took me a while to realize that the high school teachers weren’t nearly as strict as the middle school teachers. This put me at ease a little bit.

My homeroom was a mixture of popular kids, nerds, jocks, and the people that just didn’t care about anything that had to do with school. You could say that I blended right in. There was one person that stood out to me in my homeroom that made me sort of bothered with who I am.

His name was Brenton Duvall. He fit into the crowd of nerds. However, he was tired of that crowd of people. I soon found out that he wanted to fit in with the popular kids. He wanted to be a star player, no matter if it was basketball, track, soccer, or lacrosse. I believed then that basketball was his best fit. He had a high-top, awesome shoes, and an appropriate height for the sport. But it took me a while to understand that all he wanted was to have a better rep than the one he walked into high school with.

The biggest thing that bothered me about Brenton was the fact that he had a romantic interest in me. Months before high school, he wanted me to be his date to our eighth-grade dance. However, there was two problems with that: he didn’t have the dignity to ask me and I simply didn’t plan on going with a date. I didn’t desire a boyfriend at that time, so I counted on my friends to make sure I had a fantastic time at our last dance of middle school.

The guilt followed me like a ghost for a couple weeks before I soon forgot that it even happened. What helped me remember is when I happened to notice him in church a month after the incident. Why did the guilt hurt so badly? Well, no guy had interest with me and the minute one did, I stopped at nothing to take a minute and just say yes to the romantic gesture, whether it was directly from him or not.

After being in that homeroom for a few weeks with him, I started to realize that he wasn’t as bad as my friend, Dee Smith, made him out to be. Dee Smith was your typical "I act flamboyant, but I’m nowhere near thinking about being with another male" kind of guy.

Throughout middle school, he was constantly asked about possibly being gay and he shot down anyone who asked. The question was gradually boosting his anger every time it was asked. I figured out that he couldn’t help the way he acted. The mystery of him being gay still hasn’t been answered to this day, though. I haven’t seen him in a serious relationship with a girl once, but he does talk very violently about women and I never understood where he gets that behavior from.

I took baby steps into Brenton’s world within a month. Kik Messenger was popular at the time so that’s where we would always speak. Growing up as two out-of-the-crowd bashful kids, we didn’t typically have any real pride to speak in person to one another. We would say things here and there, but no serious conversation was lifted between us. And that’s simply what’s wrong with my generation. We depend on these devices to express our feelings and thoughts. Sometimes I wish we could throw all our devices, break away from our fears, and face people with confidence. What much did we have to lose?

Well, Brenton and I believed we had a relationship that could possibly be lost if people saw us together too much. We were together in secret, due to strict parents. Our mothers had similar minds. However, my mother was eventually going to give me freedom. She and my father agreed that I could date at 16. I was less than one year away from that chapter of my life. At 15, I thought I was more than ready to break into my dating life. All I wanted was to get my life started. Could you blame me?

It took about two months for me and Brenton to develop a serious relationship. We had two different definitions of serious. My serious was like a married couple. Brenton was just on the serious level of experimenting what it felt like to be with a girl who had romantic thoughts about him only.

But, something bothered us both about our peers in our freshman year. What would we call ourselves when someone asked if we were dating? Dating was going on dates and spending quality time together without the presence of other people. We didn’t necessarily think like that. We believed “dating” involved mostly kissing, touching, and showing PDA throughout the hallways in the school. I mean, come on, we only had school to see each other.

Well, we did both attend a large student church group at our church, but we knew better than to be kissing and touching in a place where you give your devotion to God. We were both developing Christians. We had to have some respect for God if he allowed us to wind up together. You know?

Like I said, we only had school, all in all. Seeing Brenton everyday made school worth attending to—of course, not on the days when we fought. Besides not being able to officially date, we had arguments about other things—small things I could say now, thinking back.

Brenton believed since he had one girl on his arm, he had to have other girls on him, as well. He felt as if he had to be honest with other females about how he felt about them, even with me on his arm. My insecurities were like, “What the hell? Do you know how this makes us feel?” From December to January of that next year, Brenton was practically playing me like a deck of cards when the little bit of confidence in me felt like I should’ve been handled like a rose.

I tell you what, the thorns on my rose poked back, and they poked back hard. There were constant overdramatic conversations that we would have. At many points, we had to sit back and realize we were still in our freshman year. We weren’t a married couple and I wasn’t being cheated on (as much as I knew of). But, if Brenton wanted to still call me his girl, he had to have his eyes on me and me only. I could’ve taken many routes to fix this problem, but I took a rather idiotic route to grab his attention again.

Instagram was growing famous in social media ever since the beginning of eighth grade. I grew the love of taking pictures as I started experimenting the little tweaks of Instagram. I grew followers rather quickly, due to developed story writing and having love for pop-sensation Justin Bieber.

Brenton found me through Instagram when he started having romantic interest towards me not long before we got together. At 15, I thought my best route was to take pictures that exposed me sexually. Don’t start thinking foul about it. I would take selfies that exposed a little bit of cleavage. Men are easily drawn by the teasing of women. It’s easy access for women to get what they want, mostly in the bedroom. I found this out from countless movies and television shows that I shouldn’t have been watching at that young age in my life.

This made Brenton feel protective over me (in certain situations) and that’s all I wanted. I wanted his eyes only on me. I knew on my side of the equation, I was remaining loyal and didn’t bother flirting with other boys. Brenton should’ve noticed that months before, but he didn’t and that made him fall into the dark lust of wanting other women as well. Ever since I walked into his life and decided to be his girlfriend, Brenton felt as if he had to experiment and find out if other young women thought the same way I did about him. Unfortunately for him, he was totally wrong, and this put me at ease about the relationship lasting.

As spring bloomed in late March, I couldn’t help but stalk Brenton on social media. My trust for him dug a hole in the dark and died in early December. I wasn’t going to let the guy that gave me my first kiss make me feel foolish at the end of the day. If he was doing something in secret, even in the public of social media, I was going to find out, no matter how long it took.

Brenton gradually noticed, but never really brought it up to a conversation to light up an argument. He knew better than to mess with me. I had the crazy mind of my mother. She was known to be clingy and overprotective over her men. I developed these traits rather quickly when I started dating Brenton.

When the end of the school year was approaching, our worries started to lift in our conversations on Kik. I didn’t want to lose Brenton through the summer. I knew I was barely going to see him. He was going to be with his family and I was gonna be with mine. We wouldn’t have time to plot on a plan to see each other. So, what did we do, you may ask? We made sure every day at school was worth it. However, I soon learned that this didn’t help decrease my summertime sadness.

On the last day of school, we didn’t get to kiss each other goodbye. They were rushing us out of the school and I couldn’t find Brenton anywhere. My heart raced and ached for him. I knew by that time, he had me hooked. He was a drug that I thought I would never take.

I went home in sadness. I ran up to my room and was bawling. I called my friend, Royale, and explained how I couldn’t find him anywhere. She told me how she didn’t see him either. Luckily, we took a picture that morning in homeroom, so I had something to smile at while I cried. Though, he looked awkward as hell in the photo.

The summer of ‘15 was the most depressing summer I ever had in my life. I didn’t even think it was possible to be so depressed that school wasn’t in session. My days consumed of thoughts of what was going to happen between me and Brenton. I didn’t care about anything else. Now thinking back, I wish I could slap some sense into 15-year-old me and make her write her thoughts down.

As a developing writer, I barely wrote that summer. I opened my laptop and would just stare at a plank document. I didn’t have any inspiration to write. All I wanted was Brenton by my side. I wanted him in my bed. I wanted to make breakfast with him. Most importantly, I wanted him to make love to me. Brenton brought up sex several times into our conversations. We both knew we didn’t ever have the dignity to get naked in front of one another.

However, we did see each other twice throughout that summer. Man, were our hormones crazy when we found out we were going to see each other. We both thought about how we had two different encounters to experiment what sex really felt like. Other kids in our grade were already finding out by the time they walked in the high school building. Being two outsiders of the popular crowd, we weren’t anywhere near ready to figure out how good sex felt. Honestly, the conversation made us blush.

To settle your hormones, we didn’t do anything on either occasion. Kissing and touching was the farthest Brenton and I went. I won’t lie and say we didn’t send sexual text messages because we did. And for two supposed developing Christians, we didn’t feel bad about it. Well, we did at some moments. But, everyone has a heat of the moment, right?

On our second encounter, I gave Brenton an invitation to my 16th birthday party. There was one problem, though. Brenton was going to be the only boy attending the party. He believed that his mother wasn’t going to let him go, due to all the girls he was going to be around. Her mind was clueless to the fact that I had feelings for him and I really wanted him to come.

As said from Brenton himself, I went ahead and voluntarily invited him to my party, simply because I wanted to see Brenton show his face at my house as well. I felt as if my birthday party wouldn’t have felt the same if Brenton wasn’t attending. I later found out that it was the best that he didn’t attend. We didn’t have enough room in one car to fit everyone.

His mother figured out something was up between us. As she grew some understanding of the situation, we didn’t speak for thirteen days, due to lack of conversation (as I know of). On the afternoon of the fourteenth day, I received a phone call… a phone call from a number I couldn’t recognize. I answered and held the phone up to my ear.

I heard his voice and my heart fluttered. The butterflies in my stomach and started flapping their wings. So many questions ran through my mind. Why was he calling? Why did it take him so long to get back in contact with me? What’s going on? But, before I could utter any questions, he announced that he couldn’t attend my party. Right then, my heart stopped fluttering and a crease fell down the middle of it. Before my anger could boil in my veins, I asked him why he couldn’t he come. He began speaking, but continued to trail off.

Next thing I know, I was greeted with his father’s voice. He explained that Brenton couldn’t attend my party and he wasn't allowed to date anyone at that time. He said that Brenton needed to focus on his studies and he was too young to have a relationship. I told him I understood before he gave Brenton the phone back. When Brenton spoke, his voice sounded broken and lost. I took that moment to realize that he really did love me. This wasn’t a game to him. Of course, I don’t believe that he fell as hard as I did, but he was in love. This wasn’t something he regretted. It sounded like he couldn’t comprehend why this was happening. And man, neither could I.

He told me he would see me at school and hung up. I spent the rest of my day confessing to my mother what happened and how this ending was unexpected.

We knew what we were getting ourselves into, but we didn’t expect the consequences to hurt so bad. Why did it hurt so bad? Why did it hurt to love someone? It felt like a re-made story of Romeo and Juliet in our generation. I knew from then on that forbidden love can never last. For a while after that, I didn’t want anything to do with love. If it was going to hurt that badly, I didn’t it want it lingering in my heart. When I slept in the dark that night, I wanted to dig deep into my chest, past my rib-cage, and yank my heart out to end the pain—to end this nightmare that I brought onto myself. I fell in love… and I fell hard. We continue to take changes, not expecting the consequences for our actions.

But, like I said, love… it’s complicated. Right?