Some people, unfortunately never find love.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have found love twice in 2 years with two incredible women. Back in 2013 (just 5 and half years ago) I was a lost soul, searching for the best version of a relationship when I couldn’t even find the best version of myself. The woman I dated in college would get uncomfortable if I called her my girlfriend and then told me to stop asking her because she wasn’t ready. -_- Even after 9 months of dating. Yes, ladies and gentlemen the New Age Proposal is no longer will you marry me, it is now will you accept my facebook official relationship request. She acted as though being my girlfriend was signing her life away forevermore. Because I didn’t want to spend my senior year of college complicating my life, I was dumb enough to go along with that foolishness. I happened upon a “situationship” and honestly it sucked. And then I made myself believe I was in the wrong when she found out I was enjoying my last year of college proclaiming I was single and seeing other people. She was pissed! Livid! And I felt like an asshole… until I came to my senses. Bruh… are we together or not? Can I tell my family about you or not? Can I hold your hand in public should the impulse strike me or not? Needless to say that breakup was messy. Or can it be a breakup if we were never “together”? Who knows? Either way that was the beginning of my downward spiral into the doldrum of sadness and social anxiety around the opposite sex.
For the next two years I would go through a succession of breakups with women I dated but also couldn’t necessarily call them girlfriends either. I maybe got to see them once-a-week if I was lucky enough to be graced with their presence, let alone a text message reply. I would even count a like on ANY of my social media posts as communication, but even that seemed too much of a burden. After the latest breakup (or should I say ruthless GHOSTING) just after my birthday, I was DONE! I was no longer willing to be Mr. Nice Guy. I wanted to break up with someone for once. I wanted to be the one that didn’t call or text back. The one that’s always so busy playing with my fucking cat (Yes that was her actual excuse) to call you back. For the record: I’d like to point out that this is NOT a fault of a particular sex, but rather a fault of the human race ill educated in decisiveness, having no idea what they want in life, let alone from a partner. So many of us, men and women, are left attempting to date people who make allusion their ultimate super power.
I was peeved yo, but more importantly I was so fucking lonely and lost… My best friend, Akron, had moved away to pursue a career on Broadway (pursue is an understatement, this motherfucker took New York by storm, destroyed the scene in a matter of a year, and is now easily my most successful friend in the arts) and although my man Jeff was still around it wasn’t the same type of relationship. Don’t get me wrong! I love kicking it with Jeff, but he’s the guy you chill at the crib with joking about fan fiction and theater while having the most advanced artistic brainstorming sessions of your life over some Kool-aid and Doritos. I definitely NEED that in my life. But sometimes that shit would just make me feel even more lonely. How the fuck am I going to meet a lady like this, staying my ass home? Akron is that dude you hit the club with; go drinking with; clown on each other; argue about who is the finest chick at the bar pretending either of us has the confidence to go spit game to her; recite the words of the songs you know even though you both only know the chorus. That’s the type of shit that has you out and about and, at the very least, feeling like there is potential to meet someone new: potential for the love of your life to walk through the door at any given moment. And I must admit there is just something so satisfying about being able to use the N-word casually with your boys and it not feel awkward. Yes, I use the N-word. I grew up saying it with friends I went to school with and it makes me feel safe, at home, relaxed. That’s not for everyone. I think it’s a word. Not saying I’ve never been offended by someone else using it. But I understand that I’m actually offended by their intention not by the words they used. And even then I’m the one the interpreted the level of power the word had over me. A lot of people disagree with me, but I wholeheartedly believe that it is the listener that chooses the power of the word that she is interpreting. I think it’s a word just like all the other words that you’re reading in this entry, and you interpret what they mean to you. I can’t decide for you. This is it’s own blog posting. But, as per usual, I’m willing to debate with ANYONE who wants to discuss this further. Message me.
Anyhow, with my partner-in-crime out of the picture and rapidly growing apart from me, I quickly became depressed in my loneliness. Yes, me, Ace the EXTRA extravert that seems to have a human magnet button the attracts people at will. I was depressed and alone. EXCEPT… just in time to rescue me from my ultimate demise, a simple phone call away was little Lily, my hero save the cape. She was like a ray of sunshine outlining the silhouetted door in the room of pitch black daunting depression that I had begun to establish as my permanent residence. It’s a miracle because she lived in New York and I lived in Dallas. We initially met briefly (literally 15 minutes) via YoungArts in Miami, became facebook friends, and kept in touch. She was a young millennial accustomed to texting people back. WHOA! You mean I don’t have to wait a week for a reply? Sign me up! I couldn’t even see her, but just having someone of the opposite sex that I could regularly communicate with and wasn’t my mother was enough to relieve me of regularly checking into the heartbreak hotel. What’s more though, since she only ever had one boyfriend before me, she wasn’t so jaded by past relationship drama that she was partaking in all the silly reindeer games that people decide to play because being straightforward with someone you’re attracted to is way too complicated.
As the story goes, Lily rose in the Ace ranks at full tilt from Pen Pal to new best friend. A few months in, I quit my job, flew to New York for a week and we started dating. I realize now too that this was my first real adult relationship outside of college and someone I could legitimately introduce as my Girlfriend without wincing in preparation for bombs to go off. A Christmas Miracle!
If you’re still with me, I needed to tell this story so you understand how important my relationship with Lily was during that time. She saved me from a version of myself that I was doomed to become if she played by the same rules that every other woman I dated had adopted. Instead, she was the first to really support me, my goals and dreams. She was the first ride-or-die person I had ever met who wasn’t my blood relative. She was down for me. She was there. I needed to know that women like her existed or I’m afraid of what would’ve been next on the itinerary for my sanity. I thought I was going to marry her, clearly.
All of these things I’m saying is what made our break up so much more devastating. After a year of Long Distance Dating, seeing each other one week per month and then going back to our separate worlds, we had grown apart. I could tell, she could tell, but how can you admit that the person that matters most in the world, might not actually be the one for you, even when it’s as clear as day. When the inevitable end of our relationship reared its ugly head, I took it the opposite of well. I stormed social media and wrote the most non-cryptic “cryptic” statuses (as you do as a millennial), but only after literally crawling under my office desk and crying my eyes out in front of my business partner who had never seen me anywhere close to that emotional. I had such a difficult depressing time alone before Lily. I was terrified of going back there after her. “She’s perfect for me!” I cried. “How on earth could I find someone more perfect than her?”
Cue sound! Cue Lights! *Enter Gabrielle Reyes* Goddess of love and light, protector of all things Ace Sanity.
You already know how amazing Gabrielle is but, really? The universe is just gonna show off like that? I mean WHAT THE FUCK?! I met G on a project I wasn’t even supposed to be doing, on a night I wasn’t supposed to be out, after an argument with Lily that wasn’t supposed to happen. I say “not supposed to” meaning the Universe would have to use a shit-ton more than normal destiny power to make those stars align, and that’s exactly what her extraterrestrial ass did. I’ll spare you the details about how we officially got together, since I feel like that’s all people ask us about, but I do want to point out that my relationship with Gabrielle was/is built on the strongest foundation of honesty and assurance that is unrivaled by anything I’ve ever see. We truly talk about everything, the good and the bad, the aspirations and the insecurities. It has been that way since day-one and so shall it ever be.
She is the MOST secure woman I have ever met and because of that: I will NEVER leave her. EVER. She’s the reason I reached out to Lily just six short months after doomsday. She knew I had baggage and needed closure for our relationship to blossom. She’s the reason I reached out to all of my exes. Now that weight is off my shoulders and G and I can thrive without the excess concerns of the past. Most partners would expect their’s to never ever ever bring up an ex especially when there’s emotional baggage tied to it. The resolution you need to grow as a person is misinterpreted as “feelings” for someone else. You still have feelings for your ex? NEXT! But this could all be solved if we all could just be honest with each other about our feelings. This is goes back to what I mentioned about allusion and indecision. Most of us are afraid of the truth so we either string people along with uncertainty or go ball up in a corner somewhere alone. We could actually all find solace in honesty. But honesty is scary because we’ve spent most of our lives creating masks of our lives so the world never sees the real us. NO ONE ever sees the real you. All Masks off. And when you spend your life under masks, you rob yourself the most authentic Version of yourself. That is a recipe for disaster. I know: honesty is extremely difficult. It may cost you a lot now to tell your parents you don’t really want to be a doctor; your husband that you’re really unhappy living in Vermont, your sister that you stole her money for the Beyoncé concert tickets, but I promise you that it is the best thing you can for your sanity in the long run. Your Beautifully authentic sexy self depends on it! But it’s easier said then done. And most will sacrifice everything to avoid being in an uncomfortable situation. So it goes that everyone wants to fly, but no one wants to jump. Everyone wants to find love but they don’t want it to cost anything. Reap reward without the risk and so on.
Now understand that I’m not saying you should ignore red flags and caution tape for the sake of love, but people should learn to reasonably discern between solvable issues and incompatibility. But this takes knowing yourself first and what you want in a partner which in my experience seems to be a select few people. You have to know yourself to be with someone. You have to know what you want and what you need. If you have no interest in being with a woman with Daddy Issues, that’s your prerogative. But if you find yourself running at the first sign of any kind of difficulty and then consistently ending up feeling lonely, you may want to review how you’re handling the people that the universe is placing in your life. I can’t tell you how to read the signs but I will say the energy that connected Gabrielle and I upon meeting was undeniably powerful, so when you know, you know. It will feel absolutely perfect for that moment! And your only job is to go with it. That something told me that I needed to be honest with her about everything, so I was. 100%. She stuck around because she loved me and that’s all that mattered. It was tough and we talked about seeing other people early on, but I made a promise to her that as long as our communication remained clear, it would all work out in the end and that’s exactly what happened. Despite the tough times we stayed honest even when it hurt and we overcame it all. And when she realized how much my relationship with Lily meant to me, she encouraged me to move forward knowing it would only benefit our relationship in the long run. So I did and fortunately, Lily was receptive. The three of us met up during a trip to New York and cleared the air. Lily and I apologized to each other and suddenly a breakup that had caused me six months of concerning emotional pain was gone! Instantly!
I was finally free. I don’t know if Gabrielle really knew this would be the outcome, but the confidence to sit down with me and my ex-girlfriend and laugh together over coffee was enough to say “I should probably marry this girl ASAP.” I mean she allowed me to reconnect with my best friend, a women, whom I slept with regularly. That shit takes a humble ass individual. You can’t have NO pride when agreeing to that shit. But that’s how our relationship is; we save our pride for the month of June. This may sound crazy but what does she have to be afraid of? She loves me. She trusts me. Most importantly, she knows how much I love her. She knows I ain’t going nowhere without her. She’s too perfect for me and she knows that. With all that being said, over the last two years, my friendship with Lily has recovered beautifully thanks to Gabrielle’s selflessness and Lily’s incredible maturity. And now we get to hangout as much as distance allows. I mean, G and Lily act like they are closer friends than we are. Truly, if you could witness them together knowing our history, you’d be amazed!
So this Thanksgiving and for the rest of my life, I’m thankful for humbleness, and being able to simply exist with my two favorite people in the world. This was the greatest gift I could ever ask of anyone. Happy Thanksgiving!
