I don’t know why I titled this… but I’ve been drowning in this heart ache, longer than I’ve ever dealt with anything in my life. The long story is this. Back in 2015 I met a girl online. Prettiest woman I’ve ever seen. 18 years old, beautiful. Just stunning. I thought to myself, there is no way this girl is real. We met up two nights later for coffee at her local coffee shop. I got there first and sat down in the corner. When she walked in the shop my whole world stood still. There she was. More beautiful than her pictures lead to believe. Blonde hair flowing with each step she took confidently toward me. She sat down with me and we shared an awkward laugh and began talking. The sparks flew like wildfire embers. In this one conversation, we laughed, we cried, we held hands and stared each other down, melting into the conversation. I opened up to her about things I’d worked to keep hidden. And she accepted me with every word. We left the coffee shop, and I drove us to the K-mart parking lot where we watched a movie in my truck and just cuddled up under the soft glow of the parking lot lights. We sang some songs together and felt so alive.

We hit it off. We went two weeks without missing a beat, seeing each other every day. Talking randomly throughout the days. And moved into her grandmother’s house. Her grandfather had passed about a year prior and her grandmother was feeling a bit lonesome in the house. It was perfect. We moved in and had our own room together. Just me, the woman who had stolen my heart, and my dog. The first few months were simple. Cute. Wonderful. Bonfires with friends, dinner with her family, random dates to nice restaurants, all the good stuff you only dream a relationship has.

But then came the start of a big issue. She was way out of my league. She was perfect in every way, which drew the attention of other guys. She was such a nice girl with a heart of gold, but she couldn’t bring herself to tell someone to back off. She lied a couple times about who a guy was that had messaged her, which just scared me. It started making me delusional, I would go to work unsure of what she was doing or who she was talking to. But I focused on trusting her. I spent so much energy telling myself “she’s better than that. She won’t cheat on me”. I work as a paramedic and spent twenty-four hours at a time on shift. Away from home. Away from her. She would do her best to come see me when it was possible.

The days got harder and harder, it felt like every two to three weeks we were having the same argument. Another guy in her inbox, another lie, another guy she wouldn’t tell to stop flirting. Another man trying to get with the woman I love with everything I am, and she couldn’t tell them to respect our relationship. My jealous insecurities began running my life. Began making me say angry things I never should have said. Making me act ways I never should have acted.

Little did I know, I was pushing this girl away and it would be almost the worst mistake I’ve ever made.

She quit her job to go to school full time and focus on becoming a veterinarian, and I support every second of this. I want her to get an education. I want her to better herself and get where she wants to be. It was stressful for a bit because I didn’t make much money, but I started working more and more to bring home money to do all the things for her I wanted to.

My pay wasn’t great, barely scraping over 10 bucks an hour, a light shone into my life. A phone call with a job offer out of state offering me 16 an hour with over time, with a set schedule, in the south where she could go to school still and have a larger clientele and make more money. When I first brought it to her, she seemed very uninterested. She didn’t want me to do go, she didn’t want to move. It started to change to a back and forth debate within herself. She would say she wants to go then she doesn’t. Which made me even worse.

I started shutting her out even more. I was scared. I didn’t want to lose this girl, but I want to provide for her, and me, and the future. I started working more, being homeless, being passive-aggressive toward her, and looking back now I know it. One day I come home, and she had started moving stuff out to her mom’s house. And being the headstrong idiot, I was, I didn’t chase her. I shut down. I shut her out. I focused on moving south. Taking the job and running from her.

Fast forward.

My last day for the county in Michigan, I get off shift at 7pm hop in my truck, with a U-Haul full of what little I own, hooked to the back. Picked up my dog from her grandmother’s house and started the drive. I hit that stretch of roadway that says “leaving lapeer”, and that’s where it started. The weight. This soul crushing pressure on my heart. I hit the interstate headed south, and put the pedal down, the radio volume maxed out, playing my goodbye playlist. Ignoring the speed limit, the recommended trailer speed, common sense, and my heart.

With the first state line, I could feel the first stitch in the break of my heart. I felt the first attempt to bring it back together, which was bitter sweet. Here I go, running away from the first woman I can say I truly loved with all of my heart. Cutting through Ohio, trying to silence the voices in my head screaming to turn back, it hits me. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want to be here with me. Keep going.

I hit the Kentucky line. It’s getting warmer out. It feels welcoming for 1am in the fall. There wasn’t much going on new with me for this stretch. Still holding back tears, missing her, with the heaviness in my heart only getting worse.

Tennessee.

Here’s where things got bad. I hit the state line, and there was an odour in the air. Something only found in Tennessee. I looked in the rear-view with only her there in it. And I couldn’t help it. I started crying. I turn the radio up a little louder.

20 miles into the beautiful TN, a song comes on. “Woke up in Nashville”. Which hits me even harder. I’m uncontrollably crying my eyes out now. My dog has her paw on my arm, almost as if to say, “it’s okay dad”. I keep on like this for another few hours until the tears had drained every bit of my fluid volume.

Georgia. Finally. The last state line to cross. A few more hours to my new life. The next step in my story. Driving down 19 south of Atlanta, one of the most beautiful sceneries. The red dirt, mixing with green blades of grass, line right to the base of the tall pine trees which are all ripe with colours of reds, browns, and swaying in the breeze. It finally starts to get better. I finally start to feel better. I’m here. I’m making it. A few short hours later there it is. My new house.

Fast forward two months.

I’ve settled in nicely to the new job. I’ve got a part time gig, some good friends and nice co-workers who truly make the job for me. The ache is still there, but it’s not as bad. I make it through most of the week without thinking about her. But drinking always makes her memory come out. I’ve not been out on another date yet, but I’m looking for the first time.

My phone rings. It’s her. It’s late in the day and my heart skips several beats. I answer, she misses me. I can hear the tears in her eyes as she tells me she still loves me and wants to come be with me and make it work. No time to lose. I call out from work, I schedule my flight out of ATL and start driving, on the phone with her the entire time, a mess of I love you’s and I’m on the way.

She picks me up from the airport and it was like seeing her for the first time again. With the first embrace the tears I’ve been hiding just came rushing forth. I’m holding her as tightly as I can. We get to her mom’s house and she packs a back and some essentials (this girl and her make up).

We hit the road driving south. This was it. She’s back. And for good. I’m going to marry this girl. I’m going to make her my wife. It was meant to be. It had to be.

It was amazing. The drive was 17 hours of holding hands, laughing, talking, crying, promises to never leave again. And a break at a truck stop that I can’t mention here. We got to GA. To my house. And we lie down in bed, her head on my chest, my arms around her and our dogs. This was it. I finally felt whole again. My life is back together.

The hard part.

A few days into her being here, she tells me she came down to convince me to go back with her.

I know, any man in his right mind would’ve done it. I, however, was clearly not in my right mind. Because I fought her about it. Which was the worst thing to do.

The hardest part.

Sunday afternoon. literally, just after noon. She pulls up to my station, car packed, dog in tow, tears in her eyes. Tells me she can’t stay here. She misses her family too much, needs them too much. She stands there, to the average person, a mess. A disaster of nappy hair thrown into a loose pony tail, with her glasses and no makeup. To me? Still, the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. Delivering the heartbreak again. The worst part is yet to come.

I had the chance. I could have begged. I could have tried. I could have done anything. Instead? I sat on the bed rail of my truck. Full of pride, piss, and vinegar. I hugged her without a tear in my eyes and watched her little red cruze pull off the red dirt onto the asphalt, as she drove away.

Here’s the worst parts. That was the last real interaction we had. The rest of this? she has no idea about.

After she left, I stood there behind my fire station, and wept. I lost every bit of my tough-guy persona and cried like I’ve never cried before. There goes my life. There goes the woman God made for me. And I’m too stupid to chase her.

I set out for change, again. This girl had spent one week with me in my new town and all I could see was her. Everywhere. I started working on a new job in a new town. And found it. Just before taking that job? I sold the truck we got together. I couldn’t drive it without hearing her voice in every song, without seeing her there next to me on my drive. without finding more strands of her perfect golden hair floating throughout the cab.

That, was February of last year.

I’ve been out on a handful of dates in that time. Nothing serious. and sadly… I’ve blocked and unblocked her on Facebook. I see it for the first time. The guy I used to be. The pictures they have together, she looks happy. She looks like she is enjoying life with her new man. And I can’t move on. She haunts my dreams. I still have my favourite photo of us together on my phone. I still hold onto the memories we built together. I have little things of her I don’t know how to let go of.

But she’ll never know.

Her grandmother used to call me every week to check in and would hint that it’s time for me to move on. I didn’t know why at first, but I do know now. She doesn’t call anymore.

The woman I love. She doesn’t know I still love her. I don’t think she even knows I exist anymore. I can’t let her go, I’ve tried. I keep trying. It seems one day is better than another, and worse than the few before.

She’ll never know how awful I feel. She’ll never know the pain I keep trying to hide with whiskey, and smiles. I feel so pathetic about this I don’t talk to my friends about it. All I do is use my fuck-ups as an example of what not to do. I give my friends advice and I’ll say “I was a great paramedic. But a terrible boyfriend”.

Some people have told me she wasn’t right for me. Some have said it wasn’t meant to be. Some have told me to move on and toughen up.

No matter what I’m told. I can’t seem to get past this girl. I hear our old song and want to cry. And in a twisted mix of emotions, selfishness, and love for her, every time I check her Facebook, I see her still in a relationship with him, and I’m happy for her, sad for me, jealous of him, and broken, one more time.

She’ll never know about the single tear that fell from my eye, when I saw my God Daughter for the first time since we broke up, and she looks at me, all 4 feet of her sweet self, and says “where’s Logan at? We really like her”.

She’ll never know the pain I had to hide from that beautiful little girl as I said with a breaking voice “She’s not going to be coming back. Some things happened and she’s staying with her family now”.

She’ll never know the countless times people have asked me about her. The phone calls from old friends telling me it’ll get better, until the phone calls stopped coming in.

So here I sit. Alone in this house with my dog, still heart broken, still missing her, still wishing she would show up in my life again.

All I know, is that my love for that 5-foot 5 blonde hair, blue eyed woman will never stop. She had the attitude to match mine. A smile that a blind man could see shine. And though she may not have been perfect to me, I didn’t deserve perfect. I wasn’t perfect to her, and I’m reminded every day, of the mistakes I made, of the heartache I still hold, and a memory of the woman I’ll never hold again.

I still hold out hope. I still pray. And in the words of easton corbin “She could call from right out of the blue, saying ‘boy I’m still in love with you’ saying she forgives me for the fool I was, and all I put her through. If a life can change in just one night, who’s to say that she can’t change her mind. Miracles happen every day”