My fantasy girl
Just a few years ago I came to realize that most if not all my life I was living in a fantasy world as a result of a neurotic mentality. I learned to escape rather than face reality which is why the first time I experienced the euphoria of alcohol I instantly was hooked.
When I was 12 a new family arrived at my church. One of the girls in this family was my age and had an obvious crush on me, and for once in my life, the feeling was mutual. We were both extremely shy, and with me being friends with her brothers, we did a lot of our communicating through them. Most of the time I went to her house and out with her family rather than her spending time with me and my family.
During this time I had the same euphoric, "on top of the world" feeling as when I had my first drinks. Something about it made me feel like I could do anything. This girl seemed to almost worship me, and I wanted to do anything I could to make her happy.
Strangely enough I started thinking about the day we'd be married, I'd be a concert pianist, and we'd live happily ever after and all that bull****. Being naieve, I couldn't wait to be an adult and make all this stuff happen.
A year after we met, her and her family moved over 600 miles away. I took it pretty well it seemed, always assuming someday we would inevitably get back together(what a joke). It was just a matter of time. Over the next four to five years her family would return every couple of years and they'd stop in at the church. Each time I saw her we seemed to pick up where we left off, but still being very sh,y by the time the ice would break she was gone again. One of the last times she came to visit I was just turning 17, and she talked her parents into letting me return home with them for a couple of weeks. Her dad had to come back up north on a business trip, so he had no problem taking me back home. Those feelings of euphoria returned stronger than ever.
I spent a couple of awkward weeks with her and her family, but I noticed something this time I hadn't noticed before. I felt really scrutinized by her mom. Don't get me wrong, her parents are really cool and really treated me well, but her mom always was telling me how nice I was and what a gentleman I was, and something about the way she talked to me made me feel like I was walking on eggshells to go along with my already shy personality. Wanting to please I was the complete "gentleman," afraid to make a move, afraid to do anything wrong. I think I was as afraid of being rejected by her parents as I was of being rejected by her. I was already sexually supressed as it was, almost thinking I could impregnate a girl just by looking at her.
By the time I left, in her own indirect way she let me know she just wasn't feeling it anymore. Discouraged but not defeated, I STILL believed it was all going to work out, we just needed to live in the same area. I would be graduating from high school soon and figured this wouldn't have to be a problem anymore(I was told she just wanted to remain friends because we lived so far away).
I saw her once again a year later, and I could see she just wasn't looking at me the same way she always did. She told me about a guy she met, and from what she was telling me, he was totally opposite of me, a total badass. Less than a year later she was pregnant with his baby. Devastated, I licked my wounds and then went into denial. I refused to let go and I never had any closure, a concept I didn't know anything about all those years.
Skipping ahead a little, I finally realized it wasn't the girl I had fallen in love with, but that euphoric feeling I was trying desperately to recapture. I took that feeling and attached it to a girl, and that girl became what I now call my "fantasy girl." In my mind I had a real realtionship, even sending her presents on her birthday and other special occasions. This long-distance "relationship" allowed me to keep a safe distance, not having to deal with what goes along with a real relationship. When reality finally hit me I felt like my life was the punchline of a joke, and if nothing else comes of all of this maybe someone can at least get a good laugh.