And his name is Pedro.
He's handsome, incredibly smart, driven, funny, and overall somebody that I just want to spend all the time that I can with and to be as close with as possible.
Prior to the breakup, things were sort of fizzling with Andy. Distance just made everything so difficult, but the second I started meeting other boys and developing feelings for Pedro, I knew I had to break it off.
I first encountered Pedro in line during check in at move-in day. He was talking to another girl in line about how he wanted to do something in the music business, and I thought he was the biggest douche. I still thought he was handsome, but at the time I was too busy to put any more thought into it. I met him in person one evening where I went out to dinner with my friends Glenn and Rawa from my immersion week class. Glenn had many friends from this group message going, and Pedro was one of those friends. I recognized him, but after getting to know him a bit better that night, I found out that he was actually a very nice, hilarious guy. After a few days, I was added to this Facebook group message, and the rest is quite the ride.
So here's what happened:
- Two Tuesdays Ago: Pedro and I had met a few times and are in the same group of friends. Pedro and I had lunch together that day, and that was the first time I had ever spent one-on-one with him. Later that night, our group went to Chipotle for dinner and came back to campus to attend a safe-sex talk in my residence hall. Pedro and I decided not to go, and he invited me to hang out and do homework in his room. His roommate (who is the BEST, by the way) got a call and had to suddenly leave for the suburbs because his aunt was hospitalized. So it was just Pedro and I, alone. Things started off with just doing homework, but then we got to talking about everything and anything. He played me music on his record player, read me passages of his favorite book (Jack Kerouac's On the Road) and feminist poetry and a poem that he strongly relates to about being the only non-English-Speaker in school (he moved to Connecticut from Colombia when he was 3, and later moved to Tampa, Florida). We watched Vines for about an hour, rapped to each other, he gave me blankets and had me try on his slippers, told corny jokes, and we just had an amazing time. I really felt like I connected with him on a deep emotional level. I couldn't stop thinking about it, and I still wish that I could have another night like that with him. He loaned me one of his prized possessions- a copy of Khalil Gibran's The Prophet- to read. I blazed through the book and gave it to him on Thursday.
- Two Thursdays Ago: I gave Pedro his book back, and then the two of us went to our friend Eric's room to watch a movie while everybody else was incredibly high. That night, he was at callbacks for one of the school's theater group's fall play, and he was anxiously waiting for the cast list to be emailed to him. When the list came out (he got the lead), he grabbed my hands and legs and just started to dance with me. He then said that he needed to get higher, so I accompanied him while he rolled a joint and went out with him off campus so he could smoke it. He had given me an incredibly warm leather jacket, and told me I looked amazing in it, and throughout the night kept calling me a remarkable woman and I just wished that it could've lasted even longer.
- Last Saturday: I spent 10 hours alone with Pedro in his room. Literally 10 hours. He had come up to my room to get snacks, and then when I went to pull up Netflix (he's never seen Clueless, like COME ON!!!!) and he said we could go back to his room to watch it since he had a TV and a futon. So, we watched Clueless, the first episode of Narcos, several episodes of Archer, and had begun to watch Legally Blonde the Musical when I'd fallen asleep. We had sort-of cuddled- we were sitting very close to each other, and my arm was nestled underneath him. And when I'd laid down, he was using my hip and thigh as an armrest while I'd propped my feet on him. I woke up at a point, and we both decided to nap. He slept in his bed and I slept on his futon. I woke up around 7, and woke Pedro up because we'd probably need to eat something. However, neither of us wanted to move so we ordered sushi online and waited to have it delivered. We ate sushi together on his floor, and shortly after his roommate came back and the three of us hung out a bit before both of them got ready to leave. Pedro was visiting an old friend at Loyola, and his roommate was going out with another guy. Then was when I realized that I was really pushing things with Pedro and needed to evaluate my feelings for him and what was going on with Andy and I. I hardly slept that night, because I had made up my mind of what needed to be done.
- Last Sunday: I broke up with Andy. I started off trying to explain how I felt over messages, but it just wasn't working and I needed to call him and talk to him. I felt horrible for doing it, but he was incredibly mature and calm about everything. He said that he'd always be here for me and is still my best friend, and no matter what would care for me. If something happens later in life that allows for us to be together, then we're probably going to give it a shot. However, right now there's just so much going on that it's practically impossible for us to continue as normal when I'm in a different time zone, several hundred miles away. It sucked. I was incredibly upset, and had several anxiety attacks that day and the next because frankly, I was worried about how he was handling things. I reached out to his roommate to see how he was doing, and when his roommate told me that he was doing fine, I finally felt free. On Sunday though, I spent a few hours with Pedro while he comforted me. He made me salted caramel hot chocolate, we listened to sad music, watched some Vines, and he held me while I cried. He decided that he would take me out for a nice dinner that night to cheer me up, so we both got fancied up and went out to this restaurant in the West Loop area. It was really a great time- I got a balloon dinosaur, we sang along with a performer on the El, and it was basically an adventure for the two of us. I didn't want it to end, not for a second.
- Last Tuesday: I acted VERY impulsively. Remember when I wrote an embarrassingly long letter to Jack that basically ruined whatever friendship we had? Well I did it again. On a whim while I did my laundry that day, I wrote a note to Pedro. Basically, it said "I have feelings for you. I think you have feelings for me, but I don't know so please elaborate." I slipped it under his door and HOLY SHIT I have never been so nervous in my life. Literally I couldn't eat anything, I was shaking constantly and I couldn't focus on anything. I was a complete and utter mess. I holed myself up in my room and just tried to not die from anxiety.
- Last Wednesday: This was the most nervewracking day of my life. Pedro messaged me asking to talk later in the afternoon/before dinner, and I agreed.Again, I couldn't eat a thing.
- After classes ended, he came to my room and we talked. While he appreciated how forward and honest I was, he didn't feel that it was quite the right time to start anything since I had just gotten out of a very long, very significant relationship. He told me that he's attracted to me and thinks I'm a cool person, but he doesn't want to be a rebound. In addition, he said that we both may have very different expectations for college relationships (as in he wants to sleep around and I'm not really that type of girl), so it may not be a great idea to jump right in yet. So, we agreed to wait a week or so and see where we stand then and talk about it again.
- Last Friday: Pedro and I met up with a guy from our school's office of student involvement to discuss what goes into starting a club and went to work with the application for an animal rights club. We had breakfast together, and it was pretty pleasant. He told me about his grandmother in Colombia and how her health was deteriorating and he didn't expect her to make it through the weekend. We sort of opened up about our families a bit, and again I really felt that connection.
- Saturday: Pedro and my friend Jimmy planned to try DOC together, and asked my other friend Marie and I to "trip sit" them. Basically, we were there to make sure they didn't do anything stupid or hurt themselves somehow because they trust both of us very much. DOC stays in one's system anywhere between 8-16 hours, so it was going to be an all day affair. It was a really great time! We drove to the beach, had ice cream, and basically joyrode around the city all day singing/rapping along to the music in Marie's car. At one point, Pedro wrote a poem about me and it made me really happy. Overall, it was a pretty wonderful day that I wish I could relive again and again.
- Sunday: Pedro and I worked together on finishing our application and constitution for our animal rights club. As we got closer to finishing, he got a call from his mom telling him that his grandma died. The second we finished working, he holed himself up in his room and refused to come out or let anyone in. I offered to bring him some comfort food, but he refused. So, my friend Heather and I had the idea to buy him a box of Insomnia Cookies and some milk and to leave it on his door with a note. We left the cookies, and that did cheer him up a bit. About two hours later though, I got some very concerning messages from him, freaking out about his grandma. At that point, I told him that I was coming down to his room and that he didn't have any say in the matter. Heather and I went down and then I signed her out of the building so she could go see the super blood moon and I went back to him. I held him while he cried, stroked his hair and face and stuff, whatever I could do to try to make him feel better. He calmed down soon enough, and started telling me about his grandma. He mentioned how excited she was that he was going to a Catholic college, and wondered if the church was still open so he could light a candle for her. They actually have an 8:30pm Mass on Sundays, and it was about 8:20 at the time so we decided to dash to Mass. He was a bit of a wreck during Mass and kept crying from time to time so I held his hand while he cried. After Mass, we lit a candle and then went back to his room because my roommate was having a boy over. We watched some Doctor Who and Moonrise Kingdom with his roommate, and I fell asleep on their futon.
- Monday: They woke me up around 8:30, and I went back to my room. I sort of felt like Pedro was annoyed with me, so I tried to avoid him as much as I could throughout the day, but that didn't really work because I spent 4 hours working on homework with him and my friends Simon, CJ, and Glenn. Later that night, he was with this girl who lives a floor above me that he's hooked up with several times. I felt really hurt (I still do) because he knows how I feel about him and he still just cast me aside like nothing. Plus, after everything that I've done for him and with the emotional connection we have it just felt like I was stabbed in the back.
I'm still really sad about everything that happened Monday, so I've been trying to not spend time with him in person. I don't really know what I hope to gain from it, like maybe he'll miss me a bit? Maybe it won't hurt as much when I spend time with him and then he goes off to fuck some other girl? I don't know. All I know is that tomorrow I'm seeing a movie with him, so who knows what's gonna happen. Like I really want something to happen, but as long as he keeps trying to live up to this "college experience" that he envisioned for himself involving a lot of casual sex I don't think anything will.Most of my friends know what's going on either from me telling them or have their suspicions about it all. It's pretty obvious how I feel, I'm terrible at hiding this shit. Some of them have volunteered to actually say something to him along the lines of "hey, you do realize that you're really hurting Emily with your behavior and you should stop messing with her feelings and stuff? Cuz like, you are..." and it means a lot to me that they'd stand up for me like this. I don't know when they're going to do this/if they're going to go through with it. I don't know what it may do to our friend group, and it worries me a lot. I'm worried that it could cause some issues or a rift in our group, and I really don't want that to happen. At the same time, I can't handle this pain on a regular basis.Tomorrow, I'm going to see a movie with Pedro. I really want it to go well and I want something to happen between us, but at the same time I feel like he's still going to be dragging his feet and I'm setting myself up for disappointment. I'm probably going to be floating on air because of some stupid little gentlemanly thing he does, and that lowkey makes me sick. The best way I can describe what's going on inside of me is that I want to go out on dates and form a relationship with him, but at the same time I hate him for how he's making me feel.
