I Am A Rebound
Most people find it hard to imagine how their life would go if they lost their significant other... some people may even think it impossible.
Most people though, they know it happens... somewhere in the world... but they never really think it will touch home.
But how... you ask your self, how does someone go on... after something like that? Do they learn to love again? Does it ever go away, the pain of losing the person they love?
Well... Its hard to tell... but heres my story:
My story goes, as it always has, that i met my boyfriend while he was in iraq... through some mutual friends... via facebook. It was almost a year ago. When we first met, he was dating this girl... we'll call her "Tiffany" at that point, they had only been dating for a couple months... but they were deeply in love... and had plans for a future. At this point i didn't talk to him very much, just a "hello" every now and again...
But a couple months after meeting him... "tiffany" died... from the story that i heard, she had a seizure in the middle of the night and choked on her tongue. I was really sympathetic towards him... so i talked to him... i didn't push anything, i just wanted him to know that he had a friend if he needed one... he wouldn't talk about it though, he seemed much too angry... however, one day, he posted on facebook that he was finding it hard to go on... that he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, that she consumed his thoughts every single second of the day... he felt as though it were wrong to keep breathing with out her... he said he felt as though he should be dead with her... but knew she would want him to move on.
i felt so bad for him... so i talked to him about it... well i tried to... he brushed it off by saying "yeah... what do you know about it?" Regardless of how angry he may have been at me for bringing it up... he seemed to open up a little... and began talking to me more and more... Until one day i found my self in a very awkward situation... he was asking me to spend a couple nights with him at a hotel while he was on leave... he said it was hard for him to sleep alone... that even where he was he found a female friend to spend the night with... (swearing it would be the same with me as it was with them, nothing more than having someone to hold during the night...) I told him i would hang out with him, but i didn't think it would be right for us to sleep in the same bed, i didn't want him to get the wrong idea... and at the time i felt i wasn't ready for a relationship.
He eventually admitted to me that he was interested, and wanted to know if i was interested too. i told him how i felt about relationships (i was really dead set against them at the time...) and i also told him i didn't want to be the girl that came next... he asked me what i meant by that... i told him that no girl wanted to be the girl that came next, meaning it would be hard for any one to live up to "tiffany's" standards... and no one wanted to take second place. i told him i thought he needed more time. his exact words to me were thiss "why? What am i waiting for? Shes not coming back... and i want to be happy." I was still unsure... it had been less than a month since she passed and i really wasnt interested in taking second place, regardless of what he said.
A couple weeks had gone by, he asked me again a few more times, i turned him down with the same reply, but i found that i had developed feelings for him too... which i knew would be no good... like i said. i was really dead set against relationships... so i asked him if he was sure that he was ready for a relationship, and admitted that i felt like i could give it a chance. he said there was no point it waiting around, because she was never coming back. and at this point, i was a little selfish and just wanted to be with him... so we started dating... a month and a half after she died. I felt he was right, that no amount of time would bring her back... and if he said he was ready to move on, he was ready.
Every one was floored... Ashley? Dating someone? Not something that had been seen in almost five years... (long story short: in highschool i fell in love with someone who cheated and hurt me pretty bad... after that i wasn't interested in going through the same BS over again, and didn't want to give any one else the power to hurt me the way my ex had... so my only solution was the avoid the situation) Not only were they knocked off their feet by me... but it was a double whammy when they learned with who... and when his friends and family found out... some cautioned against it, and some were dead set on not seeing us together... one girl said "how could you do that? If i had lost my husband, it would take me years to find someone else to care about, and a life time to let him go... how can you really be ready to love someone else after a month a half... you're being so disrespectful to tiffanys memory. ashley isn't her, and will never take her place in our hearts" His reply to them was the same as it had been to me... Whats the point in waiting... she isn't coming back. and i want to be happy... and ashley makes me happy. if you care about me, then you'd be happy that i found someone who makes me happy..." After meeting his mother she admitted that she thought i was a nice girl, but i wasn't tiffany.
There were a few other things that happened that made me feel like second best... small things like him asking me to sing her favorite song, him always talking about her... and other things like... him posting things like "i love you baby... i'll always love you" on her facebook, and saying "happy birthday baby, i miss you more than life and i'll love you forever" on her birthday, and on valentines day he wished her a happy one, and said that he wished she were here with him...
For a while i tried to convince my self that all of this stuff was ok, I had to. I felt like a terrible person... I told myself that i had to be reasonable, that i had to be understanding... they were gunna miss her and it wasn't gunna go away over night. i told my self that i had to give them time to get over it, to grieve and move on...
A couple of months went by, with not much change from his or his family, and i felt like i had to say something about it, i knew it would sound mean, and cruel, but i simply had to point out that i knew i wasn't her... that i wasn't going to ever be her, but i was tired of being compared to a dead girl... i wanted, at least,him to understand that she was dead, and i wasn't... and no one was taking my feelings into consideration... no one thought that maybe i'd simply like to be judged for being me and who i am. When i brought it up to him he apologized and said he hadn't realized he was making me feel this way that he loved me, and knew she wasn't coming back...
after that, a lot of it had stopped... for a couple of months, things seemed to get better, it felt like he thought of her less and loved me more... and i was happy... until recently... (as in yesterday)
He jokingly asked me to marry him, as he does often, and gave me a suggested date of "June 16th 2015"... I was a little confused... it was such a random date, that i felt there might have been more to it... then i remember that him and tiffany had started dating some time in june (a year ago) and went online to check the date... it so happened to be that the day he suggested we get married... would be their anniversary...
I know he isn't going to get over her any time soon... i'm just tired of feeling like second best... I know for certain now that I'm the rebound girl, and it puts more emphasis into my fear that one day hes going to wake up and realize that he doesn't love me... that he has only been with me because hes afraid of being alone... I dont know which hurts more... thinking that... or knowing that i absolutely do not blame him at all for not feeling the same way for me that i do for him...
Most people though, they know it happens... somewhere in the world... but they never really think it will touch home.
But how... you ask your self, how does someone go on... after something like that? Do they learn to love again? Does it ever go away, the pain of losing the person they love?
Well... Its hard to tell... but heres my story:
My story goes, as it always has, that i met my boyfriend while he was in iraq... through some mutual friends... via facebook. It was almost a year ago. When we first met, he was dating this girl... we'll call her "Tiffany" at that point, they had only been dating for a couple months... but they were deeply in love... and had plans for a future. At this point i didn't talk to him very much, just a "hello" every now and again...
But a couple months after meeting him... "tiffany" died... from the story that i heard, she had a seizure in the middle of the night and choked on her tongue. I was really sympathetic towards him... so i talked to him... i didn't push anything, i just wanted him to know that he had a friend if he needed one... he wouldn't talk about it though, he seemed much too angry... however, one day, he posted on facebook that he was finding it hard to go on... that he couldn't sleep, he couldn't eat, that she consumed his thoughts every single second of the day... he felt as though it were wrong to keep breathing with out her... he said he felt as though he should be dead with her... but knew she would want him to move on.
i felt so bad for him... so i talked to him about it... well i tried to... he brushed it off by saying "yeah... what do you know about it?" Regardless of how angry he may have been at me for bringing it up... he seemed to open up a little... and began talking to me more and more... Until one day i found my self in a very awkward situation... he was asking me to spend a couple nights with him at a hotel while he was on leave... he said it was hard for him to sleep alone... that even where he was he found a female friend to spend the night with... (swearing it would be the same with me as it was with them, nothing more than having someone to hold during the night...) I told him i would hang out with him, but i didn't think it would be right for us to sleep in the same bed, i didn't want him to get the wrong idea... and at the time i felt i wasn't ready for a relationship.
He eventually admitted to me that he was interested, and wanted to know if i was interested too. i told him how i felt about relationships (i was really dead set against them at the time...) and i also told him i didn't want to be the girl that came next... he asked me what i meant by that... i told him that no girl wanted to be the girl that came next, meaning it would be hard for any one to live up to "tiffany's" standards... and no one wanted to take second place. i told him i thought he needed more time. his exact words to me were thiss "why? What am i waiting for? Shes not coming back... and i want to be happy." I was still unsure... it had been less than a month since she passed and i really wasnt interested in taking second place, regardless of what he said.
A couple weeks had gone by, he asked me again a few more times, i turned him down with the same reply, but i found that i had developed feelings for him too... which i knew would be no good... like i said. i was really dead set against relationships... so i asked him if he was sure that he was ready for a relationship, and admitted that i felt like i could give it a chance. he said there was no point it waiting around, because she was never coming back. and at this point, i was a little selfish and just wanted to be with him... so we started dating... a month and a half after she died. I felt he was right, that no amount of time would bring her back... and if he said he was ready to move on, he was ready.
Every one was floored... Ashley? Dating someone? Not something that had been seen in almost five years... (long story short: in highschool i fell in love with someone who cheated and hurt me pretty bad... after that i wasn't interested in going through the same BS over again, and didn't want to give any one else the power to hurt me the way my ex had... so my only solution was the avoid the situation) Not only were they knocked off their feet by me... but it was a double whammy when they learned with who... and when his friends and family found out... some cautioned against it, and some were dead set on not seeing us together... one girl said "how could you do that? If i had lost my husband, it would take me years to find someone else to care about, and a life time to let him go... how can you really be ready to love someone else after a month a half... you're being so disrespectful to tiffanys memory. ashley isn't her, and will never take her place in our hearts" His reply to them was the same as it had been to me... Whats the point in waiting... she isn't coming back. and i want to be happy... and ashley makes me happy. if you care about me, then you'd be happy that i found someone who makes me happy..." After meeting his mother she admitted that she thought i was a nice girl, but i wasn't tiffany.
There were a few other things that happened that made me feel like second best... small things like him asking me to sing her favorite song, him always talking about her... and other things like... him posting things like "i love you baby... i'll always love you" on her facebook, and saying "happy birthday baby, i miss you more than life and i'll love you forever" on her birthday, and on valentines day he wished her a happy one, and said that he wished she were here with him...
For a while i tried to convince my self that all of this stuff was ok, I had to. I felt like a terrible person... I told myself that i had to be reasonable, that i had to be understanding... they were gunna miss her and it wasn't gunna go away over night. i told my self that i had to give them time to get over it, to grieve and move on...
A couple of months went by, with not much change from his or his family, and i felt like i had to say something about it, i knew it would sound mean, and cruel, but i simply had to point out that i knew i wasn't her... that i wasn't going to ever be her, but i was tired of being compared to a dead girl... i wanted, at least,him to understand that she was dead, and i wasn't... and no one was taking my feelings into consideration... no one thought that maybe i'd simply like to be judged for being me and who i am. When i brought it up to him he apologized and said he hadn't realized he was making me feel this way that he loved me, and knew she wasn't coming back...
after that, a lot of it had stopped... for a couple of months, things seemed to get better, it felt like he thought of her less and loved me more... and i was happy... until recently... (as in yesterday)
He jokingly asked me to marry him, as he does often, and gave me a suggested date of "June 16th 2015"... I was a little confused... it was such a random date, that i felt there might have been more to it... then i remember that him and tiffany had started dating some time in june (a year ago) and went online to check the date... it so happened to be that the day he suggested we get married... would be their anniversary...
I know he isn't going to get over her any time soon... i'm just tired of feeling like second best... I know for certain now that I'm the rebound girl, and it puts more emphasis into my fear that one day hes going to wake up and realize that he doesn't love me... that he has only been with me because hes afraid of being alone... I dont know which hurts more... thinking that... or knowing that i absolutely do not blame him at all for not feeling the same way for me that i do for him...
By:
babygizmo89
Age:
22-25
,
Female
1
response
