Ahhh, young love! Such innocence, such passion, and when it all implodes as a black star of fuckery in the end- such utter despair. We’ve all been there. Some of us have even been there many times. It’s always fun to look back and reflect upon how utterly insane we behaved nestled in our heartbreak, how feverously we defended our innocence in the relationship’s demise. With maturity comes 20/20 hindsight and sometimes we happily get to see that we really were on the right side of history. But sometimes… sometimes we realize we were the fuckboy all along.

Tommy Melons was not by a long shot the first guy I dated in college, but he was the last. He stumbled into my life second semester junior year with his goofy-ass grin and marijuana cologne. In a series of boys I courted that semester, he was the first to catch my intellectual attention. He was very bright, and also sweet and sensual. He was awkward, but in the endearing way that makes one grin from ear to ear in admiring amusement. We connected during one of those movie moments: our eyes locked as we brushed past each other on the rave floor; I ran my finger down his spine, painfully broke the gaze, and disappeared into the mob. It wasn’t a half hour later that he found me to offer me a beer and well that was how it all began.

The beginning was intense, filled with enthusiastic love making and late night conversations about the universe. It was simple, neither of us wanted a title but we were devoted to staying devoted to each other through the summer. And we were. We Skyped everyday and when the beginning of senior year rolled around we were ready to get it started together. In our glowing bubble of dopamine, neither of us could’ve predicted that it was going to be a year full of emotional and mental turmoil. We couldn’t have known that I was going to sink into a depression that transformed me into a monster, and that “bless his soul” Tommy Melons was going to be my loyal punching bag through it all.

I had been struggling personally and academically since the end of junior year. I had planned to tackle senior year differently, but it was more of a passing promise to myself than a concrete prepared plan of action on how I was actually going to achieve my goals. So, I basically began again where I had ended off the previous semester. I did start off with a renewed ambition to succeed, but that quickly wore off as I was in denial of my unresolved depression and hell, anyone who has experienced emotional health issues knows that if you don’t address it, it wins. Tommy Melons was my rock, my wall to lean on, and my always-forgiving mattress to collapse upon at the end of a hard day. And every single day was hard.

Tommy Melons had his own struggles with anxiety and so he understood me. He was ever generous and I was ever happy to take what he had to offer. Tommy Melons took me on dates. He made me take walks. He made go swimming and jump off the pier at the end of the university’s South Beach. Tommy Melons made me look outside of myself and see the bigger picture. But obviously, sadly, Tommy Melons was never enough. I didn’t love myself so how could he ever be enough. How could I ever truly love him if I didn’t even love me?

At one point, halfway through senior year, I decided I was ready to make things official. He had been ready for a while, but I had been holding back. Call it FOBO (Fear Of Better Options). Call it feminist freedom or the decided defiance of being tied down by a man. Call it selfishness- for that was a major part of the internal debate. Anyway, I said I was finally ready and he took an elaborate approach to the asking. Tommy Melons made a pathway of “I love you because…” sticky notes through my dorm apartment. “I love you because you’re artistically creative,” in the doorway. “I love you because you’re interesting and interested,” in the kitchen. “I love you because you’re beautiful in everyway,” in the hallway. It ended with, “I love you. Will you be my girlfriend?” on my bedroom door. I said yes! …And then two days later I changed my mind.

I said the official title freaked me out. And it did. But what a classic excuse for the typical fuckboy, right!? Miraculously, he stuck with me. Well. I wouldn’t say miraculously, I’d say faithfully. I thought it was a miracle, but for him, he really did love me and had more faith in me than I had in myself. He’d been in an unofficial committed relationship with me for a year anyway. I have no doubt the blow hurt, but he probably assumed things would be just the same regardless. They weren’t. In my deluded unconscious mind, I must’ve thought I’d tested him and I had won. I honestly didn’t think about it that way at the time, but looking back, there’s no other way to explain my upcoming behavior.

What does one do when they can’t find happiness within themselves? What does one do when their significant other isn’t making up for their lack of self-love? One looks outside of oneself and takes those closest to them down with them too. This is what I did when I slept with the voluptuous Asian girl down the hall and the underclassman hype boy in the neighboring dorm. That was what I did and it was all mixed up feelings of guilt and temporary satisfaction until Tommy Melons found out.

So again, we were dating but he wasn’t my boyfriend. That simple lack of title creates many a loophole in the fucked up mind of the fuckboy, which in this case, was me. Soooo cheating wouldn’t actually be cheating; it would simply be exercising my right as a technically single young college millennial. Right? RIGHT!? Well, fuck. Yeah, technically. But was it still a conniving, deceiving, and terrible move? Well, yeah. Tommy Melons was my best friend, the only person who was there for me when I burned all other bridges in my depressed isolationism. Tommy Melons deserved better.

He was devastated by the realization of my disloyal indiscretions. Tommy Melons knew better than anyone what a mess I was at the time, but with his steadfast soul, I don’t think he could’ve conceived of how lost I really was. I apologized profusely, of course. And I was truly sorry I had hurt him, but I wasn’t sorry for my actions, I was sorry I had gotten caught. I really did love him, but I also really relied on him to an unhealthy point of co-dependence. I actually managed to manipulate him into staying by appealing to his empathy and love of music with Pink’s “Just Give Me A Reason.” But my irrational outbursts and neediness became worse as graduation loomed and I struggled to crawl across the finish line. When he broke things off again, I moved past the point of no return, threatening suicide in the midst of a panic attack. That was the end for Tommy Melons and I; I had pushed him to his breaking point.

Lesson Learned: Fuckboy mentality may be a great topic for Instagram memes, but it’s no laughing matter for the people who get wrapped up in its twisted reality. It is wrong to string a good person through your bullshit just because you’re in a bad place. It is selfish to hold on to someone for your own sense of safety, when holding on to them is ruining theirs. Some people are enormously generous and selfless and it’s an asshole move to take advantage of that. It is a cowardly move to avoid taking responsibility for picking up the pieces of a thing you broke yourself. I am not a bad person, but I did a bad thing. Given that I was in such a bad state of mind, do I think I could’ve done better? Yes, I could’ve. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I simply wasn’t brave enough to do the right thing. But I could’ve been.