open ended boy

kelsey reckling

I sometimes feel like I'm such a walking cliché. Being a commitment phobic doesn't make me seem edgy, more different or more complex. It's a fact, one I have had doubts about, but has just been called out on by my best friend tonight. He told me that he's getting concerned about how I seem to be falling into an easy habit of making out with everything that moves when I'm a bit drunk. As a girl who has just finished her first year of university, that's probably normal, but after he said that, I have realised it has become a lifestyle, one that is kind of hard to break.

I believe in amazing love songs, cry at the sappiest ending in films, write about relationships as a creative outlet...I want to be a writer when I'm older. These signs point to 'romantic', so why then, do I not let myself believe and fall all the way in?

I have fallen before, let my guard down, with a slightly emotionally unavailable guy I met in the dorms, I have fallen before, for someone who was bad for me, and I have tried to fall for someone who was nice, who was constant, but I ended up running anyway. I have recently fallen again, for a guy who lives halfway across the world, one who I may not see again for a few years. Half of his family lives in the same city as me, and the other half lives across the ocean.

We've known each other since we were thirteen, and we keep re connecting different parts of 'us' (if I can even call it that), whenever we can. Email, facebook, face to face. As time goes on and we try less and less, it becomes a shock to finally meet again, and to learn how much we have both changed, both physically and emotionally, and how comforting it is to realise that we're the same kids we've always been.

So from then we begin a two day commitment. Dinner, drinks, lunch, movie, phone calls, texts and skype sessions. We kissed for the first time, and he kisses just like I hoped and wanted him to, and somewhere along the line, the commitment phobic began to give pieces of herself she never really did.

At the movies, we just kissed, and held hands, and when I put my head on his strong shoulders, I felt safe, I felt stable. I felt like the feeling didn't send me running in the opposite direction. I have let my guards down before, but this time, it felt promising, instead of unstable. I don't really want to know what that could mean. How could a commitment phobic fall so fast in two days?

The night he left for the airport, we skyped for three hours and I ended up sleeping in the whole day afterwards, but I didn't care. I told him about my fear of vulnerability, of sensitivity, and he took it. He said it was normal, and during the conversation I kept telling myself to pull away, to not get too attached because I don't know when he'll be back again. He said it could be a few years; stupid colleges and sports.

I don't like commitment, I get scared of giving someone parts of me that they could break. I don't like admitting to feelings, even though I have a lot of them. So while I'm smiling at the fact that this could be left open ended, I am telling myself that there's no way we'll maintain this skype-facebook flirtation for long. I am an optimist for life but a terrible cynic for love.

I know that he'll be at the back of my mind for a while, so while I do my 'single girl' thing, maybe there'll be a fraction of me that would feel like I'm cheating on someone who is halfway across the world.

I might just allow myself to fall someday, if not with him, then someone else. But him, my 'open ended boy', has taught me, in the span of two days, that maybe falling (if not cautiously) may not be such a terrible thing to endure.