I feel like my life could be a movie

Well my story is rather long but its quite the tale and every now and then my mind is still blown every time I think about what happened to me and I want to share it for entertainment purposes. Any advice or thoughts would be great though since I still have so much confusion.

Anyways, my story begins a few years ago during the spring semester of my freshmen year of college and joined a sorority and met this girl Marie, who would eventually become my big. She was one of the coolest and most interesting people I have ever met. She was fiercely independent and incredibly adventurous-- she studied abroad in Africa for a semester and for spring break she booked a last minute ticket to France on her own. She was one of the most down to earth, caring people I had ever had the pleasure of knowing. She had such a infectious personality that could be both exciting and very extroverted at times, yet also very calm and deep. We both shared similar philosophies on life and while we definitely had our differences, in certain aspects, I had never met anyone so similar to me. It was amazing how well she seemed to know and understand me when we hadn't known each other very long or even spent a significant amount of time together when we were at school. I was attracted to her immediately, but it would take me almost a year to realize (or maybe just admit it to myself) that I was falling in love with her.

While there were times when I did question my sexuality as my heart would beat rapidly and I would get butterflies often whenever I was around her, I really did not think much of it. For one, if you know anything about sororities and the big/little system, there is so much hype around that pairing and the incredible bond that can form between a big/little. So, I thought this special connection was no different. I did though recognize that this friendship did not seem normal as I would think about her constantly and I felt a sense of happiness around her that I had never really experienced before. When we would drink together this was elevated and the connection we would have seemed so mystical and surreal, and different than I would feel around anybody else. There was this intensified closeness with her that I craved.

Things started to change though the next fall semester. The first moment that things started to get confusing was at one party we attended together. Like me she seemed to really enjoy when we would get drunk together but this night she was very distant from me. She didn't want to dance near me or even look me in the eye. A couple weeks later we had lunch together and she mentioned that she went to a gay bar when she was on fall break in Chicago. (I did not think anything of it at the time because it's not abnormal for straight people to go just for fun--it still could have meant nothing I still don't know). As more weeks went by she seemed to become even more distanced from me. While some of the reasons were pretty clear and made sense --she was insanely busy at the time, our lives were going in different directions, and there were other issues that about me that upset her-- something still seemed off. When I approached her about what was happening with us, one of the things she told me was that she never wanted to drink with me again. I was kinda mystified when she said it. Right then she didn't give an explanation of why and I didn't ask questions because she didn't seem to want to drag the conversation out.

Later, after an exchange of a few messages she told me that she didn't want to drink together anymore because she felt uncomfortable being so close to me. Initially, I thought it was something I had only done to make her feel that way. Yet, we were never really "intimate" with eachother when we were drunk, except the occasional hug or hand holding that she was the one to initiate. For some reason I never really considered that she could be falling for me too.

Things continued to be distant and awkward between us for the rest of the semester. While there were other contributing factors, I started getting pretty depressed that she really wasn in my life emotionally anymore. Over break, I actually started to develop bipolar manic symptoms. I had all this energy and started having new discoveries about myself. I texted Marie that I had just made some scary but really exciting revelations about myself and that I wanted to tell her all about them when we got back to school. (Ironically none of these revelations had anything to do with my sexuality). She responded within a minute and said sounds good.

When I first saw her after returning from school, she seemed really happy to see me and it seemed like nothing had ever happened last semester. She though had a sense of nervousness around me though that seemed a little off. I did eventually get dinner with her but I rambled the whole time about my problems and some of my realizations about myself and how confused I still was about our relationship, I didn't get any real answers though. Though whole time she seemed sorta sad and that she was holding back tears most of the time. A lot due to my worsening conditions, things got pretty heated and tensions rose between us. Due to my mania, I had few inhibitions at the time and really crossed a line with her. She was furious with me and yelled at me during a fight we had. Eventually she told me that she did not want to have any personal relationship with me outside of the sorority. She would mainly just serve as a type of mentor.

A few weeks went by and I have her space. I tried to forget about everything and move on in my life. However, she started dropping hints that she still wanted to be emotionally c
lose with me. She would run into me and seem really excited to see and talk to me at times. When we were in a room together for a meeting, she started to stare at me from across the room and was very indiscreet about it. What really started to confuse me though was during one meeting when I came in and she was standing in the entrance way. I tried to ignore and go around her but she grabbed my arm back and complemented my outfit in a very flirtatious and intense way. I realize this could have been nothing because she is a very flirtatious person in general.. But this seemed different. When this happened, I was so scared by the feelings that she generated and immediately kinda stormed off. During the meeting I glanced over at Marie and she had a sort of sad and dejected face.

My Bipolar symptoms continued to worsen and I decided to take a semester off and eventually never actually returned to the school. A few days before I left, in the initial stages of my full blown mania episode that sent me to the hospital, I realized that Marie may be having romantic feelings for me and that I indeed was in love with her. Being in love alone is exilerating, but combine that with mania which makes everything insanely emotional and exciting.. I was truly on cloud 9. I was in such a over joyous, psychotic state that I texted a good handful of friends and my parents that I was gay...quite the way to come out haha. Though I would be told and learn that mania can really twist your thinking and make you feel overly sexualized, the feelings that seemed pretty crazy are true, as I still have those feelings a year later after recovering.

Before I left, I told Marie that I really had something I needed to tell her before I left and said goodbye. When I met up with her I told her that I was in love with her. When I told her, though she didn't repeat the same feelings, she almost
seemed to be expecting my declaration and seemed to be sorta happy, maybe relieved.. I couldn't accurately tell because I was in such a sleep deprived and delusional state at the time. She just asked me if I was sure and that I might want to figure those things out at home. She then asked me if I was coming back to school and I told her no. She seemed relieved with the response and right after we stopped talking, she immediately started texting someone and walked away smiling.

Later that night I was rushed to ER and was admitted to the hospital. After my recent discovery, I told everyone in the hospital I was in love with a woman. I was in North Carolina at the time though and there a lot of religious nuts there that thought I was just delusional and tried to convince me the whole time that I was not really gay or that homosexuality was wrong.

A few weeks later after I was released I wrote Marie a letter telling her that what I told her was true and that I hoped at the least we could over time go back to the friendship we had before. At the time I was still recovering and didn't really realize how naive I was and kinda regret sending her anything, given how I had behaved around her. Aside from my declaration of love, I had said some really weird things about her during my moments of psychosis and our relationship would forever be incredibly complicated. Though I never expected her to, she never responded. About 6 months later I texted her about something that came up that made me think of her and wished her well. She responded and wished me well. A few months later I sent her just a friendly message, merely saying hi and how I was doing well after everything that happened to me and she never opened the message.

I miss her dearly and more than anything I really just want her friendship back. For the past year I don't think a day has gone by that I have not thought of her. While I realize it may not be healthy for us to ever be close again and I completely respect her need for space, she was my first love. Though my gut tells me that she probably had some similar feelings for me, I may never know what was going through her head. Some day it won't really matter and will be merely an enigma in my life, but now even though it's been a year it still kills me inside. The most difficult part though is that I felt so comfortable around her and I never got the chance to explore my sexuality with her. It's hard for me now to really open that door.

Ironically, I am actually moving to the city she's from for college this year (it had nothing to do with her of course) but there is the possibility she would visit and maybe see me sometime. But I still have an inkling feeling that she won't want to see me again and confront her feelings if she ever had any.

If you are still reading this saga, I appreciate it. I am really curious of your thoughts!

 

Well thanks for reading the whole thing, seriously thought no one would haha. Thank you for your honesty, it's a little hard to take but I needed it and I am well aware I need to stop my obsession for her. I mean she will always have a special place in my heart, and while our relationship turned pretty toxic and unhealthy, before things started to get strange with us she had made such an incredible and positive impact on my life that I will be forever grateful for which makes it so difficult to move on. I know though that there is so much more to life and that I will continue to meet amazing people and have new experiences. It's been hard moving on though because I have not had much to distract me or look forward to over the past year. I have been pretty lonely for awhile at home recovering where I have very few friends still and it's been hard to meet new people since I live in kinda a small town. There is not much to do here and I spend a good amount of time by myself drowning in my thoughts which is not good for me.

Even though it may not have seemed like it, I have come a long way. Unfortunately this is actually only a fraction of my real story believe it or not and I have had to deal with an incredible amount of stress, loss and tragic events events unrelated to this over the past few years. Health wise I am actually pretty stable and am in a better place than I have in quite a while.. I know my rambling may not necessarily indicate it but I'm just pretty introspective and emotional by nature and love to write. I am on the right meds and see a therapist frequently, I have 2 jobs and am doing well in some community college classes I'm taking. Up until recently, I actually was feeling happier than I had in a long time. I kinda started to think I was getting over her until like a week ago when it was her birthday. I didnt and had no intentions of contacting her but it just stirred up a bunch of emotions that I thought had mostly gone away and I just needed to rant because there are not many people I feel comfortable opening up about this. One of the hardest parts too is that I never got any real closure with her, even just like one last normal conversation where we said our goodbyes in person and made peace with each other. I have come to accept though that we won't always have closure in life and have already learned a lot from everything. Despite everything, I truly am positive about my future.. Still confused about my sexuality haha but I can't stress too much and just take it step by step