In April, my parents leave the country and I do what most responsible 20 year old single moms do when they have the house to themselves- throw a party for me and my coworkers. It wasn’t a huge party and to be honest it was kind of lame. Lucas and Paula are there and we drink,hang out and talk.

Lucas eventually leaves the party and Paula cries to me about how upset she is that she can’t really have a true relationship with Lucas.It was a weird and awkward situation for me to be in considering my feelings for Lucas.

Around this time, Ron comes and spends a weekend with me and my son. I notice that he tries to discipline my son and yells at him and complains about how bratty son is. This does not sit well at all with me and I start to grow distant from him. I know that I need to break up with him but I procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate on this.

Around mid April, my son gets sick with pink eye and strep throat and I do as well and stay home a few days. On one of those days, Lucas comes by to spend the evening since his wife is out of town. He comes with food and alcohol. We spend a few hours watching TV with my son and eventually my son goes to sleep in the back bedroom. We start drinking and put on some music. Our soundtrack was Matchbox 20, 3 Doors Down, Hoobastank , Linkin Park , Shakira ,and of course Nickelback, Below is a playlist of the songs that “we fell in love to”:

We start dancing and there is so much chemistry and we kiss. One thing leads to another and we have sex in one of the bedrooms. It feels like this is a surreal dream and I feel like I’m really in love AGAIN. I’m in disbelief that I could fall in love again. In fact, I’m so in love that I’ll overlook the fact that 1) he’s married with no plans of leaving his wife 2) he’s still sleeping with my close friend Paula  and of course 3) I’m still dating Ron. However, none of this matters to me because I think that eventually our special and unique love will conquer all because like duh…that’s what happens in romantic movies and telenovelas. Looking back on this, I think that most likely I had undiagnosed BPD based on the choices I was making. I mean, I even come up with nicknames for both of us based on the Brazilian telenovela, “El Clon”- He’s Lucas and I’m Jade. Here is a clip from that meeting that I felt captured the magic of our first meeting:

So after having sex, we start a whatevership that’s mostly phone calls and long ass emails where I vent to him about Ron and he offers advice. We also come up with more corny nicknames like Superman and Superchick. I cringe right now as I’m typing this but I’m trying my best to not judge my 21 year old self.

In the middle of May, I not only get more distant with Ron but I eventually ghost him for weeks. I was in love with Lucas but still felt a deal of shame and guilt about the whole situation. However, I couldn’t stay away from Lucas because I LOVE HIM and nothing else should MATTER, right? I’ll admit it, I was downright obsessed. And he fed into my “fire of love” with his emails and sweet words of love. Below is an excerpt from one of his emails:

At one point, I started to write a book about “us” because I feel like this is the GREATEST LOVE STORY EVER! Nothing compares to our “forbidden love”. I’m actually laughing right now as to how absurd it all feels. Like, wow, this was my real life 20 years ago. Then again, I do go on to repeat similar unhealthy patterns almost 20 years later so there’s that. After numerous emails from Ron asking me where I am, I decide to finally break up with Ron. I do it the worst possible way which was via email. I actually tell the story of how that all went dowin later on this month through poetry about how I processed it and endured Ron’s rightful wrath. Yes, Ron may have been emotionally abusive at times but he still deserved more than an email. After this, I vent to Lucas about it and this was his response:

In late June ,me and Lucas start to fizzle out and the emails are fewer and shorter. I process this through salty poetry and of course drinking and finding my next victim, Damon.

Eventually Lucas tells me he’s going to work things out with his wife and the emails stop. I accept it but it’s still hard for me to process but I find my next victim, Damon. Damon is there to catch me. He’s a new start for me, not exactly the start I want, but an escape from the feelings of worthlessness and abandonment I was feeling. That time was intense for me. I broke someone’s heart and had my heart broken at the same time while getting into a new relationship. It’s chaos, but hey that’s life on the BPD. As I’m at the end of this story, I never imagined that this is how I would tell this story. In my mind, this story has always been larger than life. I do want to add that I did run into Lucas a few years later when I’m working at Target and a few years after that I ran into his marriage announcement in the local newspaper and yes, I wrote a poem about that too.

Looking back, I don’t judge anyone in this story. I think that we were all just doing our best to find love. And of course, at times, even our best looks shitty.  Also looking back on the emails and my journal entries from that time period , I see how these unhealthy patterns in relationships have presented in my life over and over again as recently as this past year. It almost makes me want to stay alone forever to be honest because it sucks to keep repeating this story over and over again. However after almost 6 months of therapy, I’m learning to not judge my past self because she was just doing the best with the information she had at the time. Still, I think it will be a long time before I think about dating.