Dear Soldier Boy

I suppose the soldier thing should've been a warning sign to me from the beginning...a charming, intelligent, flirtatious, sarcastic soldier.  Sound like anyone else you may have heard of?  Someone by the name of Mr. Wickham, perhaps?

And like Elizabeth, I bought into the whole act.  I did think it was weird whenever he talked about how few friends he had--sure, it was possible that his explanations of having moved around several times since high school, being a minor league professional baseball player, or just not quite getting along with people--but he made me laugh (ok, so that's not exactly difficult, but sue me, I love to laugh), and he was encouraging and SO smart, so I mostly ignored that detail.

(disclaimer, this blog post does NOT end with this guy running off with my little sister, or with a "scandalously patched up marriage")

Part of me wanted to write this blog in the form of a letter to him (hence the title), but I decided that made it too personal.

Soldier Boy and I began texting in May.  We were matched on one of the dating apps because his location said Columbus...but once we had been texting for about a week, and we both seemed to be enjoying getting to know each other a little bit, he told me that he was in New York for the summer, as part of a training camp at West Point.  Honestly, judging by my past experiences with texting boys from the internet, I didn't expect us to continue texting for the entire summer.  But we did.  Almost every single day, and usually a lot each day.  We talked about everything--weather, religion, politics, sports, work, family.  Whether he wanted to admit it or not (he didn't), we were building a pretty good relationship.  We even made it to talking on the phone a few times before we met up...usually for over 2 hours at a time.

And we played knock-off battleship on an app.  Lots and lots of battleship. (and for the record, I maintained a winning record in both fake battleship AND the fake connect 4 game that we played)

The last weekend in July was when he was supposed to get back to Georgia.  We had loosely planned to meet up the following weekend, since I didn't have a horse show for once.  To my surprise, he wanted to drive to Athens the night he got back.  I had a local horse show that day, but I told him we could do something if he didn't mind that I would be coming straight from the barn...he said he didn't care.  We had *sort of* decided to go bowling, but by the time I was finished at the barn, I was hungry, so we decided to do dinner instead.

Here's where he demonstrated his intelligence...or his ability to read people...or both.

I had previously told him about one of the online dates--the one where the guy tried to hold my hand (that story is told in full in the post "Bowling with Mr. Bingley", in case you haven't read that one yet). Soldier Boy and I were on the phone while parking, because I was nice and told him where the free parking lot is in downtown Athens (because he had never been to Athens before, so I told him we should go to The Grill).  Like a romantic comedy, we stayed on the phone while he started walking toward me...but then he stopped, over 100 yards away.  He asked if that was how far my personal space bubble reached, or if he should come closer.  Honestly, that was a GREAT first impression for me, a person who really does have a huge personal space bubble.  It was funny, disarming.

While walking to The Grill (for those who don't know, the free parking lot is a couple of blocks from almost anything downtown, but totally worth it because, you know, FREE PARKING), Soldier Boy stayed pretty far away from me, sort of smirking the whole time.  Then he started talking, but quietly, so I had to move a little closer to him (he really was a little bit soft-spoken on the phone too, but I feel like he maybe exaggerated it a little bit in person).  Seriously, it was a good strategy.

We talked all through dinner.  He told me a very elaborate story about the dogs he had growing up.  Allegedly, there was one who was mostly wild, and probably part wolf, according to him, that he tried to befriend.  That's a whole different story, but while he told it, he used fries to "draw" out a diagram of where he grew up.  At one point, he looked down and said "I don't know why I'm doing this, this is weird"...but of course, being an artsy person, I thought it was a solid story-telling skill, and I appreciated the creativity.

Soldier Boy wanted to go walk around Athens a little, since he had never been there.  We were planning to go do that after paying (at The Grill, you have to pay at the front).  When we went to pay, they asked for our IDs to accompany our credit cards--and yes, I paid for my own food...we had agreed to treat this first meeting as just that, and not as a date; his idea, but it actually took a lot of the mental pressure off of me, so I appreciated it--but he had left his ID in his car.  The cashier asked if I could confirm his last name.  Funny story...I actually could have, but he didn't know that I already knew his last name.  In our 2 months of texting and talking on the phone, we never exchanged last names.  He had "accidentally" sent me a picture of something that did have his last name on it, early on in texting, but I didn't mention it at the time.  I also had already done enough internet stalking to discover his full name, which he definitely didn't know that I knew.  But I pretended I didn't know his last name.  It was SUPER awkward, but also kind of fun knowing that I knew information that he hadn't actually given me.  So anyway, he ended up having to show them his Facebook profile to prove that it was really his credit card; he has enough privacy settings that I had *not* been able to find him on Facebook, so once again, I was gaining more information.  I felt like a spy.  I didn't even bother to try to hide my last name on my card or ID, because I'm not difficult to find online, so I figured he already knew my last name (and plenty of other info that I hadn't actually told him); he did, but also didn't admit that to me at the time.

BUT THEN...

My stomach started to feel AWFUL.  Like all of a sudden, I felt like I was going to hurl.  After I went to the restroom, I met him outside.  I told him that I knew it sounded like a bad line to get out of a date, but that I really thought I was going to throw up, so I needed to go home.  Turns out that I actually had spiked a fever at some point, and I assume I had caught the 24-hour stomach bug that had been going around at the barn.  WORST. TIMING. EVER.

I texted him after taking my temperature and told him (again) that I really was sick, and that I had a good time with him up until then.  He clearly didn't believe me, as I soon found out...

The next day, I texted him and tried to convince him that I hadn't been trying to get out of anything.  Eventually, I think at least part of him accepted that.  We talked on the phone again a couple of nights that week, texted lots again, and played more battleship.  Spiderman: Far from Home had just come out, and both of us wanted to see it, so Friday night, he drove to Athens again, and we went to dinner (at Waffle House, because EVERYTHING else was packed since the college kids had just come back to town).  Again, dinner was pleasant enough.  Soldier Boy ended up paying for my food this time, but only because he didn't realize he was doing it since the whole check was so cheap.  I definitely started to think it was weird that he was so against calling anything a date, or treating any of it like a date...I mean, we were doing dinner and a movie, for crying out loud.  That's pretty date-like.  But he didn't pay for my movie, which again was awkward, since you have to choose seats when you pay at almost all the theaters now.  My snarky side might have won at that point, because I said something to the effect of "I mean I guess we don't *have* to sit together"...he just kind of rolled his eyes at that.  But I mean, COME ON.  Date me or don't date me, or let's hang out in a group if you're not sure yet; heck, I wasn't sure yet...a group would've been great.  But I've done the "non-dating" thing before for a whole entire summer, mutually, and those waters get real murky real quick where feelings are concerned.  GIRLS LIKE LABELS.  Especially type-A girls like me.  I'm not saying labels should be attached to things too soon, but at least some sort of discussion should happen.  In this post-I Kissed Dating Goodbye world of Christian dating, I know it's intimidating to attach labels to relationships...but "going on a date" doesn't have to be the same as "dating."

We both enjoyed the movie, but rather than standing around after to talk about it, we just kind of chatted on the way back to our cars, and he literally just kept walking after we got to my car.  He didn't say goodbye, he didn't wave, he didn't try for a hug...he didn't even stop walking.  I yelled "bye, thanks, it was fun!" across the parking lot to him.  Because it was fun.  But maybe it was just fun for me...who knows.

We had vaguely discussed meeting up in Atlanta the next day to do something, but had made no solid plans.  I had to work that morning, but when I still hadn't heard from him by about noon, I finally texted him.  I didn't hear back for several hours, at which point he basically just said the whole day had been a day of not doing things he had planned to do...whatever that means.  At that point, I had already made dinner plans with my parents, since I hadn't heard from him, so when he asked if I wanted to get dinner somewhere, I had to say no.  So then he decided he was going to go on some random solo road trip to who knows where.  He sent me a couple of pictures of the sunset while he was driving, and of a Delorean that he drove past.  And that was the last thing I heard from him for 3 days.

I texted him after a whole day of nothing, and said something to the effect of "did you and the Delorean fall into a black hole or something?"  No reply for a couple days, at which point, his "excuse" was that he had been sleeping a lot for the last few days.  BRO.  DUMBEST EXCUSE IN THE WORLD.  I told him that he could've at least texted that he would be disappearing for a couple days...he said he didn't think I would care, and didn't think that I was even still interested.  I never got to hear why he thought that--I still really would like to know.

The rest of that week, I barely heard from him, and really I don't think I would have ever heard anything if I hadn't texted first.  I called him out for ghosting me (which allegedly "isn't my style", according to one of his texts from early-on in our texting), and he turned it back on me and said "c'mon now, you're classier than that".  He said some other things too, we kind of chatted again for a little bit that night, and then that was really it.  But honestly, I was so mad when he tried to make it my fault that HE QUIT TALKING TO ME with no explanation, that he would've had to have done a lot of damage control anyway.  I'm sure he realized that at some point (he is smart, after all), and decided it would just be easier to disappear entirely.

So, Soldier Boy, if you ever read this blog post, consider this my way of saying goodbye.  Also, you should consider learning how to say that word yourself.  I think I at least deserved that.