Lessons From the Kissing Booth

In December a boy and I broke up, and I just heard--literally, just hours ago--that he killed himself on New Year's Eve. I don't talk about my love life on the internet, but this, you should know.

Things between us ended poorly, and after they ended they rapidly went downhill; we were both passionate, stubborn people with hurt feelings and different ways of operating. I wanted some space to heal up and forgive a little, and he wanted to talk everything out, and it eventually devolved to a place where the fewer phone calls I answered, the more he made. And the more he made, the fewer I wanted to answer.

We were never well matched, which was a lot of the excitement. He stayed home and played music, I drank and went to bars. He wrote long crazytalk emails and I sent text messages. And we adventured together, trading new experiences, swimming in a lake, going to gallery openings, visiting the pumpkin patch. The spaces between us were large but when our rough patches met they made sparks you could see from space.

He was kind, and smart, and he wanted badly to be the sort of man the he admired. He cared about people, and I very nearly loved him.

He called for the last time on the 30th, and I never responded.

It's a strange feeling, to be finding out so late that this person that I spent so much of my time with, that I had such strong feelings for, is no longer around. I am terribly sad, of course, but I'm also confused and angry. He had so many friends, so many people that loved him, that it seems such a selfish thing to do. He had nearly, as a younger man, attempted suicide before, and was stopped by a kind friend at the right moment who had no idea what was on his mind. Someone who still doesn't know that they once saved his life, and now might never know.

And so I also feel terribly, terribly guilty, for thinking too much about my own healing and not about his. We had both broken each other, but I worried only about how he had broken me. Things might not have turned out differently if I had been kinder, but they could have.

My heart goes out to his friends and family.