Single and Complicated

(note: if you do not like posts that have to deal with a 20-something's romantic frustration, then scroll down and read some poetry. Or....something.)

My romantic life has always been a little bit complicated.  I mean, beyond usual complicated. 

I didn't really "date" (if you can say high school freshman "date") until I was 13 and in high school. This was OK with me. I had crushes before, but when you're in seventh grade crushes mostly consist of getting the boy you like to dance with you at a chaperoned dance in the gymnasium, whilst you stand a foot apart under the watch of your math teacher. 

In high school I had one boyfriend. I didn't really mind, although I did develop other crushes. We dated on and off for the first three years of school. He was a good friend, and he didn't really mind any "issues" that came with me, because, at that point, there weren't that many. I mean, we didn't go on dates after school or anything. Everything we did was weekends or school events (like French club trips). Your lives are fairly segregated in the early years of high school. 

College, I was engaged. Now there were many reasons that relationship didn't work, but my health wasn't really one of them. He was fine with all of that, behaving heroically through my ICU stint and other (less dramatic) hospital admissions. I don't know many guys who would've done that. And for awhile I stayed in that relationship because I thought that no one else would be able to handle all that came with being my significant other. 

But, regardless, we broke up right after our Junior year. So single again--all through the t/x, etc. which was fine. The last thing I needed was having to reassure a guy that I was going to be OK, yada yada yada. That's not the most fun thing to do when all you want is for someone to be telling you those things. 

So in 2006, a year post-tx, I started dating again. A nice guy. We got along well. But he had major issues with my health and the uncertainty it brings. And even though I told him that no one's future is secure (this was after 9/11 for crying out loud) it didn't work, and he was my first ever hospital break-up (it was done over the phone). 

Now I'm non-dating again, but there is one person that I can't get out of my head. It's sort of torturous. And so, being that is it was it is (and knowing that we cannot, at this moment, have a relationship due to extenuating circumstances), I sort of feel like romantic crap. 

(OK, yes, this is probably a whiny post. But it does go  along with the whole post-tx mentality so that's why it's here.)

I need to be with a guy who knows my situation and doesn't really care. Not that I don't want him to care--I need him to know what it entails--but he needs to be able to deal. He can't look at me and be pondering when I'm going to drop dead on him. 

The worst part about this whole unrequited love thing is that it is just that. I really, really hate dreaming about things you can't have (who doesn't?).  

The thing that really makes this hard is we have known each other for so long; therefore, he knows absolutely everything about me.  That makes dating so, so much easier than having to have the Big Talk. 

OK, rant over. (Was this a rant?) I just needed to get that out.