One of my biggest mistakes

This isn't a topic that I talk about. As a matter of fact, even some of my closest friends don't know about it. It's not something that I think about a lot. But Mitzi's interview yesterday brought it all out again - not to mention that I was talking to a friend about it last week.

Way back in the dark ages, after my disasterous first year of college, I got engaged. Oh, and it wasn't to Joey, either.

I was at the Huge University that year. I had a roommate from back home who turned out to be one of the strangest and sickest individuals I've ever met in my entire life. I skipped a lot of classes and pretty much had the worst semester in the history of the GPA (I believe that semester I had a 0.9). Around the last month or so of school, I somehow met this guy named Dave and we ended up being friends with benefits. Hey, it worked for me at the time. And as it happened, there were two guys on his dorm hall that happened to be from my hometown and he introduced them to me one day. Their names were Mark and Jody - I thought Mark was hot as hell, and Jody seemed like a pretty nice, average guy. I exchanged phone numbers with them on the last week of school and figured that I'd never hear from either one of them again.

That wasn't what happened. Jody called me the first week that I was home and we started hanging out. One thing led to another and we started dating. He was a nice guy - had a very nice and respectable family, and we enjoyed doing things together. Then, we both were put on academic probation and ended up heading to summer school together.

Instead of goofing off, we studied a lot. Oh, and had a lot of very hot sex. He might not have been as hot as his friend Mark, but he was no slacker in the sack. So let's just say it was a very interesting summer.

Summer school ended and we both decided to withdraw from school. Our parents were horrified, especially mine. I'm not even sure what made us decide to drop out - I think I was really confused about whether I even really wanted to go to college, and I think his parents were sick of paying tuition when his grades sucked so they pressured him into dropping out. We both got full-time jobs and continued dating. By the fall, he had proposed and I said yes. We went out and got the ring, but we didn't tell anyone until December. Let's just say that I was scared to death of what my parents were going to say. I was a whopping 20 years old, and this wasn't what they had in mind for me.

So we lived a lie for almost two months. We finally told my parents on my birthday and they were disappointed to say the very least. I think it wasn't that they hated him or anything - I think they weren't crazy about him or think he was "the one". But we promised our parents that we would not get married until we finished our bachelor's degrees. This was December, 1989.

We went back to community college the following January, continued to work, and spent a lot of time together. We finished our Associate's degrees in 1991 and had already figured out where we were going to transfer to. And we weren't going together. He headed in one direction, and I headed in the other.

Living over three hours apart from each other was hard. It wasn't that we fought or anything, but since he had to work to pay his expenses and I was under pressure from myself and my parents to get great grades, we rarely saw each other. We talked a lot on the phone and that was about it.

I can't even remember when we broke up. I know it was the year before my senior year (1992) because it suddenly clicked in my head that I just didn't want to spend the rest of my life with him. It wasn't even horribly dramatic or anything like that - it was just one of those realizations that I'd been just plodding along for so long that I'd forgotten what I really wanted out of life.

He wasn't a bad guy. He was a nice guy. He just wasn't "the one."

He was devastated. I remember our phone conversation like it was yesterday - it was one of those conversations that started out fine and then it was kind of like "what the hell are we doing?" I ended up sending him the ring back via UPS and even paid for the extra insurance. What a gal, huh?

We really didn't talk much for the next year. He would call every now and then to talk, and I was busy dating and doing senior year things. Then, the following year, I had moved to the city where I live now and he came to town on business and wanted to have dinner. We went to dinner and I remember him asking me if there was a chance for us to get back together and of course I said no. My feelings hadn't changed at all. I hadn't even missed him at all.

A few months after that he was back in town again and asked me if I wanted to hang out downtown with him and some of his business associates. I brought my best friend from college, Amy, with me that night. Within a few weeks Jody and Amy started dating behind my back. It ended my friendship with her, and he and I never spoke again.

I have a lot of regrets. Mostly for wasting three years with someone that I didn't really have very deep feelings for. I've tried and tried to figure out why, and the only thing that I can figure out is that I was so messed up from the college experience my freshman year that he was the one normal and safe thing I had at that time. Not to mention that my relationship with my parents was very strained at the time, and he was the only person that still believed in me and told me I could be whatever and whoever I wanted to be.

I guess my other huge regret would be for hurting him. But I guess it would have been far worse to marry him and have it fall apart in record time.

So he eventually moved on. Last I heard, he has an excellent job in the western part of the state and is married to a teacher and they have two kids. So obviously I didn't wound him for life, right?

When I look back, I dated a ton of guys. And don't take that the wrong way - my life back then was way more about quantity than quality. I did have relationships with two guys before meeting Joey that I would consider "real love" - and Jody was not one of them. Obviously that speaks volumes about our relationship in my mind.

It makes me kind of sad to think about it. Not really sad that it ended, but sad that he didn't mean more to me than he did - if that makes any sense at all. Surely you have someone in your life that you have loved and lost that still makes your heart twinge a little bit when you think about it...I never, ever had a moment like that about Jody. How could I have thought I wanted to spend my life with someone that turned out to mean so little in the spectrum of my life?

Probably something I'll never know. And that bugs me.