Like sands through the hourglass...

If I’m being honest with myself, there’s really only one guy I’ve met in my life that I can say I actually connected with. He was completely wrong for me - not in a bad boy way but in a situational way - but I connected with him in all the ways that matter. How do I know? Because when things didn’t work, I wasn’t broken in any way. It seems counterintuitive, but sometimes reality is. The situation never made me question myself. 

Every freshman at Boston College is required to take Freshman Writing Seminar, and being the college virgins that we were, we didn’t know good professor from bad - a Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society from a Jack Black in School of Rock. Luckily, I had the counsel of two seniors through a first semester seminar, and they suggested one particular section. I walked into the first day of class, instantly recognizing the guy I had admired from afar at freshman orientation. No, it wasn’t one of my fellow students ... it was my professor. A young professor, mind you - a 26 year old doctoral student. For the sake of anonymity in case this blog can be linked through Google (doubtful), let’s call him Very Hot Professor, or VHP.

An integral part of Freshman Writing Seminar is the weekly conference with your professor, which meant being one-on-one with VHP, which came to mean spending time with someone who got me. VHP always encouraged personal writing, which opened the door to personal conversations. Everything from his days as a BC undergrad and self-professed awkward wallflower, to my disdain for high school, to our favorite Easter candy. No topic was off-limits. Being a man worthy of the acronym VHP, I was hardly the only female student lining up to talk to him after class. There was one particularly clingy girl who probably saw me as a pain in her ass, the way I would linger longer after class to talk to him. But the important thing is that I beat her, right?

It’s important to note that throughout this whole semester, I wouldn’t say I had a crush on him. I just thought he was a decent guy - perhaps the most decent guy I had met aside from my brother. Was I comfortable with him? Yes. I found myself joking about him  stalking me after seeing him twice in one hour around campus (seemed like a funny idea at the time). I also found myself confiding in him when I was going through some tough family issues. He was there for me in a way I’ll never forget. 

On our last day of class we had a pizza party. The rest of my classmates filed out, leaving Clingy Girl and I to duke it out for ultimate supremacy one last time. I finally decided to give up, not having the energy to fight a woman on a mission such as herself. But I was able to get the last laugh when VHP offered to walk me out. Once we were safely out of ear shot, he turned to me and showed me a prayer necklace. He said it was from the nuns that taught him when he was a kid, and they claimed that as long as you wore it, nothing bad could happen to you. Then he gave me that same necklace to keep, along with a very long hug. And that, my friends, was the moment I officially had a crush on him.

The catch: aside from being my professor, VHP was also finishing his last year at BC, with a plan to move on to Michigan State to complete his doctorate degree. I spent the summer trying to pretend it would be easy to forget him, but needless to say that didn’t go well. I emailed him at the beginning of my sophomore year, and we embarked on a year long internet correspondence, trading long tales of our lives about every other week. 

We got to know each other even more without the constraints of the classroom, including our mutual quests for a meaningful relationship. He was broken after his girlfriend of a couple years cheated on him, and I was ... well, much like where I am now. He continued to extoll my writing, as well as my value as a person. I was getting in pretty deep, and one day I was at my internship at a local paper, reading his email, and I decided I couldn’t be silent anymore. There was no reason he was feeling the same way I was, and yet I knew if I didn’t say anything, this could be the type of thing I held onto far too long. I sent him an email saying I was wondering that despite all the reasons it wouldn’t work - age difference, geographic difference, the fact that he was my professor - did he ever think we could possibly be more than friends? I felt relieved the moment I sent it, knowing whatever the answer, I did what I needed to do. The response was expectedly sweet - that yes, because we met when he was my professor, there would always be a certain quality to our relationship that couldn’t transcend friendship. But it was still a no.

The emailing became more sporadic. After graduation, even less frequent. But he had left his mark - every guy I have met since has suffered in comparison. I’d be lying if I said I never hoped that somehow things would change, but the final nail in the coffin came when a few months ago a friend informed me VHP was getting married. It stung, but   only for a few moments. Because he did what every meaningful relationship (chaste and innocent or otherwise) should do - he taught me something about myself.