I Got a Second Chance with “The One That Got Away”

In part one of this story:

I explained how I got back in touch with “the one that got away” — but there was something I left out.

Remember that zoom call?

The one where he started insulting me and devaluing me (and my minimalistic lifestyle) with “jokes”? Well, it didn’t stop there,

But it started with a TikTok.

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While We Were on Zoom…

I asked him if he was on Instagram and he said he was. He said he was also on TikTok but only uses it to watch funny videos.

When I asked what kind he told me he loved dark humor and proceeded to tell me about a TikTok video in particular that he found hilarious.

This TikTok was captioned something like —

“When you go over to your emo friend’s house”

It showed a guy walking into his friend’s bedroom, where the lights were off. As he goes to turn the lights on the ceiling fan starts to turn.

All you can hear is a choking noise, along with the sound of a body hitting the wall as the fan starts spinning,

Indicating that a suicide attempt is in progress.

And he started laughing, hysterically.

He was laughing so hard he couldn’t physically speak and that spoke volumes about his character.

I don’t have TikTok and I’ve never run across this clip so I was shocked when he described it to me. I was disturbed and I was frozen.

At nineteen, I lost a friend the same way.

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Kimmy

She was a beautiful spirit who touched a lot of people’s hearts in high school. If you didn’t remember anything else about Kimmy —

You remembered her kindness.

Kimmy was in an abusive relationship… and it got to be too much. One morning, she hung herself while her mom was out doing their laundry.

Her mom found her when she got back home.

I was in college at this point, so those of us who went to high school with Kimmy found out directly after.

I was in Spanish 101 when I got the text and saw it on Instagram. He and I were also friends at this point, he knew about this. He actually left campus with me that day, in support.

I went to Kimmy’s wake and funeral alone.

It was my first, and only, time attending a funeral and a wake for someone this young, as young as me. I still remember the rope marks around her neck. They tried to dress her up in a way that would cover it,

But the marks were too deep.

At the funeral, her mother began talking to her body as she lay in the casket. Kimmy and her mother weren’t just mother and daughter, they were best friends.

Watching her mother try to convince her to wake up hurt deep inside. I’d never seen something like that before — that level of grief.

Suicide is no fucking joke.

There’s absolutely nothing funny about someone attempting (or proceeding) to take their life. Nothing at all.

And it was the fact that he not only found it funny but hysterical that put the final nail in our coffin. Suddenly, I felt justified in the decision I’d made to walk away, so many years ago.

This was the moment of closure I’d been needing to let go of him and my own guilt. We had plans to meet up that upcoming weekend but I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him on Saturday.

I didn’t want to meet this man.

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The Truth Is They “Got Away” for a Reason

That version of him in my head wasn’t him anymore, it didn’t exist anymore. It was only for that time and place and there were very few subtle signs that predicted that who he is now is who he’s always been,

And would further become.

He just loved me so much, at that time, that he set much of those characteristics to the side, but there were still glimpses.

There were moments his mask slipped that are still too uncomfortable to discuss right now but I ignored them all, refusing to believe that could be the real him.

The one thing that should have been enough to tip me off to who he really was were the friends he had.

They were not the kind of men I’d ever want to associate myself with in any capacity and it always lingered in the back of my mind —

How could he be friends with men like that when he was so different?

The truth is he wasn’t.

Birds of a feather do flock together.

It finally settled in that some aspect of him was always like that; I was just choosing not to accept it because to me he was perfect.

In my eyes, I was the problem so my perspective was biased toward his faults because of my own guilt over breaking his heart. But the truth is if he was always going to fully embody the person he is right now.

Considering how judgemental, materialistic and cruel he has become, he isn’t the kind of man I could love now anyway. And he was no longer the man I loved, he was only ever an idea.

But I only know this because we were given a second chance to experience one another. Sometimes “the one that got away” was supposed to get away,

For a reason.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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