i’m often asked if i think i have a “one that got away”. usually, my answer would be no but right in this moment, i think there might’ve been one. while i don’t think id go back in time & change the way i handled this relationship, i definitely wish we could’ve have had a better ending or at least wish things could’ve played out better. there is love in holding on & and in letting go, & while i have done my due diligence with letting go, i choose to hold on to this story for the duration of this blog post—it’s one worth reopening & telling.
i met, let’s call him ken, on tinder in the fall of my sophomore year of college. tinder is the most fascinating app to me & i am not ashamed to admit that i have fulfilled the apps design by falling into romance because of it. we had tried going on a date within a few days of matching on the app & planned on meeting a college town bar. we decided WAY TOO LATE in the night to meet up; by the time he showed up to the bar, it had started closing & i had walked out with my friends & headed home. we tried again & i invited ken over to my apartment halloween weekend. it was the middle of the day & he had knocked on my door & when i opened it, there was a brunette, 5’7, built man with the cutest smile waiting for me. my apartment was a disaster because my roommates and i had thrown a party the night before & we didn’t bother deep cleaning it yet because “talloween” had just begun—if you know anything about halloween in tallahassee, you would understand. i introduced him to my roommates, sitting in the living room with a pong table and empty beer cans, & then we went to my room, walking across sticky floors, where i had a pulled up game of fortnite on my tv. before he came over, my roommates and i were in a deep game of fortnite, & unfortunately for him, his presence was not going to stop us from continuing to play. he sat on my bed for an hour just watching me play, i probably exchanged like five words with him that day. i made up some excuse about having to start getting ready to go to a party & i quickly got him out the door because i just didn’t think we clicked. once i closed the door on him, i had told my roommates that the probability of me ever seeing him again was low because i thought he was a little awkward &…he was shorter than me. we all laughed and i truly believed i would never see ken ever again.
in the midst of the conversation, one of my roommates, brooke, stopped me and asked me blatantly “are you shallow?” i was stunned and i asked her what she meant by that. she told me that my love life is terrible because i’m a shallow person & i should give ken a try because he seemed nice & didn’t deserve to not get a chance because of his height. i was offended that she would point out something evidently clear about me, so once she said that, it was determined that the possibility of seeing ken again wasn’t off the table.
a few nights later i was in college town & i remembered that he told me he lived in college town. i texted him and asked if he wanted to hangout, so he picked me up from where i was and we went to his house. he lived in this beautiful house right off of W Pensecola street & we spent the night watching love is blind. we watched HOURS of love is blind & i had fallen asleep in the middle of watching it. when i woke up, i realized i was going to be late for pt so i quickly had to get all my things & asked him to drive me back to my apartment. i had anticipated that i’d spend the night so i had all my pt clothes except my shoes. ken was so sweet and offered to let me borrow one of his but i knew i’d need my running shoes so we sped to my apartment. he dropped me and apologized for making me late & when i closed his car door, I WAS, ONCE AGAIN, SURE ID NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN.
i was wrong & we kept spending a lot of time together. we’d do homework together, watch more love is blind, run errands, & sat in each others presence. after a while, it really started to feel like i could be in a relationship with ken & felt like brooke might’ve been right. one thing that relationship did was bring me closer to brooke. at the time, brooke was just the random roommate assigned to our 4x4 apartment & i never really spent that much time with her. but once i started dating ken, i went to brooke a lot for advice because she got me there in the first place. ken & i loved spending time with brooke, & even though ken & i didn’t work out, brooke & i sure did & we’re still great friends.
now that the foundation is set on my relationship with ken, my favorite thing to talk about is what an amazing person he was to me. i have been in a relationship, i have dated, flirted, & everything in between. i have seen the best of romance & the demise of it, but the one person who i will always have kind words for is ken. ken was the epitome of southern charm & kindness; he opened every door, was the designated driver, paid for every meal, cleaned around the apartment, & called me pretty every chance he got. now, what made ken special wasn’t the things he did on that list, i could do all those things no problem, but he did them because of the ease he wanted to bring to my life. he knew i didn’t need any of those things done for me, but he still did them anyways. my roommates & i loved having ken around. he would talk to them, help take the trash out, do dishes, help do laundry—anything he could to contribute to the apartment. my old roommates and i still talk about all the kind things he did for us, & it set the standard for all our other boyfriends, dates, & in-betweeners we had after him.
i gave ken the nickname "ken" because one of my best friends, andrea, told me he looked like a ken barbie doll when she first met him. let me tell you, she wasn’t too far off. ken was a pretty man! he had a great smile, kept himself in great shape, had luscious hair, & had a good sense of style—he told me that one of his teachers growing up once asked him if he was gay because he was just “too pretty to be straight”-- i always thought that was funny. ken had the cutest southern accent that got stronger whenever he’d drink. he could light up a room every time when he laughed. & the only thing he wasn’t “blessed” with, was height, but when you’re kind & get compared to a ken barbie doll, height doesn’t really come to mind.
now, after reading all of this you’re probably wondering why we didn’t work out, & honestly, it’s a good thing we didn’t. i really could’ve seen myself in a relationship with ken, for a while, he was basically living in my apartment & became our fifth roommate. he had a toothbrush next to mine, a drawer with clothes, a designated side of the bed, and walked into the apartment as if he truly did live there. but, i wasn’t ready for all of that that quickly. we had moved so quickly that by the time i realized how far into we were, it was enough to suffocate. our lives didn’t align well. i was in the midst of applying to west point, rotc was taking up a huge chunk of my time, student government took up the other chunk of time, & all the moments in between were reserved for the friends i loved. what i'm trying to get at is that there wasn’t any time left for me to give him what he deserved. ken also didn’t really have a plan for his life. he was two years older than me & he had a few huge life choices to make & i knew EXACTLY where i wanted to go in life—i didn’t want to wait around to find out what he wanted to do with his life, so when push came to shove, i knew at the end of the day, it was time to call it quits.
everyone around me saw the love this man had for me in the way he looked at me…it was so obvious, even i saw it. honestly, ken wasn’t the man i deserved but he was the man i needed at the time. he taught me bare minimum behavior, made me realize that there was room to raise the standards i had for my love life. looking back, i wish i could’ve loved him better. i couldn’t have loved him any more because, at the time, i had no capacity for it. i know now that love isn’t enough on its own & it matters how i love—so i wish i loved him better. at 19, i was going to keep pursuing what i was pursuing, & it took up more & more of my time. that meant, i wasn’t able to spend much time with him, & all the moments i did spend with him, all i was thinking about was west point,
& all the things i could be doing that would get me closer to getting here (it's a good thing i ended up getting in).
i think of ken often & i hope he is well. i think about the polaroid he had of me in his car, what his side of story sounds like, & if he ever thinks of me whenever he eats sushi or shotguns a beer. even though we are not on speaking terms, i still wish the best for him. even though he is with somebody else, even if he hates me, i still wish the best for him. always. i think of his kindness often, and sometimes it haunts me to the bone--i forget about him until i am haunted of his presence on a random thursday night while i'm on a date with another man who is simply not ken. he is still the best man to have ever loved me, gently & romantically, i hope a love like that comes along again, but when i'm ready.
i hope you find your ken one day.
with all my love,
♡steff
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