Every relationship has its ups and its down, some are just plain weird. I personally came across a few relationships that weren’t the best, but I have no shame to it. But before I get into some details let me tell you who I am. I just recently turned 20 and I am in college, now I got to admit what you read might not be what you wanted to hear, but it will be the truth. I always thought that having a boyfriend was every girl’s dream, or at least that’s what I thought to myself. I had about 11 boyfriends, but to fairly say I only admit that 4 of them were actually really boyfriends. I know that 11 sounds a lot but hey, I didn’t date them pretty long.
So lets’ start off with guy number one, it was middle school year, the ending of 7th grade. He was Hmong. We dated for about 2 weeks and then summer started, that meant that there were 2 months in between. For the entire summer we didn’t speak or hung out at all, but then when 8th grade started, we continued our relationship, or so we thought. We took it extremely slow. Fast forward, 7 months later. Although we been together for 7 months, we didn’t hold hand, we didn’t even kiss, lets’ just say, we hardly even spoke. Funny right? Well at the time I didn’t really know what was going on, but I felt like he wasn’t really communicating with me and it was hard, we were young and I figured we needed to break up. I broke up with him, sadly. But again fast forward, now, he is one of my best friends. We don’t really talk about the past, and our other friends don’t really know we use to date either.
Now time for guy number two. He was Hmong, but also mixed with some other race. I honestly forgot this one existed. I don’t mean to be rude but we all got that one guy we forget because it was pretty much nothing. This guy was my second boyfriend, we also dated in middle school, in the 8th grade. He dated this girl and she really loved him, but then something happen. I don’t really remember. But we started talk and then we started dating, he was pretty cool. He didn’t live that far from me, and every place he went, he’d bring me a souvenir. But we only dated for about 2 weeks or a month. I can’t really remember either.  While we were dating, I had this friend, she would always be around us. I soon figured that they were hanging out a lot more together than I knew. And then one day he called me and broke up with me, yes through the phone. I always thought that was the worst way to break up with someone. It was painful, but I think what hurt more was the fact that after 2 days when we broke up, him and my friend were dating and they tried to keep it from me, but I eventually figured it out. I lost one of my friends, well make that two, because the girl who was also helping my friend get with my boyfriend was also my friend. Getting back stab twice at once hurts, but that’s when you find who are your real friends. Fast forward, he and I are somewhat friends, he dated my friend and then my cousin, although he went around saying we dated, I denied it. I didn’t want this relationship to ruin my past.
Moving on to guy number three. He was Fijian/Hindi. I think this relationship is what killed me the most. He was dating this girl for over 3 years, she was a classmate of mine. At the time he was talking to me, I knew that he was dating her, but then they were on and off. This was freshman year. One day he asked me out, and I asked that girl if they were still dating, she said no, and she advised me to date him so I did. I went to look at his Facebook profile page and he was already in a relationship with another girl, I talked to him about it and he said it was just a friend thing. So I believed him. But then after that, I messaged that girl and she told me that they were really dating, she didn’t know who I was though. Two days later, me and my classmate became really close friends, to the point where we trusted one another with our phones. Well that’s what I thought at the time. She gave me her phone, then, I use to think maybe she trusted me to hold her phone, now I think she purposely gave it to me to read her text between her and my supposedly boyfriend. In the text, he denied being with me, and he didn’t even know my name properly. In those text they talked about keeping it a secret form me, hiding it, and pretending that nothing was going on. I confronted her and she said she tried to tell me, but she couldn’t and then when I confronted him, he denied it and made up stories about her being psycho and crazy about him. It was hard but I broke up with him. We lasted for about a week. After a few months, he tried getting back with me, he acted like he was losing himself, but he was caught red handed kissing another girl. Funny how people tell you they want you back but have their lips glue to someone else’s mouth. Now, lets’ fast forward. About a year ago, he texted me saying that he was sorry for the way he mistreated me. (it’s been 3 years already) He told me how out of all the girls he dated he missed me the most, that I was everything and that he couldn’t get over me. Being a girl, I thought I should believe him, because it was 3 years. I messaged his ex-girlfriend, asking her if he texted her too, and believe me the things he wrote was copied and paste to two other girls as well. Now, he came across some problems that I cannot say due to some privacy issue, but he would have his cousins message me saying all these things, which I lost trust, so I don’t believe anything anymore. Because of this relationship, I now have a hard time trusting guys.
Then here comes guy number four. He was Caucasian. This boyfriend made me feel so loved. We walked around the entire school, it felt like a movie because it was raining and he had his black pea coat and he took it off and gave it to me. He held my hands making sure they weren’t cold, and when he walked me to my classes, his smile made the sky shine. It was an amazing feeling. We were in class and he held my hands under the table knowing that there was going to be huge consequences because we were in this academy together and holding hands was considered PDA (public display of affection). My hands were freezing, and he would try to warm them up. But then that all soon faded away. After a week, he hardly talked to me, he was always in the academy room and he was always with these two other girls. He stops walking me to class, and his feelings were just gone. He told my classmate (the same girl from my 3rd boyfriend) that he thought I still had feelings for my ex, that my ex had said something to him. I was hurt. After class he broke up with me, I went to my last class crying my eyes out. I didn’t even attend my last class; I was just crying outside the classroom. While crying outside the classroom, my ex-boyfriend came to try and cheer me up. Ok, fast forward. After 4 years we finally got back into contact, we talked about what went wrong and how we were going to change that. I really believed him. He would text me good mornings and text me good nights. He was actually becoming someone I never thought he would. But after a few months, it just started to fade. He stopped texting me for two weeks then text me again and then went missing again. And so one day, after he wasn’t texting me back, I stop trying. A month later he texts me saying how sorry he was and that he was grounded and didn’t have access to his phone. I honestly would have trusted him, if I didn’t have him on social media. So he lied to me and I just stop replying to him.
Guy number five was Filipino. I met him after I had transfer school. This was still freshman year, but the ending. He was the first person to talk to me in my English class. He knew the friends that I hanged out with because he went to middle school with some of them. At first he had a thing with one of the girls but she didn’t like him that way. We were both in ROTC together and he basically taught me everything. There came this dance called the Military Ball, and he asked me to go with him, but my parents didn’t let so I couldn’t go. After that dance he asked me out and I said yes. He walked  me to my classes because it was also near his. In the morning he would be with me and then during lunch he would make up excuses to walk around the school with me and at the end of the day, he would wait with me for my ride. I honestly don’t know what went wrong. We dated for two weeks and then summer break came along. We seemed fine, but then he just stopped contacting me. I asked him what was along and he’d just tell me that he was busy, but then when I asked a friend to talk to him, he told her everything, and she refused to tell me.  I messaged him on Facebook, and he broke up with me through email. Now I thought the phone was bad, this was through email. I wasn’t really hurt, because I was already use to him not being around. Ok, so now let’s fast forward. He told me he liked this girl, so I asked her to give him a chance and be his valentine, and she said yes. After a while they started dating. After 2 or 3 years now, they are still together and both of them are in the military.
So moving on, guy number six was also Hindi. I think this was one of my longest relationship and maybe the hardest. This guy is one of the guy that I would consider my boyfriend. We were both in ROTC and we had our own team. He was in Color Guard and I was in Unarmed.  Majority of the time we would be in the ROTC room. But let’s get to know him first. I met him 7th grade, I didn’t really talk to him because I didn’t know him that well, but we were both into music. I played the violin and he played the cello then the bass. Now fast forward to sophomore year. We started talking the summer before sophomore year, he told me he liked someone but wouldn’t tell me who, but after a few chats he said that for me to look into the mirror and I will see who he likes. It was so cute because I told him I didn’t know what he was talking about. We both took a field trip to an elementary school and taught little kids about how to put the flag for their school because I was in charge of Honor Guard and he was Color Guard. He was also a friend of guy number 5. He talked to guy number 5 and asked if he would be ok if we dated and he said he was okay with it. After a few weeks he asked me out and I told him I already had a boyfriend he was so surprised but then I told him my boyfriend was standing right in front of me and we started dating then. At first we were the perfect couple. We both didn’t really mind spending as much time with one another because we both were busy. We both attended so many ROTC events together and that’s how we spent our time together.  But after a while it started to feel wrong because we never hung out outside of the ROTC room and when we did one of his best friend would always be with us. I never really had him to myself. We had first period together but we didn’t even walk together, it was mostly with all his other friends. We wouldn’t really see each other throughout the day because we had different teachers but the same subject, and our building were the opposite side of the school. So fast forward, after 7 months, I told him how I felt like we lost our sparks because we barely had any more connections. He couldn’t handle the way I thought so he broke it off. I was really hurt, because this was the guy I loved so much, but I learned my mistake and moved on. Fast forward. After we broke up, he dated one of the girls on my unarmed team, I mean I didn’t really care, but it hurt, because she was one of the girls that cheered me up after the break up. Okay so another fast forward. He basically cheated on her, and he kept coming back to me. He will call me when he’s down and he will try to hang out with me when he needs to get away from all his other girls. Yes, that makes me a rebound, but not if we are just friends. I guess you could say that this went on my entire senior year. We hung out secretly and we were secret friends. Not like Friends with Benefits, but our friends didn’t was us being friends, so we were our own friends without anyone knowing.  We hung out the summer after senior year, and I found out that he was leaving to the navy in two weeks, it broke my heart, because I started to have feelings for him again, but he just never really made it clear of how he felt towards me. He promised me that before he leaves he will come see me, and he left without a notice. He didn’t tell me anything, he didn’t even say anything after I found out he was leaving. Now, he’s back and he’s dating the same girl he dated after we broke up. Being in this relationship I learned a lot about what it felt like being taken for granted and how it felt to be a rebound. Throughout this phase I encountered a lot of pain, but also a lot of affections.
Moving on the guy number seven, he was Chinese. I didn’t really have feelings for him. I guess I went out with him because he was there for me and he comfort me when I was down. I guess you can say he was like a rebound to me. We dated for about 4 months I believe, but he kept talking about another girl, all the time. He would go hangout with girls without telling me and I soon found out that he liked those girls. We kept our relationship on the down low so no one really knew about it. (this was ending of sophomore year). There was this girl, I told everything to about me and him. And one day we went to a last day of school party and they were basically all up on one another. She was upset or something and he kept hugging her from behind, and she fell asleep on his lap. I didn’t really say anything, because i guess I wasn’t sure if I was mad or if I noticed that I didn’t really care. When I got home, and we talked about it, we decided to break up, because he was going to college and he still obviously had feelings for other girls. He made it so noticeable that I couldn’t defend myself when people told me or asked me about it. I guess you can say that we both used one another to hide our feelings from someone else. Fast forward. To this day, we don’t talk anymore. We left it at there, because now its awkward. 
Guy number eight. This was maybe one of the short relationship, it was about two weeks and he was Hmong. (this was beginning of Junior year) We known each other since my 7th grade year, well I knew him. Anyways, I met him again through church events. The girl from guy number seven took me to some of her church events and I met him there. He was playing the piano and started talking to me. we talked for about two weeks and we went ice skating together and we went to the mall together. We also we went to church together even though I wasn’t a Mormon.  He taught me how to love god and he taught me how to basically be someone others can depend on. Every time I felt down, he would give me some words of wisdom and it would make me feel all better. After two weeks of our relationship, we realized we jumped into a relationship way too soon and that we were better off as friends. So we became somewhat best friends for a while. Fast forward. After he graduated high school, he left for a mission, he became a missionary, because he wanted to spread the love that god has given us. I believe that he succeeded.
This relationship has shaped me the most. Guy number nine was also Hmong. It’s funny how we met and it’s a very long story, but to shorten it up, we met at a traditional celebration of New Years. I was basically playing a game with my friends. The game was to get random peoples number and loser has to buy food. My friends knew who he was, but I didn’t. so I asked him for his number and I told him I wouldn’t text him. After New Year was over I decided to mess around with him. I texted him and we started talking constantly. He told me his first impression of me and we just started talking from there. He came to see me at school after he was finished working, or he would skype me before we slept. He didn’t really give me attention because I never understood him. he would go days without talking to me or he would just ignore me, but through all the bad phase, he always knew how to make me smile. He knew when I was mad and he knew exactly how to make me feel better. He pushed the buttons that I never knew I even I had. He walked away from me during my worst moments and he never really seemed to understand why cared so much. While we were talking he was also talking to other girls. It never really bothered me because I thought I had his attention. He met my family and they loved him. They soon figured that he was a little brother to one of their friends. He came to surprise me after swim practices and he threw something at me and he told me that he chose me. As corny as it sounds it was a pen that looked like the Pokémon ball, it was the perfect moment and the perfect time because everyone was just staring at us. We didn’t really get to see each other so when we did we made the best of it. I left to Minnesota for a vacation to visit my dad. He came to see me at 4 in the morning and he took me to the airport as well, he told me that he wouldn’t give me a kiss until I got back to him safely. After 4 days of me being gone, we broke up, I honestly still wonder why what happened. I found out that after we broke up he was talking to a girl from Minnesota. She didn’t know that he had a girlfriend at the time. Anyways, fast forward. He has become one of my best friend. He calls me when he knows I’m going through a lot he knows when I need him. He is someone I consider a boyfriend because he taught me how to love myself and to be free. 
Guy number ten was someone I thought that would never really impact me. He was also Hmong, but white washed. He made the cutest move to talk to me. He passed me a note saying that he knew it was wrong to pass notes in class but he wanted to introduce himself. After class I went home and searched him on Facebook, I found out that we were friends already. I was so amazed, I talked to him about it and he said he already knew. He asked to hang out so we did, we had so much in common. My family was going through some things and he was basically there for everything. His voice was amazing, when he sang country music songs or when he sang in Hmong, it was like an angel speaking to me. It might sound funny but it was beautiful. He played football and I cheered for him, but when he got injured I would go over to his place and help massage his injury. I met his family, he was the first boyfriend where I met his parents. I loved them. They were like a little cute family. After a while I got a job and I got busy because right after school I would go to work and right after work, I would do my homework and then fall asleep while being on the phone with him, and it made him so sad. But I don’t really know what happened. Fast forward. He now has a girlfriend, but we are still friends. We talk when we need to get things off our chest. His brother recently passed away and I attended the funeral and I just wanted to comfort him, he told me that for a moment talking to me, he forgot his brother passed away. I consider him a boyfriend because being with him, I had so much adventure. He showed me what a loving family is and he showed me what it meant to care for someone.
Okay so lastly, my last boyfriend. He is Hindi/Fijian. He is two years younger than me but we have so much history together. Let’s start off where and how I met him. He was a freshman and I was a sophomore, he was dating this girl and I was dating guy number six. He was one of my students when I took over the ROTC class. When me and guy number six broke up, he told me he liked me but the girl he was dating was the same girl guy number three cheated on me with. (it might be confusing). Anyways because of this situation we kept it on the down low. He went with me to this ROTC competition and he brought me some snack because he knew that I’d be busy with the team and I wouldn’t have time to eat. After I finished he walked around the school with me. (it was a different school). When we came back home, we sat next to each other on the bus, and I started to get a headache and he gave me medicine. Fast forward, nothing happened because his ex-girlfriend still loved him and I didn’t want to get involve with them. His sophomore year, we hardly spoke, but when we saw one another we give each other a hug. I left a rose on his desk for valentine day as a secret admire. He never figured it out who it was from. Leading to his junior year, we didn’t really talk either, but we hugged each other a lot and we messed around with each other at the end of the day, almost every day.  Fast forward to his senior year. We finally started talking again, after 4 years. It started off as a post on his wall then him inviting me over for their traditional event. We hung out for a bit and then that was that. I invited him to go to Hmong New Year with me, both from Sacramento and in Fresno. We started dating on November 29,2015, we’ve only been together for about 7 months. We’ve gone through hell and back for one another. What makes me hurt the most is that sometimes I feel like I have to beg for affection, or time, but most importantly I had to beg to be loved and wanted and needed. It hurts so much more than it sounds. I know, you’re probably thinking why don’t I just leave, it isn’t worth staying with someone like that. But it’s hard to throw away something you put so much love and effort in. What really makes me mad is that he doesn’t understand the part about being a boyfriend, maybe he does but he messes up on priorities. He doesn’t know the consequences of taking someone for granted. He always uses the same excuses and the same reasons. He always says he doesn’t do these type of things or that he’s new to this type of relationship, I get it, but he doesn’t even try, so where’s the effort in that. He always walks away when we argue and he allows me to sleep angry or crying. Even when I just want him to understand me, he makes me feel like I am not worthy. He makes me feel like I ask for too much, and all I’m asking for is to love by him. I know I make it sound like I’m being emotionally abuse but I tell myself, this is what relationships are like right.  Fast forward, we are the way we remain. No matter how many downfalls there are, he is always the light that guides me through the storm, I just wish he would be the rainbow instead of the lightening.
Being in these relationship has built me to be who I am today. I know these might just be old boring love story you guys always read about, but this has been my life lesson. These relationship has taught me to love with my fullest, to hate with all my energy, and to naturalize with equality from my personality. The only thing I can say, is you can’t give up in the middle because it gets tough. I honestly can admit that I did come across suicide but trust me, life is so much brighter after that stage, that’s when you find the meaning of love and life. The world is filled with many things; you just have to be willing to be an opportunist.