Come one, come all, and share your stories of unsolved mysteries in your personal life. (Preferably non-superatural.) Here’s mine:
R. and I started dating in college when I was a senior and she was a sophomore–the fall semester of 1997. Our feelings emerged tentatively at first, but within months we were both head over heels for each other. On campus, we were joined at the hip. We spent the following summer together on the coast of Maine, where she had family who owned stores and were willing to employ us. Though we didn’t live together there, we ate three meals a day together and spent all of our spare time together. Due to a lot of indecision my first two years of college, I had to go for one extra semester, so we returned to campus together in the fall, and continued to be as close as a couple can imaginably be. She cried quite a bit as the date of my graduation approached, and I always assured her that we’d be together in spirit, if not in body, and that soon enough we’d be together forever. We avoided the M word, but we both knew we’d get married. I had no job lined up, but she wouldn’t graduate for another year and a half, so I knew we’d make it work somehow.
I’ve never had much ambition, and was a little frustrated and even resentful that I was going to have to do something with my life. At the time, I longed merely to be an heir or a lottery winner, and to spend my whole life puttering around the house, traveling, and pursuing hobbies. I knew I could program computers, and there was a lot of hype in the news about the supposed desperate shortage of programmers, so, convincing myself (against the protestations of that voice of wisdom in the back of my head) that I could make a huge salary doing easy work as a programmer, I decided to enter the IT field. I spent 1999 taking classes. R. was still in school, and we longed for the day when we could be together again. Though I see in retrospect that we didn’t talk on the phone as often as most “serious” couples (usually once a week!), our e-mails and AIM conversations were more frequent, almost daily. My heart was most assuredly not in the IT field, however, and a good bit of our relationship consisted of me crying on her shoulder about not knowing what to do with my life. Despite the fact that lack of ambition in a man is usually a turn-off, she still seemed to love me as much as ever. We visited as often as we could, though with her still in school full time and working two summer jobs, and with me taking classes and working full time, those visits didn’t amount to more than a handful over the course of the year. Nevertheless, I had Thanksgiving dinner with her family, and she had Christmas with mine, both major milestones that virtually cemented our future marriage in my mind.
In 2000, I landed an unpaid internship at a small company, and it soon turned into a paying job, so I was getting somewhere. Finally! I’d gain some experience there, then get a job with a “real” company, and be all set to get married, though I was still complaining as much as ever about not knowing what to do with my life. R. was doing her student teaching, being placed in a position of authority over classrooms full of high school students, and no doubt feeling more like a mature, responsible adult than she had ever felt.
Valentine’s Day came and went that year. In February I was still an unpaid intern, so I was working on the weekends, and had no time to do anything more than send a card. She told me that she had a gift in mind for me, but didn’t have time to get it together by the 14th. Over the course of the next few months, she alluded to it often–in phone conversations, AIM chats, and e-mails. Apparently, she was making something herself. She told me it was straight from the heart, original, and very personal. I was, naturally, quite curious. Not that I was obsessed, but I did think about it from time to time and wonder what it could be. I wasn’t concerned, however. She was graduating in May, so she’d definitely be able to finish once her grueling student teaching semester was over. More importantly, we had an entire lifetime of Valentine’s Days and gifts to look forward to, and I spent more of my time thinking about both of us getting a job in the same city, and about me getting down on one knee before her and offering a ring. We both professed our love for each other every time we talked, I was never happier than when I was around her, and we both just knew we were made for each other.
About five weeks before she graduated, her spirits no doubt crushed under the accumulated weight of all of my whining about not wanting to do anything with my life, and her student teaching experience and impending graduation no doubt making her feel more confident, mature, and collected than she’d ever felt, and certainly more so than the guy that cute little R. had once looked up to as a big man on campus, she dumped me. I was devastated at the time, of course. Crying, sleeplessness, loss of appetite, thoughts of suicide, the works. I managed to survive the first few months only by believing that we’d get back together someday. I tried to be civil and friendly, but she completely ignored all of my e-mails, even the ones in which I assured her that I only wanted to keep in touch as friends. I didn’t think that was very nice of her, and so denial led into resentment, and for a while I considered her an enemy. In the fall I began to have eyes for another girl, however, and I knew I was getting over R. I thought of her less and less often, and upon level-headed review of our relationship, concluded that we really weren’t right for each other anyway. One of the thoughts I did still have from time to time concerning her was, “What the heck was that Valentine’s Day gift she was always talking about?” And it struck me that I’d never know. The mystery that had tormented me so much that Spring, would remain forever unsolved.
R. and I have exchanged a few friendly, chit-chatty e-mails and AIM chats since then, so I do have contact with her and there are no hard feelings between us now. Nevertheless, I would consider it beyond the bounds of taste to ask her what the gift was. Of course, in retrospect, I think it was probably just a photo album or scrapbook chronicling our relationship. And I almost never think about this anymore; I can’t remember what brought it to mind this weekend. In my more sleep-deprived moments, however, I like to think of it as somehow poetic or literary or piquant that I will have this unknowable Valentine’s Day gift in the back of my mind for the rest of my life.
I apologize for the unnecessarlily long build-up for such a mundane mystery. I did it to provide an example of the kind of story I’m looking for, one in which the mystery is so fascinating that it needs a backstory. Surely many Dopers have more intersting mysteries than mine in their lives. Anyone?
skyzoo blessings…