To make a move or to move on

Hi there. I am going to start from the beginning just so one can get a complete sense of how much I am affected by this. I am an eighteen year old girl who recently graduated high school. Up until my junior year, I was a rather shy person. I live in a small town - my graduating class consisted of 91 people. I had a small group of friends. I had never really had a serious relationship. I was never attracted to anyone. I was a homebody. I have always had the tendency to cancel on people last minute when I did make plans just because I didn't feel like going. Like I just mentioned, no one really caught my eye enough for me to pursue them romantically. Granted, boys have asked me out on dates and such, but I rarely agreed to go. Well, during my senior of Cross Country, the schools made new conferences, which meant I would be competing against schools in the area I hadn't competed against ever. At the first cross country meet of the season, I saw a runner from another school dressed in a bright gold morph suit. He was dancing around and talking to different teams. He caught my eye because of how funny and outgoing he seemed. I didn't talk to him that day because I was still sort of shy. The next meet was held at my school. (Brief break-down of the way cross country meets go: There is a girl's race and a guy's race. It is common during the opposite gender's race for the rest of the team to watch or cheer on their fellow teammates. At every meet, or "game" every school would compete. There were only three other schools in my conference. Before every race, there is a "course walk," which is a guided tour of the 3.1 miles so the runners know somewhat where to go on their run) Throughout the wooded area of the race, it is common for a group of team members to be stationed to cheer on their team. My race was second after the boy's. As I was almost finishing, I see the guy in the morphsuit hanging from a tree just cheering any and everyone on. He had definitely grabbed my attention. While the teams were boarding the bus, I saw him without the morphsuit on, and might I say that he was very attractive. Next week's race was at his school. After finishing my race, I saw a group of teammates gathered around a water cooler. The guy was mingling and talking to some of my teammates. I decided to wander over. I managed to get myself into a conversation with him and another guy from team. We were making jokes, and before my team left to board the bus, the guy had added a lot of my team, including me, to his Facebook. That night he started messaging and we soon exchanged phone numbers and started texting. Every meet after that, we would end up walking and talking together on the course walks before hand. We would text every night. We also started talking on the phone. We became good friends. We would even cheer for each other during meets. (Fun fact: Our schools were RIVALS.) We talked so much during the course walks, that one time the guy (I'll call him Joe) managed to go the wrong way at the beginning of the race because he hadn't paid attention. During the last part of his regionals meet, I started to cheer his name and he almost fell to the ground trying to look back at me. Whenever there was downtime, like when the judges were determining the scores, we would walk around and talk. we would be apart from our teams. When his team won "All Conference," he almost missed the picture because he had to run over there because we were apart from everyone. Both of our schools made it to State championships. We hung out as much as we could then too. We hugged and kept saying, "We have to hang out sometime. I don't want this to end because Cross Country is over." We ended up hanging out the weekend after. He lives across the river, so he had to take a ferry over. He said that this was the first time he had ever been on "a date." We walked around and he carved my name into a bench. We hung out almost every weekend for the next few months - starting from Nov. 9th all the way to Jan. 19th. We would text from morning to night. The first time we hung out outside of cross country, he tried to kiss me, but I denied it, saying that my lips were chapped. I didn't want to kiss for two reasons: One - Don't kiss on the first date and Two - I had never kissed anyone before and was embarrassed about it. We had so much in common - everything from appreciation of punny, bad jokes, to weird habits, to parental issues. One time he came to my house and we just sat and talked on my bed for about four hours straight. (Big accomplishment for a 17 yr old guy) Around the third time of us hanging out, he kissed me and I finally went with it. We hung out more after that, and continued the kissing and stuff. However, we never had a label. I remember talking to my friends and being frustrated about it. When we first started talking on the phone in Oct, he talked about his one ex girlfriend. Even without dating anyone, I knew that it wasn't good etiquette to mention exes to someone. I got the feeling that he wasn't quite over her. But, we hung out from Nov to Jan. Joe's favorite sport is wrestling and he would always tell me the details about his diet, exercise and other routines. He once told me that I motivated him to do better and always brightened his day, and that he looked forward to talking to me. I went to one of his wrestling matches in Jan.(He said his parents had never even been to one.) Keep in mind, we went to different schools, so going to his match wasn't just a simple thing. Anyway, back at his house that night, he asked me to do something with which I wasn't comfortable. I asked him the infamous, "What are we?" He replied with something along the lines of, "I obviously have an emotional attachment to you. But, you will be going off to college next year and I know I would be wondering who you would be talking to and I would get jealous and I don't want to hold you back." I said that if we're hanging out anyway, then why don't we just cross that bridge when we get there, but he just kept saying that he didn't want to hold me back when I was going to be starting a new life. He said he didn't want this to stop us from hanging out though. We hung out the next weekend. He told me a story about his coach just got engaged and how his fiance was always at wrestling matches. He said that "You know she's the one when she comes to your matches." I brushed it off, not wanting to get my hopes up. Anyway, that was the last time we hung out. We texted until about March. He was busy with wrestling state championships and stuff so I didn't really worry. I asked to hang out a few times, but he said that he had work. I had been his "top" on snapchat for months; it was our prime form of communication. Around March, when our talking began to dwindle, I would get random snaps saying, "Goodnight sweetcheeks." I used to get messages like that, but I knew they weren't for me. I called him out saying that he was sending them to me instead of whoever else to whom they were supposed to go. After about a month of short or no communication at all, in Mid-April, he sends me an-out-of-the-blue text along the lines of, "I feel like you need an explanation of the way I have been acting. I don't want you to think I was playing you in anyway. I've been distant to everyone because I don't know how to process my family's divorce. I'm failing classes. I don't feel like talking to people. That's why I have been distant w/ you. It has nothing to do with me being bored of you or trying to play you, it's just that I don't want to talk to people in general." After a few sympathetic texts, I brought up the fact that he said that he didn't want to talk to people, but he was obviously talking to someone because I kept getting messages that weren't for me. I told him that if he didn't want to talk to just me, he could tell me. All he said was, "It's not you. I just don't want to talk to people in general." And that was the last contact I had with him for a while. We still followed each other on Twitter and would occasionally "favorite" each other's tweets, but no real communication. On my graduation day in June, I made a post about me graduating. He sent me a "Congrats," message. I replied and got no answer. And just about two weeks ago, he randomly sent me a message saying, "Hey!" I replied and we talked very shortly for about 30 minutes. He opened my last message and never replied. He has "favorited" a few of my tweets since then but no more direct communication. I have been trying to work up the courage to message him, but I just don't know if it's worth it. It has been six months since I have seen his face in person yet I still think about him every day. I think about him all day. He was the first person I've ever really been close to at all. He still has another year of high school because he was held back and I will leave for college in a month. I feel like it is almost too late to even bother trying to talk to him anymore. I still have this hope that things could go back to the way they were, but deep-down I know they won't. So, if there are any listeners, do you think I should contact him on my own? He obviously wanted to talk to me a few weeks ago. As sad as it may be, I think this guy is special and would rather have him as a friend than not have in my life at all - like the past six months have been. I never got closure because he just randomly stopped talking to me and I still have feelings for him. I feel like he will always be "The One that Got Away" since I leave for college in less than a month. If anyone has any advice, I'd love to hear it. I haven't talked to anyone about this in full detail because my best friend is awkward and won't talk about it, my sister writes Joe of as a bad guy and won't let me talk about him, and my mom just brings the subject back to her. So, any advice is welcome. (I apologize about the length but I just REALLY need to get this off of my chest.)

I can really relate to you. Like a lot. I'm much like you. The point is, I chose not to talk to him or contact him in the end because of uncertainty. Sure, college would be different but when you look back would it be okay for you to have just left it like that? Try to talk to him if you don't want to lose him just because you didn't do anything. It's a better way to look back at than nothing at all. I know because that is how I feel and I am now in college.

Wow, thank you so much. It's comforting to know that someone else can relate! I feel like any answer would be better than an unresolved problem, so I'll work up the courage to talk to him. Thanks again! :)

Thanks. I probably needed that reality check to bring me back from a delusional hope that anything could ever happen. Thanks for saying it like it is without sugar-coating it.