Thursday, July 5, 2012

Reminiscences


K:
He was my first love.  I loved him with everything I had.  He was all I thought about, day and night.  I dreamed about him whenever I didn’t talk to him.  I made up every possible excuse to get on the computer to check and see if he’d emailed me.  Everything I did I did for him.  I adored that boy.  When I looked at him I got butterflies.  When he so much as brushed my hand, a tingling like I’d never felt went up my spine.  And not in a lustful way.  It was more.  So much more.

I don’t think our relationship ever gained anyone’s ‘approval’.  After all, we were both quite young.  I was 14, he was turning 16.  But I didn’t care.  I didn’t care what anyone thought.  I was happy.  Happier than I’d ever been in my life.

Then I got scared.  I knew he was good looking – half the school wanted him for crying out loud! – and I got very nervous that he might leave me.  I became depressed.  I think that’s probably part of what drove him away.  And when he did, my heart broke.  No, it more than broke.  It shattered.  Into a million pieces.  It took me a long time to catch on (well, no offense to him, but he didn’t exactly break up with me.  At least not to ‘normal’ standards, so I was very confused!) but when I did I was devastated.  But I loved him.  And when I finally figured it out, I told him I was sorry for the way I had acted.  I then told his new girlfriend that I was letting go, but I warned her not to hurt him.  I was very young, but I loved him.  And even though it killed me, I wanted for his happiness more than my own.

It took me a very long time to get over him.  It was several, several months before I stopped making every excuse to see him.  It was a couple of years before I stopped being willing to go out of my way to see him if the opportunity presented itself.  It was even longer before I stopped checking his Facebook every now and then.  Now the only time I ever look at his Facebook is if he posts something I find particularly amusing.  I’m very much over him, but I still hold a special place in my heart for his memory.

S:
I didn’t mean to fall in love with S.  In fact, I meant not to.  But I fell, hard and fast.  I loved him just as much as I loved K.  Ours was a more passionate relationship (not that kind of passionate, mind out of the gutter, thank you, haha), and full of ups and downs.  But the ups were so up, and the downs weren’t all that bad.  Any time I saw his name pop up on my phone, I got excited.  Anytime we Skyped, I was thrilled.  It was a long distance relationship, and though we couldn’t do much together we found ways around that; World of Warcraft became a staple.  Skype was a must.  We played online chess every now and then just to keep things ‘fresh’.  Even though it was totally unorthodox, I was happy with it.

Our relationship was taboo, though.  I was married (like I said, I tried not to fall in love).  “We” could never be.  We tried to keep things on a ‘brother and sister’ kind of level, but that was more a façade for others’ sakes than anything.  It was horrible and wonderful all at once, but it had to stop, somehow, and we both knew it.

I got over S a lot quicker than I got over K, and I have S to thank for that.  Honestly, he changed.  He changed so dramatically and drastically that I barely recognized him.  The sweet, kind, loving, caring person I knew had been replaced by someone greedy, deceitful, and lustful.  He broke my heart, but in a different kind of way than K had; K had crushed my heart.  S crushed my soul.  If the S I knew was still around, I’d probably still be in love with him.  But he changed, and as much as I wanted to hold onto the S of the past, I couldn’t.  I still check up on him from time to time, but it’s for much different reasons. 

X:
Xwas sweet.  He was shy, and very quiet, but sweet and respectful.  We rarely talked, but he was a great kisser.  We’d write notes back and forth every class period.  Mine were always a page or two long.  His were barely a paragraph.  I had a crush.  But I wasn’t in love.  X wasn’t who I wanted to be with.  He wasn’t my first choice, or even my second or third.  My 1st choice was a boy named Stephen Parry who didn’t know I existed (at least not at that point).  I had a nickname for him when I didn’t know his name, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember it.  My second choice was a boy named Alex Rodriguez.  He and I had Biology together, and he was very handsome.  I wanted to ask him out to Masquerade but he’d been taken.  Third was our friend, Rob, and I might’ve had a chance there, but Caylee (his former girlfriend whom he was still in love with and my best friend) broke up with her then-boyfriend and I knew she wanted him back.  So then there was X.  And I wanted a boyfriend, so….

We got married.  Most everyone approved of our relationship, and I was proud to be one of the first of my friends to get married.  We had a good, respectable life, and I made it very public.  The happiness I had in our marriage came from the attention I got as a homemaker and wife of a Marine.  But inside our home I was miserable.  We never did anything together; our relationship was just as stale as it had been in High School.  When we did do things together it was forced.  Honestly, it was when he was deployed that I was the happiest.  A harsh truth, but truth none the less.

Now we’ve been separated for going on four months.  And my heart isn’t broken at all.  It aches for him, but I don’t miss him.  I don’t check up on his Facebook.  In fact, most of the time I don’t think about or talk to him at all, except where Keira is concerned. Not much different than how it had been during his deployments.  I also hurt when people tell me how horrible I am, but luckily that’s happening less and less and I’m getting more and more “I love you”s and “I don’t judge you”s than I ever thought I’d get.  If I felt even an ounce of the pain I’d felt about losing K or while getting over S I would be inclined to stay.  But I don’t. 

And honestly, I would rather feel that pain all over again, than live feeling numb about the person I am with.  I want to find someone who can break my heart into a million pieces, but who won’t.  I want to find someone who, if they changed, would crush my soul, but who refuses to do that.  I want to find someone who is just as sweet and respectful to me as X was in High School, but who I love as much – no, MORE! – as I loved K and S.  And I think that maybe, just maybe, I might have found that.  Or, at least the start. ;-)

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