On first love and getting your heart eaten out of your chest with a spoon
I'm looking for a friend of mine. We have a complex relationship. I'm not writing about it anywhere else, so I'm writing about it here.
He was my first love.
We met in high school. He asked me out on graduation day, by chucking a note at me that said that I was a terrific person and he wanted to get to know me better. I had never gotten a phone number like that before, I was surprised. I had a lot of male followers, but too many of them were cocky-they tried to give me their numbers with a tacky pickup line and a grin. This guy was different. The night I called him, we talked for four hours. The better we knew each other, the longer it got. We topped at six. My mother was less than thrilled, but I was elated. Hell, it tingled. He was good looking, he had been a weight lifter in school and had big brown doe eyes. He also had good manners, the best I've seen in a teenaged boy to this day, and a faint Texas accent. He was sensitive-he had been sexually abused as a child and managed to turn that into a profound empathy. He was also hard working and very smart, even though his plans weren't for college like mine were. Both of us made a pact to, for once in our lives, love without reservation.
And we did. For a long time. Unfortunately his parents moved him back to Texas, he couldn't afford to stay alone. So we went long distance. Suddenly his voice was muffled and all of these other people started chiming in and telling me how to run my love life. Most of them thought that I should be dating a college boy, someone at "my level". My mother wanted me to marry my catch and bleed him dry financially (always the gold digger, my mom). A guy that liked me started showing up at random places that I frequented. Before I knew it I was spooked. I broke up with the big love and went after the guy that was actually on the scene. It didn't work out. I got back together with the big love, but it wasn't the same after that. He felt I'd cheated, and I suppose in a way he was right-at the very least I had betrayed him somehow. That snowballed-he was a nineteen year old boy with a case of hurt pride. Pretty soon he started dating women he met on the internet. Two weeks before we had scheduled a visit for him to come back to cali and shop for an engagement ring I got suspicious. He had given me his email password as a sign that I could trust him a very long time before, but I had laughed it off and never used it. Suddenly I felt the need to, and I found the emails from the other women in his inbox. Some of them talked about me-one woman talked about how she liked holding his hand at the movies and she wished that evil bad me would let him go free so that he could say he loved her. We broke it off. We tormented each other for a year in snippy phone calls, but eventually the tone of the calls changed. In spite of ourselves, we became friends. He briefly moved back to California, and we talked about getting back together. But I was seeing someone else and I couldn't do to them what I had done to him. It wasn't love that kept me in that relationship, but guilt. He later moved back to Texas. I dumped guilt boy and got together with mr. current. Last September I got mail addressed to him c/0 me from his ministorage. I called him, but his cell was dead and his mother flipped out because I had gotten the mail and neither of us knew why (he must have needed a second contact). I emailed him and never got a response. Then his email went dead. His myspace hasn't been touched since September. Even his parents number, which was in his name is now dead. I'm afraid for him. If something happened to him, no one would know to tell me. He insulated me and his life from his family.
I started looking for him in September. When I found his myspace and saw his picture, the oddest thing happened. I felt tingly and smiled involuntarily. I came to the sudden and shocking realization that after five years of thinking myself over him, I'm really still in love with him. The other night I went combing through old letters for addresses and other information and realized that this isn't just a temporary feeling or one that can be brushed away. My God, can I really be this illogical?
He was my first love.
We met in high school. He asked me out on graduation day, by chucking a note at me that said that I was a terrific person and he wanted to get to know me better. I had never gotten a phone number like that before, I was surprised. I had a lot of male followers, but too many of them were cocky-they tried to give me their numbers with a tacky pickup line and a grin. This guy was different. The night I called him, we talked for four hours. The better we knew each other, the longer it got. We topped at six. My mother was less than thrilled, but I was elated. Hell, it tingled. He was good looking, he had been a weight lifter in school and had big brown doe eyes. He also had good manners, the best I've seen in a teenaged boy to this day, and a faint Texas accent. He was sensitive-he had been sexually abused as a child and managed to turn that into a profound empathy. He was also hard working and very smart, even though his plans weren't for college like mine were. Both of us made a pact to, for once in our lives, love without reservation.
And we did. For a long time. Unfortunately his parents moved him back to Texas, he couldn't afford to stay alone. So we went long distance. Suddenly his voice was muffled and all of these other people started chiming in and telling me how to run my love life. Most of them thought that I should be dating a college boy, someone at "my level". My mother wanted me to marry my catch and bleed him dry financially (always the gold digger, my mom). A guy that liked me started showing up at random places that I frequented. Before I knew it I was spooked. I broke up with the big love and went after the guy that was actually on the scene. It didn't work out. I got back together with the big love, but it wasn't the same after that. He felt I'd cheated, and I suppose in a way he was right-at the very least I had betrayed him somehow. That snowballed-he was a nineteen year old boy with a case of hurt pride. Pretty soon he started dating women he met on the internet. Two weeks before we had scheduled a visit for him to come back to cali and shop for an engagement ring I got suspicious. He had given me his email password as a sign that I could trust him a very long time before, but I had laughed it off and never used it. Suddenly I felt the need to, and I found the emails from the other women in his inbox. Some of them talked about me-one woman talked about how she liked holding his hand at the movies and she wished that evil bad me would let him go free so that he could say he loved her. We broke it off. We tormented each other for a year in snippy phone calls, but eventually the tone of the calls changed. In spite of ourselves, we became friends. He briefly moved back to California, and we talked about getting back together. But I was seeing someone else and I couldn't do to them what I had done to him. It wasn't love that kept me in that relationship, but guilt. He later moved back to Texas. I dumped guilt boy and got together with mr. current. Last September I got mail addressed to him c/0 me from his ministorage. I called him, but his cell was dead and his mother flipped out because I had gotten the mail and neither of us knew why (he must have needed a second contact). I emailed him and never got a response. Then his email went dead. His myspace hasn't been touched since September. Even his parents number, which was in his name is now dead. I'm afraid for him. If something happened to him, no one would know to tell me. He insulated me and his life from his family.
I started looking for him in September. When I found his myspace and saw his picture, the oddest thing happened. I felt tingly and smiled involuntarily. I came to the sudden and shocking realization that after five years of thinking myself over him, I'm really still in love with him. The other night I went combing through old letters for addresses and other information and realized that this isn't just a temporary feeling or one that can be brushed away. My God, can I really be this illogical?
posted by jen at 2:53 AM
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