Just a Thought

Love can make you crazy. Even when it's moved on, it can mess with you something awful. I don't think it's possible to every truly and completely recover from love.
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My first boyfriend was when I was in 9th grade. I was young and innocent and had yet to realize that parents could be disagreed with. I did my school work, fought with my siblings, and had a reputation for being "good". He was a heavy metal rocker. He had long, greasy hair, played in a band, and moved to the basement after a fight with his parents. He was tall and skinny and awkwardly adolescent.

We dated intensely, the way only high schoolers can do, walking with each other between classes and writing long letters every night. I would fold them intricately and slide them through the slats in his locker each morning. We attended school dances, spending much of the time holding hands on the bleachers and trying to think of something to say, and once or twice even went to a movie. (We went to see "JFK" because it was so long.) Eventually, my girlfriend convinced me that I could do better and I broke up with him. They started dating a month later.

For the next two years, I pined for him. No matter who I was seeing at any time, I always knew that I should have been with him. Although he probably never gave me another thought, I would watch him through the curtains from another friends house, swooning at the sight of him mowing the church lawn with no shirt on. I was never able to have a conversation with him again. There was too much I wanted to take back and too many daydreams in the way.
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When I was a junior, I had a crush on a senior boy. I say "crush" because he never really knew how I felt, flirting instead with my best friend (who, I must say, never flirted back because she knew how I felt), but I was In Love with this boy. For his attention, I would do anything. Skip class? Sure. Have a party while my parents are gone? Absolutely. Stay out past curfew to drive him home? My pleasure. He was another skinny, long haired, "bad boy" and I just knew that if I could take care of him, he would be saved. (I know...Puh-Leeze.)

We never became more than friends (although we were very good friends and I will always be grateful for that), and eventually we lost touch. I went to college and he moved to the cities to continue the life of a bad boy. I haven't seen him in years, but I know that if I were to bump into him tomorrow, I would be tongue-tied. I no longer need or want his attention, but I will probably feel that gut-slamming electricity that plagued my junior year for the rest of my life.
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As a freshman in college I had two main goals. 1) Become a teacher. 2) Move out of the dorms and into an apartment. When my boyfriend at the time graduated from high school, we immediately moved into a tiny efficiency apartment over a sewing shop. I had to tell the Dean of Students, a kind but interfering man, that I was getting married so he would excuse me from the dorms. Although I had every intention of marrying this guy, it wasn't for several years down the line.

He and I were together for 4 years - a lifetime when you are 20. My future was planned and it was completely and utterly wrapped around him. He decided not to go directly to college and I waited patiently as he experimented with a variety of callings. He had to find himself on a road trip to Alaska. Okay. He had to find himself by becoming vegetarian and gathering/drying his own herbs from the roadside. Fine. He had to find himself by screwing around with another woman under the guise of playing music. No Fucking Way. I kicked him out** and threw myself into my final year of college, student teaching by day and licking my wounds by night.

It was only after I started to move on that he started to regret what he had given up. When he realized that I was not going to sit there and wait for him to grow up, he suddenly wanted to be friends again. He would call and write and stop by just to chat when all I wanted was for him to fall off the face of the earth. The very sight of him was all it took to tear my slowly healing heart back into a million pieces.

That was 5 years ago. Since then I have gotten my degree, moved to CA, married a man that I love in a way that makes all those other loves look pale, and grown into a person I am fiercely proud of. I am so happy with my life, I could just burst. And yet, thinking of him and his betrayal still sends a spike through my heart. I was in MN recently and I stopped to visit with his parents. When he walked into the room my heart flinched just a little and I had to distract myself to keep from shouting "Why? Why did you do it?".

** What can be stated in four little words actually took many months and an amazing amount of denial before it came to be.
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As I said, love can mess you up. Love wraps you in a blanket of peace and joy, but at the same time it is wrapping tendrils so deeply into you that, like Morning Glory or Kudzu, you can never quite get rid of it all.