Where We Began

                                    

                                          


                          
"The tragedy of life is not death but what we let die inside of us while we live," -Norman Cousins
                          
        In school, we learn that stories need a few key components. They need a beginning, a middle, and an end. Save for the things you learn later on like tropes, motifs, and figurative language of course because we totally need the skills of critical analysis with literature when life's said and done, 100% of the time. You know, ask anyone outside of high school and college how the critical interpretation of To Kill a Mockingbird serves them in their nine to five job in a cubicle that makes them wonder what the fuck life even is... But I digress. Let's start this tale of where we began. The thing about your first love that anyone will tell you they remember, is that... innocence. You're pure, you may have had a few silly crushes that don't mean anything and some "boyfriends" who held your hand in the back of the bus before fleeing when the dreadful cooties epidemic reached your peers, but you're pure. You go into this wild ride with high expectations from the books you have on your shelves and you're ready for them to start collecting dust. Surely this is the adventure of a lifetime the films and books made it out to be. Surely this is different than the terrible examples life has thrown at you from birth. He won't leave you. He'll love you. He'll be the Morpheus to your Alyssa Gardner (a more obscure reference I'm aware), he'll ignite the passion within you and set you free. But as most of us know... Life doesn't work the way it does in the books.
                          
 It was Freshman year when you first saw me. And I mean saw me. Not glanced at me from across the room awkwardly trying to hold onto the hopes that she loved you. She didn't. And neither did you love her. You saw me. A buck-toothed, insecure, four-eyed, dorky nerdy girl who hadn't exactly grown into her looks yet. I was lonely. Truly, desperately lonely. And so were you. You'd just been dumped by the girl you sold your soul to and completely one-sidedly planned your life with... While she, on the other hand, had other... secrets. Secrets that wouldn't make for a healthy or sustainable relationship for either of you as I'm sure you can agree. Then there was me. The heartbreak girl, crushing and chasing after guys who would never be hers. Who would never cherish her. We were lonely. And loneliness always seems to find the best company, doesn't it? We were in English class. You texted me on our messaging app, the one we'd use to become inseparable. We'd never talked before, my prior impression of you not being so cheery as you dated the girl my friend wanted. But we talked. And we talked. We soon became best friends, yourself using me as a therapeutic tool to vent and get it all out to. I listened, intently. Hanging onto your every word and comforting you to the best of my ability. Then came the time where our hugs became longer, those gazes across the classroom started lasting moments too long, and I started getting butterflies whenever your name popped up on my screen. I developed a crush on the person who made me feel like the most special person to ever exist, like I was everything.  It wasn't long before I found myself falling in love. Loving you and the warmth you gave. Loving the idea of being loved with the same fervor and passion you talked about her with. Loving your smile, your laugh, your intelligence, every facet about you I fell in love with. And you loved me. And of course, as most love stories do, one thing led to another and a few months later and we were together. We were happy. But that's just how we began.
                          
Even now two years after the fact I still wonder. Why were we driven so closely together, why did we fall so far, why did we speed so fast just to crash... Why did we fall? Then I remember. As wrong for each other as we were. In that time we were perfect for each other, we were alone and needed someone to help us pick up the pieces. And in the end, we just broke the pieces, even more.  We were a temporary distraction from our very corrupted realities. We began blissful, sweet and innocent. But as I'm sure we both know, that didn't last too long.