When We Were Young 

                I had gone cross-eyed listening to my Earth/Space Science teacher drone on and on about the shadows of the moon, the deep craters that dot the landscape, and the chilling temperatures compared to ours in the perpetual summer of Florida. The clock seemed to stretch lithely against the impatient shuffling of shoes and shifting of teenage bodies in seats. I felt the anxious butterflies in my stomach begin to unfold their wings. In five minutes, the bell will ring to signal the end of one class and the hurried march to get to the next. But I will stand by my locker and wait for him. His tall, slender body and chaotic, frizzy hair. I adored him, but he didn’t know. Finally, he emerged from his Chemistry class and smiled at me. We were friends, but I wanted so much more. We hugged, exchanged words, sometimes notes, sometimes we would find them tucked away in each of our lockers; a secret exchange that I looked forward to. It was 1999, our senior year. The world was so much simpler then, and the outside world beyond him to me was unfathomable. However, he never knew how much I wanted to tell him that I wanted more than just the friendly glances and notes scrawled hurriedly onto notebook paper so our teachers wouldn’t take notice. But I never did. And it haunted me. 

                Graduation happened. A scatter of blue and gold mortar boards and tassels. Futures of college, military, and plans to stay on our little secluded island and surf away our lives were all represented. I still yearned for him but felt it best to let him live his life. After all, I headed off to college to become a doctor. A cardiologist, in fact. I was ready to spread my glass wings and fly. At least that was the plan. Like any well-made plans, however, they tend to fall apart. Mine unraveled in the days after graduation when I traveled to my then-best friend’s hometown for a well-deserved respite from twelve long years of education. It was there that I met my derailment. All through the steamy, sun-soaked summer months, I fell deeper into a chasm that was filled with late-night parties, sleeping away the days, unbridled sex, and eventually the unraveling of my college plans. While I wiled away my time, I never forgot about the tall, slender boy with chaotic, frizzy hair and wondered where he was, how he was doing, and if his thoughts ever drifted to me, too. I sat and stared at the reflection of myself through the glass-paneled windows of the State's Attorney's office. The bruise on my neck was forming a grotesque purple hue, ringed in black. I looked down at my hands, wringing the remnants of a Kleenex in my hands as fresh tears fell to my lap. Where was the boy with the chaotic, frizzy hair now? Would he have protected me from what culminated in two long years of abuse? Was he thinking of me? Did he think I was safe? No, probably not. I doubt he even cared. 

                "Put as much pavement between yourself and him", the state's attorney pointed his chiseled jaw in my direction. At court, there would be an order of protection in place. I was better off leaving him behind. Him, not the boy with the chaotic, frizzy hair, but him, the man who fueled himself on drugs and anger. Him, who gave me my fresh bruise. I managed to wrench my body and mind away from the insanity that was my undoing and return home. A fresh start. I started college, finally, not for a medical degree, but still within the field. I thrived, but at night, my thoughts drifted on a serene beach towards him. Was he happy? Was he finding his path in life? Did he ever wonder about mine? Probably not. I’m sure that he had long forgotten the smell of my perfume, the way I would gently tug at the bottom of his band shirts as I was flirting with him. I was a wisp of a memory, buried far enough in the Earth that it might as well have been a funeral. But I kept him alive in the back of my mind even when my life suddenly became a fast-paced whirlwind of activity.

                Summer of 2002. I’m standing in the same room I did as a small four-year-old. Pictures of animals explaining colors, and construction paper cutouts strung from the ceiling. My old preschool, which annexed the church, was where I now stood in my wedding dress. I sighed to myself that after everything, I had the gall to wear a bright white gown, but it was what it was; and what it was was my wedding day. “I do,” I said breathily. He, with his deep, resonating voice, said it too. It wasn’t the tall, slender boy with the chaotic, frizzy hair that I pledged my life and fealty to, and I wondered if somewhere he, too, had taken vows to someone else. Even if he did, I hoped he was happy in his new life. I had married a man who was kind and gentle, the polar opposite of his predecessor. A man who was serving his country honorably, as well as my heart. Life with him was gentle, a little unnerving at times, but I found a peace I didn't know existed. 

                Twenty-one years later. I am a mother; my children are nearly grown. A mortgage, an SUV, and back in college, not at all for what I had always planned for my own life, but for teaching, and teaching high school English at that. I had managed to connect with the tall, slender boy, who had shaved off all his chaotic, frizzy hair, and now his bald head remained. He asked me over to his house. I knew I shouldn’t have, but my fingertips glided over the wood of his door too quickly, and within a heartbeat of my knocking, he answered the door. Towering over my five-foot-five-inch frame, he smiled that smile that I longed to see every day after class. All too quickly, the night was over. My head was a mess. A dizzying swirl of clothes and awkward goodbye. I never saw him again. Admittedly, it was my own undoing. I was the epitome of a human train wreck. A grieving daughter who had not yet truly grieved the profound loss of her father. A wife who was lost in a sea of feeling ignored and unwanted. A mother who wanted to be everything to her children, but somehow always missed the mark. Instead of being who I am, I lost myself in my own maze, and I crumpled alongside the hopes I had built, in a heap of an unrecognizable human. He banished me from his sight, mind, and heart. It eviscerated me. It tore the flesh from my bones and laid me bare and exposed on the altar that I had sacrificed myself to him to. My breath felt like shattered glass in my lungs. My eyes desolate. My heart no longer beats in a rhythm I understood. Can he feel my heart? 

                I am now eighty, my bones weathered from old age and my stride bent and arthritic. I didn't expect my life to drag on this long, this longevity that seems more curse than blessing. My children, grown and with families of their own. Memories are all I have left. They hang in the belfry of my fading mind like Turkish lanterns beaming in the sunlight. Now and again, I'll visit them. I'll sit with my crooked back, and look up at them with my faded emerald eyes and smile at their light dancing around the spaces. My thoughts will drift to him. I took a walk to the market to buy an apple or two. At eighty years old, I'll continue to buy them if it keeps me alive long enough to see him again. There he was. Sitting at the small cafe in town that was once a gas station. He'll look up from his cup of coffee, and he’ll smile at me. Perhaps, he'll offer me his arm, invite me to join him, reminisce about the time that I had him for a fleeting moment, and I alone ruined it all. Maybe not. Perhaps, I will be sent to my grave wondering about him, wondering if the afterlife may be kind enough to place us back into the memories of us standing by the lockers of our old high school. Perhaps, in death, is where I will not only find myself but also his heart. Perhaps time is not a friend, but a constant reminder of what taking a chance after so much has changed can bring.