It can still hurt

Funny how certain words or certain scenes from a movie can remind you of memories. I'm in the middle of watching P.S. I Love You and I'm still not sure why I do this to myself. I hate movies that make me cry, but sometimes when I'm feeling sappy and in the mood to cry, I pop one in. It's not a great movie, it's mediocre, but something about it makes me cry. The movies context is sad, of course, a woman loses her young husband to a brain tumor and has trouble moving on without him, but he coaxes her out of her shell post-mortem by sending her letters. The man's character in the movie reminds me of my first love. I feel like first loves are almost always bittersweet. Looking back, that's the exact word I would use for how I feel about my first love.

We met when I was fourteen, almost fifteen and about to start my freshman year of high school. He was a baseball and football player and we had our athleticism in common. He stuck out to me because he was so confident and so sure of every move he made. I was only confident when I was on the court or on the field. He had an accent; a smooth, slow, Kentucky drawl that made me laugh whenever he would try to say "Kankakee." He had moved up to Illinois after his parents divorced and his mom thought it best to put some distance between everyone. He was a year older than me, and that was half of his appeal. We started dating and I was head over heels immediately. I loved his big blue eyes and the fact that he was the only boy that could make me smile just by saying my name.

After a few months of dating, his mom decided that their move wasn't the best decision and that they should pick up where they left off back home in Kentucky. I told him that maybe we should just break up, I didn't want a long distance relationship and truth be told, I wanted to meet the boys at my high school and go out and not worry about having a boyfriend. He convinced me that we could make it work, and it was the first time that he told me he loved me. I'd never had a boy tell me he loved me and I said it back immediately. Later on, after he had left, I thought about it. I was in love. I thought about what it meant to be in love and why I loved him. I remember thinking that I loved him because when I had a terrible day, he always made it better. When he'd call me and I saw his name pop up on my cell phone, I'd smile and feel this burst of warmness inside of me.

I loved him purely and perhaps naively, but when you're fifteen, how else can you love someone? We'd talk for hours on the weekend and eventually I got in trouble because I ran up my cell phone bill to almost $1,700. When I told him, he said he'd promise to help me pay it off. It was horrible to have to go to school all day, wondering what he was doing and who he was doing it with. I hated when we had practice after school because that meant we couldn't talk until later that night, or worst case scenerio, the next day.

He wrote me poems all the time. They were cheezy and sometimes they didn't make a whole lot of sense, but it made me feel special because he took the time to write them. Eventually, we started to miss the physicality of our relationship and it drove us both crazy. When we'd be on the phone, I'd hear him start breathing heavily sometimes and I'd ask what he was doing and he'd give this little laugh that made the image of his crooked smile flash into my head. He'd tell me that something about my voice made him hard and he had to take care of it because I couldn't be there with him. Whenever he'd say that, it'd excite me in sexual way, but even more in an emotional way I think. I felt like he loved me so much that even the sound of my voice could get him off.

We got in a lot of fights. However sweetly we'd make up, there was always another fight around the corner. He was a jealous guy and he'd sometimes interrogate me about where I was and who I was with. I remember being at a party and leaving at like 10pm because he called me crying, upset because he had talked to one of our mutual friends that lived up here and told him that I was being flirty with some guy. I can't even remember talking to anyone else because he had kept me on the phone literally the whole night. I always apologized though and I always assurred him that he was the only one I wanted or needed.

We'd talk about marriage and it seemed totally logical to me. We talked about him going to med school and how we'd make it work because, if we could make our long-distance relationship work, we could definitely deal with the stress of him going to med school.

Everything was so great, I didn't even mind our fights because that just meant that we could make up. It was difficult not seeing him, but I feel like talking to each other like we did made us more connected. The day of my Fall dance when he was supposed to take the train up to spend the weekend with me, he tore his ACL at his football game. His sister had called and told me that he couldn't make it and that he was in the hospital, but that he would call me tomorrow morning. I was devestated because I wanted to show him off to my friends and to hold him and look into his eyes again and feel his big soft lips on me. We had planned on having sex that weekend, too. It was funny talking about it all the time and putting so much pressure on those few days. It seems so fucking silly now, how we planned every detail and how he was so worried that he'd hurt me and all that other nonsense. I think that's what devestated the both of us the most when he couldn't come up that weekend, knowing that we didn't know when the next time he could come visit would be.

In that December, I found out that I was pretty sick with a heart condition. When I told him about it, he had the strangest reaction. His mom was a nurse, so I knew he could ask her about it if he wanted to, but when I told him what was going on, he said that he couldn't deal with it. I didn't understand what the fuck he was talking about. He wasn't dealing with it, I was. When I had my surgery to get a pacemaker and defibrillator put in and I told him I was scared about it, he told me that it wasn't that big of a deal, it happens everyday and that I would be fine and just needed to "man up." That was the first time that he broke a little piece of my heart. I couldn't understand why he didn't get how serious this was to me.

He went on vacation that Spring Break and we didn't talk for a few days because of it. I logged into his e-mail because I thought it would oh so cute to send him a message to himself from me. I logged in and saw emails from a few chicks, girls that I had heard of but didn't really know who they were. I saw a poem, that he said he had written for me, addressed to another girl. Needless to say, I was fucking pissed. I had to wait a few more days to talk to him about it because he was on vacation and I refused to call him during it. When he got back and we talked, I had asked him if he had fun, etc, etc, making small talk. I asked him who these chicks were, and I can't even remember their names now, and all I heard was silence on the phone. He finally told me that they were no one, just friends, and he was sending them the poems to see how they liked them before he sent them to me. I told him that I fuckign hated him and that we were finished.

I guess I wasn't strong enough to stay away from him though. We still dated on and off for a few months after that, but when his one friend that lived in Kentucky IMed me and told me that he had bought another girl a dozen roses, I flipped. Part of me thought that this friend just wanted to start shit because he was lonely and was jealous of our relationship, but I knew I was making excuses. BF called me when he found out that his friend had said something and I just broke down. "How could you do this to me? Again?" He cried, too. He said he didn't know what was wrong with him and that he was an idiot and I felt placated for the most part, but I knew it could never work because I didn't trust him. When we broke up for good, I sent him an email about how much I loved him and that he broke my heart and I'd never be able to love someone as purely or as innocently as I had loved him.

He wrote me a few more poems, telling me that he'd always love me and I would always have a special place in his heart. About a month after we broke up, I started dating a new boy, who didn't last long, and who was a total rebound. When ex-BF found out, he called me and told me that I was a slut and how it was funny that I was so upset about our breakup, but could move on so easily. I really hated him then, he was trivializing everything that we had because I had decided to move on. I was a total cunt to him in retaliation. I probably said the worst thing that I could have said to him by telling him he would end up just like his father, a life-long adulterer who would never have a meaningful relationship because he was such a fucking prick. The slight intake of breath after I said that to him, said it all. I knew that I'd gone too far when I said it, but part of me was happy about it because I'd finally cracked him and hurt him.

We talk every now and again. He asks me about my health and family and I ask him about his education and his sister's marriage. We're Facebook friends, but other than that, I don't know much about him anymore. He's a frat boy, and apparently a very popular one at that. Looking back, I have no regrets about our relationship, only lessons that I've learned from it. But, damn, it can still pull at my heart strings when I watch movies like P.S. I Love You.



A little sidenote about Rocker....we talked for like 3 hours last night. He called when I was getting ready to go out, and instead of going out, I ended up just staying in and talking to him. I should have just invited him over, but I guess I didn't know we were going to talk that long. I convinced him to play some of his music for me and I about melted when he started to play "Nothing Else Matters" by Metallica. I told him that was going to be played at my wedding and he laughed a little. He continued playing different songs on his acoustic guitar as we talked. When we had a period of silence, I asked him to play my favorite song, not saying the title. He started playing "Nothing Else Matters" again and I couldn't stop smiling. When he finished, he asked if I was happy now and I said no. He asked what he could do to make me happy and I told him to play it again. It was like a lullaby. I listened to him play as my eyes grew heavy and I cuddled further into my bed. I think he sensed that I was getting tired and he asked if I was still there in a soft voice. Ahhhh it made me totally melt. What's more adorable than a boy playing guitar for you? When we hung up, I couldn't wait to fall asleep so that I could hear from him again tomorrow. I've yet to hear from him so far, but he knows I'm working until 4, so we'll see what happens.

All I know is that this could be some trouble...some gooooood trouble.