Tuesday, February 21, 2012 :::
'cause every time I hear that song...
it reminded me of a guy I went on a few dates with back in high school.
BoB and I were in the middle of one of our infamous lovers' spats.
this fellow had a pager, and BoB & I already had cell phones.
I'd paged him earlier that evening, but he was a the local military academy and would have to sneak off and borrow someone's phone to call me. I got tired of waiting, and decided to go to bed.
I changed my voicemail greeting to say something to that effect.
the next morning I had a voicemail waiting for me.
BoB had called during the night, and his message...
... after all these years I still remember the first line, and the way he sounded when he said it, and the way it made my heart break.
it was only a few seconds long,
but his voice...
I dunno. y'all.
"well I guess that message wasn't for me....'
he mumbled a few more lines (or maybe I just remember it that way) and that was it.
naturally, we worked things out.
this next event,
well I don't remember if it was before or after the message.
but we'd been split up for several months, and I was walking down the corridor of our local mall.
I saw him coming down the same corridor, but on the other side of all the kiosks that litter the center of mall corridors.
like a coward I avoided eye contact and pretended I didn't see him.
he saw me, paused, and then continued walking.
we were almost directly across from each other, with me still avoiding eye contact...
and he cut across the kiosk alley
"I don't know how you feel about this, but I will regret it if I don't do this."
and he hugged me.
naturally, we worked things out.
it is interesting to me, that while I was busy avoiding eye contact, at the ripe old age of 17 he swallowed his pride and walked up to me and put his arms around me.
we both always knew we'd work things out.
I gave so much of myself to him.
he took so much of myself from me.
I don't know which is more true.
I said once, that the love I felt for my david was "fierce and consuming, empowering and complete"
hollow words from a little girl who didn't know any better.
they say you never forget your first love, and I know I will never forget BoB.
everyone gives the twilight books so much shit for lots of reasons, but one in particular - because, at some point, when bella & edward split up, the book has several blank pages with only months to label them.
I remember being part of something so symbiotic that even when we weren't "together" we were never really apart.
I remember nights when I didn't know if the sun would really come up the next day.
and even through the uncertainty, the only thing that I knew was that we would eventually work things out.
love conquers all, or so we both believed back then.
things with BoB were a bonfire, bright and severe... and even long after the fire has dwindled the embers are still hot enough to reignite, given the chance.
things with my david were small and convenient... a candle in a dark room... even after it is extinguished the smell lingers, an unwelcome reminder of the small flame.
things with budd were like a lightbulb. predictable and dependable. at the cost of a natural flame, the artificial light is stable and familiar.
things with milkdud.... are currently unquantifiable. it is too soon to tell how bright this particular light will be. or when it will burn out.
I find myself hoping it lasts forever.
::: posted by tinafish at 9:24 PM :::