Wednesday, June 13, 2007
Cause I've seen the dark side too
I remember the first time that I heard his voice in AP Biology, my junior year, his senior. I was dozing off, when it resounded from the back of the room. So deep! I came to attention to see who had uttered such a masculine sound! I barely knew of him. I knew that him and his twin had just moved in and that their family had a lot of money. Until I had heard "The Voice", he had barely registered on my radar.
My lab partner and I managed to finagle ourselves seats at the same table as Mike, New Guy, and his lab partner and I proceeded to turn on the charm. Love blossomed over the bunson burner (for me anyway).
The first Girl-Ask-Guy dance of the year was rapidly approaching. I decided to ask Mike, unaware that a friend of mine knew I was asking him and got to the punch before I did. So when I asked him, he told me he had already been asked, but asked if he could take me out that weekend to make up for it.
Everything in me rebelled against the idea of The Pity Date, but I was so smitten with him, I had to go, not having any idea where this was going to take us.
Mike and I had a typical high school relationship, complete with a break-up where he dated my best friend in the interim before he discovered that she is a raging psycho and we got back together. We cuddled on couches. I lived in fear of his mother. We drove around aimlessly just to be together. We had a song. We slow danced in the headlights of the car. He was charming and wonderful and everything I had ever wanted a boy to be.
My god, how I loved him.
One day, we went over to his house after school to work on some biology homework together. When we needed a break, we took a walk up the hill near his house as the sun was setting. We stopped at the top to catch our breath and to bask in the view. I was telling him about a weird declaration of love that I had gotten from a classmate that day and he made some ridiculous sappy remark about how no one ever told him that they loved him.
I knew it was my cue. I'd been wanting to say it forever.
I held a flower in my hand that I had picked along the way and I stretched it out to him.
"I love you, Mike."
"I love you, Chloe."
And there it was. The first (and maybe only) time in my life that I have ever told a man that I loved him. 12 years later and it is still in my Top 10 list of Life's Greatest Moments.
We spent our whole summer together. Doing all the dumb things that kids in high school do. When I went to Girls' State that summer, he gave me a card before I left, that I later discovered he had drawn a heart on the back and wrote 'Here's my heart in case you get lonely.'
I wanted to be with him forever. We promised each other we would love each other forever. We loved each other with the kind of abandon reserved only for those people who have never been badly hurt. We didn't know how to be careful with our hearts. Our vulnerability was palpable.
That fall, he started college. I was still in high school. We couldn't close the gap between the disparity of our lives. Night after night, I sobbed, great big heaving sobs for the man I knew I was losing. For months and months, my heart took the beating of its life as I hung on as tight as I could, while he pulled further and further away.
I was the one to pull the plug.
"I can't do this anymore," I said. "You're killing me. I need you to not be in my life anymore."
I just heard from my sister. She just met his wife. The mother of his 4 children.
Can you say- dodged a bullet?
Today's Title from: I'll Stand By You by the Pretenders
My lab partner and I managed to finagle ourselves seats at the same table as Mike, New Guy, and his lab partner and I proceeded to turn on the charm. Love blossomed over the bunson burner (for me anyway).
The first Girl-Ask-Guy dance of the year was rapidly approaching. I decided to ask Mike, unaware that a friend of mine knew I was asking him and got to the punch before I did. So when I asked him, he told me he had already been asked, but asked if he could take me out that weekend to make up for it.
Everything in me rebelled against the idea of The Pity Date, but I was so smitten with him, I had to go, not having any idea where this was going to take us.
Mike and I had a typical high school relationship, complete with a break-up where he dated my best friend in the interim before he discovered that she is a raging psycho and we got back together. We cuddled on couches. I lived in fear of his mother. We drove around aimlessly just to be together. We had a song. We slow danced in the headlights of the car. He was charming and wonderful and everything I had ever wanted a boy to be.
My god, how I loved him.
One day, we went over to his house after school to work on some biology homework together. When we needed a break, we took a walk up the hill near his house as the sun was setting. We stopped at the top to catch our breath and to bask in the view. I was telling him about a weird declaration of love that I had gotten from a classmate that day and he made some ridiculous sappy remark about how no one ever told him that they loved him.
I knew it was my cue. I'd been wanting to say it forever.
I held a flower in my hand that I had picked along the way and I stretched it out to him.
"I love you, Mike."
"I love you, Chloe."
And there it was. The first (and maybe only) time in my life that I have ever told a man that I loved him. 12 years later and it is still in my Top 10 list of Life's Greatest Moments.
We spent our whole summer together. Doing all the dumb things that kids in high school do. When I went to Girls' State that summer, he gave me a card before I left, that I later discovered he had drawn a heart on the back and wrote 'Here's my heart in case you get lonely.'
I wanted to be with him forever. We promised each other we would love each other forever. We loved each other with the kind of abandon reserved only for those people who have never been badly hurt. We didn't know how to be careful with our hearts. Our vulnerability was palpable.
That fall, he started college. I was still in high school. We couldn't close the gap between the disparity of our lives. Night after night, I sobbed, great big heaving sobs for the man I knew I was losing. For months and months, my heart took the beating of its life as I hung on as tight as I could, while he pulled further and further away.
I was the one to pull the plug.
"I can't do this anymore," I said. "You're killing me. I need you to not be in my life anymore."
I just heard from my sister. She just met his wife. The mother of his 4 children.
Can you say- dodged a bullet?
Today's Title from: I'll Stand By You by the Pretenders
