Something lost
I look back now and can’t see what the rush was all about.
I sometimes wonder if it would have been different for both of us if we’d waited.
I mean, what was the big deal about getting it done before we were legally allowed to. Did it make it more special, more precious, more anything?
It’s kinda sad, the reason I remember it. It’s not because the earth shook or I heard choirs of angels or anything, in truth it was awkward, it was fumbled and it hurt and it didn’t take very long. I just remember it because it was my first.
It’s not that I didn’t love you, as much as a girl three weeks shy of her 16th birthday loves anything, it’s just that I wish it had been more. I wish that we had saved each other until we knew what we were doing and knew what it was all about. But how does that work. How can we save ourselves until we’re better at it without doing it first to know what we’re doing wrong. Or right. I just wish we’d done it better so I could remember all those things about it, about you, too.
I think about you sometimes.
I know it’s been nearly 25 years since we last spoke, just because that’s the way life turned out for us. But I wonder where you are and what you’re doing and if your life is everything you wanted it to be. You used to paint such great pictures about what you wanted to do.
Although it was never the same picture twice.
I bet you’re an artist of some kind. Or a professional dreamer, if there is such a thing. It’s a shame we never kept in touch, but probably for the best. School doesn’t go on forever and neither do the lives we had while we were there.
We get grown up lives instead. Lives with mortgages and bills to pay and jobs to do and responsibilities.
You and me, well we belonged to a time before that. A time when our biggest worry was if we’d done our homework. But we shared something that we only get to share once.
And for all that it wasn’t, I’m glad I shared it with you.
You were lucky Annie - two youngsters fumbling through an eternity of longing and coming short of expectation, is far eaier to live with than, well, my memories. :) k xxx
Your gentle, wistful candour, rife with regret and appreciation...though glad for aspects of what was...giving rise to ponderings on how it could have been...highlight what many do not realize today... The significance of the first time after the restraint and happy expectation of an old-fashioned chaste engagement... or at least a protracted time of deep commitment leading up to the kind of informed communication that can make such a precious event memorable by being truly beautiful in every way.... Fine write, Annie