~*~*~*~*~ April The 19th ~*~*~*~*~

On April the nineteenth, 1997, a very special woman and I decided to be ‘boyfriend and girlfriend'. That night also marked somewhere in the neighborhood of two months of good friendship for her and I, and it was on this night, quite on purpose, that she and I shared our first "real" kiss. Therefore, we considered this date to be our ‘anniversary' from then on.

We were young. We had both just turned eighteen within the last couple of months. The beginning of the relationship was a beautiful thing to be part of. I remember kissing her one night in her house, and she said that she could feel a feeling all the way to her toes. I felt the same way. Never in my life had I been part of something so awesome.

Alanis Morisette sings a song on her Jagged Little Pill album that completely summed up our relationship. We were best friends in every meaning of the word; we would do everything together and talk about everything together. And, although we were best friends, we were just as much significant others to each other; we shared a very innocent, very healthy romance. The song "Head Over Feet" applied in every sense to us, and to this day it reminds me of her vividly.

We were a little wiser than the average couple, and we tried hard not to rush things, to control our magnetic attraction for each other, and to focus on the real properties of what we thought a romance should be. We shared a very special kind of mutual healthiness and honesty. We waited until we felt we really meant it before each of us said, "I love you." I think we really did love each other. I still remember the day, a June day as clear as it were yesterday. My girlfriend (the only blonde I've ever been attracted to) and myself had gone for a drive a little outside of town together, and were having fun all day window shopping and walking around together. We had grown very comfortable with each other, and I put some real thought into those words when I said them that day. Instead of reflecting the sentiment directly back at me, she kissed me, and we continued on as we had for another hour or more. All the while, she was thinking about it just as I had been, and then she stopped suddenly and said, "You know, I really do love you too." I will never forget her face as she said she loved me that day.

Eight wonderful and intimate months went by, and before we had really realized it we had become a very serious couple. Hints of children, marriage, and life's eventual plans wove their way into our regular conversation almost without our noticing. We were very certainly headed for a life together.

It only occurred to me during the year after we broke up that I should have embraced this direction I was headed. I didn't know it at the time, but I was very much in love with her. In fact, had I had the sense then to realize I was actually in love, I would not be typing this story today.

I had since graduated from highschool, just turning nineteen, and she still had the remainder of her Senior year to finish. A tiny bit further in life as I was, I was still as young as she, but I thought I knew everything. The implications that this girl might well become my wife someday, all of the sudden scared me to death. I saw my bachelor years flashing before my eyes. It seemed all that was free and careless in me would surely be snuffed out, were such an eventuality to actually happen. I had slowly started to drift away from her, and more toward the college life I alone, of the two of us, could be part of. I had more and more interest in hanging out with friends as time went on, and, try as I did, I could not hide my true nature from my highschool sweetheart.

I was in a very precarious position. Here I was, extremely attached to, and very much in love with my girlfriend, but, being a prisoner of stupidity as I was, I did not realize it, and I was pushing myself away from her out of fear. She, too, had grown just as much attached to me as I was to her, and, of course, couldn't understand and didn't want to accept what I was going through. I myself didn't want to accept what I was feeling, because that would surely mean ending the only thing that meant anything to me in the world. But I was scared and unhappy with the direction things were going, and increasingly thirsty for not sealing my future with anyone just yet.

It must have been early March of 1998, but a month or two shy of our first year's anniversary, that I finally broke under pressure. Songs like Third Eye Blind's "How's It Gonna Be", and U2's "With Or Without You" ran through my head over and over. I then found the will to attempt the impossible: to change our relationship to ‘best friends' rather than ‘best friends with benefits'. I was so afraid of losing something (although I'm not sure what) by being ‘tied' to one person, bound as we were for a future together. It was, believe it or not, a very difficult thing for me to do. But I was sure I knew everything, and that this was the best course of action, so I did it. I broke us up.

As one might expect, it was not a very smooth event; it was quite the opposite, to say the least. Her heart was broken, and rightly so, I see now. She searched and searched for the 'why', but could not accept my ever-constant trials to explain to her what I was thinking. I think she finally concluded that it must have been another woman, in her mind, although she finally relinquished voicing the idea with my steady denying of it. Try as I might to first understand my own thoughts and then to relate them to her, I utterly failed.

For the next two months I remained as involved with her as I ever was, if not more so, trying to prove that I still loved her and that we could be still be best friends without benefits. It seemed among the easiest of tasks to accomplish this in ideal, but I had no idea what I was asking her to do. She, too, tried hard to understand me and make amends, but somehow it didn't really work without a fair amount of tension between us. We had shared too much and had too many great memories associated with everything around us, for us not to be constantly reminded that something was missing. I simply wasn't the same person, now more driven by fear than I knew. I tried my best to be all that was honest and loving, but I wonder, now, if I did more damage than good to her heart with the entire effort.

And then the roughest of times came upon us. Mid-April itself brought nothing but the reminder of our anniversary no more, to me at least. It was an especially difficult and trying time to carry on trying to forget the past and be only best friends. It became increasingly difficult for the both of us not to be stretching our definition of ‘friends' to include more and more gestures of affection. After all, I still loved her then as much as I ever had, and as much as I do now, nor had her deepest feeling for me really changed. It was during this that I experienced our second first kisses, some of the most heartfelt and real I've ever experienced; indeed, it felt like first kisses all over again, and I can remember how I could feel every one of them down to my toes. Here, it must be said, that if ever I was called a 'good kisser', I acquired the special heartfelt skill from her.

And then, her parents went out of town for a three day weekend, their first lengthy absence since our breakup. The event had always instantaneously carried with it a sort of freedom, and we had always taken extreme advantage of it, as I'm sure most everyone our age did. I also happened to be house-sitting for some friends of mine the same weekend, and it was a most unusual and dangerous weekend that we thus shared, for we had complete and total freedom to ourselves for three straight days. At the time, I had no idea how both sweet and sour that weekend would turn out to be.

That weekend (without going into too much detail), we not only re-experienced all our sexual life had ever become, but also surpassed intimate lines we'd never crossed before. Looking back on it, I don't think either of us went there for the right reasons, and I think we both knew it, deep down, at the time. As near as I can tell, I believe now that she was trying to win me back in a way, and I, in turn, was merely pretending that I wasn't responsible for letting her have what she wanted, to an extent. I would venture to say that the love that we made was the most purely physical love we had ever shared.

Driving to work on the first morning after the weekend had ended, I remember being instilled with a very real sense of doom. I could scarcely believe that I had let what happened happen, and yet, of course, I could not take it back for anything. I once again felt all free life slipping quickly from my grip, and I sped faster and faster to work that morning, futilely and fearfully trying to get away from the inescapable. Instinctually, I removed myself from reality into an almost opposite world of consciousness, trying to run away; I was nowhere to be found by her for the next three weeks. During that interim, in trying to get as far away from myself as possible, I had begun dating another girl, almost by accident, with another (although not nearly as intimate) episode in the same house I had house-sat in not three weeks before. I would soon see that this running from my problems was no good solution at all, and, if anything, only left me with more guilt and more problems on my hands than to begin with.

Out of the blue, this three week interim gone, I called her, pretending that the lost time had been but a few days. Still scared, though still loving, I set myself up for the landmark tragedy and separation that was to ensue. She had, once and for all, become fed up with my lingering, and rightly so. With a harsh and hostile tongue, she wrecked and desecrated anything real that remained between us. Although I kept control on the surface, over the phone, within me ran a hurt and a rage I had never known; my vision blurred and my body trembled with the thought that it, us, and everything between us, was being ended before my own ears. From the last recess of my reason, I asked her quietly not to do this to us, but to no avail.

I pride myself on my ability to control my emotions and feelings, even in the most extreme situations. But, after I hung up the phone that evening and walked out of the room unconsciously, I lost complete control of myself for only the second short time ever in my life. It could not be real, that with all that I had put into our relationship in the past, she could possibly squash all the life from it, and from me, in one fell swoop. I never felt so enraged, so hurt, so guilty, so alone, and so misunderstood in all my life as I had at that moment, taking out my aggressions uncontrollably so, against the contents of the garage. I had lost everything, including my temper, and the worst peril of all my fears materialized in the plight of our relationship.

A yelling match, staged quite by accident in my driveway, still was to follow, one of the only arguments she and I ever had. I begged and pleaded for understanding, as I tried still to explain myself and my true and deep care for her. This, too, only separated us even more. I had broken her heart and her trust, and she was too smart to let me anywhere near those two jewels again. It was over. Period. No more nothing. There was not even the time taken by either of us to return each other's simple belongings. Not even for all the love and care, or all the good intention between us could it survive. It was sad, to say the least.

I still believe that love is an infinite thing. I believe that it can exist in many strong and true ways other than that of romance. In such a way can I say that I still love her now as much as I ever did; for although what I feel has altered from a state of romance, I still care for her very much, and whole-heartedly appreciate the beautiful person she is and always has been, regardless of what I hope we ever become or do not become.

The following is a letter that I wrote on December 20th, 1998, but never gave to her, reproduced in verbatim here, for the sake of the story:

...The Second Floor...

...An Unsent Letter...

TenSenses@JustFuckingAround.Com

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