Michael

         You found me deep in the garden of innocence. Sixteen years old, sure in myself as a woman, with no real concept of all it entailed. The first to kiss me, the first to hold, the first to hurt. My first glimpse of you echoes deep in my heart today, more than a decade later. Tall, blonde, grown. Twenty-three years old, you had a car, a license, a job. Is there anything else, really, a man needs to make a half grown woman love? Awash with the assurance of happily ever after, my first taste of reality was spoon fed to me at your knee. No one sees forever as clearly as a teenage girl. Looking back, I don’t even think you worked up a sweat ensuring my devotion. Some pretty words I’d never heard before, an introduction to feelings that had never before been a part of my realm, a wish to be loved as the heroines in the romance novels that flashed unedited through my overactive imagination, and I was yours. Just this, and your face was painted forever on my heart and mind. Your touch stained on my soul.

         When I’m strong enough to be honest, I can say it was the forbidden which drew me to you. Never tell my friends, they’d all eventually tell. Never tell my parents, how could they understand true love from the other side of the generation gap? Just you, and me in moments stolen from the homework and chores that dominated my life. Sneaking out of my window in the middle of the night to ride the back roads of that tiny Texas town. The night my parents thought I was at my best friend's house, but instead I lay draped across the sand at the creek, watching you cut effortless through the water and shoot me sassy grins while shaking droplets from your hair. Shooting stars filled my eyes and the magic of first love filled my heart. It was all I needed at that moment to be happy. A release from the need to be perfect which I perceived to be coming from my father, but that probably originated in my own guilty heart. Did he know? Almost definitely. But a need to hold evidence kept him silent out of fear of alienating me further. And gave us the room we needed to go too far.

         The day came, of course, when we were caught. They stood before me, the knowledge of who I’d become clasped to their chest, the dreams they had for my gasping their last on the floor between us. Angry words sizzled back and forth, accusations that could never be unsaid. I was in danger of destroying my life, that’s what they told me. What of college, my future, achieving all I was meant to achieve? In that moment, did any of it make any difference? The words of dread from my friends, the threats of dire punishment from my parents? Of course not. Torn apart in my home, safe in your arms, there was only decision my immature heart could make. You held out your hand in the age-old question, and I answered as a million girls had before me. Two hours later, we were gone.

         Houston. Not paradise, but independence, or at least the illusion. That was good enough. I held you close to me and cried in a cheap motel in a neighborhood my father would never have let me enter. My father. And my mother. Did they cry? Did the rail? Did it matter? Not at that time, it didn’t. And why should it? At seventeen, I had done what all must do at some point. I had broke out on my own. I ignored the knot in my stomach that said I hadn’t thought this all the way through. I didn’t ask myself how we were going to eat, or live. How I was going to react without the comforts my parents had provided seemingly effortlessly for years. All I knew was the time I had been living for for years had arrived. No rules, no parents, no school, no one to tell me what to do. I was all powerful and in control of me life. Oh, and when I rolled over in the middle of the night, you were there to hold me. The seduction of that feeling alone carried me through the first month. Carried me through the trauma of finding my first job and living on minimum wage. Carried me through the inevitable fights that resulted from two people who didn’t actually know one another trying to join their lives, carried me from a rat-infested room in Houston to an island paradise. Or an equally rat-infested room in Galveston. It’s all in the beholder, I guess.

          My first days in Galveston were happy ones, absolutely. Every day is sun, and beach, and not thinking even of tonight. I was still high on the feeling of being master of my own destiny, and you still looked good in cut off shorts. I hadn’t been yelled at or pressured in weeks, and even a homeless shelter can be romantic through a haze of naiveté. Eventually, adventure wears off and all your left with is day to day, I guess. Spoiled, pampered little girls learn what its like to be hungry. What its like to be an employee. What the word cold really means. Your words weren’t nearly as pretty as they used to be, your ways not nearly as winning. Somewhere between stolen moments, and stolen dinners, I ceased to be the center of your universe. The fall alone could have killed me. Breathless love now left me empty, and work left me tired. The beach was dirty, and the motel room we eventually shared was even dirtier. Had I been the woman I thought I was, I would have gone home. Would have returned to the world of school, and rules. Admitted my defeat and done everything in my power to pick up my life where it derailed. And maybe it would have been possible, I guess that’s one of the things we’ll regulate to the land of the Unknown.

         But I’ve never been strong enough to admit defeat. Never been brave enough to say I was wrong. Maybe I told myself it was too late. Maybe I still told myself there was forever wrapped in your blue eyes. Today I don’t know.

         What I do know, is that summer found us in Colorado. Convinced the fights and the endless feeling of unrest was not caused by something missing between you and I, not caused by the inherent shallowness of the life we were living, but that we hadn’t found our niche, the place where we belonged. We packed the few things we owned and moved halfway across the country. Away from our home on the beach, away from the ulcer in my stomach that told me daily we had made a mistake. Homeless again, we stayed with old friends until it wasn‘t an option anymore. The funny thing is, we never had a problem then, did we? When it had to be us against them to get through the day, we were one, united in the belief that our love alone could change the world and save us from the monsters that hid in the dark. We might be safe in that world today, if we hadn’t eventually found our way to a better life. If we hadn’t found our way out. The hard times of none were not the death of us, my love, it was the times of plenty. When there was no mystical “they” to battle, that left only one opponent, didn’t it?

         Why couldn’t I be a woman, you asked me. A grown-up who made adult decisions. The answer was simple on the face. I wasn’t a woman, a grown-up, an adult. I was a child trying to keep my playhouse alive forever. In my fantasies, our world of poor love was never disturbed by being cold, or hungry, or scared. Or even by rent, bills, and keeping house. I wasn’t ready for the day to day minutiae of life. I wasn’t ready to take care of myself, let alone you in the capacity of wife. Not that we ever married. Just another aspect of my pretend life.

         I did what all children do when the road is rough. I left. And came back. And left again. Apparently my parents' potential for forgiving and being deceived was endless. I don’t even think it was love that brought me back over and over again. More, I think it was romance. When I was with you, it looked very good to be back at home. No job, no bills, no fights. Laying in the bed that was mine in my parent’s house, I didn’t know how I would survive without you. And always there was the certainty you would take me back, that you would continue to play my games. Until the day I was eighteen years old, and you wouldn’t anymore.

         I remember the early autumn day I left you for the last time. I remember you begging me to stay. To grasp the enormity of what I was doing. In my arrogance, and my anger, I refused. You weren’t what I wanted. This wasn’t the life I was destined to live. I got on the bus and returned to my parents to be a pariah. To face every day the censure and disillusionment I had put in my father’s eyes. Twelve months, and not one kind word from him. I took it as my due. After all, I must be to blame. You, I couldn’t even get on the phone. All it took was the sound of my “Hello” and you hung up. Terse reminders that I had to live with my actions. I don’t think I ever fully appreciated that until then.

         But there were things I needed to say that long ago day. First, I wanted to tell you that I was sorry. Sorry for the hurt my immaturity and inability to think caused you. Sorry for not respecting and understanding the forces I was taking for granted. Sorry, in the end, for not being the woman I pretended to be. It doesn’t matter now, I hope. In the midnight, when I think of you, I pray you’ve found the joy that was your destiny. The safety and surety of love that I couldn’t provide you. I pray you’ve found the forever for which you were searching.

         The other I hold in my heart today. It’s the last bit of us that still causes the ache associated with your name, your memory. The one action for which I will never be forgiven, by you, be me, by the universe. I needed to relate the discovery of the best, and the most painful thing my life. You were my best friend for so long and I wanted to tell you the story of how I finally became a woman, to relate the end of the tale of my youth. It is at once, much more mundane than all the days that led to the conclusion, and the infinitely more exciting beginning of the meaning of my life. I wanted to tell you his eyes were blue as yours, his hair was gold as the sun and he had my smile. I wanted to tell you his name was Carson.

         Today I am happy. I know only you will appreciate the pure colossal ness of that statement. My husband is a good man who strives to nourish the woman he sees in me, and preserve the child you knew. He is the love I dreamed of and the faceless knight that danced in my mind as I slept in your arms. He loves me, and I truly and purely love him. But always there
are simple truths that lay between us in our bed: My innocence, he never knew; I am no longer capable of making him the center of my universe; and our son calling him “Daddy” doesn’t make it true.