Children on a Mountain

This morning, I found out that football!boy is engaged. Oh football!boy. He was the first boy I let myself feel anything that was serious.  I was eighteen and away from home for the first time and it seemed like he was everything that I had never experienced before. He was irresponsible, outgoing, popular, and had that confidence that I found (and still do find) incredibly attractive.  I love his hugs. He's just bigger than I am, and strong, and when he would hug me, he would just sort of gather me up in his arms. I love that feeling, and the scratch of his scruff when he would have it.

I knew pretty much from the first that I wanted to get to know him. We were in the same program at school, had lots of classes together, had quite a few mutual friends. I was so shy and quiet to the nth degree then, but I really wanted to just talk to him. He was quite fascinating to the girl who had always walking the straight and narrow.

We were on a school trip together the March we were nineteen. We would spend all day working, and at night after all was said and done, people would go out on walks. One night, I finally got up the balls to ask him if he wanted to go for a walk, and that question changed a lot in my life. So we start walking down this winding, dark mountain road and we just talked. About all sorts of shit, somewhat our families, but mostly what had happened while we were in high school. It got fifty shades on intense, and during this talk, I really opened up about my past, and told him something that I had never told anyone before about myself. I don't know what possessed me, other than it seemed to just happen.

After that happened, I was scared shitless. One friend later said that I had emotionally slept with him, and I can get behind that statement. Every time we were together, I would get very quiet, and wouldn't look at him. It felt like he could see right through me. That actually sleeping with him would be less intimate for me than what had transpired on that mountain. Not too long after, we were in a dorm of a mutual friend watching Blues Brothers and all I did the entire movie was crochet. I thought I was actually going to die of embarrassment.

Finally he called me out on my behavior and after class told me to drop my stuff off in my room, and meet him outside in ten minutes because we were going to talk. I did, and we ended up walking around the town we went to school in, trying to work it out. He told me that he would never repeat what I told him, and that I didn't have to be scared. This was after he told me about five times to look at him.

He proved true to his word. We went home for the summer, and that next school year I really began to fall for him in earnest. It was during this time I had my very own Anna Karenina moment. You know that part where Vronksy falls off of his horse during a race and Anna freaks the hell out in public and the entire world knows that they're involved? Yeah... it was kinda like that except it was a concussion inducing hard hit during football game... Anyway, on occasion we would just go and talk about whatever. They would be these crazy intense talks that I wouldn't really have with anyone else. I would talk about whatever was on my heart, and I would be completely open. I really started to fall for him.

The spring of our sophomore year, we ended up having an amazing talk right before school was finished. We sat on this cold bench outside of our dorm and talked. I know I talked about my difficult relationship with my mother, and how I hated to go back home, and how my heart lived for the moment I could come back in August. It really felt that we were heading in the direction where maybe this really would become a dating relationship. I wanted it to be, so badly. I was close to telling him that I had feelings for him, but I stopped myself. I was going back home, and I thought it was silly to say anything at that point. I came waltzing back in the dorm in the middle of the night, my heart absolutely light at the thought that maybe, just maybe there would be a boy waiting for me when I came back in August. I don't think I could have been happier that next afternoon, laying on my bed, windows open, warm spring breeze blowing over me, listening to "Love Fool" on repeat. Part of me started to believe that if we could get our shit together, this could be it. We would date, and be married when we were done with school, and I would have a baby and we would be this little family.

That summer was incredibly hard. There was a lot of crap that went on, but I had that memory and promise that we would have that talk in the fall. We texted a lot that summer, mostly at night, and I would often fall asleep texting him. It was comforting to know that he knew what was happening, and he would be there. I know in retrospect that it probably wasn't fair of me, but I did it. It was also this summer that he met his now fiancee.

We got back to campus that fall, and it wasn't long after we were back, I called him down out of his room and basically told him, that I really liked him. I'd been dying to tell him. Well, it turns out that he didn't feel the same. I was simply devastated. I remember not sleeping a whole lot then. I just couldn't, for whatever reason. Anyway, things pretty much went to smash between us for a little while. I was hurt, confused, and all sorts of emotions, and I think he knew well enough to leave me alone. There were moments when the pain was awful. I think it boiled down to the fact that I felt rejected, and I didn't know what to do with that.

It took a while, but eventually things got back on track with us. The last year we were both at school was perhaps the best year that we had. I think if you asked either one of us, that was when we were the happiest in our relationship. By this time he had an apartment off campus, and I would schlep over there every now and then for good wine out of a beer mug. And, you know, quite possibly scramble my way back to the dorm drunk when there was snow and ice, leaving tiny handprints in the snow down the front steps... and running in to him the next day where he just gave my never been hungover self a knowing smile in the main hall and called me champ. Not that I would know anything about any of that. At all.

Those nights we talked about what we wanted for our lives and hopes and fears and it was simply wonderful. He talked about her, and how much she meant to him. I would talk about how I was falling in love with academia and how that was making things complicated for me. We were once again open, and he would often tell me that he didn't quite know what to make of how I phrased things, that I would think in ways that he couldn't comprehend.

 I met his fiancee around this time, and I know why he loves her. She is so kind, loving, and bubbly. The first time we met she bounded up to me and gave me a huge hug. If I were her, I don't know if I would have done that, but she did, and I knew that she was something out of the ordinary.

The last year I was in college, he was on his internship (we both ended up being in college for five years) and we lost some contact. He was starting his whole adventure and I had completely thrown myself into my academics. He was in town the week of my birthday, and took me out to dinner. It was slightly awkward being back together, but in the end, it was alright. At this point, our lives looked so different than they had before. I had finally picked a career path, and he had decided to alter his a bit as well.

Over the past year, we go on spurts where we text. He is in grad school now, and I have my career, so it's harder. We lead very different lives these days. He was talking awhile back about picking up some more hours at his job to start saving money for a ring. Hence, I am not really surprised that it happened.

The honest truth is, I am so happy for them. I am so glad that these two people found each other in this great big world and have decided that they want to make a life together.

The thought I have tonight though is this: we are no longer those children on a mountain. We're adults now and lead these adult lives. What I felt for him, I think one can only feel at nineteen, when the world is big and new and you're so tiny and green. When there are no scars and calluses on the heart. When there are no reservations or past relationships that lurk in the corner. Those first feelings of wanting to really be wanted by someone. Not in that "I hope he takes me to prom" wanted, but that honest to God wanting to be with someone for better or for worse.

He is a part of my past that, despite how much we hurt each other, I am so glad I have. I hope for nothing but blessings on him and his fiancee as they start this incredible journey together.