no regrets

One's first love is always perfect until one meets one's second love. ~ Elizabeth Aston

When I was seventeen, I went to Europe with about 14 classmates for our Senior trip. I've lived a charmed life, in that vein anyway. I wrote about the plane ride here in this post, Richard being the key character, the boy who, by Paris, had mended himself to my side, and who became the most important person in my life for the next four years.

I ran into him on Facebook the other night. An old high school friend contacted me, and there he was, green eyes and curly hair, on her wall saying hello to her. I hadn't seen his face since Christmas day of 2003. I broke up with him early that fall, but when Christmas rolled around weakness overtook me and I went to see him. Something about meeting him there, at his parents house, finding that the old feelings were gone and replaced by awkwardness and uncertainty, that even the pain of the split was numbed on my end, let me know that was it, that was the end, this was the last.

There had been love between us, I think. It may have been more desperation, more loneliness, that brought us together though. We were kindred spirits, but only in our negative qualities, feeding off of each other. I lean towards the thoughtful, the sullen, the quiet and pensive, as did he, but I know now that never meant I had to be depressed. He was depressed. He was a cutter, and a tantrum thrower. I did all I could to make him happy, but he brought me down to my knees with his sadness. I ran as soon as I could run. I did love him, I loved what he could be if he just could. But I loved myself more in the end.

I met my husband while I was still dating Richard. I wrote about this meeting in this post. The more I got to know my husband, the more I came to see what I could have, and I began to fall for him even while still with Richard. To tell the truth, my relationship with Richard had become a shell by then, fragile and begging to be broken. But I thought that's what life was.

I don't wonder what would have happened if I had not gone to Europe, if I had not spent those years with Richard. He brought me to my husband. I wish Richard well, if that's possible for him. I do wonder where I would be if I wasn't strong enough to be the one to push at the cracks of what we were, to jump ship when I saw the boat sinking. Drowned, I suppose.

There's something so disarming about seeing a face you haven't seen in years, a face you used to see every day, that meant the world to you, that was the last thing you saw at night and the first thing in the morning for years, that you thought you'd continue to see forever. Rushing tingles, swelling scars, and trails of tears, love like a ghost haunting your memory, shadows only of what once was there.

What once was there in no way compares to what now is here. What now is here is written here.