There are some people in your life that you connect with and for years afterwards, even without seeing them, you feel their continued presence in your life. I think that we all have a person from our past that, whether we want to admit it or not, still holds a piece of our heart and always will. The hardest part of this situation is when you honestly and deeply believe that your relationship with that person is not really over. That your soul and his still have “unfinished business,” and that fate will eventually bring you back together to finish that business.
That person for me is someone that I have known since I was nine years old. It’s a total cliché, but he is the older brother of my childhood best friend. For many years, we only knew each other because I was over at their house hanging out with my friend. At some point around the time that I was fourteen and he was sixteen, that acquaintance relationship changed. Around that time, we began to forge a friendship that was separate from my relationship with his younger sister. He and I had many interests and ideas in common. I would stay at their house and spend half the night up talking with him about anything, and everything.
The funniest thing about the situation was that, at that time, I was totally besotted with his best friend. It took my father pointing out to me that, even though I claimed to be interested in his friend, it was the conversations that I had shared with my friend’s brother, the fun he and I had together and the laughs that we shared that I talked about and made me light up and smile. To this day, I don’t know if my father’s observation was a blessing or a curse, but it did help me to realize that, of the two guys, the one that made my heart race was my friend’s brother, not his friend. Especially since his best friend didn’t really swing my way but that’s another story…
Over the next few years, we had on and off again contact, mostly due to the fact that we lived about 100 miles apart. Also during this time, he met another girl who he became very close to. It was very hard for me knowing how I felt about him but spending time with him and adhering to the boundary that his relationship with her presented. Even with this other girl in his life, I felt an undercurrent of connection and attraction between us. Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I thought he felt it too. And even during those years that he was connected to this other girl, we still shared many deep conversations and good laughs. We had both had difficult childhoods, were both children of divorce and after knowing each other for so long, we knew things about each other and our lives that others wouldn’t have understood.
This kind of limbo went on for several years, but then, the summer between my junior and senior years of high school, I went up to visit his sister. When I got there, I was surprised to discover that he was living at home again. I had known that he had been living with the other girl for some time, but apparently they had a falling out. It was a unexpected and really bizarre twist of fate. On top of that, it turned out that one of his co-workers was interested in his sister and she was interested in the co-worker also. Between the two of them, they convinced us to go on a double-date. I was beyond excited that my opportunity had finally come but terrified too. He and I spent the next four days connected at the hip and were intimate in almost every way that a man and woman can be. His co-worker and sister were fast losing interest in each other, but her brother and I couldn’t find enough time to spend together.
For me, it was everything I had spent three years dreaming of. I was seeing visions of where we would go to college together, when we would get married and how many children we would have. Apparently his view was very different. The day before my last day there, “the girl” called him. Instantly, every thing changed. He became distant and the long talks, walks on the beach and late night talks ended abruptly.
When it came time for me to head home, he wasn’t even there to say good-bye. I cried through most of the four hour bus ride home. I wasn’t crying in regret for letting myself be that vulnerable or giving so much of myself. I couldn’t regret achieving something that I spent years reaching for. I was crying out of grief for all the hopes and dreams that I had previously held that were gone. By the time I reached the bus station near my home, I was spent, really a shell of my former self. But even with that, I did not regret giving myself to him because I would rather have taken the chance at the brass ring then be too afraid to reach out and let it go by.
I spent the better part of the next year trying to move on, have a productive life and find interest and joy in something or someone again. I came down with mononucleosis and spent most of the first quarter of my senior year either out of school on medical leave or on a partial schedule so that I could recuperate. The truth was that I withdrew from most of my extracurricular activities and just went through the motions in my other classes. I also pulled away from my friends because they didn’t understand the profound sadness that I was feeling. I am still amazed that I made it through senior year and actually graduated with honors. I withdrew from everything that had been important to me at school up until that point. At some point during that year, I tried to overdose by taking a half a bottle of aspirin. If I could have done anything I wanted, I would have crawled under a rock and just focused on slipping out of this world and into the next. I believed then and still believe now, that he and I have some sort of unfinished business that needs to be resolved. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking, but I may never know…
After all this time, I have married a good man, had a beautiful family and created a very successful career. At the same time, I believe that in the depths of my soul this person has a very significant meaning to me and that our paths are destined to cross again. Only time will tell if my prescience is real or just a figment of my imagination, but I hope that it is real. Because if nothing else, I miss his friendship terribly.
