01.20.05
Ode to a (highschool?) earn
I just got two emails from my high school sweetheart. He lives in Montr�al and bumped into my younger brother on campus. They are going to get together sometime this week and go for a beer. This came the day after we exchanged emails. It�s a small world with good timing as he put it.
Jimmy broke my heart worse than anyone else ever has. After our breakup, everything I knew to be true changed. I have never written so many bad, or good, poems as I did about him. He�s a musician. He wrote me love songs and touched me for the first time in a lot of places and got into my pants and my heart and made me feel things I had never felt before. It was amazing and it was terrible. I think it was a pretty standard first head-over-heels falling in love.
For a long time, I thought we would end up together, eventually. I thought he was it for me. I thought no one else would ever make me feel so alive. I thought that part of me was dying without him in my life, and he was the only one who could bring me back to life. I told myself that no matter what, I would always be a little in love with him. But years went by and life went on and I did things I never really thought I would, and I learned more and loved more and basically, got over him. He was always my unicorn though: my one ex that I didn�t want any of my friends to touch.
When I think about high school, I realize how na�ve I was. It�s like I was a different person. And in a way, I suppose everyone changes that much from 17 to 23. That�s a long time, with a lot of big decisions to make and changes to be had. I don�t think that way about Jimmy anymore, I don�t feel the same. Lately, though, I have been thinking about him. Wondering how he is, hoping he�s doing well. He played with drugs and with girls for years. I think he flirted with that line of going too far, but I was never quite sure. He dated girls for months but could never call them his girlfriend. He smoked too much pot and drank too much too often. I worried about him, but told myself I wasn�t allowed to get too close anymore. That he was running on empty and a dangerous boy.
Looking back on it now, I guess we all flirted a little too closely with danger. Our whole group from high school, we all went a little self-destructive. Whether it was unprotected sex, too many drugs, too much drinking, we were all hurting ourselves. I can also see now what I could never see before - that maybe he was as hurt by me as I was by him.
We all seem to have gotten back up on our feet again, though. He�s back in school, Steph�s happy with her new baby, Erin is about to graduate and has a steady boyfriend. Sometimes I feel sad for what I�ve lost, but sometimes I don�t feel like I�ve lost anything at all. The memories make me feel nostalgic, and I wish that Steph was closer, because I�d love to hang out with her again, or to see her baby grow. But here we are, each of us somehow settled into where we have become comfortable. It makes me feel nostalgic, but I guess I�m finally letting go. Jimmy�s not my unicorn anymore. He hasn�t been for quite some time. And I don�t write poems anymore, but my thoughts are thicker, I�m a stronger person, a more confident person. I�ve met a boy who treats me like a queen, something no one else has been able to do. I�m not sure where the future may take me because even the best laid plans and all that. But I guess in a way, it�s reassuring to know that we�ve all made it through the bumps this far, and we all turned out alright.
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