I keep telling myself that we’ve only got this one life; and that everything between birth and death is up to us. We get to decide what we wear every day. We decide what to eat, who to talk to, where to go. Essentially we decide our life-course up until we hit that point in our lives where we fall in love. I don’t think we choose who we fall for. I think that part of life is already written and we just have to strap ourselves in and hope for dear life that someone catches us.
I fell at 15.
I hit the floor in front of a boy in combat boots with a future so bright it knocked the wind out of me.
He was a Marine, and he was 18. He was everything to me.
We spent hours talking on the phone, and sometimes we didn’t even talk at all. We’d fall asleep beneath the same sky and dream about arms that were so far but breath that was so close.
When your feelings are this deep at only 15, not even a quarter of the way through life, it’s a cause for the concern of every single adult around you. Especially your mother.
She told me I was young and crazy and that it was okay to feel. She said: “Everybody has their first love around your age.”
He was my first.
He is my current.
He was my future.
After a year he left for boot camp and my heart committed itself to sappy love letters and country songs about marrying a military man.
Smitten, I closed my eyes as I scrolled past the girl with the blue overalls who posted a picture of herself and an all too familiar face with the caption: “I miss you” to my Marine’s Facebook page.
I turned 16 on October 3rd and I was still in free-fall.
I got a phone call from a government number and his voice dripped through the speaker straight into my all too eager heart. Bootcamp was over and he would be home soon.
He said he had to go; he hung up; he made another phone call.
Nine days passed and with each moonrise our conversations became as distant as stars.
The call log in my phone only boasted minutes each day under his contact. Our silence was spanned across galaxies; with arms too far and breath to shallow to hear till the receiver clicked off.
I wrote him an email.
I told him I couldn’t do it anymore.
I told him maybe we just needed space to see if the separation would bring us back together.
Facebook confirmed I was wrong.
October 12th, 2013.
In a relationship.
With the girl in blue overalls.
