First LOVE- Sunday Confessions

   His name still flows from my tongue as dreamily as it did when we were in the throes of our hormonally-driven, adolescent-charged, magic-producing relationship. Jonathan. His name is there, bouncing throughout my brain with a level of excitement equivocal with that of a 3 year-old, every time someone brings up the topic of First Loves, High School, or “the best days of your life.” There is still a place in my heart for this guy, as fresh & alive as it ever was, but it’s not because I’m still in-love with him, it’s because of all that he represents in my nostalgic-driven, hopeless-romantic stricken, reminiscent-savoring life. I don’t let go of anything. I collect instead. Memories, feelings, emotions, absolutely perfect moments in time. A collector of all things meaningful, I am.
  We met in High School, through a mutual friend. A week of passing notes through the halls was all it took to sweep my 15yo self into dreamland, away off into a new world called LOVE that had only been found in the pages of books, within the lyrics of favorite songs, or on the big screen in movies, before this point. I had no comparison of my own to guide me through these uncharted territories, no previous wounds or heartache to heed to or send off alarming warning signs. No douchebag or shithead memories to taint the magic of our budding passion or make me think twice about what I was jumping head first into. This was pure, innocent, untarnished puppy love in the making. We spent every waking moment together, somehow, someway- on the phone, walking around the neighborhoods between our houses, sitting in the backseat of friends’ cars, cuddling at those same friends’ houses, sneaking in & out of our own with the fear of being caught alone without parental supervision making sure we weren’t getting naked. We dreaded having to go home at the end of every night, afraid of the misery we felt in seperation from one another. We were made to be one together, brought together by a higher power, the happily-ever-after I had only ever wished upon stars for. Concerts, football games, bonfires, camping trips, & time at the beach all changed in perspective forever when they became OUR things to do. Everywhere we went, everything we did was magical, sprinkling the love dust spilling over from our connected souls upon the wake we were making in the universe. Life was wonderful, all peaches & roses, rainbows & butterflies- there was nothing standing in our way, well, except maybe our parents, but that was just their job to watch over & try to suck that magic dry.
   Then he moved. Twenty-five long, horrible, across-the-great-divide-feeling miles away. For a brief moment in our magical little world, we felt fear, tasted the bitterness of real seperation. So I got my licence & in the blink of an eye, we were back in business! Our relationship evolved, grew even mightier than it previously was. Already, we had made it through over a year together & in our naivety, we thought we had accomplished the same feat as the one’s who’ve been married for fifty years! Jonathan & I were flying high on top of the world at this point, unaware that we would soon be graduating from children into adults, because all we cared about was being side-by-side. We made it to that two year mark, surpassed it, grew cocky in it. That cockiness was the beginning of the end. Adulthood started creeping in, adolescence phased out. Forced to get jobs, contemplate graduations & continuing education, participate in future-oriented discussions about where our lives should go from here, shattering the magic that had been shielding us from reality all along. Reality opened a gaping wound between us, exposing the most tender parts of our relationship & exploiting them, turning the world against us. Turning US against us! First loves are created out of innocence & when there is no longer innocence to be lost, there is nowhere left for them to go without sheer determination & purposeful intent holding them together as superglue. Jonathan did not possess the drive to work hard or fight in the name of something that wasn’t a social fad, as with most barely eighteen year olds. His childhood was completely gone & so was the magic of it, there was no getting it back & soon I was facing that same problem. Adult choices needed to be made in our lives & neither of us understood the grave impact those choices would have on our relationship. We NEVER even broke up ,officially. One day we were together, the next, we weren’t. He turned his back on me, I turned mine on him. The waves of adult life swept us apart, sending us drifting into the sea that was the real world before we could ever even think about linking fingers & grabbing a hold of one another’s hands. We never said good-bye.
   That relationship was SO life-altering for me that I never buried it, grieved for the loss of it or let it go. That relationship defined my childhood, my adolescence, my growth into adulthood in such an iconic way that I immortalized it within my heart. Everything I have been through in my life since then has been reflected on, projected through, & compared with that time I first felt in-love. Every man I have ever met has been scrutinized & compared with the model of true love that Jonathan built for me. His character traits, personality, & soul have become my eternal reference point for Godliness. Make me laugh like he did, you’re golden. Brush my hair outta my eyes with the same gentle touch, you’re awesomeness. Have something in common that was once his favorite, you’re my newest favorite person. Jonathan holds the key to everything I deem important in my life, because his love shaped my heart, created the foundation for my loving heart to develop into the enormous never-ending gift that it is today.
   All these years later, and I’ll admit it’s been almost fifteen since we parted, Jonathan is still in my life. My greatest friend of all friends, though we are not actively involved in each other’s lives. Just there, as iconic as that Nirvana poster in the back of my closet, as time-tested as that lovie I have from my infancy, as familiar as that old sweatshirt I still wear of my husband’s on the coldest of cold, bitter winter days. We’re grown up enough to know that the magic we shared is forever lost in time somewhere, helping another young couple discover themselves & leave childhood behind, so that there can never be an US again, but that connection is one-of-a-kind & doesn’t happen to everyone & we relish the fact that fate chose us to share it’s secret with, bonding our hearts together for all eternity. We say ‘Hi!’ on FB, trade messages about the kids & our marriages, wink over small things that no one but us could ever understand, & carry on in our lives with the knowledge that we made each other who we are today. The memories are contained within, as precious as the most antique artifact at the Smithsonian. The moments in time of purely positive, unadulterated emotion, are captured, subdued, & hung for display in our hallway collages of the past. The music, the movies, the concerts, & all the happenings we ventured together are bronzed along with the first baby shoes of all my children.
   The course of my life was paved by that very First LOVE & I’ll always cherish it for the meaning it has within the very soul I possess, as I write this today. I even married someone who also has been touched by the fate of First Loves the same way as I, because he understands why those names still flow with ease off our tongues, uniting us as one in the battlefield of love. So understanding of this role our first loves played in our development, I honored my husband by giving our first daughter his first love’s name as her middle (hyphenated with my grandmother’s, as well), allowing him to pass on that spark of magic into his baby girl, Liliahna Noelle-Pauline. People think we’re crazy, but that’s okay, they’ve just never felt the kiss of fate the way we did the first time we ever fell in-love!