She Appears Composed, So She is, I Suppose

Okay. I am smack dab in the middle of a freshman in high school sleepover. As you can imagine, my brain is melting and my head is splitting open, so I'm pilfering from my old blog. Here is another one about that one guy I used to date...You know, since I was already on the subject the last couple of days. Ready?:

Earlier this week, I was talking to a friend of mine about relationships. He said he didn't think that any relationship ever truly ended. That even if you never saw that person again, you would still have a connection. The conversation got me thinking of the first boy I ever dated. Out of any of my relationships, I thought ours was the most compatible.

We were 19 when we met and for both of us, it was our first real relationship - the first time we lived with someone, the first time we moved somewhere with someone and the first time we were both willing to change plans for someone. I was still young enough, that I was sure my feelings for him could actually kill me. And he was young enough, that he couldn't admit he loved me without some kind of immediate qualifier.

"I love you...But there are many different kinds of love," he might say.

And since I was trying hard to be cool and funny about everything, (even though I wasn't fooling either of us) I would say something like, "And you love me like you love your dog?"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far. I really, really love my dog."

We broke-up when we were both 22. Neither of us had known what we were doing and we had made all of our mistakes on each other. According to my friend's theory, somewhere we still have a relationship.

I like to imagine that when we outgrew each other, we shed our old skins like snakes or cicadas. And the leftover shells of us are still together. Hopefully, at some point, I was able to get him to admit that he loved me at least as much as he loved his dog. And if he couldn't do that, then we would go through another round of shedding. Eventually, we would grow to a point where we didn't have to leave anything behind to be able to live together. I envision hundreds of husks in our wake. Would they dry-up and blow away, or would they remain, leaving a trail of our former selves? If I were a stronger person, I would follow it back and check on that fledgling shell - just to be reminded of the emotion that made love feel so terminal at that age.