The Answer to the Biggest Question I get, Part 1.

I get all sorts of questions while I'm on or in my inboxes, but none come close to the one, or a version of it..

"Relationship status?" or "Why are you on here so much, don't you have a man or friends to be with?"

Yes. I do have friends, and I go see them or sometimes they come over. But, I live a pretty solitary life. It's because I want to though. When I was young I had a fierce independent streak. I was out on my own at 15 and had my own place when I was 16. 

Here's where the real answer is, and where it gets personal. I don't talk about my 'love life' or any of that. I have a very guarded heart. I love being social, especially in the chat rooms because there's so much freedom and fun. But, in real life I'm very protective of the people I let in especially close. I was married when I was 17. Separated months later because I couldn't keep up with the touring schedule or the time away. Before that though, the thing that built up the most walls was the best and worst kind of thing. The indian summer kind of young love. 

I was really young, 16. He was a year or 2 older. We were in the same run around. The first year we were around each other it was strictly as friends. There were 4 or 5 of us who were very close. We snuck into forests and along side creeks and talked in a comfortable haze instead of a few classes. Tightly knit, a lot of love. One particular member of the group had a house not too far from the school and we would go over frequently after lunch to jam or watch Star Wars. As the weather got warmer it seemed like our conversations and actions did too. We sat closer together. I made food for the boys and served him first. Those looks started. The ones that are mutual and explain more without words than you could with them. 

A month or so of that build up and we got close enough that we started spending just a little time alone. Not much, but moments here and there. Lingering behind the group a little as we walked back to school to talk. One bright and crystal day we snuck away from the group under a bridge that a creek ran beneath. Our first real time alone with no real time constraint on just how long it could be it was awkward at first.   He picked up a rock and tossed it into the slow moving water, I copied. Again, again. Soon it was clumps of loose ground, grass anything. We built up a little damn and exhausted ourselves. 

He always wore this oversized jacket and laid it down so that I could sit without getting my skirt in the dirt. We didn't talk for a long time, we didn't know what to say. That terrifying electricity was in the air. He put his hand on my arm and it dwarfed my skin. Already pale, next to his bronze skin I looked like moonlight. He didn't ask to kiss me, not out loud at least. He just leaned in, and I smiled. For the next hour there existed that twilight that innocence, and innocence alone can experience. Dirt in your hair, grass stuck to your leg, little red marks from where pressure was put on too long. And it was a dream. 

We had one week. Where everything was like a cliche novel. Stupid and dumb and perfect. He held onto my waist, moved hair out of my face and shared his 44 oz. fountain sodas with me. On a Sunday my home phone rang, his number on the screen. The excitement was short lived. "We need to talk", the first few words told me everything I needed to know. But he elaborated. His family, being Catholic, didn't approve. I was a little punky and hardly a Christian. It was quiet and sweet,  heartfelt and sad, but it was final. 

School ended a week later. We saw each other one more time. Under the same bridge. He played in the soft dry soot dirt. I traced in it. I felt it and commented that it was soft. "You're soft", we the last sweet thing he said to me, and probably the most sweet, because we knew it was the last. So it counted more. 

It might sound silly to get your heart broken like that, but it did. One beautiful summer like time where I was young and well on the path to falling in love. Cut short by numerous things. Maybe, it's for the better though. All my memories are fond. All my dreams about it were innocent and pure. It's the least painful thorn in my heart, and I don't feel it much. And I wouldn't trade it out or remove it if it meant the memories went too.

It was, and still is very worth it.