the old-school guestbook archives
my amazon wish list... my favorite astrologer... my favorite artist... yerba mate revolution! erowid: a travel guide for interior journeys... no more war: MoveOn.org United for Peace and Justice True Majority seek the truth: Common Dreams Unamerican Activities The Nation people I adore, diaries I read: rev.raikes ariana cubiclegirl epiphany glitter333 laurakay wammo the music: the asylum street spankers backyard tire fire blue highway bill camplin wendy colonna freedom tribe joules graves guy forsyth band hamsa lila hanuman libby kirkpatrick leftover salmon pamela means medeski martin & wood the motet the nice outfit nickel creek open road rose polenzani railroad earth south austin jug band string cheese incident taarka tha musemeant the devil makes three tim o'brien band trolley wild sage keller williams yonder mountain string band |
my first true love... ~ June 25, 2003 - 9:18 p.m. yesterday I went and found my first true love on the internet. I've been out of touch with him for at least five years, and I've gone looking before, but he's never been much into technology. last night, out of nowhere, it occurred to me that he (being an artist) has probably discovered the usefulness of the internet by now. so I went looking. and there he was. his paintings, his bio. the boy who, once upon a time, changed my whole world. I was about an inch away from giving up the ghost when I met chris. I was nineteen, at the bottom of an angry-adolescent-punk-rock-downward-spiral that led to a hell of emptiness. I'd broken from the punk scene by then, and from the worst of the string of bad boyfriends. I was still drinking too much, smoking too much, and I had no clue where I wanted my life to go. done with high school, not yet ready for college. I was in limbo, and I didn't know who the hell I was. and then I met chris. and he was different from all the others. sweet, creative, fiery, alive. he drew real and true things out of me that I didn't know I still had. he made me feel young again, after feeling like the world's oldest 19-year-old. I loved him like I'd never loved before. I made him the center of my whole world. and that's where our problems started. he's the one who got me to quit drinking, to quit smoking, and to this day I think I owe him my life for that. his love was the only thing strong enough to get me out of the cage I'd built for myself. and then he left me. and my whole world fell apart. and then he came back. and then he left again. it was torture, really. but we loved each other. oh yes we did. and then I went to college in ohio, and he left me for real. he got a new girlfriend, I got a new boyfriend, although I kept freaking out and breaking up with richard, because the fact was that I was still in love with chris. and he was still in love with me, in spite of himself. my first christmas break home was enough to break both of us from our respective relationships to stumble back into each other's arms. he came to visit me when I went back to school. he moved to philadelphia. he called me up on the phone one day. I've got a really dumb idea, he said... and I was saying yes! almost before he said you want to move to philadelphia with me? and I was at the kind of college where you could do that. could ditch out for six months to live in philly, and write a few papers to get credit for your time there. I could take night classes through a consortium program, and make it all make sense. so I went. my first time living with a lover. we started out subletting with some rich kids out in west philly, and then moved into a tiny, shadowy efficiency in center city. I took crazy pride in buying things for our apartment, feeling that I was building the base for our future life together. I thought we'd get married, have kids, the whole deal. move to some cabin on a lake out in the country, maybe in vermont, where he could paint and I could write and we could be happy. and then, in philadelphia, it all crashed and burned. everything got harder and harder. our work schedules were crosswise, so we hardly saw each other awake. I was diagnosed with cervical dysplasia, and the doctors wanted to do lazer surgery, and I was scared and he didn't know how to be there for me. didn't know how to be there for me in any of the ways I needed it most. I won't walk on eggshells around you, he'd tell me, when I'd explained that something he'd done had scared me. and by the end of my time there, in winter's bitter cold, I was crying every day, alone while he was at work. I was hanging out at the lesbian bar around the corner and wishing I was free to explore the tender longings that were stirring within me. I was saving my money for a plane ticket to ireland, and we were fighting about the fact that I didn't want to pay for everything anymore. and then I left. in the midst of all the mess and sharp edges and hurts and heartaches, I left. he cried in the train station on the way to the airport, because it was all coming down to this in the end, after all. I soothed him, told him I'd be back. I believed it then. I flew home for christmas, and then on to ireland, where I waited tables for three months and recovered from philadelphia. I even called him once from there. it wasn't until I was back in college, a payphone conversation where I laid out exactly the kind of emotional support I was going to need if things were ever going to work between us, where it all came to an end. he said, you're right. you need someone you can feel safe with, and that's not me. and I knew it was true. we both knew it. three years down the road, it was time to lay it to rest. and so we did. and as I recovered, I realized just how much power I'd given him in my life. I had to work hard at figuring out who the hell I Was, without chris. I discovered that I was much more openhearted than I'd thought. it was chris' judgemental nature that had been closing me to so much over the years. I had to rediscover my own tastes in art, in music, in love and life and politics. in leaving him I found myself again, and walked alone into a whole new world. the last time I saw him, I was on a greyhound bus on the way out to boston for Pride weekend. I had a one-hour layover in philly, and asked if he wanted to meet up to talk. and so we did. and he eyed my shaved head, my combat boots. he hugged me goodbye and told me he was glad to see that I was happy. I wrote a kickass poem about that conversation later. and we kept in touch, in bits and pieces over the years, but I think he got weary of the leftover bitterness I had a habit of laying at his feet. a weariness I would only understand after the crash and burn of my relationship with clare-- which in many ways was a mirror image of my relationship with chris. me playing the chris part, and finally understanding what had been going on inside of him all those years gone by. we lost touch sometime after I moved to california. I wrote him a letter full of bitterness and blame, and he never answered. I didn't blame him, even at the time, and I decided the time had come to let him go. but you never do forget your first love. and I have wondered, over the years, where he is and how life is treating him. if he's married, if he has kids-- both of which seem unlikely. so when I found him on the internet, his paintings just so familiar, so chris, his bio alluding to pieces of his life I was there for, I decided to reach out. so I sent him an e-mail. just to say hey, here I am. how are you? and just so you know, I *get* it now. I told him he could write to me if he wants, that I'd love to know where life has taken him, what he's up to and what he's loving these days. he may never answer. but it's enough to know. that the man to whom I owe at least part of my life, at least one re-birth of my heart, is still out there.
(((rings))) |