The Journey

Peering out of the tinted windows of the family van, I laid eyes on a blonde-haired, crystal-blue-eyed boy for the first time and instantly knew that he was going to be fundamentally important in my life. I pointed him out to my sister who was sitting beside me and I announced as much. She seemed unmoved by my 15 year old’s proclamation. We were straggling inside the vehicle, drawing out the last precious moments before we had to ultimately emerge onto the downtown city square and fulfill our weekly Sunday morning duties.

My parents were already in the square setting up. Sound equipment had to be hauled out and plugged in. Tables were erected onto which the large vats of hot food would be set. Some of the homeless “congregation members” were already assembling nearby. Fresh food and hot coffee would soon be theirs for the low-low price of a sermon.

Meanwhile, the boy walked across the square with his own family and my heart sped up a beat or two as I emerged from the van on this new Sunday morning. In the briefest of moments, I’d already felt a fleeting premonition of all that was to come.

By the time I was 16, I claimed that same young man as my boyfriend and I was in love. It took months to finagle our meandering paths into a definitive and finite crossing that could be labeled an official relationship. There may have been boys of interest before him, but I couldn’t remember who they were. My heart belonged to a thuggish ruggish white boy from the other side of the tracks. …Or more specifically, Whitmarsh Island. But despite the dubiousness of his authenticity as a “bad boy,” I palpably sensed my father’s dislike and thereby a constant, underlying dread filled my relationship with him.

On the eve of the tragic events that led to the demise of my relationship, I sat on the bed telling my sister of the impending doom that I sensed without apparent reason or cause. She was home visiting from college and I confessed my sincere fear that something bad was about to happen. And then it did.

By the time I was seventeen, I was deep in the throes of first love’s loss. A bizarre romeo-et-juliet twist of events had forced us apart and I saw that my father’s will was done. I fell into a period of deep mourning, for, truly, this was the first death I had ever experienced as a full-grown human. The boy I loved had not physically died, but his total and sudden absence from all who knew him left those of us who loved him in a state of shock and despair not unlike the sudden physical death of a beloved. The devastation was unbearable, and at times, I felt like it would literally overwhelm me and I would stop breathing.

I spent months in a state of grey. Nothing seemed to matter. My senses were dulled. I bitterly resented the forces that had torn us apart. I craved connection with the one I’d lost. I swallowed fireballs of fury for my abandonment, not just from him but from those around me who went on as if life were normal. I found myself a captive of isolation for none of my peers yet possessed a point of reference for what I was experiencing. I felt as though the one thing in my entire young life that had been truly and uniquely mine, and that I cared about more than anything else, had been carelessly ripped away from me and thrown aside. And the whole world around me just went on as if nothing at all had changed.

I learned so much during this period, lessons about life, myself, and those around me. I began to seriously question the beliefs and teachings of my childhood. I began to recognize the disconnect and denial that ran through my family. And I found myself in a deeper state of disillusionment and anger than even my earlier adolescence had inspired. The trauma of the experience had a far-reaching impact that would shape my life in unforeseen ways.

Eventually I began to connect with my present life again and function with some interest in it. But occasionally, the old heartbreak would resurface at random and grab me by the throat. It would be another two years before I truly began to “move on.” At that point my parents had separated, I’d gone off to college, and the forces that controlled my young life disintegrated. But it was too late for me and my first love. Life had already taken us in drastically different directions.

For years, no other romance compared to that one. I’m not sure that any romance ever does compare to the first smiting. However, time begins to reveal the cracks in every overblown love story and I know now that the events of my life have unfolded with a methodical precision that only hindsight can reveal.

Fast forward eighteen years and here I sit today at the end of another relationship. It is quieter this time. It has been a longer period of undoing. One of the differences today is that I no longer believe relationships have endings. The form may change and interaction may even cease entirely, but the connections that bring us together never really break or die or disappear. A particular form of a seven year endeavor has come to a close and the most amazing lessons have been learned and everyone involved is better off for it.

There is beauty in change and there is comfort in solitude, if you are open to it. There is adventure and joy and peace in the unknown. These are the things that I am choosing to learn presently, and the experience I am willing to have this time.

In the words of the great Maya Angelou, “Wouldn’t take nothing for my journey now.”