When everything falls apart.

I moved to Lake Geneva my Sophomore year of high school, and I enjoyed my time there. I mean, sue me if I say that I actually liked my high school. But the first year I was there, I met this guy who lived about a block down the road from me and kinda/sorta got to be friends with him. We talked now and then, and whatever small time we spent together, it was pleasant, but nothing too special.

This part I'm a little bit murky on the facts, but somehow within the next year when I saw him even less, I fell into a one-sided girly obsession as I typically did with guys. But somehow this one seemed different, and you may say that "of course it felt different, they always feel different." But no, even looking back after a few years, I know something different was going on in my mind when I fell for this guy. But anyhow... I imagined myself with him for the rest of my life, you know? I guess I had decided somehow that he was my destiny or something like that.

I remember in a fit of juvenile affection, I sent him an anonymous note at his house since he'd stopped coming to school for reasons unknown to me at the time, and after a few weeks I called him out of the blue and talked to him for a while and told him it was me that sent the note and everything. And then I found out why he'd been out of school. As soon as he'd turned 18, he'd signed up for the Army and was leaving in less than a week to go to training in Georgia. Oh my God. After I got off the phone that night, I was absolutely broken. I thought it was the worst I'd feel for the rest of my life. And THAT, I agree, is a typical feeling.

So I didn't talk to him again before he left, and all the next year I didn't hear a single thing about him, not even from his friends, who had also become my friends during that time. But then, in January 2006, I heard one of his friends talking about how he was supposed to be coming back from Iraq in May. Iraq? Are you kidding?

And so for the next few months, I waited and daydreamed the way I had for the past year until May came around. I didn't know exactly what day he was supposed to be back, so I just kept my eyes open any time I went by his place, and one day I was in the car with my brother and -insert hallelujah sound clip here- I caught a glimpse of what I knew was outside in the driveway talking to some people.

So that day I walked down to his house which contained his mother, sister, several small animals and like ten of his friends, half of whom slept there all the time. His best friend answered the door, and he's also a friend of mine, so I go into this tangled mess of people around the tiny house toward the bedroom where someone is playing an electric guitar and listening to Slipknot. Who could that be?

It ranks as one of the happiest moments of my life, and I remember the feeling exactly, when I turned the corner around the doorway and saw him standing there, so close I could reach out and touch him if I had the mind to. I know I'm not the only person who's had that experience. Seeing someone after a long time that, for a while, you thought you may never see again. And by the way, I thought I'd never see him again because I knew I was moving across the state after graduation.

But for the week he was home, I went to visit him every chance I got... I thought I was getting to be pretty good friends with him, and some of the other people that hung around his house. His mom has a tendency to "adopt" her kids friends, so I started calling her mom like everybody else did. I stayed over for dinner, watched movies with them and listened to music with him and his friends and watched him play guitar, which he is really good at and I took some pictures on my new digital camera there.

The last day that he was going to be there, I planned on inviting his mother and his closest friend to my graduation party that was going to be in a few weeks. But when I tried to open the door it was locked. So I knocked, and I saw his mom in the window and she came running to the door. She opened it and pushed me outside and started asking about my camera. Apparently someone had been stealing stuff from them for the past week, and somehow I had become the prime suspect because of my camera. So I wasn't allowed in the house anymore.

I think I went numb just then, and turned around and slowly walked home. All my life I'd never been accused of something like that, which makes sense since I've never done something like that. But that's how it was and the way I saw it back then there was nothing I could do about it. When I got home, I walked in the door, trudged through my house to my bedroom. When I shut the door, I fell back against it and just sat there. I felt dead. Or like I was grieving for someone or something that HAD died. But I didn't cry until I crawled over and onto my bed and curled up on it.

I cried for hours. My eyes hurt like someone'd replaced them with molten lava. And I screamed until my throat was sore, and it was the first time I ever did the most stereotypical sad/angry person thing. I screamed "why" at the top of my lungs to whoever could hear me. And I meant it, that's the thing. For a one-sided girly obsession, the band-aid ripping off hurt a million times more than anything else I'd ever experienced, but then... maybe that's how this one was different.

But I didn't see him again before he left, and I haven't talked to anyone associated with him since then, so I have no idea if they ever actually figured out who was taking their stuff. I wish I knew if they still hated me or not. Or if they found out it wasn't me and felt bad for kicking me out. But maybe I'll never know. If that's not the case, and they still think it's me, I hope I get the chance to let them know that karma caught up with me unjustly and somebody stole my camera at my graduation party. I'm sure they'd love that. heh.

I remember the pain clearly. As well as the joy. But it's comforting to realize that anything that hurts that much, should it happen again, will soon be exactly that: something to be no longer experienced but remembered.

Oh... and why the song? Because the sadness in it seems so clear to me that any time I hear it I associate it with the time in my life that I felt the most broken, and so far that's the Spring of 2006.

"I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release
Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight"