Day Three: My First Love

As a boy I thought I was in love (romantically) many times. As a man, I realize that none of it was real. None except one. I know that this one was the real deal because three and a half years later, the relationship that we had still affects my interactions with the opposite sex. I also think it’s interesting to think about the girls I know today, and pick one or two that I think I could fall in love with, but who would probably not agree or ever even consider it without solicitation. And who solicits the prospect of falling in love before it’s well on its way to happening? Ha! Not this guy.

My first (and only) romantic love began as a sophomore in college… kind of. It was the Georgia-Florida game and I was in the stands as a proud Redcoat celebrating an impending victory over a team that my Georgia Bulldogs have struggled to compete with during the last two decades. A friend of mine from the Wesley Foundation came over to say hello after our halftime performance. She knew a few other Redcoats, and so I saw her from a distance before she made her way to speak with me. She had a friend with her whom I didn’t know but whom I noticed right off as being very attractive. So my friend eventually made her rounds and walked up to me, sans sidekick, and I inquired. I could barely get the words “who is your friend” out of my mouth before being interrupted with “she’s taken.” That was that. End of story. Until two months later.

I was returning to Athens from my dad’s retirement party, which was taking place during Winter break, just before classes resumed for the Spring semester. I was in a rush to get to the dining hall before it closed at 7pm, and I walked in the door at approximately 6:30. I spotted my Wesley friend as I was passing through security, and she met me in the food line as I was grabbing a dinner tray.

“Guess what?” She asked as she approached with arms out for a hug.

“You’re single!” I jokingly proclaimed as we embraced.

“Nooo,” she responded with a light punch to the chest, “but my friend is.”

“Your friend?” I inquired, not at all excited about being asked to go on a blind date. “Which friend?”

“You know, thin, long brown hair, gorgeous” she described as I stared blankly at her, wondering if there existed a more generic description. Noticing my lack of intuition, she continued, “you know… the girl you saw me with at the Florida game?”

“Ohhhhh!” I exclaimed as my eyes lit up from the memory.

“Yeah, and when she saw you come in just now she said ‘hmmmm’.” The intrigued tone of her vocal impression suggested that this was a very favorable indication of attraction.

“Oh really?” I uttered, genuinely surprised at this seemingly ideal scenario.

Fast forward a few weeks, and I am a bit more emotionally attached to the relationship than what would have been optimal. That comes out verbally one day, and I effectively impede the progression of romance with this girl. After the fact, my friend admits that she might’ve left out a tiny detail about her friend before setting me up – a severe phobia of commitment. But I don’t blame the girl for bailing; in hindsight, I was not ready for a serious relationship and it was probably good that I goofed up early on. I like to say that I ruined it initially, but she made it awkward for the next two years.

It was two years later when we were cast together as the leads in what would be my very first stage performance in a musical theatre production. I had come to terms with the situation; I had counted my losses and moved on from the terrible end two years prior. It was strictly business between me and her… until one night when we met with some other cast members outside regular rehearsal to run the kissing scenes. Everything was going fine until I went in to kiss her for the first time. She tensed up and turned around to avoid being kissed. It was really funny, and she never did kiss me that entire night.

Immediately upon leaving rehearsal (and by immediately I mean I had barely gotten to my car), I get a TXT from her saying “well that was fun!”

I laughed to myself and responded, saying “yeah it was, except that you didn’t once kiss me, and that’s what we came to do. haha”

Her next words penetrated my heart like an unsuspecting bus stop bystander getting impaled by a medieval war javelin: “that’s because you know it means something more.”

“WHAAAAAAAT?!?!” I announced this verbally to myself in my car. “I definitely did NOT know that!” Here I thought the book was closed and thrown out to sea then suddenly she picks it up off the ocean floor, tosses it back up on the beach, and the pages fall open to the exact chapter (maybe a chapter ahead) where the story left off two years ago, before my emotional outburst collapsed on the not-so-happy ending.

Once the subject was broached, we really hit things off… the right way. Her commitment issues remained an obstacle, but I learned how to play it cool on the days she freaked out and broke up with me (even though we were never really official to begin with – the thought of making it official scared her to death). The only true and unavoidable disturbance was her impending graduation.

She would be graduating in May. I would be spending an extra semester to earn an interdisciplinary certificate in addition to my degree, but she was hired by a theatre company far away to perform over the next several months. It wasn’t long after she was gone that she started asking me to come visit. I was broke, and told her there was no way that I could afford it, but one day I surprised her with a letter in which I disclosed that I had bought a bus ticket to come see her. Three days before I was to make the trip, her commitment issues got the best of the situation.

We had agreed before she left that it would be best not to try and maintain a romantic interest with each other while separated by 1,500 miles. It was as much my decision as it was hers, but visiting her still seemed like a favorable idea, especially given her persistence during the first 45 days she was gone that I should do so. Alas, in the days just before I would board a Greyhound, she turns an emotional 180 and vehemently opposes my coming to visit.

Well the ticket cost me my entire savings (I was still working at Chick-fil-A) and was non-refundable. I was set on going. It would be an adventure, and I reasoned in my head that when I got there, she’d be ecstatic to see me. After all, it was to be the first time we’d seen each other in over two months, after spending so much time together during the previous six.

As often happens when one tries to predict the outcome of a love affair, expectations are ripped to shreds. She yelled, I spoke calmly. She cried, I tried my best not to. I slept alone in a tent on a mountainside, watched the morning sun rise over the sleepy little gambling town, and for two days I spent my time reading the Bible and Wild At Heart by John Eldridge. I perched myself on a street bench located on the main strip of this miniature Las Vegas, a tiny tourist attraction in the midwestern mountains, full of interesting people to watch.

That was pretty much the closure I needed for moving on… again. But as you can tell by the vivid details of conversation and occurrence, I recall it all with near-perfect clarity. I’ll never forget this girl and the blissful six months we shared together – whether that is a positive star or negative scar, I prefer not to decide. Regardless, this is the story of my first love.