First Love
The first man I ever loved left me without explanation.
I was given a story about how later, many years from this moment I would understand why he had to go, why he chose this path. He left me standing there wondering what I did to cause him to leave, he said I would understand, it wasn’t my fault; that is just how it goes. I stood there feeling the blood drain from my body leaving me with a numb helpless aura and wondering if I ever would.
I had been a part of the arguments, a part of the late night whispers, and a part of the absence that had come to be longer and longer each month. I sensed that something was not right but no matter how hard I wanted the answer to come it would not show itself to me.
As girls we fall in love the first time with the man of our dreams. He is our ideal. He is tall and handsome and can in just a moments notice sweep you right off your feet, placing kisses and hugs where there is desire. I have never lost the desire to curl up on his lap and feel his arms wrapped tightly around me. I have never lost that comforting feeling as I breathed in wonderful musty aroma in the crook of his neck or felt on my nose the stubble of his unshaven beard. I have never lost the desire to be his “baby girl”, the one he loves unconditionally. As girls we pattern our behaviors and our criteria for all that follow after this one man, our first and only love. We look for him in our dreams and we wish for him our every desire to come and capture our hearts. He will be as tall and handsome, romantic and charming as our first love.
Then we grow, we mature and we make mistakes and we look back.
I searched in vain for that man. I searched for the answers and to this day have never found what I still ponder each day. Why? I don’t know, and quite honestly I don’t think I will ever find the answer. Frankly, I don’t know if I could handle it if I did know the answers, if they came to me now I am not sure I could take the truth. I want to just let it lie quietly and never poke it again. I don’t, I have never just let things go, I take everything to heart. Bad trait to develop when trying to just hang on.
I grow, I marry, I create masterpieces in the form of children that look just like him and after many years I wake up and repeat the pattern. Not once but several times.
I watched as my daughter felt the same way as I had when my first love drove away. She is a daddy’s girl. Their weekend visits were marred by the upheaval, the display of emotional meltdown that she felt when having to return back to me. She would spend each Wednesday night midweek in his company for a dinner and homework hour. When she returned I would see the immediate tears as they began to well up in her big green eyes. I knew that she would cry each time her father would drop her off and there was no comfort I could give that would consol her. There were times that it took days to bring her back to normal and then he would arrive for that short visit or the weekend and once again starting the whole process over again. He was the love of her life even though I had chosen not to keep him as my own. I had to explain away his absence; I had to keep to myself his inability to work with me for the best interest of the children. I had to hold my feelings in. I had to explain to her that he did love her even though some days it just didn’t feel right.
Some days there was no consoling her I had no answers that would help to heal a broken heart. I could have told her I know how you feel but those words were no consolidation as the tears flowed and the words “he doesn’t love me” came crashing through.
I spent a week with the first man I ever loved, we sat and enjoyed the children, and we reminisced of old times in the cinderblock hotel long since torn down. We spoke of mutual desires and promises of more visits just like these. I look at his now weathered and wrinkled face; his weak frame supported by a walker, his grey hair all scruffy and tried to remember that man of my dreams in his youth as he would dance me and my mother around the room. I try to imagine life if he had never left me behind. Behind his blue eyes are all the answers to my questions but once again I just let them lay.
Sometimes it just takes time and maturity to understand the reasons why. I still don’t imagine I could handle them even though so much time has now passed.
Sometimes we never find the answers but we do come to the place where it is easier to just not poke at it any longer.
I was given a story about how later, many years from this moment I would understand why he had to go, why he chose this path. He left me standing there wondering what I did to cause him to leave, he said I would understand, it wasn’t my fault; that is just how it goes. I stood there feeling the blood drain from my body leaving me with a numb helpless aura and wondering if I ever would.
I had been a part of the arguments, a part of the late night whispers, and a part of the absence that had come to be longer and longer each month. I sensed that something was not right but no matter how hard I wanted the answer to come it would not show itself to me.
As girls we fall in love the first time with the man of our dreams. He is our ideal. He is tall and handsome and can in just a moments notice sweep you right off your feet, placing kisses and hugs where there is desire. I have never lost the desire to curl up on his lap and feel his arms wrapped tightly around me. I have never lost that comforting feeling as I breathed in wonderful musty aroma in the crook of his neck or felt on my nose the stubble of his unshaven beard. I have never lost the desire to be his “baby girl”, the one he loves unconditionally. As girls we pattern our behaviors and our criteria for all that follow after this one man, our first and only love. We look for him in our dreams and we wish for him our every desire to come and capture our hearts. He will be as tall and handsome, romantic and charming as our first love.
Then we grow, we mature and we make mistakes and we look back.
I searched in vain for that man. I searched for the answers and to this day have never found what I still ponder each day. Why? I don’t know, and quite honestly I don’t think I will ever find the answer. Frankly, I don’t know if I could handle it if I did know the answers, if they came to me now I am not sure I could take the truth. I want to just let it lie quietly and never poke it again. I don’t, I have never just let things go, I take everything to heart. Bad trait to develop when trying to just hang on.
I grow, I marry, I create masterpieces in the form of children that look just like him and after many years I wake up and repeat the pattern. Not once but several times.
I watched as my daughter felt the same way as I had when my first love drove away. She is a daddy’s girl. Their weekend visits were marred by the upheaval, the display of emotional meltdown that she felt when having to return back to me. She would spend each Wednesday night midweek in his company for a dinner and homework hour. When she returned I would see the immediate tears as they began to well up in her big green eyes. I knew that she would cry each time her father would drop her off and there was no comfort I could give that would consol her. There were times that it took days to bring her back to normal and then he would arrive for that short visit or the weekend and once again starting the whole process over again. He was the love of her life even though I had chosen not to keep him as my own. I had to explain away his absence; I had to keep to myself his inability to work with me for the best interest of the children. I had to hold my feelings in. I had to explain to her that he did love her even though some days it just didn’t feel right.
Some days there was no consoling her I had no answers that would help to heal a broken heart. I could have told her I know how you feel but those words were no consolidation as the tears flowed and the words “he doesn’t love me” came crashing through.
I spent a week with the first man I ever loved, we sat and enjoyed the children, and we reminisced of old times in the cinderblock hotel long since torn down. We spoke of mutual desires and promises of more visits just like these. I look at his now weathered and wrinkled face; his weak frame supported by a walker, his grey hair all scruffy and tried to remember that man of my dreams in his youth as he would dance me and my mother around the room. I try to imagine life if he had never left me behind. Behind his blue eyes are all the answers to my questions but once again I just let them lay.
Sometimes it just takes time and maturity to understand the reasons why. I still don’t imagine I could handle them even though so much time has now passed.
Sometimes we never find the answers but we do come to the place where it is easier to just not poke at it any longer.