Memories
Sometimes I find myself just wanting to write about things from the past, things that made a huge impact in my life. And today as I read over a comment I made recently that held some writing I had done previously I decided that I would very much like to write about the part of my life in which it happened.
Warning, this is very long and filled with my version of the first time I fell in love. Read only if you really really want to.
When I was 16 I was a very quiet reserved girl. I was in my Junior year of high school and I knew where I fit. I was a girl who was not well liked, I was at the bottom of the social scene. I am sure that everyone knows how the social structure in their school goes. In mine there were the Jocks, Preps, and the Popular people up at the top, then the Drama Geeks made up the middle and then near the bottom but not quite there, somehow living in their own little area were the other people, the goths, the punks, those people who were tough enough that people left them alone, but strange enough that they didn't fit anywhere else. Then very close to the bottom were the nerdy losers, and at the very bottom was me and my friend. I suppose we could have been called nerdy losers, but outcasts fit much better. I did have other friends who usually ranked higher than me, but I was there at the bottom and I knew it.
It wasn't so bad, and it had improved from junior high. In junior high I had been sexually harassed, touched in inapporopriate ways in the hallway, and life had been a living hell. But with high school things had improved. I was still picked on, I was still teased mercilessly, but most of the worst things had stopped.
In my junior year of high school things were pretty good. I had finished my foreign language classes and thus was able to take the things that I really wanted to take, Art classes, Choir, creative arts. I loved creating things, I loved singing, and I had made it into the Chamber Choir of my school, which was wonderful.
Life was decent and I had settled into my regular routine. I drove now, so after school my friend Lexi and I would wait for the after school rush to end and then we would head out. I hated sitting in the traffic jam that happened every day, and I could afford to wait a few more minutes till it was gone. So there we were sitting, reading and watching the cars go by, waiting for the line to dissappear so that we could head home as well. The school was always slightly magical at these times, everything was empty and things were quiet and the light would drift lazily through the windows.
It was at this time that a boy approached us and walked up to me and held out a key to me. I thought I recognized him from some where, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I looked at the key, not quite willing to take it from him quite yet until I knew what he was up to. It was an old antique skeleton key, the kind you might find at an antique shop. I looked up at him and asked, "What is it?" I don't know exactly what I meant with the question, whether I meant what did he want or what was he offering me, but his answer left me feeling slightly lacking in some way. "It's a key." was his reply. I took the key from him and then without another word he walked off.
I was highly confused. Who in the world was this boy and what did he want? I thought more about him and realized he was in my math class, I knew he was a senior and that he was quite good looking. He had long hair, almost as long as mine, it was almost an auburn, not quite blonde, not quite red, not quite brown but something somewhere in between them all, and yet when the sun hit his hair it shone. In general I mostly ignored him, he was an older boy who really had nothing to do with me and probably had no idea of who or what I even was. And yet this strange meeting of ours had peaked my curiousity and had gained my attention. And so I started to watch him. It took me some time, before I got up the courage to approach him, I learned that he sat in the lunch room in the mornings, I learned where his locker was, I started to watch his habits and then one day after school, while everyone else was busy getting their stuff from their lockers I approached him and asked him about the key, why did he give it to me? He looked at me and asked me a question in return, "Have you ever dreamed of something so intensely that it feels like you are in a waking dream?" I chuckled as I thought of my life, my world that was full of imaginings, and dreams and fantasy that seemed so real that it sometimes spilled into the real world. "Sometimes too often" I responded. He looked at the key, which at this point was hanging from my neck on a necklace and said, "That is the reason." Then he gathered his books and walked away.
He had left me more confused than ever, I had no idea of his intentions with the key, I had no idea what he even wanted from me. But he had gained my attention and now I could not stop thinking of him. A little while later he gave me a poem, written in flowing handwriting and illuminated with flowing designs. It was incredibly written in a free verse style that caused me to lose my breath. At that point in my life I knew quite a bit about poetry, I was a language nut and loved the play of language that poetry was so good at, however for myself I had only tried rhyming iambic pentameter and other form poems. I had not yet hit the point where I had started to experiment with verse. I sent him back a poem of mine, one I had written a little while previously, he commented on it in a note he sent me and I didn't quite know how to respond.
At this point the time was approaching a dance, Turnabout (known other places as Sadie Hawkins, MORP and other such things, but the premise is this, the girl asks the guy to the dance). And so I decided to ask him to go to the dance with me. I talked things over with my Mom who was at the time my confidant on everything, she suggested I give him a key in return as one of his poems mentioned a key and he had started our strange relationship with the gift of a key. So I found another antique skeleton key and on the day I planned to ask him out I hurried to school with it.
It was a snowy slushy day in early February and as I hurried toward the door I slipped and fell. When I got up I realized that the front of my pants were soaked, mainly from mid-thigh down. I couldn't believe my luck, but I hurried on to the lunch room where I usually passed the mornings till school started with my friends. After settling myself I prayed that my pants would dry quickly. Eventually they did begin to dry and by the time he walked in and made for his locker they were mostly dry. I knew this was my chance and I knew that I had to act, so I got up and followed him to his locker. Once there I undid the ball chain necklace that I was wearing and took off the key I had brought for him. When I went to refasten the necklace I had a terrible time of it because I was shaking so badly from nervousness that the clasp kept jumping away from each other. Finally it fell together and I slid it closed then looked at him and asked him with as steady of a voice as I could make it, "Is this the key you are looking for?" He took the key from my hand and said, "It might just be." I then asked him if he would go to the dance with me, and he said yes. I felt so happy, I turned and walked back to the lunch room where I sat trying to regain my breath and composure. Eventually it came back.
The dance was still a few weeks away and in the meantime he and I started communicating more and more. He and I started hanging out together and on Valentines day I gave him the gift of a braided lock of my hair made into a bookmark as well as my claddagh, which is an Irish wedding ring. He gave me his and we both wore them around our necks. It was at that time that we actually started dating.
Everything from that point just sort of blends into snips and pieces that I remember individually. Our first real date ended in us parked at the end of a dead end street with the car headlights shining into the forest a head of us, we sat and talked and talked and talked until it was time to go, and then we discovered that the car battery had died and we needed a jump. Luckily we were close to his house and so we walked over and called my parents and asked for a jump. I remember him saying as my parents pulled up, "they are never going to believe that we were just sitting talking."
We began exchanging notes, poems, writings to each other. He would draw me pictures or paint things for me. I began to learn that the poems he wrote for me often had many meanings and when I missed the meaning he often seemed to be hurt by it. I started to learn that everything seemed to hold some sort of meaning to him.
My friends, the ones that were a little above me in the schools social ranking thought that this was an incredible thing. Here I was the lowest of the low in our class dating the guy who had been the Homecoming King that year. In their eyes here I was the most unpopular girl in our class dating the most popular guy in the Senior class. They tried to get me to put them in a good light, to gain all of us some popularity, but I was not interested in that. I was too busy falling head over heels in love with him.
My mom began asking me on a regular basis whether we had kissed yet, and every time I told her no, which was true. Then one night he came over and we watched "The Princess Bride" during which we kissed for the first time. That night I told my mom that we had finally kissed, she had been following my relationship so avidly that I thought she would be happy for me, or something. However, I was not expecting what did happen. Rules of all sorts sudden started showing up. It was strange for me because I had told them, trusted them when I had told my parents that we had kissed. And they sat me down, like I had done something very bad, and laid down rules like they were punishments. Suddenly I couldn't do so many things, and I felt restrained, restricted. I started to lose my trust of my parents.
John (for that was my boyfriend's name) and I kept dating. Our dates often consisted of walks out in nature, or drives in the car. He loved driving and we would often drive for hours just talking about things. He took me all over the forests around his house, and would tell me about different things he had done.
Once he took me out into the marshlands around his home, it was summer time and he told me to make sure to step where he stepped so that I wouldn't fall in the water or get stuck in mud. We walked and walked until we finally came to a little stream, once there he sat down and we talked for a little bit. He told me that the stream was a natural stream that came up nearby and flowed all year round and because it was so busy and swift it flowed even in the winter even during the coldest times when everything else had frozen over. After awhile of sitting there he asked me to name the stream, so that we could use the name later in notes or letters or phone calls to each other. This way, he said, we could just refer to it by name and we would both know instantly what we were talking about.
So I sat there and listened to the stream, I knew that if I named it just anything that he would be dissapointed in me. It felt almost like a test and so I did the only thing I figured I could do. I listened. I sat and listened to the stream and waited for it to tell me its name, for I had decided that the only name that would work would be a name that the stream chose for itself. And so I sat and listened and listened and the stream burbled merrily and he grew more and more impatient until he finally said, "Nevermind, let's just go." but I stopped him and said, "Just a little longer, please." And he gave in and let me listen longer and finally there within the burbles I heard it, almost as if the stream had opened some little liquid mouth and said its name aloud, "Riesiel".
I told him the name, just as I had heard it from the stream. It sounded almost French the way I pronounced it and when he tried to wrap his mouth around it he got the prnounciation wrong, so I had him repeat it till he got it right. Then he asked me, "Where did you get that name, where did you hear it from?" And I looked up at him and said, "Nowhere, the stream told me its name." The look he gave me was odd, almost as if he couldn't believe the stream had talked to me and not him. And yet, he accepted my answer and we left the stream behind. As we walked away he asked me to protect the stream, he said, "If I ever go away make sure it stays safe and that no one destroys it." I promised but knew I had no way to keep such a promise.
Ironically we never returned to the stream together again. He never used the name and we started to fracture before I returned to Riesiel again.
At the time I was working for a library as a page, I shelved the books in the children's area. I remember one night I was shelfing books and he came to visit me. It was so good to see him and after work we sat around and talked. We eventually had to leave the library parking lot because they didn't want us just sitting around and talking so we went down to the nearby train station and just sat and talked. Later I wrote a poem about him visiting me and tied it into the book I was working on at the time. He seemed happy that I had written a poem for him.
At one point he gave me a bracelet, it was a four in one european chain mail strand (which I did not know at the time) I just knew that I loved it and so I wore it all the time, unfortunately the clasp kept breaking and so when he offered to attach it to me I agreed. It wasn't permanent but it was close. He himself wore a chain bracelet which had pretty much been attached almost permanently. For some reason when he first gave it to me he asked me to hide it from the art teacher, but later he said it didn't matter. I wore the bracelet quite a while after we had broken up, and for years after I got married.
He claimed to be a blacksmith, he was teaching himself how to make things. The chainmail was just one of them, he was planning on trying to make himself a curtain from chainmail, I don't know if it ever worked but I thought it was a great idea. He said he could make daggers from railroad stakes and once took me walking on an old abandoned railway line looking for loose stakes and rail plates. He told me that he would love to have a piece of rail to use as an anvil, but it would be so hard to get a piece.
We finally went to the dance together and it was wonderful. He gave me a piece of his family plaid and I wore it in my hair. We watched Braveheart together and for his birthday I gave him a crosstiched Scottish Rose (Thistle) set up much like a hankerchief.
We talked about many different subjects, but one we came back to again and again was religion. He was a devout Catholic and I was of course a devout Mormon. He had a lot to say about why my church was wrong and why his was right. It worried my parents quite a bit and that made things even worse between my parents, my boyfriend and me.
Things were going well between us, but I kept worrying, worrying that I was saying the wrong thing, worrying that he was upset with me. He would say hurtful little things every so often, not obviously hurtful just enough that I would know and hurt. I don't even know if he did it on purpose or not, but it seemed like he did. Over time my behavior around him changed, I grew sad, morose almost and I didn't act quite like myself. He started trying to get out of the relationship, but I had fallen completely for him and the thought of losing him seemed to tear my heart from my chest.
We went to the Prom together, but at that point things were falling apart already. He went off and danced with some other girls at the dance and I sat in a corner and waited. He did dance with me that night but things felt strained between us.
He wanted me to stand up for myself around him but I didn't want to offend him and lose him. I remember talking to him on the phone and he wanting me to get angry at him and just hang up or something. But I never could.
Things got worse, I however did not want things to end, I had already lost my heart to him and did not want to have things break off. He started to make tapes for me, tapes where he had written things all over the tape. I knew he was trying to tell me something with the tapes but I couldn't quite piece together what. I think I still have them sitting around, they held a lot of good music. One day he took me to a local concert that a friend of his was playing at, after the concert we drove a little ways and then parked in the parking lot of a McDonalds and talked. He spoke of breaking up and eventually talked me into accepting it.
Shortly there after the school year ended. And though John and I still talked or called each other sometimes we really didn't do much together. As summer began I decided to go on a summer long trip to Iowa, to get away from Illinois, to get away from my parents and to get away from John. It just hurt too much to be so close to him and yet be unable to still be together with him. We both agreed to write to each other and I went off to Iowa to live with my grandparents.
Before I left he gave me a book, and a little letter to read only when I really needed to. When I got out to Iowa I slept in my grandparents basement on a cot (I had asked them if I could do so), at nights I often cried myself to sleep because I still missed John so much. I looked for employment and as I waited to find something I spent my free time doing other things. I spent a certain amount of time per day writing letters. I wrote all my friends letters as well as my family. And I wrote him letters, not one every day but over the summer I wrote him three letters.
I went walking along an old abandoned rail road I found. I gathered railroad spikes and plates and even found an abandoned piece of rail that I tried unsuccessfully to hacksaw through. I wandered a lot that summer, and saw so many things. Eventually I got a job as a corn detassler, which was very hard work. Finally in August a few weeks before I was about to return to IL I got my first letter from John, I was so excited and I sat down imediately to write him a response. As I started it I wondered if I should date it, in wondering I glanced at his letter and noticed that it was dated one day before I had left for Iowa. I dont know if it was misdated but I felt myself grow cold at the sight. I wrote him a response and sent it out. But something had changed in me. I had finally started to get over him.
When I returned from Iowa I wrote him a poem and sent it to him. The poem was not the nicest poem but it was how I felt about everything. He called me up. I gave him short and curt answers over the phone and he finally asked me if Iowa was cold, and I told him "no, why?" "Because that is how you have returned." was his answer. "I am sorry you feel that way." was my response, the phone call ended shortly thereafter with him asking if he could come over to drop something off and pick up the book he had lent me. I said sure and got the book ready for him. When he came by he handed me a manila envelope and took his book. I took the envelope and said "Thank you" as he walked away. I didn't think it would be the last time I would see him. As I walked back inside I held the envelope and realized what was inside it. My family was in the living room as I walked in and they asked, "What is it?" I sat down and said numbly "It's everything I ever gave him" I hadn't even opened it.
I took the envelope and went downstairs to my room where I cried until I couldn't cry any more, I had no more tears left. I felt numb inside, as if a part of me had died and would never live again. As I sat there looking at the world from eyes that held no feeling what so ever I knew I had to do something while I still had the chance. So I took the envelope and I took sheet protectors and I put everything he had given me and everything I had given him and put it all down in a binder in chronological order. Then I filed that binder away. I still have it.
About a week or so later I got a letter in the mail from him, asking me if I would be willing to go on a walk with him, just a walk to talk and see how we both were. I wanted to go, I wanted to go so very badly, and yet I listened to my parents and did not go, I did not respond. I never heard from him again. I spent years looking for him, just curious to see what has happened with him, where his life has gone. Recently I have found him listed online and have thought about sending him an e-mail. But I have held back, not sure of myself even now.
The next year of high school around the fall time when the plants had begun to die and the little marsh around where John lived was easy to wander through without a guide, I brought a guy friend of mine with me to Riesiel. To share the little stream with someone else and to see her once again. On our way back to the car from the stream he and I kissed. It was the begining of a new relationship for me. Yet, when I returned home I told my parents nothing.
Warning, this is very long and filled with my version of the first time I fell in love. Read only if you really really want to.
When I was 16 I was a very quiet reserved girl. I was in my Junior year of high school and I knew where I fit. I was a girl who was not well liked, I was at the bottom of the social scene. I am sure that everyone knows how the social structure in their school goes. In mine there were the Jocks, Preps, and the Popular people up at the top, then the Drama Geeks made up the middle and then near the bottom but not quite there, somehow living in their own little area were the other people, the goths, the punks, those people who were tough enough that people left them alone, but strange enough that they didn't fit anywhere else. Then very close to the bottom were the nerdy losers, and at the very bottom was me and my friend. I suppose we could have been called nerdy losers, but outcasts fit much better. I did have other friends who usually ranked higher than me, but I was there at the bottom and I knew it.
It wasn't so bad, and it had improved from junior high. In junior high I had been sexually harassed, touched in inapporopriate ways in the hallway, and life had been a living hell. But with high school things had improved. I was still picked on, I was still teased mercilessly, but most of the worst things had stopped.
In my junior year of high school things were pretty good. I had finished my foreign language classes and thus was able to take the things that I really wanted to take, Art classes, Choir, creative arts. I loved creating things, I loved singing, and I had made it into the Chamber Choir of my school, which was wonderful.
Life was decent and I had settled into my regular routine. I drove now, so after school my friend Lexi and I would wait for the after school rush to end and then we would head out. I hated sitting in the traffic jam that happened every day, and I could afford to wait a few more minutes till it was gone. So there we were sitting, reading and watching the cars go by, waiting for the line to dissappear so that we could head home as well. The school was always slightly magical at these times, everything was empty and things were quiet and the light would drift lazily through the windows.
It was at this time that a boy approached us and walked up to me and held out a key to me. I thought I recognized him from some where, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I looked at the key, not quite willing to take it from him quite yet until I knew what he was up to. It was an old antique skeleton key, the kind you might find at an antique shop. I looked up at him and asked, "What is it?" I don't know exactly what I meant with the question, whether I meant what did he want or what was he offering me, but his answer left me feeling slightly lacking in some way. "It's a key." was his reply. I took the key from him and then without another word he walked off.
I was highly confused. Who in the world was this boy and what did he want? I thought more about him and realized he was in my math class, I knew he was a senior and that he was quite good looking. He had long hair, almost as long as mine, it was almost an auburn, not quite blonde, not quite red, not quite brown but something somewhere in between them all, and yet when the sun hit his hair it shone. In general I mostly ignored him, he was an older boy who really had nothing to do with me and probably had no idea of who or what I even was. And yet this strange meeting of ours had peaked my curiousity and had gained my attention. And so I started to watch him. It took me some time, before I got up the courage to approach him, I learned that he sat in the lunch room in the mornings, I learned where his locker was, I started to watch his habits and then one day after school, while everyone else was busy getting their stuff from their lockers I approached him and asked him about the key, why did he give it to me? He looked at me and asked me a question in return, "Have you ever dreamed of something so intensely that it feels like you are in a waking dream?" I chuckled as I thought of my life, my world that was full of imaginings, and dreams and fantasy that seemed so real that it sometimes spilled into the real world. "Sometimes too often" I responded. He looked at the key, which at this point was hanging from my neck on a necklace and said, "That is the reason." Then he gathered his books and walked away.
He had left me more confused than ever, I had no idea of his intentions with the key, I had no idea what he even wanted from me. But he had gained my attention and now I could not stop thinking of him. A little while later he gave me a poem, written in flowing handwriting and illuminated with flowing designs. It was incredibly written in a free verse style that caused me to lose my breath. At that point in my life I knew quite a bit about poetry, I was a language nut and loved the play of language that poetry was so good at, however for myself I had only tried rhyming iambic pentameter and other form poems. I had not yet hit the point where I had started to experiment with verse. I sent him back a poem of mine, one I had written a little while previously, he commented on it in a note he sent me and I didn't quite know how to respond.
At this point the time was approaching a dance, Turnabout (known other places as Sadie Hawkins, MORP and other such things, but the premise is this, the girl asks the guy to the dance). And so I decided to ask him to go to the dance with me. I talked things over with my Mom who was at the time my confidant on everything, she suggested I give him a key in return as one of his poems mentioned a key and he had started our strange relationship with the gift of a key. So I found another antique skeleton key and on the day I planned to ask him out I hurried to school with it.
It was a snowy slushy day in early February and as I hurried toward the door I slipped and fell. When I got up I realized that the front of my pants were soaked, mainly from mid-thigh down. I couldn't believe my luck, but I hurried on to the lunch room where I usually passed the mornings till school started with my friends. After settling myself I prayed that my pants would dry quickly. Eventually they did begin to dry and by the time he walked in and made for his locker they were mostly dry. I knew this was my chance and I knew that I had to act, so I got up and followed him to his locker. Once there I undid the ball chain necklace that I was wearing and took off the key I had brought for him. When I went to refasten the necklace I had a terrible time of it because I was shaking so badly from nervousness that the clasp kept jumping away from each other. Finally it fell together and I slid it closed then looked at him and asked him with as steady of a voice as I could make it, "Is this the key you are looking for?" He took the key from my hand and said, "It might just be." I then asked him if he would go to the dance with me, and he said yes. I felt so happy, I turned and walked back to the lunch room where I sat trying to regain my breath and composure. Eventually it came back.
The dance was still a few weeks away and in the meantime he and I started communicating more and more. He and I started hanging out together and on Valentines day I gave him the gift of a braided lock of my hair made into a bookmark as well as my claddagh, which is an Irish wedding ring. He gave me his and we both wore them around our necks. It was at that time that we actually started dating.
Everything from that point just sort of blends into snips and pieces that I remember individually. Our first real date ended in us parked at the end of a dead end street with the car headlights shining into the forest a head of us, we sat and talked and talked and talked until it was time to go, and then we discovered that the car battery had died and we needed a jump. Luckily we were close to his house and so we walked over and called my parents and asked for a jump. I remember him saying as my parents pulled up, "they are never going to believe that we were just sitting talking."
We began exchanging notes, poems, writings to each other. He would draw me pictures or paint things for me. I began to learn that the poems he wrote for me often had many meanings and when I missed the meaning he often seemed to be hurt by it. I started to learn that everything seemed to hold some sort of meaning to him.
My friends, the ones that were a little above me in the schools social ranking thought that this was an incredible thing. Here I was the lowest of the low in our class dating the guy who had been the Homecoming King that year. In their eyes here I was the most unpopular girl in our class dating the most popular guy in the Senior class. They tried to get me to put them in a good light, to gain all of us some popularity, but I was not interested in that. I was too busy falling head over heels in love with him.
My mom began asking me on a regular basis whether we had kissed yet, and every time I told her no, which was true. Then one night he came over and we watched "The Princess Bride" during which we kissed for the first time. That night I told my mom that we had finally kissed, she had been following my relationship so avidly that I thought she would be happy for me, or something. However, I was not expecting what did happen. Rules of all sorts sudden started showing up. It was strange for me because I had told them, trusted them when I had told my parents that we had kissed. And they sat me down, like I had done something very bad, and laid down rules like they were punishments. Suddenly I couldn't do so many things, and I felt restrained, restricted. I started to lose my trust of my parents.
John (for that was my boyfriend's name) and I kept dating. Our dates often consisted of walks out in nature, or drives in the car. He loved driving and we would often drive for hours just talking about things. He took me all over the forests around his house, and would tell me about different things he had done.
Once he took me out into the marshlands around his home, it was summer time and he told me to make sure to step where he stepped so that I wouldn't fall in the water or get stuck in mud. We walked and walked until we finally came to a little stream, once there he sat down and we talked for a little bit. He told me that the stream was a natural stream that came up nearby and flowed all year round and because it was so busy and swift it flowed even in the winter even during the coldest times when everything else had frozen over. After awhile of sitting there he asked me to name the stream, so that we could use the name later in notes or letters or phone calls to each other. This way, he said, we could just refer to it by name and we would both know instantly what we were talking about.
So I sat there and listened to the stream, I knew that if I named it just anything that he would be dissapointed in me. It felt almost like a test and so I did the only thing I figured I could do. I listened. I sat and listened to the stream and waited for it to tell me its name, for I had decided that the only name that would work would be a name that the stream chose for itself. And so I sat and listened and listened and the stream burbled merrily and he grew more and more impatient until he finally said, "Nevermind, let's just go." but I stopped him and said, "Just a little longer, please." And he gave in and let me listen longer and finally there within the burbles I heard it, almost as if the stream had opened some little liquid mouth and said its name aloud, "Riesiel".
I told him the name, just as I had heard it from the stream. It sounded almost French the way I pronounced it and when he tried to wrap his mouth around it he got the prnounciation wrong, so I had him repeat it till he got it right. Then he asked me, "Where did you get that name, where did you hear it from?" And I looked up at him and said, "Nowhere, the stream told me its name." The look he gave me was odd, almost as if he couldn't believe the stream had talked to me and not him. And yet, he accepted my answer and we left the stream behind. As we walked away he asked me to protect the stream, he said, "If I ever go away make sure it stays safe and that no one destroys it." I promised but knew I had no way to keep such a promise.
Ironically we never returned to the stream together again. He never used the name and we started to fracture before I returned to Riesiel again.
At the time I was working for a library as a page, I shelved the books in the children's area. I remember one night I was shelfing books and he came to visit me. It was so good to see him and after work we sat around and talked. We eventually had to leave the library parking lot because they didn't want us just sitting around and talking so we went down to the nearby train station and just sat and talked. Later I wrote a poem about him visiting me and tied it into the book I was working on at the time. He seemed happy that I had written a poem for him.
At one point he gave me a bracelet, it was a four in one european chain mail strand (which I did not know at the time) I just knew that I loved it and so I wore it all the time, unfortunately the clasp kept breaking and so when he offered to attach it to me I agreed. It wasn't permanent but it was close. He himself wore a chain bracelet which had pretty much been attached almost permanently. For some reason when he first gave it to me he asked me to hide it from the art teacher, but later he said it didn't matter. I wore the bracelet quite a while after we had broken up, and for years after I got married.
He claimed to be a blacksmith, he was teaching himself how to make things. The chainmail was just one of them, he was planning on trying to make himself a curtain from chainmail, I don't know if it ever worked but I thought it was a great idea. He said he could make daggers from railroad stakes and once took me walking on an old abandoned railway line looking for loose stakes and rail plates. He told me that he would love to have a piece of rail to use as an anvil, but it would be so hard to get a piece.
We finally went to the dance together and it was wonderful. He gave me a piece of his family plaid and I wore it in my hair. We watched Braveheart together and for his birthday I gave him a crosstiched Scottish Rose (Thistle) set up much like a hankerchief.
We talked about many different subjects, but one we came back to again and again was religion. He was a devout Catholic and I was of course a devout Mormon. He had a lot to say about why my church was wrong and why his was right. It worried my parents quite a bit and that made things even worse between my parents, my boyfriend and me.
Things were going well between us, but I kept worrying, worrying that I was saying the wrong thing, worrying that he was upset with me. He would say hurtful little things every so often, not obviously hurtful just enough that I would know and hurt. I don't even know if he did it on purpose or not, but it seemed like he did. Over time my behavior around him changed, I grew sad, morose almost and I didn't act quite like myself. He started trying to get out of the relationship, but I had fallen completely for him and the thought of losing him seemed to tear my heart from my chest.
We went to the Prom together, but at that point things were falling apart already. He went off and danced with some other girls at the dance and I sat in a corner and waited. He did dance with me that night but things felt strained between us.
He wanted me to stand up for myself around him but I didn't want to offend him and lose him. I remember talking to him on the phone and he wanting me to get angry at him and just hang up or something. But I never could.
Things got worse, I however did not want things to end, I had already lost my heart to him and did not want to have things break off. He started to make tapes for me, tapes where he had written things all over the tape. I knew he was trying to tell me something with the tapes but I couldn't quite piece together what. I think I still have them sitting around, they held a lot of good music. One day he took me to a local concert that a friend of his was playing at, after the concert we drove a little ways and then parked in the parking lot of a McDonalds and talked. He spoke of breaking up and eventually talked me into accepting it.
Shortly there after the school year ended. And though John and I still talked or called each other sometimes we really didn't do much together. As summer began I decided to go on a summer long trip to Iowa, to get away from Illinois, to get away from my parents and to get away from John. It just hurt too much to be so close to him and yet be unable to still be together with him. We both agreed to write to each other and I went off to Iowa to live with my grandparents.
Before I left he gave me a book, and a little letter to read only when I really needed to. When I got out to Iowa I slept in my grandparents basement on a cot (I had asked them if I could do so), at nights I often cried myself to sleep because I still missed John so much. I looked for employment and as I waited to find something I spent my free time doing other things. I spent a certain amount of time per day writing letters. I wrote all my friends letters as well as my family. And I wrote him letters, not one every day but over the summer I wrote him three letters.
I went walking along an old abandoned rail road I found. I gathered railroad spikes and plates and even found an abandoned piece of rail that I tried unsuccessfully to hacksaw through. I wandered a lot that summer, and saw so many things. Eventually I got a job as a corn detassler, which was very hard work. Finally in August a few weeks before I was about to return to IL I got my first letter from John, I was so excited and I sat down imediately to write him a response. As I started it I wondered if I should date it, in wondering I glanced at his letter and noticed that it was dated one day before I had left for Iowa. I dont know if it was misdated but I felt myself grow cold at the sight. I wrote him a response and sent it out. But something had changed in me. I had finally started to get over him.
When I returned from Iowa I wrote him a poem and sent it to him. The poem was not the nicest poem but it was how I felt about everything. He called me up. I gave him short and curt answers over the phone and he finally asked me if Iowa was cold, and I told him "no, why?" "Because that is how you have returned." was his answer. "I am sorry you feel that way." was my response, the phone call ended shortly thereafter with him asking if he could come over to drop something off and pick up the book he had lent me. I said sure and got the book ready for him. When he came by he handed me a manila envelope and took his book. I took the envelope and said "Thank you" as he walked away. I didn't think it would be the last time I would see him. As I walked back inside I held the envelope and realized what was inside it. My family was in the living room as I walked in and they asked, "What is it?" I sat down and said numbly "It's everything I ever gave him" I hadn't even opened it.
I took the envelope and went downstairs to my room where I cried until I couldn't cry any more, I had no more tears left. I felt numb inside, as if a part of me had died and would never live again. As I sat there looking at the world from eyes that held no feeling what so ever I knew I had to do something while I still had the chance. So I took the envelope and I took sheet protectors and I put everything he had given me and everything I had given him and put it all down in a binder in chronological order. Then I filed that binder away. I still have it.
About a week or so later I got a letter in the mail from him, asking me if I would be willing to go on a walk with him, just a walk to talk and see how we both were. I wanted to go, I wanted to go so very badly, and yet I listened to my parents and did not go, I did not respond. I never heard from him again. I spent years looking for him, just curious to see what has happened with him, where his life has gone. Recently I have found him listed online and have thought about sending him an e-mail. But I have held back, not sure of myself even now.
The next year of high school around the fall time when the plants had begun to die and the little marsh around where John lived was easy to wander through without a guide, I brought a guy friend of mine with me to Riesiel. To share the little stream with someone else and to see her once again. On our way back to the car from the stream he and I kissed. It was the begining of a new relationship for me. Yet, when I returned home I told my parents nothing.