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So many boys, whose shadows I followed through the grim valleys and dramatic peaks of adolescence, wanting more than anything for them to turn towards me and bathe me in their light.
I remember her fondly, but perhaps more than anything I remember the person I became while I was with her. To know love is to know more of yourself. This is what keeps us returning to all that it promises us. We desire to know ourselves more, and for that to happen we need to be seen.
When I was younger, I made the mistake of thinking love was a matter of being chosen; that romantic love was the only kind that had the capacity to profoundly change our lives, and that in this sense it was the only kind that mattered.
Grief is a rushing river that in time delivers us to the sea. We never escape it, but soon enough the rapids give way to gentle waves. In that great body of water, we can see that we are part of something bigger. Call it heaven, if you like. Call it the universe. Call it magic. I choose to call it love.
It’s a terrible thing, this view we have as young girls that our real lives—our happy lives—are sitting just over the horizon, waiting for us to become small enough to fit into them.
He was a boy with soft features on the brink of being a man, and in that way it felt safe to let myself love him, to let my heart be broken by him, the way so many of us decide to when we are young and exploring edges over which we might fall.
This was how we fell in love with each other, in a way that felt simultaneously gentle and intense. We were like children, whispering our secrets into a tin can telephone, each clutching the receiver at our end of the string as we slept.
I liked that our friendship was being nurtured quietly and with intention, a fertile bed of soil in a secret garden being watered steadily each day while the roots of something magical took hold.
