This Is a post that should've been written ages ago, but I never had the balls to do so. Few things in my past trip me up like the subject of my first love. Next month will be 13 years since she left (I still can't bring myself to use the 'D' word in reference to her), and it feels...weird. almost like it was longer and more recent than that, if that makes sense. My progress in these past 13 years has been very touch and go. For the longest time, I felt like I had to punish myself for not being there for her when she needed me the most, and for a good, long while, I did. A friend of mine runs a number of support groups and asked me to speak to hid bereavement group about how to get through a loss. I don't care for public speaking so my initial thought was to turn it down. But it's a smaller group and I'm thinking maybe it would do me some good to help out. For that reason, I decided it was time to delve into the gory details and write this long overdue post.
I was extremely blessed to have crossed paths with Ms. Ramirez, almost twenty years ago. We were kids, blissfully unaware of what we were getting into. I was complete infatuated with her from the start too. She was just magic to me and we understood each other in this weird and wondrous way. She loved art of all kinds and planned to make it her career someday. She loved to read and pick my brain on the most random things. I've always been inherently curious about the world around me, but she challenged me to question things. She was my best friend. But everyone has flaws and I wasn't blind to hers. She had a rough family life and some of that had an effect on her that she had not yet learned how to deal with. We never had a minor, silly little argument, all of our fights were major and loud and ugly. But we always recovered. The teenage years are rough though and that eventually caught up to us. After four years of being mostly together, we had a blowout that threatened not just the relationship, but the friendship that we valued so much. We'd broken up before but it was always temporary and our friendship always remained intact. Sometimes we made better friends than lovers, but the chemistry was just ridiculous and always led us back to each other. After graduation (and the nasty fight), we mutually agreed to take a break. The decision was helped by the fact that we were going to different colleges, but that didn't make it any easier. This was someone I'd loved for four years and still did love. We'd planned out our entire lives together, down to the colors on the walls of the house we'd live in someday. The break was a hard pill to swallow for me and I coped by signing up to head overseas with friends for the summer, anything to get away from being by myself. She dealt with it differently, jumping into a relationship with the first dude she met after the split, who turned out to be a total dick. Still, they lasted for awhile and that stirred up so many emotions in me, but convinced me I needed to move on.
I was extremely blessed to have crossed paths with Ms. Ramirez, almost twenty years ago. We were kids, blissfully unaware of what we were getting into. I was complete infatuated with her from the start too. She was just magic to me and we understood each other in this weird and wondrous way. She loved art of all kinds and planned to make it her career someday. She loved to read and pick my brain on the most random things. I've always been inherently curious about the world around me, but she challenged me to question things. She was my best friend. But everyone has flaws and I wasn't blind to hers. She had a rough family life and some of that had an effect on her that she had not yet learned how to deal with. We never had a minor, silly little argument, all of our fights were major and loud and ugly. But we always recovered. The teenage years are rough though and that eventually caught up to us. After four years of being mostly together, we had a blowout that threatened not just the relationship, but the friendship that we valued so much. We'd broken up before but it was always temporary and our friendship always remained intact. Sometimes we made better friends than lovers, but the chemistry was just ridiculous and always led us back to each other. After graduation (and the nasty fight), we mutually agreed to take a break. The decision was helped by the fact that we were going to different colleges, but that didn't make it any easier. This was someone I'd loved for four years and still did love. We'd planned out our entire lives together, down to the colors on the walls of the house we'd live in someday. The break was a hard pill to swallow for me and I coped by signing up to head overseas with friends for the summer, anything to get away from being by myself. She dealt with it differently, jumping into a relationship with the first dude she met after the split, who turned out to be a total dick. Still, they lasted for awhile and that stirred up so many emotions in me, but convinced me I needed to move on.
I was still nursing a broken heart when I met R, one of my better exes, during my time abroad. She was everything my first love wasn't. She was a stunner, three years my senior and out of school, had her life together, knew what she wanted for her future - and she was in a longterm relationship with someone else. They'd been together for five years and it was assumed by all that they'd get married someday, and probably soon. I met the guy on two occasions and thought he was great, which irked me because I really liked her. Within a few weeks, she'd broken it off with him and we started dating, which I felt a slight twinge of guilt about at the time but I ignored it (years later, it would really trouble me that we'd come together in such a way). We fell into something great pretty quickly and continued it long after I came back to the States. My friendship with Ms. Ramirez was also doing well, though it was obviously somewhat strained since we both saw each other with new people. Things went along this way for awhile and I got serious with R, while the first love continued on with her jerk of a boyfriend. She'd tell me of her troubles with him and I'd get annoyed because she deserved so much better and because I still cared about her immensely. Then, everything took a major turn when she and I began working on a project together that required a lot of late nights and tedious hours. R was fantastic about this, never once doubting that I would be faithful or even questioning what was happening during our long sessions, but then I never really gave her reason to. After a few weeks of working together, those old feelings began to creep in and both Ms. Ramirez and I began to see each other in a romantic light once again. But we were both taken, so we put it on the back burner and tried to ignore it. Spoiler alert: It didn't work. The more time we spent, the more the feelings took hold, until we came very close to kissing late one evening. We stopped ourselves but it was obvious we couldn't ignore it anymore and needed to make some tough decisions. I told her I wouldn't fight or be a part of drama anymore, so if things were going to be the way they were, I was going to stay with R. Did I love her? In a way, yes, not like I did Ms. Ramirez, but at least it was something stable with potential. She said it wouldn't be like before, that she'd learned how to cope and deal with things without always escalating them and if I gave her another chance, she'd never let me go again. I don't know why I believed her, maybe I saw the change in her, but I agreed we should get back together. I told R I wasn't happy and an argument ensued. I'd hoped to get out of it with minimal damage, ignoring the irony in the fact that she'd broken someone's heart on a whim for me and now I was doing the same to her (sidenote: This circle was completed years later when a woman I was dating left me to go back to her ex). But she would have none of it and I finally had to tell her the truth, as well as be brutally honest about how I could probably settle down with her and have kids and all that, but my heart would never truly be in it. I could see myself having a comfortable, vanilla life with her, but not the kind of life I wanted. We ended up splitting somewhat amicably and Ms. Ramirez and I jumped back into our relationship full force. But it was different this time, more respectful, more loving, more mature. We were now in our twenties and closer than ever to all the future things we'd talked about. I adored her. Adored isn't even a strong enough word, really. We just fit and it was working and it was beautiful and even then I felt so fortunate to be a part of it.
Of course, nothing gold can stay and Ms. Ramirez and my relationship was not exempt from this rule. Unbeknownst to us, the world was about to come crashing down. We spent another year together and it was without question our best year out of the seven that we had. I was so happy and I couldn't help but say it all the damn time, which she said annoyed her but secretly loved to hear. The plan was for us to move in together full-time after we graduated college, but we never made it that far. Our birthdays fell within days of each other and she always made such a big deal over that. In that last year, she'd had a long planned trip with friends that would have us apart on our actual birthdays, so we went to lunch before she left. The next day I dropped her off at the airport and she told me she loved me and would call when she landed. That was the last time I ever saw her. We talked over the next five or so days and she left a voicemail on my birthday that I still have to this day. I will never be able to bring myself to erase it and I have it emblazoned on my brain for all eternity. I know her tone, I know every word, I've analyzed the thing over and over again. Because that was the last time I ever heard her voice. Those were the last words she spoke to me. Because of time differences and country differences, we couldn't quite speak as much as we would've liked and didn't get a chance to over the next few days. It was three days after my birthday when she and her friends were on their way home from a party and somebody ran a red light and smashed into the car. Supposedly, it was instant. She was the only fatality.
As has been discussed, I shut down completely and the month after both accidents is a blur because of my own near-death and the parts of my memories that it robbed me of. Also extensively discussed here are the dark ages and the alcohol and drug use and the PTSD and the brain damage and etc, etc, etc. I'm a fucking mess at almost 34, but it's nothing compared to what a mess I was at, say, 24, so that's a little victory in and of itself. I spent years having nightmares about her, wishing and believing I could've done something to save her. I spent years applying band-aids to my emotional wounds, mostly in the form of one woman or another who would make me feel normal for awhile but always, inevitably and unavoidably, leave. I wasn't trying to replace her, I was trying to replicate the feelings she'd given me. I was convinced I wouldn't live to see 30 and I didn't really mind that because at least then I wouldn't be thinking about her and feeling guilty all the time. The dreams though...those were probably one of the worst parts. One recurring dream has always been about her calling for me and it's like an anguished cry, and I can't get to her. It's like I'm being blocked. It crushes me every time I have it. Another one was about my own demise, beginning with me sleeping in bed and then suddenly hovering over my own body and looking down on myself. In that moment, I know I'm dead and I can feel that loneliness and emptiness, this overwhelming sadness and, "Oh fuck" moment that must come with realizing it is game over. I feel cold too. And every time I wake up, the only thing on my mind is Ms. Ramirez and how she went through that terrible moment of realization. And that guts me.
So here we are nearly 13 years on, me having lived longer without her than I did with her, which still boggles the mind. I'm, for the most part, as healed as I'm ever going to be from the experience. I still love her, though I am not in love with her. It's funny how that works actually...falling out of love with her was just awful. I don't even know when it happened, perhaps I was on something at the time, but I know now that I cannot replace her or the feelings she gave me. Those are ours, and only ours, for the rest of this life I remain in. Still, she has a place in my heart that will always belong to only her. I think about her everyday. I miss her everyday. I miss our secrets and our talks and our plans and hopes and dreams. Everything was just ripped away in that instant, and it took me years to rebuild something that was only mine. And maybe that's why I can't keep shit together now, because I'm afraid to build with someone else. That person could be taken away just as quickly, just as violently. And knowing the strength it took to rebuild once, I can confidently say I could never do that again. I barely - barely - survived one loss of that nature and it's a miracle that my sanity and optimism are still intact. Some days...even thirteen years later, are just too much to take. Some days I just want to stay under the covers and hunker down and forget about life because it all hits me at once and I remember her and us and the end and the time after. I wish she was here to experience so many things, even small day-to-day things. And maybe all of this is what I should say to this bereavement group. I wish someone had told me that it never gets easier and that you will always have bad days, though there will come a time when not everyday is one of the bad days. I wish I'd been told that you shouldn't feel guilty for being alive and for feeling something for other people, even for falling in love with other people. You're not unworthy of happiness just because the person you always wanted to be happy with is gone. Remember the good things, not the unhappy ending. Heal and move on but never forget that person. It's odd when you're the boyfriend/girlfriend of someone who passes because you're not considered "widowed" since there was no marriage or official lifelong commitment. But it certainly feels that way sometimes. Just because we didn't get to the marriage part doesn't mean I was any less committed to spending my life with her. I just wish we'd been granted the privilege of a long, happy life together before death did us part.
