Summer 2012

In the summer of 2012, I spoke the hardest words my voice had ever dared to shake out. Those words were goodbye. I had expected to say them. They are after all, what you say at the close of a visit. But, this was more than just a visit. It was more than friends saying so long. It was more than I’ll see you next time. It was more than a weekend of summer. It was us. We had collided into each other and as the hope of promise sparkled in the distance, summer gently told us to that it was time to say goodbye.

Your hands held mine. Your fingers lightly gripping, like how you hold sand as you watch it fall between your fingertips and I guess that’s what we were doing, watching each other slip from our fingertips. For a second my memory escaped back to how those very fingertips felt. Soft, against the small of my back.  A quick flash and then it was gone and I was back to standing in front of you.

Here we were, saying goodbye, trying to at least. We stood face to face in your garage, your eyes met mine and I looked away. I couldn’t look at you, I couldn’t do what I knew had to be done. I glanced back down at your fingers and remembered how each one looked as you traced the palm of my hand. All five of your finger tips in the palm of hand, branching out to trace each of my finger tips, up they traveled until the tips of your fingers pressed against mine. It was a habit you had formed over the past couple nights while we laid together, talking or not talking, sometimes, just breathing.

If I could just remember how to breathe right now.

I looked back up at you and all too quickly reality had surrounded me again. I was leaving Santa Monica today on my last day of summer vacation, headed back to Phoenix, back to teaching. Back to everything that wasn’t you. My two best friends quietly waited in the car, our entire weekend packed away in the trunk of my silver Lancer. But here, you and I stood. You slowly tracing over my fingers as you held on for an inevitable goodbye and me trying to figure out how I had gotten into this position. I wasn’t ready for you. I hadn’t been prepared. I didn’t know I would have to stand here and look you in the eye and turn my back on the best two nights I had ever known.

I looked up to you for guidance. Your brown eyes met mine and they were only filled with questions.

How do we do this?

But I didn’t have answers for you. I didn’t know how to put a close on us. How do you bring closure to someone who in a matter of days ignited something in you that you weren’t even aware of?

My lips parted to form words, to give you something to go off of, but I had nothing. I wasn’t ready, I needed more time and there wasn’t any. I wasn’t ready for goodbye.

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to how you slowly brushed my hair away right before you kissed me.

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to kissing you at all. The way your fingers tangled in my hair. To the way two of them would  press down against the side of my neck, while your thumb outlined my jaw, as you pulled me into you.

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to how you sometimes smiled right before your lips met mine. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to your smile. Or your laugh. Or us laughing together. Or how we made each other laugh. Hard. Constantly. To the point of having to cover our faces with pillows as to not wake anyone up. Because it was three in the morning and we hadn’t slept. We were too busy laughing. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to making you laugh so hard you kissed me, as if telling me thank you. I wasn’t ready to let go of you saying thank you.  

I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my back against your chest, your arm draped around my hip, your face in the curve of my neck. How do you say goodbye to something that fits together so perfectly?  How could I say goodbye to the feeling of safety that consumed me as I laid there next to you? Like nothing could possibly harm me in any way, shape, or form, ever, so long as I stayed there with you.

How could I say goodbye to the look in those gorgeous eyes that stared back at me right now? Forcing me to come back to reality. To the present.

This was happening. It had to. Summer was not going to wait on me to figure out how to tell you goodbye. It was ending and so were we.  I took a step forward and hugged you for one last time and breathed in a feeling of closeness I had never felt with anyone before. Then, I hoped that as I pulled away our lips would find each other one last time.

But they didn’t.

“Goodbye,” I said and I’m not sure if you responded to me. I could not have heard anything you said because at that moment everything I thought I knew came crashing down around me. I thought I knew you- you were a friend, that’s it. That I sometimes saw. Now and then. I thought I knew where I belonged- in Phoenix, teaching. I thought I knew who the closet people to me were- my best friends, who were waiting for me to take them back to Arizona, right now.

Get in the car, I told myself.

I turned around and sat in the driver’s seat suddenly, knowing nothing about myself and everything about you and how you made me feel. You were so much more than a friend, I wasn’t sure when it happened, but it happened, I cared about you. I only wanted to be anywhere that you were- Arizona, California, anywhere; it didn’t matter where as long as you were there, and the closeness I felt to you outweighed anything I had ever felt before with anyone.

What was this? But, before I could answer my heart, you had walked away and I was starting the car and backing out of your garage and summer wasn’t waiting and neither was anyone else. Not on me. Not on you. Not on us.

 I sighed, loudly, because it was my only way to release this feeling I couldn’t shake: this feeling of losing complete control. You had me, in the palm of your hand and I scolded myself for it, but worse, I scolded myself for saying goodbye to the only person who had ever made my heart escape logic and my eyes smile.

“Shannon.”

“I don’t even know what’s going on.” I said flatly, avoiding Maria’s gaze. I wasn’t ready for anyone to know how you made me feel. I wasn’t even ready for how you made me feel.

“Did you kiss him goodbye?”

My head leaned against the head of my seat, “No.” I said, defeated. You had finally won. You had me. I wanted you to kiss me goodbye and you didn’t. You had kept the control and I had lost it completely.

“So what are you doing?” Maria squealed at me, “You know that’s all you’re going to be thinking about. Go!”

“What? I can’t…”

“GO!” Tara yelled from the backseat. “And hurry up.” She added as I put the car in park and flung my door open.

My feet hit the sidewalk and I ran to you, praying you hadn’t gone inside, praying the gate wasn’t locked. Praying there would be nothing that separated me from you. 

I turned the corner trying to remember if I had brought my cell phone with me in case I had to call you –my face pressed against white, metal, bars and I panicked. Had I missed my chance? Had I missed—And there you were. Just on the other side. You opened the gate and I fell into you, mimicking what my heart had done days ago.

“What are you doin’?” I could hear the smile in your voice.

And I kissed you. My hand reached around the back of your head and I pulled you to me. I closed my eyes in relief as your hands reached around my waist as though they had been waiting for me. My head spun and I didn’t know which direction I was facing or where I was going to end up, but I didn’t care, because I was with you and if I was with you, I was safe. I needed you to know that I was giving in. I had let go of control. You could have it or not have it I didn’t care anymore. Summer may have been ending, but this wasn’t over for me. Everything I had known had escaped me, but I did know, I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, not to you. Not yet. 

Memoir Chapter 1- Rough Draft

I was raised to believe I should never give up on anything. It was a long hard lesson to understand the difference between letting go and giving up, but I was raised to never quit, never surrender,  and to always pick myself up and keep going, no matter how hard I was knocked down. 

But, you can’t possibly stand up tall all of the time, so when I wanted to quit, when I couldn’t pick myself back up, when I felt knocked out, not knocked down…I called Dad and he always picked up, because he knew how he raised me was easier said than done. He knew that.

Dad was the best person to go to for advice. He listened, he understood, he was genuine. His advice could be brutal, but it always was accompanied by a quip, a quote, or an allusion to some song, movie, play, poem, a piece of history. I didn’t always come out of our conversations knowing what I was going to do, but I always learned something.  Sometimes about myself, sometimes about Julius Caesar, nonetheless, I needed those conversations, like I needed to stop crying over this guy who had done me wrong, which is exactly what my dad was trying to tell me when he said, “You know Ray Charles, right?”

I was in my early twenties, sitting in my apartment complex, alone. Crying over a boy…a man, technically, a boy, fundamentally. It wasn’t my first heartbreak, nor was it the first time I had cried over a boy. There had been plenty before him and I was sure there were more to come. There had to be because looking back, I had been crying over boys my whole life. There was Robin, a master tether ball player who moved away in the sixth grade. There was Clay, a green-eyed Mormon who had never taken notice of my four year crush on him, there were all five of The Backstreet Boys when I read the article in Teen Bop about the band breaking up. I had cried many a tear over boys, but this time, the tears were accompanied by the feeling of defeat. That’s what made this time different. The hopeless romantic in me was taking her last breaths of air, the young girl in me had begun to curse fairy-tales, and the young woman in me had given up.

“Listen to the song and cheer up. It’ll be OK and in a few months, I’m sure none of this will matter.” I knew I needed to just get over it, but it wasn’t as simple as just getting over someone, it wasn’t just the ending of a friendship or relationship. It was the concept of relationships and love in general. This had been the last break in a long string of disappointments, chained together with the rusty links of lies and let downs. I sniffled, wiped my nose, said goodnight to my dad and hung up the phone.

I didn’t know where I was going to go from here, but I sure knew a lot more about the biography of Ray Charles.

That was the night I gave up. My dad’s advice was to move on, forget; listen to Ray Charles. I did. I did listen to the song, multiple times, while teardrops fell down my face and I tried to figure out what my father’s message was to me, what Ray Charles’ message was to me. But, I had already chosen to stop trying to understand. I wasn’t heartbroken, I was defeated. The young woman in me had put her foot down, the little girl in me was pouting, and the hopeless romantic in me, well, she was missing in action. I was sure true love was a made up concept. A way to deny reality. A label. A crutch I believed I would either have to settle and call it love or never really find love at all.

I hit repeat on the YouTube video of Ray Charles and pulled my flowered quilt to my chin. I rolled my eyes at how this frilly linen had cost me ninety dollars and then rolled my eyes again at how stupid I was to still be listening to this song. I was tired of crying, it was time to stop and figure life out. Figure love out. My neck slowly tipped backwards and my head lightly hit my headboard and my eyes opened to the bumpy, white drywall above me. I took a deep breath and hit play again.

This was partly my fault. I knew that. These tears and pain were half, maybe even more than half my fault. Which was why I was so mad. I should have known better. Hadn’t I learned my lesson yet? I tried to trace back over my decisions, figure my way through the maze of how I ended up exactly where I sat now. My brain filed through ex-boyfriends, ex-lovers, ex-friends. There had to be someone, something to blame. A pin-point to where I could point and say “That. That’s where I messed up.” But, there wasn’t or there were too many and in the end, no matter how many times I hit replay, no matter how many times I closed and reopened my eyes, no matter how many times I told myself, “that’s enough,”  I was still  twenty-two, crying, alone in my bedroom. I had given up on trying to find an answer and simultaneously had given up on love. I slammed my laptop shut.

“Fuck you Ray Charles.”