Loneliness

We weren't a good match.  We don't like the same things anymore.  I'm too quiet and bookish and he's a social butterfly -- funny, earnest, talented and good-looking.

When we were little we'd play games, lots of imaginative little fantasies that I came up with on the spot and he'd snatch up like a precious treasure.  We'd be pirates or sky-sailors or living in a city that floated miles above the ground.  Sometimes we'd fight or bicker, usually because he was being mean to his little sister -- but she was my friend, too.  Sometimes I'd feel guilty because I was hogging him from his other friends.

We just couldn't help it, I guess.  We had so much fun together!  It didn't matter where, we'd figure it out.  We'd see who could throw apples with the most accuracy or who could run up the slide best.  I almost always won, not because I was athletic by any means but because I was an inch taller.  I'd always tease him about that.  Sometimes he'd actually get upset and I'd feel SO guilty!

Then, one day when we were five, he asked me to sneak out and see him when the sun went down.  We'd done it before.  I didn't think anything of it.  We always had so much fun during the day that we didn't want to stop when darkness came.

That night was different.  With all the seriousness and innocence of a five-year-old, he told me he liked me and that he wanted to marry me someday.  He assured me he knew we were too young and asked if at least we could be each other's first date when we were old enough (sixteen) and then we could see where it went from there.  I was so shocked and rather pleased and I told him I liked him too.  I promised him he would be my first date.  He gave me a necklace with sand art he'd done himself in preschool and a couple of marbles to seal the deal (after apologizing he didn't have a ring.)  How silly it all was!

After that, we were both aware we liked the other, but come on -- we were just two tiny kids.  The next day he announced (quite proudly) to one of my older brothers that one day we'd be boyfriend and girlfriend.  I was so embarrassed!  I hadn't wanted anyone to know!

I remember one night we went to a concert his parents had arranged and the lady performing pulled me out of the audience and sat me on a stool in front of everyone.  She said she had some questions for me and she'd give me a penny for each one I answered.

I think she asked my name, and my age, maybe even my favorite color.  I don't know.  I just remember her asking me if there was a boy I liked.  I admitted there was, but I did so very reluctantly; I didn't want anyone to know, and now I was sitting in front of what seemed an immense audience with a microphone held in front of my lips.  She asked me if I could tell her what his name was.  "No," I mumbled.  She persisted.  So, finally I said it.  I remember my cheeks being hot.

She gave me three pennies for answering that question.

But time has a way of changing things that we sometimes wish wouldn't change.  I almost forgot about the night he'd confessed to me.  I forgot that he was the boy I liked.  He was just a friend again, but we still played games, often at the neighbors because they were fun and they had dogs for us to dote on.  AND they had the treehouse.  Our little clubhouse.

I can't remember if we started fixing it up before or after sixth grade, but that treehouse became our project.  We enthusiastically discussed plans to paint the inside and how we'd have to prime it first.  It ended up blue and green with little sponged on splotches of white, although we'd wanted to do a forest scene -- none of us had the skill.  All that time I was convinced he was "just a friend."

It's funny how things are clearer in hindsight, right?  Now I realize how I'd feel a little lonely and jealous when his sister would tell me she thought he had a crush on someone at school.  I'd get disappointed when she'd join us at the treehouse so it wasn't just him and me anymore. I'd feel warmth spread through my stomach and chest if he smiled at me.

I was so excited when we were finally going to the same school!  He came over to my house to compare schedules.  He came to see me just to know if we'd have classes together!  It thrilled me.  We didn't have hardly any the same, but we just laughed it off.  No big deal.  We still were next-door neighbors, right?

The times at the treehouse were some of the best.  Once we'd finally finished painting it -- I'd ruined a jacket, a pair of shoes, and two t-shirts in the process -- we hauled in one of my sets of plastic drawers, bought lights at the dollar store, and stocked it with paper and coloring pencils and whatever odds and ends we thought would be fun to have up there.

The ghost stories!!  One night he, his sister, and I all got up to tell stories, taking it in turns to hold the light under our faces as we did.  I went last, telling them my own spin on a story I'd heard from my mother.  At one point I'd tilted my head to one side to stretch out my neck and he shuddered -- "Don't do that, Hannah!" he exclaimed.  "That's so creepy!"

I'd laughed so hard it was hard to finish the tale.  By the time I was done, however, we were all too scared to walk back to our houses in the dark.  I ended up walking him and his sister home!

The best times of all, however, was when it rained.  I loved the rain and I'd wander about in it for hours, but my feet always led me to his driveway, where he would come out and talk to me for as long as I'd be there, even though he insisted he hated being wet.  Sometimes I'd find him already waiting for me, playing basketball and drenched through.  We talked about trivial things, sometimes, and at times we delved into subjects with more depth and insight.  I loved every moment of it.

But it all changed beginning of seventh grade.  You see, in all of those years I'd never seen him cry.  Not even when we were three.  I'd cried, his sister had cried, but not him.

Two of the boys he considered friends were cruel to him that day.  We all got off at the same bus stop and I yelled at them when I heard what they were saying to him.  I was like a bomb when someone hurt my friends.  Let them bully me instead.

The two boys left for their own houses.  He went down his driveway with his head hanging lower than usual.  I dropped my stuff off then hightailed it to his place to make sure he was okay.  He wasnt'; he was sitting on the porch swing crying.  He was crying.

I felt so helpless.  I've never known how to help people when they're upset.  I didn't know how to make him feel better!  I felt like crying then, too.  I went home with more rage than I'd ever felt before.  I wanted to hurt those boys back so bad they'd never bother him again...!  I wanted them to pay for what they'd said.

I don't even remember what they said.  I just remember the anger and wondering why I felt so torn up inside just from seeing him cry.

I remember waking in the middle of the night with his face in my mind and realizing why.  I loved him.  I didn't just like him, I cared for him with a depth and intensity I didn't know how to handle.  And, just like that, my perfect little world was shattered.

I didn't know how to talk to him after that.  I became self-concious and awkward and I'd forgotten what "being normal" was.  How did I used to speak to him?  How should I act?  He had his friends, and I...I had my cowardice.  After that, every second spent alone with him was a secret treasure.  Every bit of attention he paid me made hurt and eagerness and hope tug relentlessy in my belly.

I was really excited when he invited me to his birthday party, but I felt so out of place there with all of his socially capable, popular friends who'd never paid me any mind.  Still, he made me laugh; he sucked all the helium out of a balloon and sang Justin Beiber's "Baby."  The idiot.  Yet it was a sort of bittersweet feeling to watch him having so much fun with the other kids, and I couldn't seem to work up the courage to steal some of that attention for myself.

Then again, in eighth grade, when I was over to do something with his sister I found myself alone with him in the kitchen.  We talked as we hadn't done in ages.  I don't know how the conversation turned to it, but he managed to get me to tell him about how I'd been tormented relentlessly at school by a group of boys.  His gold eyes looked much darker than usual and he told me in a taut voice if any of them ever did it again to let him know and he'd beat them up for me.

Just those few words got me through a lot.  I should have told him how much it meant to me.

I never even admitted I had someone I felt that way for until ninth grade.  I think part of me was still trying to deny my own feelings.  Even then, it took me the better part of the year to tell my best friend the name of the boy I cared for so deeply.  By the time we started sophomore year we were pretty much strangers.  I watched over him from a distance, convinced of my on inferiority and wishing I'd not let that friendship fade.

We really didn't have anything in common anymore.  How do you rekindle a friendship, after all, when you're so drastically different from each other?  Friends have told me not to give up.  Now that he's gone for a couple of years, they've tried to get me to write him.  They've rooted for me even though they liked the same boy I've been in love with this whole time!

I don't know what to say.  Part of me would rather forget everything he means to me, but after all, how do you get over someone you've loved for -- for sixteen years now?  Because I've loved him since I first knew him.  No, not romantically maybe, but he's always been the only boy important to me.  I loved him as a three-year-old loves and those emotions have grown up with me.  As much as I'd like to say I don't, I still love him.

We still aren't a good match.

It's lonely.