Everyone remember their first love. Either with fondness or regret, they roll their eyes and exclaim “ I was such an idiot then ! “. Love is something constantly spoken of, a feeling about which there are endless ideas and philosophies. Nothing garners more theories than romantic love, thus, first loves are remembered, stored into the collection of experiences that concoct a life. Often recalled with fond regrets and deprecating shame of naivete they cause smiles and tears. The first love was the first to see that special glint of romantic value in  you, the first to kiss you, the first to say “ I love you “ without obligation. The first person whose demeanor changed drastically at the sight of you, and likewise the first person who caused shifts of bittersweet weakness to claim you. Love is indeed a many splendored thing whose first touch makes of everyone a poet.But love is also a teacher. Love teaches us about ourselves, about relationships to others. Indeed, what is a relationship between two people but a degree of love or the absence of it ?  I believe having multiple experiences with love causes people to realize that love is infinite and that heartbreak is not. The broken heart may mend, but the guarded heart will never grow. A heart is not meant to be a solitary tower  but a busy city. Hearts are made for the traffic of many lips and arms and eyes, many perhaps poorly penned but sincere words. To guard a heart is to defeat its purpose.  Besides, truly guarding your heart is impossible. Love is a sneaky rogue, placing its tendrils while you  are yet unaware anything is happening. We should be glad love begins this way, because its end is never so easy. Slowly the waves of turmoil eat away the rock of love. Some debris shored when he was too invested in the game cuz dammit they better win this time so she went drinking with the girls and vented about how he obviously doesn't have time for her. It goes on until the rock has withered to a sad residue, an impression of the majesty it used to be. Sometimes the rock of love  explodes in one fell swoop, with the fall of a few words or the discovery of a secret. Seething and simmering, those explosions leave behind  the worst burns. Eventually though the lava cools, and a new stronger rock is forged on the foundations of the ruin left behind, like the earth has always done before and will always do in the future. Life continues. Life,as is so often said, goes on. Life may  even improves upon itself. That’s why first loves are so important. They begin the cycle, lay the cornerstone. They begin the eternal, ever volatile process of building maturity. For only when you have  loved  another above yourself can you say that you are an adult. You must first know what it is to sacrifice yourself freely, not because of family ties or because it is expected, to know the secret of life. What lasts forever is memory so if you do not leave behind a good one in the minds of others anything else accomplished is secondary. And the key to human interaction is love. We like to think every child is born to loving hands. A mentor, a sage, a parent, a person who offers advice and unconditional love. But for some of us thats not true. Sometimes, the love is so misguided indifference would have been healthier. Sometimes there is no love, only resentment and anger. To those children, love is a fight.  They recognize from the start that love is not freely given but something earned. Regardless of background, first loves mature people in ways simple loves from childhood cannot, First love is conditional, based on trust and an understanding of fallibility. For the unconditionally loved child,it’s a foreign concept and maturing process. For the battered, world weary it’s a freeing novel experience. A rebirth,another shot at emotion. An affirmation of worth because after all if someone loves you you must be worth something. I am one of those. My first love was not only the first person to make me feel as if I was walking on air, not only the first person to give me forelsket. He was the first to consider my words and give them credence. The first to learn who I was and value me. My first love taught me how to feel. And he taught me that feelings were nothing to be ashamed of.

Fall 2011

I had been 14 for almost one month. I had 3 suicide attempts, 4 years of depression, and a lifetime of high- octane moments behind me. But that was in the past, a long dark period just ending. I was about to leap into a new chapter. Life felt like it was suspended in time. In short, I was  a bored girl ready for passion.It was a hot  day, like every day in South Florida, and I was walking my old black labrador  retriever with my sister.  The morning had been spent like most other mornings: waking up to do nothing, laying around doing nothing, going back to sleep reflecting on doing nothing. My mother had insisted we take the dog or “ she’d put us in a school “, a threat I secretly wished was more than exaggeration. And so we ventured out on a walk on that hot October afternoon not knowing that every step brought me closer to  my new reason to live. We came upon them in the neighborhood park, a place that would eventually become sacred ground. There were three of them; boys, nothing particularly special about them. I heard them tittering amongst themselves looking at us. I could feel the sun eating us all in its heat and causing little rivers of nervousness to raise on my skin. At that point in life,  a past  and present of isolated homeschooling had left me severely lacking in social skills. So I focused on the ground, brilliant greenery side by side with worn asphalt made cobalt black in the sun. “ Hey “ he said, and in his voice I heard all of my nervousness multiplied  tenfold. I did not raise my head, I did not look at him, I made no sign that I had heard him except to stop walking and watch my left toe collide with my right. I said hello while studying the flowers above my feet.  He told me his name was Alex and he asked if I came there often. I told him my name and that  I did when I wanted to escape. By then I had established that the flowers were meant to be white but their color was perverted with dirt, that they had only four petals, and that they did not make talking easy. We began to chat, making small talk like I’d heard the people in my church do. I learned the bare details of his life, and he learned the bare details of mine. That was the only time we ever spoke of daily life, for after the conversation had concluded and I finally looked at him, I saw in his eyes a person made for questions. To call them blue was an insult. In every ring of color there seemed to be so much life, so many wanderings. It was as if his eyes were the  moon itself, luminous and bright.  In an instant I saw a years worth of memories yet to be made under the shade of secrecy. I don’t know what he saw when he finally looked into my eyes. Did he see me for what I was, broken and waiting for the final piece ? Much, much later he told me he saw the soul of someone who was not meant for life but for magic. In that moment  of recognition we agreed without words that tomorrow we would meet again.

And we did. This time without his friends, this time without my sister or my dog. We met at the same time, same place. Still being eaten by the sun and held by the grass,he sat six inches away from me and told me of his ideal society and I told him of mine. After an hour of whiling away the time in possibilities, I bid him farewell without a backward glance, but an aching  need to do so. For the next month we continued to meet like that: without promising to do so but never missing a day. Every word we ever spoke was measured and thought  through to every possibility as carefully as if our lives depended on it. And in a way, they did. I began living for those afternoons in the sun with him. I felt like the only time I was alive was when I stopped action to think about why I lived. Reality, the reason for existence, the genesis of morals, the natural rights, the purpose of breathing, nothing was too sacred a topic for us to discuss. Most often it was god. I was a convinced atheist; my ultra religious background awash with indoctrination made sure of that. But he was not. He believed  god was a positive energy found in every human, or that god was a force which set the world in motion but did not interfere with it. He was uncertain of the nuances of god, and I was intrigued by the idea of a god other than Jesus Christ, so we constantly spoke of the supernatural. Not always however; there were days dedicated to lightness, days filled with banter and jokes. We found in each other someone to share the search for meaning with but also someone to make light of it with. Eventually the hour in the afternoon became too little for what was becoming in us both more than friendship. However I didn’t ever even dream of introducing him to my parents and dating him like my peers were doing. My parents identify as  Independent Fundamental Southern Baptists and so they believe in God’s providence providing a mate through the parents’ pick.The solution was to meet again only this time under cover of darkness. So it came to be on a chilly night in November I slipped out the door off my room onto the patio and made my way down the street in the first warnings of moonlight. With every step I could feel my heart pound and my blood congeal. For the first time I felt like I was living life and not letting life move me. For the first time I knew what it was to take my fate in my hands. Something primal, something elemental, something maybe even spiritual claimed my soul and I was born again washed in the unforgiving mystery  of night. I know now that that was because it was the first time I walked away from my life unsure of whether I would return. The moment a person is unsure of whether or not they will  live the life they were born to is the moment they are  fully independent. They are irrevocably changed from that moment on.Daunted by the challenges they will give up or they will embrace the journey to a new life. I knew every time my feet touched the pavement that I was doing the latter. When I arrived at the park, our usual rendezvous, he sat his traditional six inches away from me. We talked like always, saying words I don’t remember because they were unimportant. The important thing was that he was there, that I was there, and that no one knew. Both of us felt an  overwhelming need to be closer to the other but neither of us wanted to be the first to move. As the night progressed it became even more obvious that we were ignoring  what really needed to be discussed. Finally the tension became unbearable and I bid him farewell. But I did not get far. The lot across from the park was empty and undeveloped and as  I walked past it I stopped to admire the beauty of the woods and I heard Alex call words which were engraved in my heart even as he spoke them : “ Jenna wait up ! “. He began to run toward me, so quickly it seemed that he was swimming in a grey pool of moondust.I smiled quizzically feeling the light in my teeth and glinting in my hair because I saw its reflection  in his beautiful eyes.  “ What is it ?”  I asked.   “ Those are palm fronds” he said weakly when he reached me.
” I see “
“ Here let me show you more its crazy back here “ he said taking my hand. I allowed him to lead me further into the little sylvan pocket  half heartedly listening to his babbling about trees. The woods seemed to disappear, all I could look at was my hand in his.His so much larger, but oh so warm, so safe. And mine , totally enveloped in his, already quite white but somehow become even snowier in  dark contrast to the sky. His words drifted away in a breeze and there was nothing but the two of us held in  timeless silence. Slowly his hands traveled along my veins until his hands met in the small of my back pushing me forward softly so that I could feel his lips resting on my temple. He opened  them and I felt more than heard him say that he thought he was in love with me.It was then that I realized my hands were somehow cupping his face. Shivers, not of fear, or of cold, or of excitement, but of pleasure grabbed at my shoulders and swept down to my toes as he began kissing my face, causing him to hold me tighter. And then he found my lips. The words of Oscar Wilde began to spin in my head: lips made not only for the madness of music and song but the madness of kissing. For indeed kissing is the most sublime madness. It is something utterly beyond words, for kissing is what happens when words become superfluous. There was fire there was ice there was knowledge of dancing and laying still, thousands of lovers in thousands of lives gone before us honored.His lips tasted like happiness and excitement, like freedom. His lips tasted like the beginning of a new life.  After, the kiss broken only by my need to breathe, I nestled my head close to his ear kissed his skin and whispered that I was in love with him.