Mom would always tell me that boys were a complete waste of time, and I agreed with her given the fact, I never had an experience with boys in the way she meant it. But here I was, still standing up in a crowd full of nearly 1,000 sitting people just to see a boy more clearly. I couldn’t focus on the embarrassment. I was in a daze, my eyes desperately trying to find the tall boy I was introduced to not too long ago. After a while it hit me, I had been staring at the back of my mystery boy, standing in front of everyone making a complete fool of myself the whole time. “Sit down, you’re acting weird” I heard my mom scowl at me.

Lunch passed and I spent the whole time saying “uh-huh” to all my friends so they would think I was listening. Obviously, they realized and left me to my search. My eyes grazed over the numerous heads and faces, no sign of the mystery boy. After the bible verses had been read, the spiritual experiences shared, and the beautiful hymns sung, the day had finally come to its end. The traditional stop at Golden Corral wasn’t the same as before. Is this what mom talked about? “Boys are distracting so you don’t need that until you’re older.” Maybe she’s right.
The weeks passed and I decided to take out any memory of my masked Romeo out of my mind, hoping to leave no trace of him there. The effort would soon be for nothing. Sunday morning, I woke up, a weird knot with complex twists and turns furiously appeared in my stomach. It was like butterflies, only they were holding guns shooting their way out…intense.

As we approached the doors of the Kingdom Halls, my hands started to tremble like a pastor praying for forgiveness before the end came. Cold sweat forming at my brow and all with no reason. As soon as the big, green doors opened I froze at the sight of two familiar brown eyes.. Before I could blink twice, a month had passed and we had already known each other closer than our own parents were probably at. We spent time together, mall, movies, and parks. Our families grew closer and we all just hung out as one huge family. We shared the same feelings and agreed to not take any action upon them yet. He was mine and I was his. It was perfect…well, that’s what my blindness lead me to believe.

Behind the smiles and laughter, was a world that wasn’t mine. There was a side to him that destroyed everything. “Why didn’t you talk to me? You have to do this for me. Don’t talk to them anymore. Don’t wear that again. Throw that book away.” I had a case of the beautiful-guys-who-turn-out-to-be-life-controllers disease, and I had it bad. Our daily conversations consisted of the norm. “Hello.” “Hey.” “What’s up?” “Not much.” Then, the daily argument began. Every day was a constant cycle of happy mornings and angrily slamming doors after I said “Night!”

I didn’t want to see the effect it had on my life, I was blinded by the small good things that were there. “You know, maybe we should try to stop arguing every day.” It was something I said that changed everything for good. My world of joy that I was so used to, turned dark like a plague entering a healthy human body. The arguing got worse, to the point where he brought my family into it.

He passed a line, and I was going to end it. I didn’t like how he demanded me to tell my mom who she couldn’t be with, I wouldn’t let him make my cousins think they did something wrong every time we got into an argument. But, most of all, I would not let him, mold me into a sad girl anymore. I told him off and sent him away. His attempts for forgiveness were good, I won’t lie they were very convincing, but as much as it hurt me to tell him goodbye, I had to.

I watched as three years of trust and building a steady friendship crumbled, I watched three years of joy go down the drain. I saw three years of me being stupid and blind and immature. But that was me, that was life and I didn’t regret not one moment of it.

For the last two year, I’ve put up walls around my heart, and let some down. The fences on my eyes that were once there finally came down and I saw the reality of things. The world is cruel full of cruel people with cruel minds, but somewhere in there is a diamond in the rough, and in the midst of all the tears and all the pain, we’ll find that diamond, right now, we simply have to live the life we have ahead of us.

With or without our fenced eyes.