To my high school boyfriend,
I toasted you a few nights ago, six days after graduation, all by myself with a shot of Chocolate Baileyās. I raised the tiny glass, dotted with Tweety Birds, gave a sardonic smirk and downed the whole thing in one gulp. Itās getting easier to do that now. The very idea seemed so wrong, just six months ago. Now the burn is virtually non-existent. It tastes smooth running down my throat, just like you wouldāve, given time.
I toasted you because I really would have loved you. I would have sent you cute messages with minutiae about my day, dedicated myself to making you laugh, held you, kissed you, been there for you through anything, given you my all. I would have loved you, I promise.
But I do not think that I ever deserved you. In those cold, lonely evenings, moving myself to the idea of you wanting me more than anyone else, I often wondered whether I was worthy of worship, worthy of a single red rose or steady gestures of support, comforting (and occasionally wandering) hands, guiding me from stormy sea to depthless surface. I wondered often whether I was being punished for wantingā¦ not guidance, not someone to tell me what to do - but stability, a pair of arms to rest myself between. Punished for not being sure I could be the same for you.
And itās all very well to wonder, I suppose. Someday, Iāll find out whether I know how to earn love, but it wonāt be with you. Hands will grasp, mine and his, searching, discovering, and I will map unchartered terrain in my heart in the meeting of someone elseās, someone who is clearly not you. I hope someday to find a path parallel to someone elseās, to travel with someone on the wavelength we never discovered.
I will take you with me into the rest of my life. In recollections of first kisses, you will be there, looking at me with that sad, disappointed look. In stories of wild, winding parties, everyone else will dance the dance eternal, and I will drive home, alone. In memories of weddings and barmitzvahs, funerals and consecrations, you will sit in the background, letting me pass without a hand to hold. But the nights will be what I remember most; taking myself to the ends without you, wondering when you would come and turn Solitaire into Double Klondike.
I owe you a debt of gratitude, I suppose; I learned somewhere along the way that doing the things you have to do is more important than waiting on the world to change. That love and acceptance are not static, that they must be earned every day, and that they must first and foremost be given to yourself. That there are so many stories to tell, that we have so little time to sit around and wait for them to write themselves.
It was hard not to hate you at first. To blame you, to blame myself, to blame others. But your deficiencies are not the fault of anyone but circumstance. Time has turned, and the winds of fate have made their judgement; we were not to have our happy ending. Our happy ending comes later, in the midst of adulthood, past the tepid swirl of adolescence, and hand in hand with other men. Our happy ending is yet to be earned, yet to be written.
A dream is a wish that your heart makes, high school boyfriend. But having faith in your dreams, and waiting for a rainbow to come smiling through, is not enough. Chase your dreams. Search for love. Search for answers. Tell your story, loud and clear, from the rooftops.
I wish you had a name, high school boyfriend. I wish you had hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions - I wished for you every night for four years. I donāt quite know what to make of the fact that you never came. On one hand, I feel like I missed out on something special. On another, I feel like I learned to love myself before trying to learn how to love someone else.
So far, you've been the best thing I never had. Maybe tomorrow, I'll be toasting to chartered territory. But for now, I toast to you, high school boyfriend, forever full of wasted potential.
