Yours Truly

The Moment I Knew

I remember the exact moment I knew. 

I was sitting in the back seat of that black Buick, you stood at the bottom of the wooden steps, we drove away. 

You waved and I waved back, but,

I was sad.

I was sad to go and I was sad to leave you. If I could've, I would've stayed there with you in your bottom unit of that condo where the turtle the size of a dinner plate never was found and where those lizards had a better chance of survival if they were never found by a toddler with a wooden net. 

With your big lipped fish ornaments and tiny faux Christmas tree. 

With your celebrity pool side appearances in funky hats. 

With your m&m cookies and attempted tennis lessons. 

With your exasperation at my short attention span. 

With my lost teeth and feeble tanning attempts, my lack of understanding of simple friendships.
Your back scratches and your stories that made me laugh even when I didn't understand them.
And your messy pomegranate eating. 

And even your head stand brace. 

And the way you talked to the parquets made me smile. 

When you're a kid there's so many firsts. 

You were one of those firsts. 

I watched you from the rear view window of the black buick lacrosse, I think you were wearing shorts. You had your hair in your usual way. The usual way it was before it all fell out, I mean. We waved goodbye to each other that day. My hand moved in the air but my heart felt the distance. You were right there but I was already sad for when you wouldn't be. 

Wise, my young heart. 

My heart had never yet felt that feeling before. Age is so fickle, I knew it back then, and the wrinkles across your face only spoke of the shortage of time. I was wise to acknowledge that that goodbye would one day be for good, and that I would be broken for it. 

That goodbye was the first crack in my heart. The break didn't come for several years after that. Even though the crack technically foretold a break, my heart was not yet wise enough to know what that meant.

Childhood is filled with many firsts but it is defined by the lasts. 

The day before that goodbye was the last day I lived without Time breathing down my neck. For better or for worse, I'll never again slow the beating of my heart to the day before that goodbye.
I'll never love again without a deadline in mind. 

They command us to live like it's your last day, but my childhood was when I didn't know the definition of loss.

Why, then, did my childhood have a higher capacity for love than my adulthood? 

They say that a broken heart can never truly be healed. 

I believe that is true. 

You were my first heart break,
and my last full hearted love. 

My first love,
my last childhood dream.

I used to look for signs of your presence everywhere. In a rainbow, in a dream. In a bug, even. 

I used to really believe you were there. 

It's been maybe 12 or 13 years since that first goodbye. 

I'm scared to say I've stopped looking. 

Maybe searching for you was the last essence of my childhood dreams living on. 

I'm 19 now, and I wasn't able to keep them alive. I'm not sure where you are. I'm not sure what happened to you. I'm not sure if I'll ever see you again. I'm not sure if I'm okay with that.

I think I even tried to kill my own childhood dreams. It gave me back an ounce of control as I grew to realize I had none. 

I still have dreams. I still have some of them. They are feeble.

Everything's so much easier when you're a child. Dreaming sure is.

But to ever dream like I did when I was a child, my heart would have to forget how it felt to be broken by saying goodbye to you. It's been 7 years next month. I haven't figured out how to do it. 

It's like, the moment I knew there would be a goodbye, I realized there were endings and failures and heart breaks. 

I still learn every day how to honor that goodbye. 

I guess childhood's a stubborn thing, even when on the surface, it acts fragile.