Yeah, What do I miss.

[FromWhereYouAre]

I've never really been the type of person to express myself openly. At least, not with words. I'm an artist - so it makes sense to convey my feelings through a canvas, but to write them down and explain how I feel - that kind of thing isn't so easy.

 

The truth is I'm a scared little boy. I never had the opportunity to grow up, because the first real lesson I learned in life was loss. I had moved overseas to be with my mother and stepfather. I was alone, was the only American in my high school class (I was 15 at the time), and had very few friends. By chance, fate, or possibly even luck - I was befriended by someone who was beyond beautiful. I don't mean just physical beauty, I mean a free spirit - someone who was capable of feeling something unconditionally, and wasn't sorry for it.

 

Her name was Sandra.

 

Our friendship was amazing. If some award-winning writer could have made a story about us, it would have been a best-seller. Something that most men and women on our small, blue planet could have only dreamed of. We would skip school and hang out on the beach. She taught me to surf, she taught me how to draw, taught me how to see people for who they were, and not for who I wanted them to be. She taught me, in all essence of the word, how to be happy.

 

It was an eventual turn of events that our relationship became sexual in nature. I was a young man with raging hormones and I assume she felt the same. There was nothing in the world that I wouldn't have done for her. At the drop of a hat, I would have given my life if only to keep her smiling one more day.

 

The only thing in common this story, at least from here on out, probably shared with a best-selling novel is the advent of loss. I wasn't fortunate enough for us to break-up, I didn't have to move away and leave her on that small island in the Pacific. She became pregnant. And in her endless guilt, she took her own life.

 

There are nights when I close my eyes, and I feel bits of pieces. These bits and pieces form the outline of a person. From this outline, I remember smiles, kisses, hugs, stupid jokes that only the two of us shared. Things that other people would miss, like the way the sun hit her face at just the right angle. She died on a Wednesday. It was the first time I remember feeling that we're all mortal, we all die, and that its not fair.

 

It's been 10 years. And not a day goes by that I don't think of her, not a day goes by that I don't love her as much as I did the first time we kissed. I never imagined that the small things would mean so much to me.

 

I really just needed to let this out. This seemed like the place to do it. Ask and say what you want, I assume I have more I want to say - I just don't think I'm there yet.

[LikeCharlotte]

I also lost my first real boyfriend to suicide. I was 14 and it was 20 years ago. If you'd like to talk about it I am willing to share with you.