the summer i fell in love

everything was getting quite expensive. i spent a lot of my time counting change: toonies and loonies and quarters and all those canadian things. i felt like a kid, trying to gather loose pennies for the ice cream truck, but i loved when i had just enough to get myself a cold drink on a warm night.

too much hurt back then. too much held onto my ankles and chained me to my hometown, but i was learning to love a lot of what was around me. the old park near my house became a sanctuary again. on random days of the week, my best friend and i would go take our journals to write on the bench. we would even, sometimes, pray there. asking God to bring us signs and joy and hope. the field..so wide and green. somehow, i was older now, yet i enjoyed the swings like i was still my 8 year old self.

it felt good to love again, what i loved once before.

still though, i was running around too often, without knowing where i wanted to go, and little did i know, a lot of it would fall into my lap. God ran a lot of miracles my way that summer. from new beginnings, to allowing me to survive heartbreak, i was trying to honour the joy of simply getting by and learning to live again. by the end of it all, i would find all of those miracles began and ended with love.

it was joyous to meet someone so naturally. he fell into my little world and fit into it like the missing puzzle piece i didn’t know had even been missing. how silly and strange. how absurd, yet beautiful. how lucky, yet luck was not a part of our story at all. it was all the work of the divine (i loved knowing that. i loved knowing we were little chess pieces that belonged on the same board, next to one another. i loved that the stars rearranged themselves in order for us to bump into one another. i loved knowing that it was all planned before we even existed. we were calculated: perfectly, incomparably so).

a lot of that summer was overshadowed by him. as i walked down the streets of the town i grew up in, i suddenly saw everything through a blinding, bright lens. it glowed with his voice, with his presence. he made me love it all, somehow: this little town and little summer and more importantly, Love itself. i wasn’t ready for anything serious. in all honesty, i was hoping and planning to give up on love that year. with long declarations, i wanted it to stay far from me. but Love simply, and honourably, chooses you. Love seizes you on a random monday in the middle of july, and it does not bring you back to the ground, ever again, not the same anyways.

and i was changed!

i was different. suddenly, i loved so much! so hard! i loved the late nights and phone calls about God knows what, and i hated how bad i was at video games. i couldn’t pay attention to our tv show because all i wanted to do was look at him, and i never knew what was going on anyways. in those weeks, i really did begin to love God more and more. i was finding my faith for the first time in years and wow, i was learning of devotion. of gratitude. i was feeling a blessing unfold and seeing how dreams and prayers struck you, even on the harshest of hours, even when you had tried to ignore them. sometimes, i look back, and all i can think is this: God loved us enough to give us that time together. one single flip of a coin, and it was us. we really were the luckiest of all. two kids, or so i felt like we were still young, falling into a great fondness of one another. (i called it a “fondness” back then. i was too afraid to face that it could be anything more).

it was a beautiful time, it really was. the way something is beautiful only once. the way the light only strikes the kitchen with a blinding glow on a sunday morning and you don’t know whether to drink your orange juice or cry. in this case, i spent a lot of time crying. it was overwhelming to feel what we felt, and even more so, to think it may be returned and for it to have the potential to be lost in the end. in all honesty, i was terrified. the way you are only terrified as a kid. the way you are only terrified when you have something as beautiful as what i had, to lose.

it was a summer of adventures. of grand leaps of faith, of over-exposure to light, to love.

i spent a lot of time swimming with my friends and laughing about old heartache. my hair was growing and growing. my fingernails, i almost quit biting. i was grieving, too, but i wouldn’t show it enough. in reality, i couldn’t accept that it was my first summer no longer belonging to anyone. i hated the nights i spent alone. even more, i was afraid of getting used to them. but, mid july came and his entrance changed my aloneness. with him around, i existed in a world full of two’s. everything was better together. i loved when he’d join me on the phone. i loved the moments that the house echoed with our voices, not being able to pinpoint who was speaking and who’s smile was so loud it stretched through the world. i realized laughter didn’t stop when loss came your way. between it all, there were still endless moments of joy. my skin was getting caramel. i was chasing the moon! on car rides, i loved listening to “birds of a feather” with my friends and really, in all honesty, so quickly, i learned that i loved, loved, loved, every second with him.

he was sweet, but never too gentle. his hair was longer back then, his skin beautiful and brown. i miss the way he would say my name. how he would even spell it the wrong way when he was frustrated. never would he ever make anything feel calm. always, i felt it to the core. always, it took over me. always, i wanted it to be all of who i am. and for awhile, it was. i carried my love for him like a badge of honour. if anyone would ask, i would cradle his name like a prayer. move it back and forth into the light. hold it close to my heart, protect it, but i believed in it enough to share it out loud (at times). i wanted to stand on skyscrapers and spell his name out for them. i wanted to live in and spread the word of love, and i wanted so badly for everybody to know what it felt like. how beautiful it was to live at the same time as someone you cared for so deeply and get lucky enough to love them. really, in all its glory, i was on the cusp of a miracle. i was on the edge of a great love.

all i had to do was jump.

so, i did, because a love like that? it comes into your life with all hands open. it happens once, until it happens again, and that is only if you’re the luckiest, and really, i felt like the luckiest. my four leaf clover boy. my shooting star love. that summer, it was flaming. it was spreading like a wildfire. i would never forget it. i was inhaling smoking and thanking God for it. i was inside the beauty of love. at the centre of its core, and it was overcoming me. it really was all that was left of me, for awhile, and i loved it. i would not give it up.

i was holding on.

in august air, we stuck our tongue out at one another like playful children. on my walks, i’d call him and show him my little world and try to find places where we could create our own home, too. when the sun was beginning to get cut short, but the beauty of the slowness still lived, i really did realize i was in love. i was in love. i was in love with him! i wanted so badly to make him breakfast, and to braid his hair, and to learn the pronunciation of different words in his first language. i wanted to pinpoint where his hurt came from and how to overcome it, for him, and what to do when he grew frustrated. i wanted to know him in and out. upside down and right side up.

i wanted him and i. me and him. together and combined and melded into one.

in all of my dreams, we were electric. vibrant. so real and honest. both of us laid in wild fields. i imagined a world where our words formed and became one. where we held a secret means of communication that only belonged to us. really, i wanted everything to only belong to us: this world, the next, the flowers in the gardens near our homes. i was dreaming a lot that summer of what could have been and the life we could have had. i was dreaming so much, i almost forgot that not all dreams can come true.

i learned to love a man who did not want to necessarily be loved, and i learned that love did not always mean you would have what you wanted. i learned that i could love and love and love and that love would not always belong to me, not entirely. when it was felt for someone else, it had to live in-between the space that was kept between us. here, we were miles apart and the love drifted from home to home, from front porch lights, all the way to tall lamp posts. here, this love was his, as much as it was mine, which terrified me. how could i ever let myself get into a position where my love was somebody else’s? and how could i be okay with it? how could i ever let it go? it would forever be shared! it would belong to us both

but, the truth is, the summer will always come to an end. august will always slip in and out of our memories. july is, already, in the past, before it even gives us a chance to hold it. soon, the fall leaves will crinkle beneath our feet. our love will split, will drift to different parts of the world, will be crushed within the dirt, will grow in another land. but, nothing, nothing, can ever stay the same. because to be loved is to accept being altered forever. i was changed. i evolved. i was a woman who was in love. who would be in love, to some capacity, with the same boy forever.

and now, wherever he goes, whatever i became, i’ll always remember our one beautiful summer. because not all love is made to last in motion. sometimes, it’s just for a moment that lives on in your heart. just for a second. it sits in the space between two hands; it can slip out at any second. it was the most precious of months. the most beautiful of times. how lucky i was to have it all for a little. now, i have someone that will always carry a piece of me. now, i will always carry a piece of him too. after-all, it would always be the summer i fell in love.