Worst Crush
This was originally written in 2020. While I had a lot of downtime in the pandemic, I revisited my lifetimes’ worth of diaries, journals, defunct weblogs accessed via the Wayback Machine, loose leaf collections written when I was supposed to be paying attention in class, etc. and was compelled to write about my life with my adult perspective.
The purpose of posting this excerpt now is to lose my discomfort with publicly sharing personal stories. Even one in this case that is over 20 years old.
Some names have been changed.
By the time I hit my stride in high school, junior year or so, my entire social circle was choir. Two periods a day, all my friend group and social life, concerts and events, officer meetings - pretty much all of it revolved around this insular group. As is probably the case in many tight-knit groups of teenagers, everyone touched constantly. I wasn’t a particularly romantically active person - this is just how everyone interacted, and as an adult I find it mind-boggling how much physical contact there was with no one batting an eye. Sitting on a dude’s lap, Bachelor-style hugging guys, wrestling on trampolines, snuggling with someone you barely knew/actively disliked - this shit was so commonplace it wasn’t even worth remarking upon. But all that kind of petered out by my senior year, when the last of the sexually active kids had graduated and the population trended religious, specifically Baptist and Mormon. It was an inclusive group, but the coolest guy in choir that year was a floppy-haired Jesus incarnate, an incredibly cute guitar-playing Baptist boy who even then exuded youth pastor energy, who every girl (myself included) crushed on. (Actually, several years later when news of his engagement hit Facebook, I immediately called my best friend so we could quasi-jokingly bemoan that our chances with him were over.) He was a vocal non-dater and his closest friends followed suit, and thus chastity was the default setting in my senior year. Sadly, this largely diminished the kind of physical playfulness that had been part and parcel to the high school experience earlier - mostly. These guys would never dream of touching a girl, but they would be affectionate with each other in a way that was a combination of homoerotic and acting out with one another instead of girls. It drove me insane that they would play grabass with each other but would never so much as hug any of us girls.
Despite this, I crushed on many, many boys in choir, usually covering my bases with a general crush on everyone at the same time and dialing up the crush on one boy or another at any given time, like a mixing board with the levels constantly being adjusted. Nothing too serious, except for one.
Tyler was a grade below me. For reasons I never ascertained, he wore slacks and dress shirts to school, and carried a briefcase. He was tangentially in the group of religious boys who didn’t date or even touch girls, and we were loose friends, the same way everyone in choir was loose friends. We had absolutely nothing in common. My closest pals in choir tended to be music lovers, like me - emo kids and Christian pop punk lovers and we even all went through a Beatles phase, but Tyler hated the Beatles and it was impossible to imagine him thrashing around in a mosh pit. My only standout recollection of him prior to developing my crush was the previous year, when at the end-of-year recording session, the Men’s choir recorded “Only You” and I was watching from the booth, and from afar he sang it to me in a somewhat goofy and exaggerated way while I giggled, and then when it was over he ran over to the window and we both kissed the glass. It was a bit, I thought.
The blessing and horror of being a lifelong journal-keeper is that you can go back and read details that you’d forgotten. Post high school, if I ever had occasion to think about Tyler, I would neutrally think of the good memories from senior year. I thought he was no different than any other high school crush - a particularly lengthy one, sure, and intense, but no different than liking Jesse, Mark Moore, or any of the other boys I mooned over for longer than a week. But reading through journals as an adult, there’s no comparison. I was actually, seriously in real adult love with Tyler.
When my senior year began, myself and my two closest friends were among the in-crowd, and several other pals rounded out the group of “officers”. As Historian, I was the lowest-ranking officer with the most dubious amount of responsibility, and my primary job was to take photos and make a scrapbook at the end of the year, which I was only too happy to do if it meant I could be reimbursed for scrapbook supplies I would have bought for myself anyway. I didn’t exactly have senioritis - I had 2 AP classes - but my schedule was otherwise incredibly light with 2 free periods (one before lunch that enabled me to go home and catch The Wonder Years reruns every day), 2 choir periods, the final P.E. credit I’d been pushing off, and an incredibly boring ROP video production class where we broadcast on public access. That ROP class did have a few hot dudes, though, and I was one of only two female students.
ANYWAY, as soon as the semester began, choir was in full swing. Our choir seasons typically followed a rhythm: prepare music for a couple of months, concert, onto the next one. The first concert, in early October, was always a cabaret-style revue with quicker-to-learn, pop-leaning music. The format was the same for every concert - dress rehearsal, opening night, closing night. If you’ve ever been part of a performing arts group, you know the chaos of the dress rehearsal and show nights, the heightened emotional responses, the drama and catastrophes, the inexplicable canoodling and short-lived, baffling couple pairings, and the indelible experiences. Our director, a religious woman, always led the group in a pre-concert “quiet time” where we held hands and silently prayed, and the excuse to hold hands was a highlight. The previous year, I had engaged in what I can only describe as “extreme hand holding” during this pre-show ritual, with an insanely handsome senior who went on to marry his high school sweetheart and become a cop.
This was the backdrop when I began to crush on Tyler. This is a line of demarcation, a day that I started to like him, like a switch flipped. Some people are naturally flirtatious, but he definitely wasn’t one of them, so when we started flirting in dress rehearsal, it felt significant. It always does when a person with a hard exterior chooses to be soft to you. I only have the vaguest sense that we were together a lot during our rehearsal and the two nights of concerts, but I can go back and read the journal entry: “Oh, shit. Something just started.” After the final show I gave him a ride home, and when we were at a stoplight some old bearded man in a neighboring car yelled what a cute couple we were, and when I dropped him off the oldies radio station played Let’s Get It On, which felt mortifying. However, I’ve always had a major soft spot for the Cars song “Drive” which I have to assume is somehow connected to the many times I chauffeured him around - he didn’t have a license yet.
After that, the flirtation continued in the background. I’d see him at the same time every day, before our free 7th period, and he’d ask why I was smiling so big and theorize that I must be about to see some boy I had a crush on. Totally true, it’s just that the boy was him. The only things I can say with certainty are the things I wrote down at the time, but I know we hung out at brunch (the midmorning period which some schools referred to as “nutrition”), talked during choir and our free 7th period, and found ways to touch each other during group hangs. The relationship was particularly physical and juvenile - lots of hitting, tickling, and biting, and it reminded me of the days in elementary school when I got in trouble for chasing boys around the playground. We wrestled on a trampoline at a Halloween party and had a rematch a couple of weeks later in a park. Around his November birthday, some friends and I TPd his car - this was a common expression of affection in our circle back in those days - and I got loose-lipped about my crush. More than one person I told said something along the lines of “Yeah, I’ve definitely noticed something between you two” which only made me more confident that it wasn’t in my head.
Shortly after, we approached Winter Formal. No matter the circumstances, high school dances might as well have been The Sopranos. Even in a large, tight-knit group where everyone was friendly, the dance date selection process was triangulated and strategized like fuckin’ Settlers of Catan. Who’s going with who? Who’s already claimed? Will I piss off this person if I go with this other person? Should I aim for someone in higher demand with whom I have a romantic connection, or should I aim for the friend who I know will be a fun partner? Winter Formal in particular was more of a pressure cooker, because everything had to be finalized before we left for winter break. Obviously, I salivated over the thought of going with Tyler and had my two closest friends check in to “encourage” him to take me. They reported back that he was planning to ask me, and I sat pretty until he did. Well, no. I was an anxious mess in the interim. I worried that another girl would swoop in to ask him first and he was so nice that he’d acquiesce. Actually, another girl *did* ask him, but he turned her down. It felt like it took way too long, but maybe a week after my friends had bugged him, he asked. I was overjoyed.
We left for the holiday break. I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s trying to work up the nerve to call him - we’d made tentative plans to hang out and fly kites, which would have been our first time doing anything alone that wasn’t tacked on to a social function (ie getting fast food after a rehearsal or party). But as much as I wanted to, I couldn’t muster the nerve to call him. I had a cell phone by that point but texting was a distant concept and I probably would have had to call his house phone. Even if he’d had his own line, the prospect of trying to actually get together seemed daunting. The CDs I’d gotten for Christmas, Saves the Day’s “Stay What You Are” and Dashboard Confessional’s “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most,” provided the soundtrack to my angst, particularly the Saves the Day song “See You” with the line: I don’t think that I have got the stomach to stomach calling you today.
As the days ticked away, it was eventually New Years Eve. Figuring it was then or never, that afternoon, I finally called him. He asked what I was doing that night.
“I have two parties to go to,” I responded. “Jenna’s, and Lili’s.”
He paused. “Uhhhh… where are you going to be at midnight?”
A little taken aback, I kind of laughed and said “Look, we’ll make sure we’re in the same place at midnight.”
After hanging up, I was like, Holy shit. We are going to kiss, because why else would he be concerned about being in the same place at midnight? I spent the next few hours in a mixture of giddy anticipation and panic, as was - and frankly, still is - my standard mode whenever romantic possibilities are on the horizon.
I started out at Jenna’s to test out her new karaoke machine, which I would become very familiar with over the next decade. Eventually, I headed over to Lili’s. I’m pretty sure everyone at both parties knew what I thought was going to happen.
Tyler and I didn’t talk for the first hour, and then we went outside to play ping-pong for another hour. We still weren’t talking much, but he made another comment about midnight which reaffirmed my sense that something was going to happen.
Per Spanish tradition, everyone set up our 12 grapes to eat at midnight and make 12 wishes. I’m guessing at least 3 of mine were related to Tyler. Then… you know where this is going, right? Obviously, nothing happened at midnight. In truth, the vibe wasn’t really right for romance - he was the only guy there at that point, and this was a particularly chaste and well-lit party. Nonetheless, I was bummed out, and so I assume were the onlookers (other party guests to whom I’d blabbed about our earlier conversation).
After the party ended, I drove him home. “Did you have a good New Years?” he asked as we approached his house.
“It was okay…” I responded flatly to convey it was less than ideal.
“Just okay? What would have made it better? Did your wish come true?”
“No,” I said honestly. “Did yours?”
“I have to wait to find out,” he said. And then he exited my car without so much as a handshake.
Thus began the remainder of the worst winter break ever. For the next few days, I was disproportionately upset about how New Years had gone - like, wearing the same shirt for multiple days, excessive crying to Dashboard Confessional, and many diary entries about how confused I was. I wasn’t sure if he’d just chickened out, or if I’d been completely off the mark and read too much into it. And if I’d read too much into it - what did that signify for the relationship as a whole? But eventually, I put on a new shirt, hung out with friends, and got insight from male pals who told me that all boys are insecure and if I wanted anything done, I had to do it myself. One lasting effect is that New Years has since been my least favorite holiday. I do have to thank him, though, because years later after the breakup of a (different) three year relationship, I went to a deserted neighborhood bar by myself on New Year’s Eve, and despite the depressing circumstances all I could think was “Well, at least it’s not New Year’s 2003!”
When the new semester started a couple of weeks later, we had a rocky start. I was sour that our schedules didn’t align as much - different brunches and he now had sports practice at 7th period. Nonetheless, Winter Formal was still on. People still asked me what was going on with us. Even his older brother asked a mutual friend about it. My official line was “We’re friends, but there’s potential.”
In the days leading up to Formal, I was stressed out about everything being perfect - it felt like it would be a defining moment. We were rolling with a friend who had graduated the year before and her platonic date, a gay Junior. My friend did my makeup. Everyone was in on it.
We picked him up and his parents were standing around in the front yard. I met his younger sister. We did the humiliating high school ritual of putting on each other’s corsages/boutonnieres while his parents took photos. Once in the car, I got a good look at my corsage.
“This is so pretty,” I said. He mumbled some response, which I asked him to repeat.
“It’s for a pretty person,” he said more clearly.
Before my brain had time to inhibit me, I darted over to his side of the backseat, grabbed his face and gave him a very quick, affectionate kiss on the cheek. My friend’s eyebrows raised in the rearview mirror. It was probably the most genuine thing I’d ever done.
After eating dinner at the pinnacle of classy restaurants, the Olive Garden, the four of us headed to the dance. The previous year, our Winter Formal had been held at the nicest hotel in town, the Hyatt Regency, but this year it was in some industrial park off the interstate. Different energy - more of a house party vibe with separate spaces and less “big hotel ballroom.” We went around saying hi and talking to all sorts of friends.
Some of his pals from church were there, and they knew who I was. One guy said to me, unprompted, “Don’t worry about him. It’s just the fear factor. It’ll happen.” Another one told him “Guard your girl” which at the time I thought meant “from other guys” but now wonder if it wasn’t just Baptist code for “from yourself.”
After a prolonged time spent milling around, we ran into our excellent friend Kelly. She was intimately familiar with my woes, and asked if I was having fun. I answered, a bit prickly, that we’d been at the dance for an hour and hadn’t danced at all. She could read my frustration and said “Just get moving!” After some consideration, I decided it was good advice.
I’d been kind of unsure about what it would be like to dance with him and what he’d be comfortable with - as Good Christian Kids, it was a potentially risky move to initiate any sort of physical closeness that lacked the juvenile pretenses of our typical tickling and wrestling matches. But I grabbed his hands and put them on my hips, and we finally started dancing. Our school technically discouraged any sort of grinding or “freak dancing” as they called it, but it was a fairly unenforceable policy. Besides, our dancing wasn’t particularly freaky, just close. And he wasn’t a good or smooth dancer by any measure. I didn’t care. I enjoyed it immensely, both in the moment and upon recalling it in the ensuing months, even though I would remember some of his dance moves that were particularly uncool and laugh, feeling a secondhand embarrassment that only endeared him further to me. We danced the whole rest of the night and didn’t talk to anyone else until the last song, when the DJ inexplicably played U2’s “With or Without You” and we got in a big circle to sing along with all our choir friends.
There’s this picture I’d forgotten about of us at the dance. He’s leaning into me, wearing a suit that’s a little too big (and may in fact have belonged to his older brother), my arm is slung around his neck, and he’s so close that my elbow is pointing up at the ceiling. I’m a little sweaty and red-faced, and my eyes look huge. He never smiled in photos and is kinda throwing what passes for a seductive look. It’s a vibe.
After the dance ended, the same four of us went bowling, then went to Denny’s for pie. It was about 2:30 a.m. when he and I got into my car to take him home. I’d cued up Dashboard Confessional’s “Ender Will Save Us All” to play when the car started, a song that is not particularly romantic but the chorus goes “I wanna give you whatever you need. What is it you need? Is it what I need?” As we approached his street, he suggested taking a “detour” but I didn’t press on what he meant by that, and we ended up in his driveway. We hugged, he said something in French (because he was one of the weirdos taking French instead of Spanish while living in California), and I headed home. Other than the ending being a smidge anti-climactic, I was glowing and happy with how it had gone.
Unfortunately, that was the high point and things changed after that, for reasons I never uncovered. Back at school on Monday, my friends asked me how it had gone, and I reported that it had been great. But something shifted in our relationship. He no longer seemed eager to talk to me or be around me, and newly started keeping me at arm’s length. Prior to Formal, I’d thought that we might officially become a couple at some point, but it was clear that that wasn’t on his mind any longer, if it ever had been. When my friends asked him what was up with us and he said “We’re just friends,” it carried a weight of finality. It was a painful realization - my feelings were unrequited. There’s a reason they call it a crush.
For a long time, I replayed things in my head and beat myself up ruminating on how I could have behaved differently. Little ways I could have been nicer or created an environment more hospitable to romance. I could have taken the hint when he said he wanted to “detour” after the dance, and ended up at the park. I could have called him over Winter Break and gone kite flying like we’d talked about. I could have taken the advice of my guy friends and made an actual move instead of just wallowing in my feelings. But even though I was older and had more experience, it wasn’t all on me, and if he’d wanted to pursue anything further, it would have happened. Shyness is one thing, and let’s not underestimate the cluelessness that inhibits boys at that age. He was a particularly awkward sort who, I’m pretty sure, didn’t have anything resembling romantic experience under his belt. However, I was an early adopter of the “He’s Just Not That Into You” mentality, which modern audiences know as “If he wanted to, he would.” That mindset has probably saved me from a lot of embarrassment over the years as I ignore my instinct to make moves on everyone I like, and ultimately it’s the reason I never dated any number of dudes. I may have, but they didn’t ask, so that was that.
In high school, I hadn’t learned that things are more complex than “he likes me and we will become a couple” or “we are not going to become a couple because he doesn’t like me.” Even if we never dated, there was a gray area, a murky middle ground, a “no, but.” I documented our interactions like a tortured romantic, noting every instance where he said or did something sweet. As though I had to prove to a jury of my peers that actually, this person *did* have feelings for me, when of course the only person I was trying to convince was myself. And anyway, I knew what the final answer was. Accurate, if not true.
Despite the perceptible shift in our day to day interactions, there were just enough crumbs that kept me on the hook whenever I started moving past my crush, though I doubt any of it was conscious or intentional on his part. I’d enjoy these moments while they happened and then feel sick and confused, and the clock would reset. At a friend’s party, we got into yet another wrestling match in an Astro Jump, that ended with him pinning me and brushing the hair off my forehead. Then he randomly kissed my knee, which I read too much into (though to be honest, I still feel like that’s a confusing move). Man, did that party fuel several days’ worth of anguished diary entries. Other times, he said how beautiful my eyes were or how pretty I looked in some picture or another, or he would randomly bring up Winter Formal and reminisce about how much fun we’d had together. Hearing that shit from someone who you know doesn’t like you feels very bad.
There was one loophole that I eventually noticed - Tyler became observably jealous whenever I was physically close with another guy in the group, Daniel. I’d known Daniel forever and we were good friends - in fact, I’d spent a lot of time earlier that year complaining to Daniel about my crush on Tyler. Unlike the rest of the Christian boys who avoided girls, Daniel had dated girls, and was cute and flirtatious and complimentary, and didn’t abide by the “don’t touch girls” philosophy. Early in the year, we’d made a vague plan to go to our Prom together if neither of us was with anyone else. Somehow, I caught him in between girlfriends, and he did end up asking me to our Senior Prom that spring.
I enjoyed Daniel - I thought he was cute, funny, a good friend. I was vaguely open to the possibility of our friendship turning into something more, but wasn’t pushing it. All was right with the world when we headed out on choir tour.
Every spring, high school choirs compete in festivals across the country. There are tour companies that organize itineraries for high school groups to do adjudicated festivals, performances, and sightseeing. In my tenure, we’d previously visited such exciting locales as San Francisco, Washington D.C./Boston, and a Carnival cruise to Ensenada, Mexico. My senior year, we were visiting what I considered the best destination of the bunch: Orlando, specifically the Disney parks. Choir tours were always a highlight of the year regardless of the location, and familiar themes would emerge: eating burgers, getting uncomfortably close with your roomies, drama popping off at every corner, a unique and powerful brand of horniness, originating a billion new inside jokes, someone (or multiple people) crying for no reason, an inexplicable dance on the final night for all the competing choirs which would involve a fistfight, at least two couples getting together and breaking up in the span of the trip, developing a weird crush. My sophomore year, the “weird crush” was a freshman named Matt who was actually cool and attractive, and at some dance party we spent a sizable portion of the night grinding on each other, and one of the chaperones narc’d to my mom. I don’t believe we spoke for the rest of the trip, though I did stare at him on the entire train ride from DC to Boston, the longest 8 hours of my life, listening to New Found Glory’s “Dressed to Kill” on repeat.
Needless to say, I was more than a little excited about Orlando. On the plane ride there, Tyler asked me if I liked Daniel, and I said no, wondering why he cared. That night, Tyler and I wrestled in the hotel pool and played chicken and roughhoused as usual. After things had calmed down and kids had trickled off to bed, a handful of us remained around the pool singing worship songs, Youth Pastor Hottie leading on guitar. I was on a lounge chair by myself, and Daniel came by and lay down next to me, where we embraced for a couple of minutes. Tyler walked by, saw us, and greedily joined in, laying on top of us both, like a child intruding on a hug between their parents. Yes, I was sandwiched between these two in front of everyone, still singing worship songs, and Tyler started mock-serenading me with lyrics about God: “I’m lost without You. I’m desperate for You.” This was actually the moment that prompted my realization - Tyler was jealous. My mind started flashing back on other instances of similar behavior - the same party where we’d wrestled in the Astro Jump, he’d also intruded on Daniel and I canoodling on the couch. I even had photographic evidence of this phenomenon - after a concert, Daniel and I had been hugging while taking a picture, and Tyler came up and hugged me from behind.
I didn’t mind this turn of events. I legitimately liked Daniel so I was happy about getting attention from him, and if some sense of jealousy or competition inspired Tyler to pay more attention to me as a result… hey, that was a bonus. Of course, it was rooted in that “I don’t want you, but I don’t want another person to have you” sense of ownership that stopped short of actually wanting to be with me. Which counts for something, I suppose. Daniel and Tyler were rooming together - I can only imagine what that rooming situation was like.
The next day, a Sophomore friend approached me: “Do you like Tyler?”
“Why?” I asked cautiously.
She continued “Last night, when Daniel and him were laying on you, my roommates and I all noticed. I was like ‘I think Susannah and Tyler have a little something’ and they all said ‘I was just noticing that!’”
“But I was with Daniel for longer” I protested, weakly.
She shook her head. “No. There’s something undeniable about you and Tyler.”
These sorts of remarks from well-meaning friends had always served as another piece of proof, the evidence I could point to to illustrate that it wasn’t just in my head - other people observed something between us too. What I didn’t grasp at the time was that maybe people were actually seeing *my* glow, *my* energy, the way I lit up around him, and not necessarily anything mutual.
Tour ended, I got rejected from USC and tried to feel excited about going to the state commuter school 12 miles away. I tried focusing my attentions on Daniel, since we were going to Prom together, but Prom was kind of a letdown. It became apparent that we didn’t have a romantic connection, even though I acknowledged that he was cute and funny and a good friend. A friend third-wheeled us most of the night which really killed the mood, and we cut out on the early side to whispers of “Ooooh they want to be alone!” We did, but mostly to get away from this hanger-on. Daniel drove us aimlessly down deserted country roads for hours, but it didn’t feel how I’d hoped.
It didn’t even matter what my expectations had been. In spectacularly weird timing, during those final weeks of school Daniel and Tyler both developed public crushes on a set of BFFs in the sophomore class. Predictably, I wasn’t thrilled with this development, even though I was technically happy for all parties involved. It really drove home the knowledge that despite Tyler being awkward and inexperienced, I couldn’t blame his inaction on those traits - it was simply that he’d never felt the same as I had. The girl Tyler pined for was a Mormon so they knew they could never be together due to “religious differences,” - yes, at age 17, we were already thinking about dating to marry. The girl Daniel liked, he eventually did marry.
At the rehearsal for the last concert of the year, there were shades of me and Tyler’s old dynamic. He playfully stole my hat and wore it, then sat on the bleacher behind me, holding me while we listened to a soloist run through LeAnn Womack’s “I Hope You Dance,” a song I’d previously thought was corny as hell but now get involuntarily weepy if I hear it on a throwback country station. Then when it was over he got up, gave me my hat back, and wordlessly walked away. It was the last time we ever did anything like that. And it was intense - a portal, an ephemeral glimpse, an acute feeling that something was ending while this song played, as if the song’s message was being telepathically transmitted between us. I wasn’t surprised when the next day someone asked me “What was going on with you and Tyler last night?” and all I could do was shrug, pretending there was nothing to see here. Time is a wheel in constant motion.
We still hung out as friends, I still drove him home, we still went to the park. I told him that I’d previously had a big crush on him, and he pretended it was news to him. To his great credit. We reminisced about Winter Formal. He talked about his romantic situation and the delicious agony of crushing on someone with whom it could never work out. He was experiencing simultaneous highs and lows, and I tried to listen and give him advice like a sister would, and even lent him some book that was a hollow imitation of I Kissed Dating Goodbye. He still wrote lovely things in my yearbook that made me a little wistful.
I gave the commencement address at graduation. In an unexpected twist, a fellow honor student who I’d mostly butted heads with throughout school kissed me in the midst of a deep hug goodbye, when our cars were two of only a handful left after the ceremony, and I was shocked at how much I enjoyed it. It was a welcome distraction from thinking about Tyler, Daniel, Youth Pastor Hottie, or any of the other choir guys I’d spent the last year with. It didn’t really go anywhere, but there was a high-stakes game of Twister at a party a few weeks later that I’ve always remembered fondly.
Graduating high school is a good way to move on from all your high school problems. There were still parties that summer and the following year - most of us still lived in the same town and had access to each other after graduating, but it was a relief when I no longer had to be around Tyler and moved on to a much larger, scarier pool of guys in college. We were a tight-knit group and a lot of us kept in touch after graduation and still showed up at concerts, with diminishing returns. By 2 or so years post-graduation, it was depressing to be one of the smaller and smaller numbers of familiar faces in the audience. About 15 years after graduating I actually did show up to an alumni concert, which was basically a room full of people I’d blocked on Facebook.
For a the first couple of years in college, I yearned for the community and friendship that I had during my high school experience. I was so grateful - and still am - for the connections, the travel, the lifelong friendships, the drama, the insane memories. The music I got to sing in cathedrals, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, on a cruise ship. Even getting further into college and making friends with classmates, I never again had that sort of large, effortless friend group.
For so many people in the group, it turned out how they wanted. They got married in or shortly after college and have presumably been married this whole time. And they’ve stayed religious, or at least that was the last I’d heard before losing touch circa the Obama years.
Ultimately, do I want that for myself now? Did I ever? Not really. Part of what was so alienating about growing up in the church was seeing the life laid out for religious wives and how not me it all was. Sometime in college when everyone had a Livejournal or Wordpress, I came across blogs by the wives/fiancées of my high school crushes and was alarmed at how different I was from them. So many of my more adventurous days are in the rearview mirror (at least, for the moment) but I had them. They never did. Imagine never having gone wild.
I have to assume that all of us could see, on some level, that I wasn’t going to be the kind of wife who is unassumingly pretty, quiet, and dutifully knits and decorates. There’s nothing wrong with being that kind of woman, and I don’t want to sound like I’m pulling some “not like the other girls” shit. I’m like plenty of girls - just not the kind that was held up as the ideal growing up in the church. If you’d asked me, at the time, to stay in our suburb and become Tyler or Youth Pastor Hottie’s wife, I would have accepted it, no matter the terms. But it would never have been the right fit, and I can only look back with gratitude that the things I wanted so desperately at age 18 never came to fruition. When you get down to it, I don’t have a relationship with God the way they all did (or claimed to). Though it has been hard at times, I’ve always tried to trust myself/the Universe, only recently warming up to the notion that God is bigger than whatever the church said he was. These people all grew up to be cops, pastors, and military spouses. If I had gotten married to one of these guys, it probably would have resulted in a divorce mired in infidelity before I turned 30, now with kids in tow.
The last time I saw Tyler was in college. I was exiting a Mervyn’s with my mom, and he was there with his. We side hugged. He was 21 and getting married in a matter of weeks, and my mom asked him questions about that even though I wanted nothing more than to bolt. I had to go home and write a final paper that was due the next day.
I don’t wish things had gone differently. I can’t imagine having had any other life and twisted path. All my stories that would unfold in college and beyond, all my experiences. Living in Boston, 8 Coachellas, all the men, the drinks, the concerts and late nights, the friendships and travel and career and my whole story, the husband I still ended up with, who I also yearned for from afar for years. This was my path and it was mine to claim, and still is, and I claim the fuck out of it.
Now, it’s more about looking back at my teenage experience through the lens of adulthood. Realizing the depth of feeling I had for Tyler and honoring that from a respectful distance. Frustration that time passes, and the weather gets hotter, and you can never meet your past selves to try and pin down someone else’s feelings, motivations, regrets, mindsets, hangups, private thoughts, mental blocks, memories. In fact, you can’t even do that for your own past self, so you have to get comfortable that you’ll never know exactly what happened or why. We were already opposites then and I’ve only kept changing, growing more into myself. It’s good that we don’t get everything we wanted when we were 18. This is how it was supposed to go. But you know, the road not taken and all. The ghost ships that didn’t carry us. Time’s relentless melt, the wheel in constant motion.
