As it was for most of us, my first experiences with the opposite sex were not good.
I grew up believing that I would never be loved the way every girl dreams of being loved.
I was the shy, skinny kid all through school. The boys in grade school used to tease me mercilessly, and beat me up on the play ground, and along the route between home and school.
One time, after school, as everyone was rushing into the darkening winter to get home, two of them ganged up on me.
One of them had a long winter scarf.
Each boy took an end, and they ran toward me in the school parking lot, one going one way, one going the other, and they wrapped the scarf around my legs, and pulled them out from under me.
When I came to, on the icy pavement, no one was around.
I spat the blood out of my mouth (I had bitten my cheek), shook my head, and went into the school office to talk to the secretary, who was still at her desk.
I was crying, and had a big bump on the back of my head.
The school secretary asked what had happened, and when I told her who the boys were, she said "Oh, Sweet Steve? He'd never do anything like that!!" She suggested that I had slipped on the ice.
I don't remember what else happened, or if she called my mother to come get me.
But I will NEVER forget the terror of watching those boys run at me, and of being dismissed by the secretary, because the one boy, Steve (who was the one who tormented me the most often and the most brutally), was the son of a local preacher.
Almost all of the boys I knew, clear through Jr. High school, treated me like this.
If it wasn't violence, it was merciless teasing, throwing rotten food, or dog shit, and breaking into my locker to leave me "gifts," and vandalize my things.
There were few exceptions.
By Jr. high, there were no more beatings, at least (thanks to one of those previously mentioned "exceptions," who was the big brother of my best friend in 6th grade. He saw to it that there were no more beatings, when he had a little encounter with Steve and his cronies at the end of 6th grade).
By high school, mostly what happened was that I was ignored.
I wasn't afraid of boys anymore, at least, and had been through some of the most devastating crushes you could imagine.
But boys just never even looked at me. And, if they did, it was to sling an insult. To call me ugly, or to berate my intellect.
(Little did they know that I had an i.q. far surpassing any of theirs!! but I was quiet about it....)
Then there was Scott.
I was a junior, he was a sophomore, and we were both Dead Heads. It was my wearing of a Grateful Dead t-shirt to school, on the day after a concert, that first got his attention.
We started talking in the hallways, or after school, or in the cafeteria. He didn't ignore me. He didn't insult me.
He was my friend.
And, before long, we were walking home from school every day (instead of taking the bus, so we could spend time together), and finding other reasons to see or talk to each other.
He asked me out, and I said no, because I had never been asked out before! I really had NO IDEA that he was asking me OUT ON A DATE when he called and asked me to meet him for coffee!!
Back in the 70's, kids didn't DO coffee! I didn't LIKE coffee then....and I was completely clueless!!
Next thing I knew, he had a girlfriend from his own class. Or one from my class....he was always "with" someone after that.
We continued to hang out, just as we always had, until I graduated.
Anyway, long story short--I fell completely and totally in love with this guy.
I always just assumed that he didn't want me in that way, and we never, ever got it together.
I met someone else while Scott was away at college, and eventually, that someone else asked me to marry him.
Scott and I had not talked for a year or so, but when he saw the engagement announcement in the local paper, he appeared at my workplace, stunned.
He, so he said, had hoped that we would be able to be together when he got home from school. He told me he had thought of no one but me, and had longed to ask me out....and then he saw the announcement.
I said, well, you could have called me some time to let me know you even knew I existed. I thought you only thought of me as a friend.
I told him that I had harbored feelings for him for a long time, but that I didn't think he was interested, because he had dated other girls during the time we were hanging out.
He said he had thought that he only thought of me as a friend, too, until he went away, and had time to think about it.
And then, it was too late.
We continued on as close, dear friends for many, many years. At one point, years later, we both admitted to one another the feelings we still had for each other, but we also talked about how it could never be, because we both believed in the sanctity of marriage, and I was married.
I became friends with his friends, and held his hand at the funeral of one who had become dear to me, too, and died of cancer at 28.
While I carried Scott in my heart, secretly (to the rest of the world), all that time, I knew that there would never be "a time for us."
It was completely futile....but that torch burned, never the less, until Scott was married, too.
I have not heard from him now for many years, and I know that he is happy and settled. He and his wife had two kids, last I heard, and they are doing great for themselves.
I used to lament that it could have been me, but it just wasn't meant to be. Not in this lifetime, anyway, and when he married, I wished him well, and let him go.
It was that easy. The torch just....went out. Poof.
Gone.
The first love, unrealized, ended.
Cut to being married and struggling to survive, in another post.....
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