I met Jim on December 27, 1991. It was at a teenager retreat with a religious theme at a very quaint stone church. He was quiet, adorable and smelled amazing.
We all slept on the floor each night, tucked in our little sleeping bags. Jim didn’t bring a sleeping bag, I don’t know why he didn’t get the message. So, I unzipped mine and offered to share.
In complete darkness, we stayed up all night giggling, listening to my personal mix tapes on my Walkman (Sport edition!), mostly the Cure and Nirvana and I gave him one of my earrings, a-la The Breakfast Club (come to think of it, I was Claire and he was John Bender). We fumbled in the darkness to get the earring into his ear and he said “I can’t find the hole”. I think we scarred the other sleeping teens for life with that one. And we would say that to each other randomly and have a good laugh.
We made goo goo eyes at each other from opposite sides of the church, we passed notes. We did everything we could to sit next to each other. It was so sweet and innocent.
At the end of the retreat, we promised to stay in touch. He lived far away and neither of us had a car. We stayed together for 6 months, but we couldn’t make it work. We were both devastated, but we were 16 and it just came with the territory I guess.
He was always sweet, he never pressured me to do anything I didn’t want to do. I somehow expected all the boys to be like him for the rest of my teenage years, but most of them weren’t.
He came to see me two more times before he got married in 1997, one time I was grounded and I wasn’t allowed to leave my driveway and the other time I was with someone else. I wish I would have recognized the connection before I lost him. I wish I would have known.
He and I reconnected on December 27, 2019, exactly 28 years later. When I figured that out by digging out my old journals, I cried. It felt poetic to me somehow.
Jim and I had a few other encounters after the one. They were rare, so each time it felt like magic.
On one trip, I said to him “the way we look at each other, the way we interact. Our happiness is contagious, our connection is beautiful… you can see it a mile away. I bet you five dollars someone will notice and say something!”
While on the beach, a young woman came running up to us, Polaroid in hand… “You two are so adorable together, I just had to take your picture”. And she handed us a not-yet developed photo. There wasn’t anyone else on the beach. At all. Jim and I looked at each other and we both started laughing and tearing up. I knew… and I knew others would see it. We had an energy that lit up a room or a beach. That is a memory I’ll never forget. (If I’m brave, I’ll post that picture, maybe someday.)
And the sexiest, most intimate moment of my life was with Jim. I was upset about something, he was in my kitchen. He was being sort of cold and distant and I was trying to get him to comfort me. And he wouldn’t. So I dismissed myself to go take a shower. And I was crying in the shower, in the corner. He came into the bathroom, took off all his clothes, and without a word entered my shower and slowly washed my hair. He held me and then rinsed me off, wrapped me in a towel and dried me off. Then he crawled into bed with me and just held me. No sex. Not a sexual advance in sight. This will forever be the most intimate encounter I have ever had in my life. And I’m bawling as I type this. The only times I felt truly loved and seen were with him.
We very truly enjoyed each others’ company. We laughed at the same things, silly things. He made me feel whole, he made me feel like I was home.
He was working very long hours in a job he hated. But he could be on the phone for most of it, so I happily sat on the phone, listening to him interact with customers, breathing and grunting as he lifted heavy things and tell me how much he missed me. We were sunshine in each others’ lives, I will always be so grateful for those calls. We truly cared about each other and were each others’ biggest cheerleader.
I love figuring out what people want to do, where their passion dwells and I found Jim’s aspiration. To have his own business.
So, I spent our time on the phone telling him how he should do this, drawing out plans, spreadsheets, marketing ideas, logo ideas. I got really wrapped up in it.
He started running his business part time and then was so overwhelmed with business that he made the jump to full time and he was immediately busy. Immediately a great success. I was so so happy for him.
Then he had to leave his small rental, and a large house with a great garage opened up on the same street as his favorite cousin. He was nervous about the rent, but we crunched the numbers and he got it for him and his two kids. He obsessed on putting together his perfect garage.
So our very special phone calls stopped. He was wrapped up in working and when he wasn’t working, he was over at his cousin’s for Sunday dinner, to fix cars, to shoot the shit. And I started fading into the background.
I still have these flickering moments of hope that he’ll do one of his signature surprise visits. I’ll hear a song, get excited and start cleaning and pick up his favorite snacks at the store. But he never shows up. And each time I sat in disappointment, my heart ached more and it kept getting worse. I wanted the hope to fade. Living in a fantasy land that he’d actually come and support me was just crushing my soul. I was so desperate for his love, for the way HE loved me. But for whatever reason, he just didn’t have the time for that anymore.
He still tells me he wants to keep this relationship going, but I never see him. We rarely talk, or if we do he’s a million miles away, emotionally. To have his heart so fully, to feel so connected and SEEN and it be downgraded to scraps. Crumbs. It broke my heart over and over. I begged to be a priority, I begged for him to come back to me and I cried. So much. Until one day… I couldn’t beg for love anymore. And to me, letting go was less painful than waiting around for something, anything, to happen. I had already thrown 23 years of my life away waiting for a man to respect me. I wasn’t going to do it again.
This story deserved so much more than crumbs, so much more energy and effort. It’s such a shame. I cry about it almost every day. To have that love, in my hand… to know what it feels like. And it just fade away into the distance. It’s a tragic moment in my life. He just didn’t want to put in the effort and he wanted to blame me for not accepting zero effort.
Maybe I deserved it*, maybe it was never meant to be. I’m sad, but… my list of sadness and loss was already long and I didn’t see Jim that much so letting go just like any other thing I was doing. Just put it in the evidence box marked “the universe hates me”. I was numb to the pain at this point.
I waffle between pessimism to optimism. That love only lasts a short season, and that’s all we can ever get from it or maybe I was never meant to be loved more than this one time. But when I’m feeling happy… I think I’ll be able to find a man who will love me like Jim loved me for the long haul. And if that happens, we’ll have hundreds of Polaroids to show for it.
Jim changed me forever. He mirrored back the best parts of myself. He helped me find my feminine voice again. He made me feel safe, heard and valued. He helped me find my way out of a very difficult cage. I feel terrible about it, he felt terrible about it… but he helped me see my value, and I was worth more than being with a man who treated me like he hated me.
Jim had the best laugh, he could fix anything and he was an amazing cook. I’ll never forget him. I’ll mourn this relationship for the rest of my life, but I will also wish him happiness.
*At this point, it feels like I don’t deserve happiness in my relationships. That my purpose in this life was to come here to be rejected, used, stepped on, ignored and abandoned. This was the one fulfilling relationship I’ve ever had, and it was mostly on the phone. I didn’t require much. I just wanted to be heard, to be cared about, to be understood and valued. And for someone to want to protect our relationship and me. That’s all I’ve ever wanted. Maybe it’s too much. I know I’ve approached every single relationship in my life the wrong way. That’s why I’m self isolating now, to understand where I went wrong, figure out what twisted story I was living in.. and WHY did I let it happen??? I’m hoping all this pain will be for a reason, or maybe it’s payback to me for something horrible I did in another life. And if that’s the case, I will come to terms with being alone for the rest of my life. If I can’t find my way into a healthy relationship, I will make peace with being alone with my dog.
