How To Build A Flower Shop

Chapter FORTY

I'm let down by everyone I meet. Sure, it happens to everyone and its life, but life sucks. I'm not writing this, claiming I have it much worse than everyone else. It's like people give me reason to be an isolated person. I keep a distance. I lost my mom. For me, it's hard to let people in because I don't want to lose them, too. I don't want to care and love too much that it will be snatched away from me. I'm afraid of the universe. I'm afraid what its plans are for me out there.

I love my dad, dearly. Please don't take him from me. I love my uncle Owen; he always makes me laugh and we have such a fun time together. Please don't take him from me. I love Jamelia, she's nuts and she's my sister. Please don't take her from me.

I'm only seventeen, and I've had a huge part of my life taken away. There's an emptiness inside. I feel dark colors surround me. A dark cloud is above my head and it's always raining when I'm alone and with my thoughts.

I had my first real boyfriend. I had the biggest crush on him for two months before he approached me. I felt so lucky when he asked me to be his girlfriend. I fell in love. In movies and books, they show love is a battle. My experience of love was different. You see, we were already in love so what was there to fight for? Each other? But we were in love. Nothing more was needed. We had each other. We made each other laugh. We spent a lot of time together. We supported each other's dreams. We talked about everything and anything, except not everything, if I'm going to be honest with myself.

The thing is, I stored away all my deep thoughts and feelings about my mom, about the loss and the empty feeling inside that it felt like it should be untouched. Maybe that was a bad idea. Homecoming night, my boyfriend forced me down in his car and attempted to do something really bad to me. I fought him off but I went back to him, thinking we had love. He was a light in my life and I didn't want to turn it off. I didn't want to be in a dark place again. I thought he could fill that emptiness. And yet, that light started flickering over a course of time and our bulb went out.

Of course, the signature thing for Bobbi Grace to do was to pack up those feelings and store them at the back corner. I got over him, though. I'm so over him. He let me down when we were together and he let me down when we're not. I'm completely done with it, with him.

I'm questioning the idea of love. It isn't a constant know. I'm not sure if that made sense. It's a complex "thing" with many dimensions and layers. With my first real boyfriend, I won't say I wasn't in love with him now that we're broken up. I won't say I didn't love him just because I didn't tell him everything. If I did I probably would've experienced a deeper love. I shared everything with another guy... the right guy. See, it all depends on the people. This other guy... I don't think words can explain how much I genuinely care about him, worry about him... and love him? I thought I knew what love was; I loved my first real boyfriend. But I learned, by being around this other guy for five days of the week for an hour and a half of those days -even outside of those times- love is not a standard, a one definition feeling. When you're happy, you're happy. When you're sad, you're sad. When you're angry and even hungry! They're all feelings that everyone can describe and everyone shares but no one can explain the feeling of love and not one person feels the same love as another does! So, what the hell is love?

I told this guy everything I felt, everything I thought... I took out those memories and emotions stored away and laid it all out to him. Do I regret it? Nope, because I felt comfortable with him and I felt another dimension of love. I felt that love fall deeper. When I'm with him I'm open to more sides of love and I keep falling. It doesn't stop. He keeps making me fall in love with him so effortlessly that one day it's going to kill me! I fall more and more in love with him when I'm with him, when he speaks to me, when I learn something new about him, his smile, his gosh darn beautiful eyes – everything. My heart is committed to him; it's very overwhelming that one day I had to lie down and absorb it. Just how far can it go? I didn't know this feeling or understood it until I took out this pen and started writing. I guess my best way to express myself is through writing, huh? I should do this more often.