Serenity - A Journal Of Some Sort

i told him that i loved him by the water fountain

It's been two years today since I met him.

I was fourteen years old at the time - young, blind, sad, lonely, and stupid. Short and chubby with the maroon rosy dress and bronze shoes and halfway curled hair romping around the dance floor like a half drunk baby horse.

I hate myself and love myself for it.
And I wonder constantly where things would have gone if I did one thing differently.

I've told the story countless times. I've told it so many times it tastes like poison in my mouth.

It was a f*cked up fairytale, what it was. We were sitting there, dancing, two different people from two different worlds pretending to be something other than what we were. A damsel in distress and sweet Prince Charming.

I'll never forget the conversation.
"Would you like to dance with me?" He asked.

"But I don't know how to dance."

"So now's a better time than any to learn."

And that was it, sold.

I can't remember what song was playing. He said it was Speechless. We made it Our Song. I hate that song now, even though it's a good song.

I really think we actually danced to Tennessee Whiskey.

I hate that song too.

I hate all those songs that we used to dance to. Perfect, Thinking Out Loud, every single one of those sappy love songs that they play at the dances just make me sick, not because it's bad music but I still don't think I'll ever slow dance again.

That was his thing, and I hated slow dancing to start with I think. Maybe I didn't. I hadn't slow danced before I met him. But I definitely hate it now.

A lot of songs still remind me of him, not because we used to dance to them but because they remind me of a particular point in time. Like The Water Fountain, Alec Benjamin, sitting in my bed under the covers on a school night, smiling in the glow of my phone because I'm not supposed to be up this late, but my parents don't care because I'm texting a boy - the first boy!! - and that's the song he said he was up listening to.

So I played it too, and it was sad but good and it reminds me of those blue and green first chilly days of winter, when I wore the same cloth boots I've had for years and primary color sweaters and first learned to put my hair up and joined the dance team, coming home late after practice and telling him stories about the guy in the Clifford suit who showed up to confuse the dancers as a joke.

It reminds me of those late nights where we'd Marco Polo, and I'd come so close to telling him I had a crush on him and I think he did too, and we both sent hearts and hearts and more hearts until that's all that filled the screen.

All these things stir up the memories and the feelings and take me back and suddenly I realize that he's always going to haunt me like a ghost.

I've known him since I was fourteen. I'm going to be seventeen in two weeks. That's a whole big chunk of my life dedicated to him.

Suddenly, I realize I've forgotten what life was like before the world fell at our feet.