That sounds really dumb, I know. And I mean, okay, I was 18, 19 years old. And of course it sounds silly and ridiculous now. And of course in retrospect, it seems unreal. But in the moment it was real. He was my best friend. It was innocent and pure and all that. You know. The kind of youthful first love you can experience once but never get again. That kind of thing.
I was recently recalling one of the stranger moments of our relationship. We had spent the weekend together hanging out at home, and I was driving back to school on Sunday evening. Mile 112. I hit the rumble strips next to the right express lane, jerked the wheel to the left to get back in the lane, and lost control of the car. Hit a mile marker. Turned into the swerve. As my car 360'ed counterclockwise across the express lanes toward the median, I thought, "There is no way I'm surviving this. I hope everyone I love knows that I love them."
And then, I was coasting up the left side of the left lane. Shaking violently, but alive. A car in front of me had its left blinker on, and pulled onto a strip of pavement on the median. These two sweet older couples from Pennsylvania. They were fine. I was fine, but terrified that someone else was hurt. They reassured me that everything, everyone was fine. They had hit a mile marker getting out of my way, but that was all. My car mostly just had some dents and scratches. That's it. A very impatient, very bored officer came and lazily wrote an accident report. Just before I called my parents, my phone vibrated. One New Text Message. "Are you okay?" Weird. I had just left his house. He knew I wasn't due back at school for another hour, at least, and wouldn't reply while driving.
An hour and a half later, I was at home on my couch, incapable of movement. Incapable of thought. I realized I had to answer that text. So I called him. He saw my home phone number come up on his caller ID, and immediately asked why I wasn't back at school, was I okay? I said I was fine. I spun out on the parkway but no one was hurt. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Why had he texted me? It turns out that he had just been overcome with a sense that something bad had happened to me. He just "had a feeling".
This is one of the most unusual things that has ever happened to me. I don't think about it any more, really. It used to make me feel lucky to be with someone who cared so deeply about me, who could intuit these kinds things about my life. Now it mostly just makes me wonder, will I ever be lucky enough to experience so deep a connection with another person ever again? The idea that the answer might be "no" is something I don't want to reckon with.
So I don't think about it. I don't think about what it was to be in love, to have a connection to someone that resonated with a richer timbre than the squeaky whimper of more shallow attractions. And I forget that I'm one of those people who doesn't "believe" in love, because of course I believe in it. I can feel very little conviction but still speak the words and know that one day I'll feel what I say. When I meet people who really have forgotten the face of love, or who perhaps have never seen it, I sympathize with them. I can pat them on the back and attempt to substitute sincerity in place of the inherent patronization of the only hopeful response - "some day" - even if I don't fully believe myself.
Very rarely, though, I will come across someone in this sad state who makes me realize the sadness of my own state, someone who makes me believe that I can believe in love again. And then, I don't have to try to be sincere when I tell him, "some day," because it seems I may have reached that day myself. For a moment, I'm grateful for this person who has unintentionally made me believe again, and I want him to believe, too. Then I feel an acute ache because I realize: he hasn't reached it yet, but when his "some day" finally comes, I won't be able to help being jealous of the person who makes him believe in love again.
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