I remember everything about the night we met, except you. For that, I would have to look back at my journals from the time; Spring of 2002. I was only 15 but we were at a bar for a show. My best friend’s boyfriend – your best friend - drove us there and back, and on the way home you and I sat next to each other in the back seat, playing Frisbee within the small confines of the car. What came next was constant hanging out – you were 16 and could drive, so you would come to my house and watch The Simpsons, we would go to the diner, a friend’s house to smoke pot, or we used trips to the mall and Best Buy as excuses just to see each other. I really liked you, but I can’t remember why. Maybe there wasn’t just one reason; maybe it was everything.

The spring and warm weather defined our relationship – standing in my driveway and kissing under freshly blooming lilacs. Driving on 17 with the windows down. The way your Volkswagen Bug smelled on Easter. Buying Girl Scout cookies at the mall, the one vegan variety that I could eat. Me wearing a low cut tank top underneath my ever present blue hoody, and you pulling down the zipper to see if I was even wearing a shirt underneath. Us being teens and carefree, except that I wasn’t careless; I really liked you and one day you just stopped calling. Stopped driving to my house. I was crushed mainly because I didn’t know why. Mostly because I thought this could be my first real relationship, and it wasn’t.

The worst part was that I couldn’t escape you, but I guess that was a blessing in disguise. Our best friends were dating (and still are now), and shows and parties always included both of us, so the awkwardness and any uncomfortable feelings I had were forced to vanish. It would have been too much if I had continued to be upset. But I was, secretly, even throughout all the boys in the future. And I was crushed when you started dating that girl – the one with blonde hair, whose yearbook picture you used to carry in your wallet. After that, I made lame attempts to emulate her style, corduroy jackets and Abercrombie scarves - semiconsciously I thought that maybe I could win you back if I looked like her.

I guess the first turning point in our relationship would be the night in November when I got sick from too many screwdrivers, had my heart hurt by another boy, and in my drunken stupor demanded that you take care of me. This will be an image of you that never leaves – the boy who came to my rescue. All I wanted was you, and for once, I got it. And although the details are fuzzy, I would say that around this time we became friendly again. Or maybe it was just always going to shows together – we weren’t friends but I didn’t hate you either. Until the time you broke my heart again, in a more serious way.

To be honest, I don’t even know what it was that made me think this was a good idea. I don’t know how I got to be so gutsy, but I guess I felt that it was now or never. You were going to college and I was in the midst of an emotionally harmful “relationship.” I had heard you just broke up with your girlfriend, the one with the scarf. Maybe I had a chance? We sat outside my house, in your car, for such a long time that night, and I poured my heart out to you, persuading you that we should be together, be a couple. I sincerely forget every detail of the conversation, except being rejected.

Now we are together. I made many more pleas, and eventually we just came together. Figured that after so many years, the feelings that had stayed between us must be real. Still though, these are my favorite memories. They’re painful, but maybe I am a misogynist, because I love to recount in my head the turmoil we went through before we actually became a couple. Something about having to work so hard, something about how I never became too discouraged. Something about the hunt. “What comes easy never stays.” I hope you stay.