So the story goes like this....

I met her in high school. I came from a Catholic childhood into a world I hadn't even imagined. I lived a very sheltered life, I must admit. And yet it seemed as though we immediately became best friends. But our connection was something beyond that, something that our young idealistic minds thought was deeper than any other relationship on earth. And maybe it is. I believed it more then. There was always so much unsaid between us, what she called "negative space." There was always more than just our friendship, some cosmic understanding between us. And yet I don't think we ever quite trusted how the other felt. We started to argue for no reason as we were about to graduate, I think partly because we didn't want to have to say good-bye. She went off to college 500 miles away. I stayed where I was. We had some rocky roads to navigate, but we somehow got back on track. Sort of. And then I went away to college, actually 10 miles from where she was. But we never saw each other. I walked away from her. I had to. There was too much to happen between us and neither of us knowing how to act on it. I couldn't stand the confusion, never knowing where I ranked. It was about this time I fell in love with someone else, someone back home while I was away at college. The love that blossomed was amazing, and as first loves go I have to say even now when I'm more of a realist that it was completely original and totally pure. But there were obstacles. It lasted a good two years, two of the happiest years of my life. And also, at times, the most painful. That first love broke me. I had all these hopes and dreams of what love was or could be and I thought I had it. And then it all fell apart. And when it did, I realized that I was with the wrong person the whole time. It took me a long time to get over that. Except I never really did. Because about two months ago and ten years later, she found me. On myspace. And it was like I was born all over again. My life suddenly had meaning, there was a point to everything I had gone through. All this before we even saw each other. Just the e-mail exchanges awakened something inside me that had been quiet and dead for a long time. And while we both recognize that something was meant to be, it seems I've lost my only chance as she is now with someone she not only loves but someone who can finally bring her the happiness that I wasn't ready to back when we were kids. I'm happy for her after all she's been through. But it still breaks me all over again. I lost something I never knew I had.

So why the blog? Well back in high school I wrote poetry. Constantly. I was quite possibly the definition of a romantic idealist. I never liked my writing, even though people (not just my friends) would tell me it was good. Sure I attended poetry workshops and got little criticism, but for some reason I never believed it was that good. Writing seems so egotistical to me sometimes, like who am I to think what I have to say is any more important than what anyone else has to say? Back then it was my way of communicating to her. I conveyed all my greatest hopes and fears. Some concerned life, but most were of love. A love I dreamed of that was more powerful than anything this world had seen. I felt that love inside me, but I was too young and inexperienced to know how to share it or who to share it with. But everything I wrote was for her and to her. She was my inspiration and most prized reader. I always felt as if only she truly understood what I was trying to say, even more than I understood it. And she enjoyed it, for many reasons. I'm not sure what all they were because we never really talked about it. After we lost touch in college and I became romantically involved with someone else, I lost the desire. What I felt for her was what fueled my passion, what put words on the page. Without her, I didn't have that and I couldn't even pick up a pen. I didn't know where to start. And now that she's back in my life my spirit is renewed. I went back and read things I wrote in high school for the first time in a good eight years. Being that far removed from what I wrote is hard to explain. But in reading the words again I remembered how she made me feel and I realized that now, ten years later, she still makes me feel the same way. So my writing has started again.

Talent or no, I know she always wanted me to share my writing with people. There are very few people in my life who have actually read anything I've written. I'm protective of it, mostly because it reveals things about me that I'm not sure I want people to know. But here, anonymously, I will share these new poems (and perhaps some old) as a way of overcoming one of my biggest fears. And hopefully it will be a way for me to get over what never really was.