iv. the first best friend

in many ways, we were destined to be best friends.

i fought this destiny once. twice, three times, actually i’ve done it so many times its ridiculous, but you have always stayed. you have always forgiven me from running from you.

that is how true love works. sorry it took me so long to realize.

i learned to run when i was young. i thought love, the feeling of ‘home’ and ‘intimacy’ meant danger. i thought it was something i needed to run away from, something that would disappoint me, something that was

threatening

to everything about my world.

there is no doubt i was threatened by you. there is no doubt i am threatened by you.

well, maybe not by you. more by how much, how deeply, how vastly i love you.

i remember finding out we were going to be in the same third grade class together (maybe it was fourth grade). it’s a memory i’ve shared with you, but i think it deserves to be revisited. i was jumping on the trampoline we used to have in our backyard, the big round one. this was later in its life, so the padding over the springs had faded with time and the net had collapsed so often we decided, for some reason, that it was safer to do without it.

it wasn’t. my sister’s broken (but healed) arm has that story to tell.

my mom opened the door to the deck and yelled out “sam’s in your class!”

i groaned audibly and collapsed to the trampoline, it’s smell so distinctly some wet rubber.

i was too young to know then that the people we ‘hate’ most are actually those we love the most. hate is inseparable from love, we hate because we wish we were, we hate because we admire, we hate because we

love.

i was about to say this is especially true when we’re young, but i don’t think that’s the case at all. adults hate too. and they do it for the same reason we always have:

they don’t want to admit the love they feel for someone.

i don’t remember what our relationship was like before third or fourth grade. i know i saw a lot of you

in sunday school classrooms with pillars of fake grapes pouring down from the ceiling and big plush pillows we’d fight each other over

in my living room and yours, i know the smell of both so well, when we were barely big enough to peer over the table at the feast your dad (readers, he’s a chef) had prepared

in backyards and playgrounds, because play and connection had to be planned, deliberated, and manufactured by our parents

but i don’t remember what my attitude toward you was. here’s what i do remember.

i remember you telling me i was your person in reference to meredith from grey’s anatomy, a show you introduced me to. we watched hours of it in cannon beach on yet another spring break trip our families shared (that was habitual). it down poured the entire trip, so it was either get completely soaked while looking at those towering, beautiful rocks that erupted from the sea or stay warm, dry and safe in the air bnb and watch grey’s on the flatscreen that was too big for the wall.

of course, we did both.

a few weeks later we were sitting in your car
(you could drive before me, and thank god you could. your car was my first taste of freedom, as i think it was for you. my world opened up when you got your license)
at the top of the world. if you don’t know, the top of the world is a lookout in bozeman, where kids our age would go to watch storms, admire the mountains, smoke, or intertwine limbs and tongues away from parents’ watchful eyes.

you told me i was your person and i didn’t believe you. you told me i was your best friend and i didn’t believe you. and of course i didn’t. you threatened everything i knew about the world, everything i thought was true about love. love was an obligation. love was forced, love was resentful, it was required, it was not natural. it was fearful. it was hateful. it was unsafe, it was dangerous. it was something to run away from. i needed to escape.

and so i did, me, the masterful escape artist i’ve recently been dubbed, i escaped your metaphorical embrace.

“i don’t believe in best friends”

“she’s just in love with me”

“i don’t need her”

“she’s weird”

and all because i didn’t believe you when you said you loved me. or, maybe, the truth is i did believe you. and that was the problem, i believed you, and because of my

associations

i couldn’t trust you.

but even though i kept running and pushing and flailing, over and over and over again, i kept coming back to you. i found myself softening in your presence, my face relaxed, finally. the doors to my heart were open in your home more than they were in my own home, my soul was brighter with you. your parents became my family. your house became my home.

thank you for giving my old heart a home.

now, i know the mistakes i’ve made with you. i’m reminded most days, but i’m done feeling guilty. i’m done reminiscing alone. i’m done missing you, i’m done loving you from a distance. i’m returning. i am coming back home.

i am returning to the thrill of hiding in the trees in the backyard of the house you don’t live in anymore, calling your name from above, and confusing the fuck out of you.

i am returning to our walks to and from the creek, to and from my grandmother’s house, to and from the elementary school we attended together, to and from youth group downtown.

i am returning to yelping and screaming, pure bliss, as we pretended to give birth to trash bags on your trampoline. we’d scribble names on the plastic with fat sharpies (we have always been so good at making each other laugh) and throw the bags into the air. they’d float away from us, up and over the net of the

trampoline

and we’d scream and sob that we had lost our children forever. one of them we did lose forever, i’m sure you remember, i scrambled over the fence that always cut my knees open and chased after the bag. my socks got soaked with rainwater, mud up to my ankles, barbed wire struggling to hold me back, as you screamed and i cried and we both watched the bag

hoplessly

drift up and away, peacefully.

sometimes garbage bags should be left to drift, i suppose.

sam, i miss you. i think about you often. i miss your honking laugh. i miss the pranks we’d play on one another. i miss how deliberately and specifically compatible our senses of humors were, i miss the feeling that i had, for the first time in my life, found someone that was made of the same stuff i was.

may our lives, once again, merge. because i am meant to love you.

and i want to.