my heart...

 

The greatest love of my life ended, before it had a chance to begin. 

I have barely spoken about him, and definitely never written about him. I don't want to. But memories of him, of our brief time together, have been invading my dreams and seeping into my waking hours. I don't know what it means. I don't know if - because I am finally happy with my life here in Tennessee and I have finally settled my restless mind - if I am supposed to now deal with the grief and loss I have held in my heart for almost 7 years.

I have a hard time telling people about him - about our friendship. It's not a normal girl meets boy story. It spans decades. But I feel like, for the first time...I need to tell it all. 

I was 19. About a week before I was going to move from Florida to Tennessee, I went to the local coffee shop. Actually...it was 1997 so "coffee shop" wasn't hip enough. It was a "cyber cafe". Not every house had a computer and having dial up internet (with AOL) made you a king. I was just hanging out with all my friends, acquaintances and saying my good-byes. Drinking a Turtle Cappuccino out of an insanely large hand painted Italian mug. I remember looking by the couches and seeing a guy sitting in the floor. He had long blond hair and was wearing all black. I knew everyone he was with but didn't remember ever seeing him. Curious, I started talking to one of our mutual friends. She introduced us. He looked at me with crystal blue eyes and I remember it felt like my heart stopped. We talked for what was probably hours, but seemed like a brief encounter. The fact that I was moving was like a wall in my mind. I didn't give him my number, I didn't ask him to meet me there the next night. As the cafe was closing, we hugged, said our good-byes and that was it. 

I went on to move to Chattanooga, live there for a few months and continue on to Maine. My life took a completely unplanned turn and I got married. I was unhappy from day one and slowly over the next few years I sank deeper and deeper into depression. It got to where I didn't even recognize the face staring back at me in the mirror. All the vibrancy of youth was gone. All the things about myself that I loved, my quirks, disappeared. I was miserable. The only shining light - we moved around alot, since he was in the Navy so I met some really amazing people, some of whom are still my friends today. Finally, in 2005 - I had enough. By this time I (we) had already moved in my parents. They lived in a cabin the woods, on a mountain in Alabama. Eventhough it was only 20 minutes from Chattanooga...it felt like the middle of nowhere and I knew I would need to get out of there if I was ever going to get "ME" back.

I got in touch with a friend of mine from highschool and he offered for me to move in with him and his girlfriend and their 3 kids. She needed help with the kids and they had an extra room. I jumped at the chance. Once I got down there - I saw how, for lack of a better phrase, FUCKED UP their relationship and household were. I felt like I had made a mistake. Thankfully, a friend from highschool, Tommy, lived a few blocks over, so I would walk to his house and hangout, watching marathons of shows that I had somehow missed while I was in the soul sucking daze that most people call "marriage". One night I walked over for an Angel marathon and saw a little jeep-like suv parked in the driveway. Sometimes other people were there but this car I didn't recognize. I walked in there sat Aaron. He smiled and looked at me with blue eyes that had a familiar gleam, but I couldn't place him. I ended up staying there until it was almost sunrise. He gave me a ride back to where I was staying and I gave him a hug. 

We would run into each other at mutual friends houses or at a horrible Goth club that I would get dragged to on Sunday nights...but we didn't hangout much and honestly, I think we were both too shy to swap numbers. Dating was new to me. A few months passed and the couple I had been living with split up - so the girl and I and her 4 year old daughter moved into a house together. I didn't have a job, but I was still able to live out of my savings account (which supported me much longer than I thought it would!) 

A few days after we moved in, Tommy and Aaron randomly showed up. It was just starting to get dark. We sat there talking, watching bits of local tv mixed with static and drinking Bud Lite. I remember every detail of that night, but my fingers won't let me type them all. I have to hold on to the conversations. There was one time during the night that he went on the back patio to smoke and I went with him so our conversation could continue. I remember the way the porch light illuminated his hair, his face and especially his eyes. All was dark but this glowing, happy man. That moment is when I felt a little spark inside me. It hit me why I was always so uncharacteristically nervous around him. Why I was shy. I liked him! ALOT! When we walked back inside, Tommy wanted to go on a junk food run - so I went with him. I had joked with Aaron that he looked like Candy Corn so I wanted to grab him a bag of it as a joke. He had light blond hair and was wearing a bright orange t-shirt and had on yellow vintage bowling shoes. That night ended around 4am. My roommate passed out, the guys left - so I put the rest of the beer in the fridge and went to bed. I remember my dreams that night were really good. I replayed our conversations over in my head and the image of him glowing under the porch light was burnt on the back of my eyelids all night. I was happy and my heart felt like it was beating for the first time in along time. 

The next day was just like any other. I don't remember what I did, specifically. I think I walked to the grocery store, played on the internet, hungout with my roommate. That night we were going to go over to Tommy's and hangout with him and Aaron. My roommate and I were driving to the other side of town when her cell phone rang. Since she was driving, I answered it. I went numb. Tommy told me that Aaron had been in an accident and that we needed to get to Shands, now. When I replay the night in my head, everything is in slow motion. I don't hear any words, nothing no one was speaking. I see the looks on everyone's faces. The hollow eyes. The running mascara. The looks from a few of his friends. 

Over the next few months, it seems like Aaron was switched from ICU to a room and back to ICU so many times, I couldn't even count them as it was happening. I don't know the specifics of his injuries, in my opinion - that was for his family to know. I focused on how I could help him. He was paralyzed from the neck down. He did regain some use of his left hand...I remember when he showed me. He wanted to surprise me. His dad knew he could move it, but was sworn to secrecy. I sat in a chair next to him - like I always did - and reached for his hand and he moved his and reached for mine. I was floored! That was HUGE for someone with injuries like his. That gave us both so much hope. 

All the months have sort of blurred in my mind. They blurred at the time too. Days never ended. I started working with his Dad at a liquor warehouse. I had an overnight shift - which worked out perfectly. My roommate and I no longer got along so I stuck all my stuff in storage and moved into a pay by the week efficiency hotel. I could walk to Aaron's parents house and catch rides to the hospital and to work. It was perfect. The walk gave me a chance to clear my mind and if it wasn't for the walk - I would never see the sunshine. 

When he was in ICU I would make every visitation that I could. If his family was there - they would go - I wouldn't intrude on their time. It got to where I was at the hospital so much, I knew the best chairs to sleep in and one of the ladies in the cafeteria would give me the employee discount. The nurses in ICU would also let me sneak in between visitation, so I could do Aaron's hand and arm exercises. I was there through all of it...even once when the crash cart had to be called in and I got pushed out the door. 

Back to US...

We had still just been friends, when he had his accident. We both really liked each other - but we hadn't even gone on a date. Though, I did find out that he was going to ask me out the night he had his accident. We got to know each other while he was in the hospital. Really got to know each other. When someone is on their deathbed...there is no bullshit. There's no time for it. Brutal honesty and laying your soul on the table are all you have. Raw emotion. Our conversations were intense. I found out how he felt about everyone. All his friends whose visits had dwindled. And how he felt about me. When he told me that he loved me - the words had never felt so true. And still haven't. There was no doubt that the love he felt for me and that I felt for him was true. I felt it after our first kiss which was during our "first date". It was one of the times he was in an actual room. His dad brought him a portable dvd player so we watched movies and I brought french fries and strawberry slushes up from the cafeteria. It was the greatest "dinner and movie" date I have ever been on! 

I grew really close to his family. I missed my parents, although I never would have admitted it. His mom and I would talk and cry for hours. She's actually the person who figured out that Aaron and I had met years before. He had told his mom the morning after we met at the cafe that he had met a girl named Erin and she thought it was fate. He told her about our conversations and when she was telling me all this...that night at the cafe came back to me in vivid detail. It was him! That was what I always saw in his eyes. 

When he passed away, I felt lost. I didn't have a purpose in Florida anymore. I think I focused so much on him and our time together because everything else around me was falling apart. I had started drinking pretty heavily and the only real friendship I had left was with my best friend Crystal. (Who is like family to me) All of the mutual "friendships" Aaron and I shared fell apart and some of them got downright ugly! I was a new friend to him. I wasn't accepted by his old friends, even by people who knew me. I was an outsider. I wasn't even invited to the club for his memorial. But, because his brother asked me if I was going - I said yes. I went. I only stayed alittle while. I didn't have as many pre-hospital memories of Aaron as everyone else. I remember one of his friends made little buttons that had a picture of him on it. I asked for one and she said she didn't have anymore. I always felt that was a lie.

When we had his memorial service, I sat on the side with his family. They asked me to. They saw me and him together...they knew that no matter how new a friendship is...it's still important and that the emotions were real and that I was important to Aaron and that he was very important to me. The next day, one of Aaron's best friends who was also my best friend through highschool, and who had helped the family plan everything, told me that I "didn't deserve to sit with the family" because I "didn't really know him" and that I "just wanted attention". I fought the urge to deck her - which wouldn't have been hard - she's alot shorter than me. One punch and she would have been out! I told myself that she had alot of pent up grief. When we were in highschool one of our friends committed suicide and she acted the same way. She all of a sudden hated me. I think suddenly hating me had always been part of her way of dealing with grief. Her words still hurt me and because I was now all alone, I sank to the bottom of a bottle. It took me over 4 months to finally sober up, get off my self destructive path and admit that I needed to get out of Florida or else I wouldn't make it out. I went crawling back to my parents cabin in the woods.

I have never let out that much of the story. It took me over two hours to write it because my glasses keep fogging up from tears and I have to walk away from the computer and remind myself to breath. I have no idea why tonight, of all nights, I had the overwhelming urge to let it all out. Hopefully, the "why" will come to me in my dreams...

*the beer we had been drinking the night before his accident stayed in the fridge until I moved. It was his beer. He was going to drink it with me when he got out of the hospital. I never opened another one of his bottles.