GTT - Heartbreak

Part of my heart has golden tawny eyes. He used to twine his fingers in his golden brown hair, long enough to fall in his eyes. I still think of it as a mane, still see his hands twined in it, pulling it as he knit his brows. I wrote a poem about him when I lost him. My lion. My heart.

I liked his friend.

If we'd had facebook back then, I would have been a fan of their little group of buddies. They were nerdy dudes but I was new to the school and didn't fit in any category; I wasn't excluded, per se, but I just hadn't been there the whole time like they all had. So I sat on the risers and watched. I leaned on the wall and listened, not exactly in the circle but near enough to throw out a comment here or there.

I spent half a year obsessing about the friend. Like all stupid obsessive teenage girls, the whole time I was worshiping his friend, I was getting to know him, and becoming a friend myself, but never once seeing him. He had a girlfriend, at first, and I didn't like her. Besides, "Liked Boys" belonged on a pedestal, and there wasn't room for him up there.

He broke up with the girlfriend. Or maybe she broke up with him, I never really knew. It was rough, though.

I noticed him at a party (the day after I had written off his friend so my eyes were open again). Someone was noticing me, then, and although I never really closed my eyes to him after that, the someone "asked me out" and then I was too busy with that someone, walking around the halls before school and talking on the phone of an evening and not knowing, at the time, how to learn what I had in common with someone.

At the same time, a Player - a ladies' man - caught my eye. I thought I could get the player, so I dumped the someone, over the phone, nicely (but of course it wasn't nicely), telling him we had nothing in common, which I thought was true. He was very quiet. I felt powerful about having had a boyfriend, my first boyfriend, and about the way the Player's eye had been on me lately. Except when I remembered how quiet the someone had been, on the phone. I still remember.

The next day, I was a free woman. With my Bestie there for moral support, I prowled the halls before school, making sure to prowl past the Player's locker as often as possible. Scoring a very warm greeting. So warm that my Bestie brought everyone's attention to it (a twinkle in her eye, in her heart, for me), exclaiming, "What am I? Chopped liver?"

And she brought it all down, for then the Player's eye was upon her, and he slipped from my grasp. Courted her. Within a couple weeks, she was hairtearingly distressed, sitting with me on the podium during a free hour. He had courted her, won her over, and asked her out, and she needed to know what to do. She would have said no, if I had insisted. It wasn't an act. She was that good a friend. I couldn't say no. I was mature enough to not want one that didn't want me.

I was sorry, then, about the someone, but couldn't really do anything about it. I just went back to obsessing about whoever it was any given week, month. We called it stalking at the time, humorously, but the word was accurate.

And my lion was still there.

The next fall, I pursued him through his baby sister. I loved kids. I think our parents saw right through it, how she was my perfect "in," but you know, after I got the idea, I fell for her in her own right, and I think they saw that, too. They let me take her to a movie. I don't remember, now, what else, but she was great. It was great.

He and I started to hang out. A class together that allowed for lots of small group time. A few overlong hugs after watching chick flicks together. A realization that we were bosom friends. A deep, intense understanding. He was still fresh with pain from his very hurtful breakup. It never went anywhere.

He graduated, stuck around. We hung out. I graduated.

I went away for a year. I met a king, an Aragorn to my Eowyn - I was so convinced the king was to be mine that I would not pursue or be pursued for years.

I came back, changed. He was still he. There was enough left of me that we still fit. We spent more time together then than we ever had. He was he, my lion. My heart, safe as I waited for my king.

We spent a little less time together. Suddenly, he was leaving. He had to go somewhere, do something in life, so he enlisted. HE ENLISTED. MY HEART. Suddenly, I didn't know him. My heart would not do this. Who was he?

Boot camp turned into a year of spy school. He returned on leave. His mane was gone. I wasn't sure if I knew him. I didn't get enough time alone with him to be sure.

He went back. We chatted online a little. He met a girl. He liked her. He was so busy, so busy, but when I got little bits of him, he was still him. It was okay.

A couple months later, his mom called. She wanted to invite me to his engagement party. It was the first time in my life I was speechless. My mouth hung open, and my brain wouldn't register the words. Then, words came that I couldn't say: "How? He is mine, he's supposed to be mine. He can't. They just met a couple months ago! There was this king, but my heart knows the king will never have me and when the king refused me I was supposed to be able to turn to him so he can't, he has to come back here when he's done, come for me." So I said, "Next Saturday? Absolutely, I wouldn't miss it for anything."

His she is wonderful. She was a willow. She has a cute little nose. She is smart, funny. I knew most, that night, that he was my heart, because I love her. We got along from the first moment, and by the end of the night she and I sat with our arms draped on each other.

That night, and again the night they wed, my heart broke and leapt. For the first, and only, time in my life, my joy came from my sorrow.