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My romance with John didn’t last long in high school. Life can sometimes be cruel that way.
John’s dad worked for a division of the United Nations, which shuttled his family all over the world. They lived in Cambodia, Cyprus, Tunisia, Japan, France, Switzerland. It worked out that around every two years; it was a different country.
John had to spend most of his life moving from one place to another. His dad had another reposting somewhere remote, and now he had to go from here too.
I cried when John moved. I didn’t care to know where he was going, just that he was leaving. He tried his best to console me, but I was inconsolable.
I wish now I hadn’t been so self absorbed. I wish now that I had been stronger and showed empathy for his situation. It couldn’t have been easy, moving from one place to another, leaving your friends behind, and starting anew at another school, each time not knowing how long you would be there.
Even though we hadn’t said the words to each other, I knew how much he loved me, and that leaving me was really hard for him too. But being seventeen, he couldn’t just leave his family.
Fear made me terribly insecure, and my thoughts became grim. How would we be together anymore? How would a seventeen-year-old boy remember me? I thought he would surely forget me. He would find another girl with hair rolling like ocean waves.
I felt broken.
At sixteen, I didn’t or couldn’t grasp the concept of a long distance relationship. I didn’t want to stay in touch with him that way. Every phone call, every text, and every picture made me miss him more. I stopped answering him back.
He wasn’t near me anymore, and my fears would have had me lose him forever.
Fate had something else in store for our young love. After many years, John would finally find me.
Until that day came, however, I was fated to listless dates, with matches that either felt unromantic, or worse, platonic. I didn’t know then he would come back into my life. I didn’t know then that he never forgot me.
Our ill-fated separation had left me hollow, and in tears for a long while. It made Ellie miserable seeing me like this too.
“Cassie! Can you please smile? I can’t bear to see you this sad!”
Looking at her concerned face, I tried to smile, but it was harder to do than I thought.
“What was that?" Ellie asked.
“What was what?”
“That?" She said, pointing to my face.
“I was trying to smile.”
“Oh!" she said, then after a momentary pause, “It looked like you were trying to grimace.” She said it seriously. “Or that you are constipated.”
That made me giggle, which set off Ellie giggling too. We stopped giggling after a while.
“Um... Cassie? Remember that day, when I thought I had lost Hammy?”
“Hammy? Your pet hamster?" I asked, slightly puzzled at her train of thought.
“Yes?”
“Yeah, I remember that cute fuzz ball. You thought he got accidentally flushed in the bathroom, but he just had been hiding in your fuzzy slippers.”
“Yes! I had cried so much thinking he was gone, and that I couldn’t even plan for his funeral,” she remembered sadly. After some thought, she asked, “Why do you think he was hiding?”
“Hmm... maybe he didn’t like to wear those bow ties you made him wear?”
“What? No, that can’t be the reason! He looked so dashing!... and I wanted to make him look handsome for the lady hamsters!" Ellie said quickly. She adds thoughtfully, “But when he went missing, I thought I had lost him forever, but he just had been hiding in plain sight, and he came back. Maybe John will be back too? You just need to have faith in him. Don’t lose hope, Cassie.”
I was struck by the fact that Ellie compared my heartbreak with John to Hammy. I thought about the frightened little hamster with the bowtie. Ellie’s words “dashing”, “handsome hamster” echoed in my brain, and despite my best efforts not to, it made me smile.
Seeing my dark mood lifted, Ellie looked delighted. “I missed your smile! Oh my dear Cassie, as long as you can think of one happy thought and smile, everything will be ok.”
Her thought, and her concern for me, touched my heart, and lessened the pain of my first heartbreak. I didn’t feel alone in my sadness.
I didn’t want to make her any more miserable for me than she already was, so I listened to her advice. It was very hard for my teenager self, when emotions felt especially magnified, to continue back to normalcy, and to keep going to the high school, where everything reminded me of him.
I didn’t have to stay long after John moved, however, as Ellie had decided to pursue her acting dreams away from high school.
I could barely survive high school with Ellie by my side. John had gone. How in the world could I do it without her?
It was a simple decision for me to make.
With no hesitation, I supported Ellie’s idea, and planned to drop out of high school along with her. We just had to survive telling about our decision to our parents, together.