Have you ever had a realization hit you out of the blue for no good reason? Yeah, that happened to me while I was working. I was sitting here, writing work blogs and playing music I've got on my computer, when this song came on.
Yes, shitty early '00s Southern rap. Don't judge me.
Anyway, as music often does, that song invoked memories of an earlier time. (Dear God, I'm not old enough to be feeling nostalgic yet, am I?) I stopped what I was doing to sit back for a moment and reminisce. I'm pretty good at reminiscing. Or avoiding work. Your choice.
That song came out in early 2002 and became popular in the weeks leading up to my high school graduation. Which, of course, brought me back to the summer of 2002. The more the memories came back, the more I realized that that was probably the only time in my life that I've ever been *truly* happy, at least for any length of time. Sure, there was plenty of bad to go along with the good, but the good by far outweighed it. I think it was the only time it ever did for me.
The weekend after I graduated high school and was through with those assholes once and for all, I got my "new" car. Of course, it wasn't actually new. Poor little '96 Firebird was already 7 years old even then. But whatever. I wanted a Firebird, and I finally got one.
I had a shitty job working 4-6 hour shifts 2-3 days a week in the pharmacy soda fountain. I didn't much care for it, but the paycheck and the tips gave me enough money to do pretty well as I wanted, and I wasn't there that much, anyhow. And I still make a mean lime freeze, only nowadays, I put rum in it. I had gas money, clothing money, spending money for other shit, and still had some to put back for that shining moment in the future known as "college."
I had several friends. I had a boyfriend. I had a bad-ass car. (It was still bad-ass then, despite its age. Most people couldn't look at it and tell it wasn't brand-new.) I still had long hair. My face wasn't hard and care-worn like it is now. I wasn't thin, but I wasn't fat, either. I didn't have to shop in the plus section, let me put it that way. Men wanted me. Multiple men. That summer, in addition to my boyfriend, I had 4 other guys specifically express interest, and that's not even counting all the heads I'd turn when I rolled up in Ashland in my cute little car, playing, you guessed it, shitty '00s pop and hip-hop, with the T-tops out, wearing my cute little clothes and platform shoes (because they were still in style then). I could've had pretty much anybody I wanted then, I guess.
I was in love with my boyfriend. First guy I ever had sex with, first guy I ever seriously dated, etc. Except we didn't really *date*. We didn't go anywhere except to his friends' houses and to go pick up a pizza and a movie to take back to his house. When he went to Ashland with his friends, he never even asked me to come along, even though he knew there was nothing I liked more than riding uptown and talking to all my friends. I spent countless nights in the same town as him while he studiously ignored me. But I didn't know any better then, so it didn't matter, I guess.
The reason I eventually chose the college I ended up attending was mostly because he used to go to school there. He'd promised that if I'd go there, he'd come back and finish his degree with me (because he flunked out the first time). Then, they waved a full-tuition scholarship under my nose, and it was a done deal. He'd made several not-so-subtle hints about the two of us getting engaged, then married. He even finagled my prized tanzanite ring from me, so that he could know my ring size "if he ever needed it."
Before it all went to hell in a handbasket, before the end of August when it all fell apart, before my best friend at the time betrayed me, before I found out he'd been fucking a cracked-out ho behind my back for who knows how long (because said "best friend" was filling him full of false information with the express purpose of ruining our relationship) and eventually dumped me to marry her because he got her pregnant, before I got stuck in a long and miserable freshman year at college, before all that...it was the perfect summer.
On the days I didn't have to work (and even sometimes on the days I did because we got off at 5:30), Kitty and I would ride around, all over Tallapoosa and Clay Counties, with the T-tops out, the radio blaring, and the hot summer sun sweeping over us. We spent time at the lake. We hung out in Ashland every weekend. We drew attention. We were adored.
It was perfect.
Most people would say, "We thought it would last forever," but I wasn't that stupid, even as an 18-year-old. I just thought that it was the beginning of wonderful things, that freedom and happiness and friendship and good times would all continue on into college and then on into the rest of my life.
Oh, how wrong I was.
I'm reminded of a passage from The Hours, which I think everyone should read if you haven't already because the movie didn't do it justice, and it's so heartbreakingly beautiful. The main protagonist in the novel is thinking along the same lines as I have been the last couple of hours and says:
It had seemed like the beginning of happiness, and Clarissa is still sometimes shocked, more than thirty years later, to realize that it was happiness; that the entire experience lay in a kiss and a walk, the anticipation of dinner and a book. The dinner is by now forgotten; Lessing has been long overshadowed by other writers; and even the sex, once she and Richard reached that point, was ardent but awkward, unsatisfying, more kindly than passionate. What lives undimmed in Clarissa's mind more than three decades later is a kiss at dusk on a patch of dead grass, and a walk around a pond as mosquitoes droned in the darkening air. There is still that singular perfection, and it's perfect in part because it seemed, at the time, so clearly to promise more. Now she knows: That was the moment, right then. There has been no other.
Yes, I did go and get my copy of the book and type out that entire paragraph. Mostly because nothing I could say could possibly describe how I'm feeling in such a rich and poetic way.
But the worst part of all is not knowing that that *was* happiness, rather than the beginning of happiness. The worst is knowing, deep down inside, that I will spend the rest of my life trying to have another summer...another month...another week...hell, another DAY that measures up to that one perfect summer. And I will fail miserably.
If I close my eyes and play Mary J. Blige, I can still feel the hot summer sun, unblocked by the roof of a car, on my face and shoulders and the wind in my hair....
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