The First Feelings of Love

by Tierra Montgomery

  You and I together.

  That is not the only thing that matters!

  But you are someone I care about.

  Seventeen

  Thinking of May

  This writing was written in October 2015, when I was still writing about my feelings for May and the impression she left me since our time over the summer.

  * * *

  When I think of you, I think of how you are still always teaching me being in the moment. That maybe that is how I continue to think of you. That I love you. And maybe sometimes it will get better, I believe it. That sometimes the heart can not explain what everyone is saying or thinking. That sometimes I still think of you in that way because I still care about you. And if there are doubts, I realize I don’t care. I do question sometimes, but for the most part I let those questions go.

  So you always teach me things. And that’s a good thing. I miss you dearly. I wish I could tell you sweet nothings or brush your hair. Make you coffee in the morning and see your smile. It’s always the little things.

  And I wish you understood how I was. I wish we had taken more time. I wish I would have realized what this relationship was sooner.

  But maybe I did not need too. Maybe if I had than I could have opened up more.

  Anyway, thinking of you right now. That’s all.

  But on the bright side, I hope you are okay. I hope you found someone that knows how to make you laugh, found someone that knows how to cherish your time, and found someone who helps you cook food. Make you crave things like any other should.

  But I still hope those things because I still care about your wellbeing. And even if I am not a part of your life in a visceral way, I still hope for the best.

  And yeah does it hurt sometimes. Sure.

  But as time goes on my heart aches less, and my thoughts of you focus on the good times we shared. Those times start to become everything I could have learned by being with you during that time. And I still miss you. I wish that you were the last person I can see. To hear you say goodbye.

  And you always questioned why? I wish I really understood at the time. That even though your words mean one thing, your heart still showed.

  I’m not going to say I’m sorry this time. But I will say I love you.

  That I wish you were here right next to me, just so I could say Morning. Lol. And I say it the way you do, hold my hand down the way you do. Maybe those are the only physical connections that I can have of you.

  You meant something to me. And that is a good thing. You have shaped my world, a part of it really.

  And I will always miss you and you will always be my first someone I cared about.

  * * *

  May and I had been fighting for a while. Back and forth on sleeping arrangements and being a loud person while getting ready over the weekends. This time the fight was over spending time.

  “I guess you have not been around a lot of people, Christine.” May blurts out, having been upset for the past couple of minutes.

  “Well, what are you talking about? Of course I have been around people!”

  “You don’t understand.”

  We would be fighting for the next ten minutes and it would settle with both of us being angry and going to sleep.

  After the last words were done, I put in my headphones and listened to John Mayer’s “Slow Dancing In a Burning Room.”

  That song seemed to fit how I was feeling about having an argument on the forth of July holiday.

  But the anger did not last long. The next morning I had gotten up and made grits with cheese and a Mimosa. May then came into the living room and started to open up the blinds.

  “I’m sorry for arguing with you last night. I still want us to have a relationship.” I said.

  She beamed and said that everything was alright. So with that our arguments became less, and I was less loud in the morning on the weekends.

  Eighteen

  A Possible Love Triangle

  I am struggling with you and with work. With what is in my head, to really how I come off to people, or if I am making this about me, or if my presence makes you sad or not.

  You sounded sad last night.

  In the back of my head, I keep thinking how people use frustration as a way to take the emotion away. It helps me to think of how there could be a chance you do not really like me.

  How we only have three more weeks left in this program and how once this is over, we go our separate ways.

  But if we were together, I would hold your hand.

  Tug your hair and kiss you.

  I would give you hugs.

  I would love you.

  I would stop being an ass and would stop avoiding you. Knowing I still like you while wishing I did not. So I thought distance would be the answer, but it was not.

  I do not want our time together to be sad. It should be happy.

  But every day I question if I should have made a move or not.

  Or if it is real or not.

  But the reason I keep thinking of you is because I care about you.

  I care if you are sad.

  I care when you are angry.

  I care when you wake up in the morning or just rolling out of bed.

  Sometimes you make me upset. But I still love you anyway. But it is good because we are still at that stage of getting to know one another. When you said, “I don’t care anymore.”, was it really about the bus route?

  I did not want to ask right a way. But I had a feeling it was not about the bus route, it was about us.

  I know you talked about how there is not a love triangle. But because you and Yulonda had so many similarities, I kept thinking about a possible love triangle.

  This is how my mind pictured it:

  Nineteen

  In Light of Troubles

  In light of troubles, everyone has something they have gone through. Troubles can follow a person. It carries a large load, a weight on your shoulders that is dragging you down. That from those experiences, we can take them as a positive aspect or negative aspect of life.

  You taught me how to see the glass half full in the midst of troubles. That we do not have to continue to carry the weight on our shoulders. That by being in a new situation can present its challenges, but also present positive experiences as well.

  That this was a new experience altogether, and that it should be a positive experience.

  That the positives are supposed to outweigh the bad. In the beginning, it was a struggle to perform on the job, but when you told me these things, than I realized I needed a new outlook for this job.

  In light of troubles, I came out stronger in that job, and you taught me that.

  * * *

  “Ms. Davis, we are going to put you in a new project. What do you normally like to do?”

  My boss had just messaged me that he would like to have a meeting on Tuesday. Nerves filled within me as my mind ran through all the possibilities of why he wanted to talk with me. Was he upset about the first day of work?

  My first day of work did not go as planned. Prior to that day, the night before at the apartment, I was discussing who I was getting a ride with for that day. Yulonda, at the time, worked in a different building and taking me would be a longer drive and in the opposite direction of where my place of work was. May said she would take me, but she had an early meeting to go that day. So it was just Jenny and I and she said that I had to be out of the building by two in the afternoon. Was she joking with me or was she serious? All the jobs lasted from eight in the morning to five in the afternoon, but there are people that come in early or stay late to finish up work. Anyway, at the time it seemed okay. Maybe she had something to do.

  “Ms. Davis…Ms.Davis. What do you normally like to do?”

  I was lost in thought about how I wound up in this position. Beating myself up for not seeing how this panned out and feeling like I missed out on a huge opportunity to work on a current, ongoing project from that first meeting on that first day.


  “Well, I really have a knack for web development. I started just last year when vying for the opportunity to create a website for my previous job mentoring children in Cybersecurity. I learned how to structure pages, align content, and use the school’s system in how they manage their webpages using HTML and CSS.”

  “Than that settles it. You will work on managing and recreating a website that manages clientele reviews for each location in our system. ”

  I beamed. I was half excited at being assigned to a new project and not getting fired and half mad at Jenny for not following through that first day.

  After leaving at two on that first day, like I was suppose to, I sat in the waiting room expecting her to show up. It was not until a couple of hours later that she did, and when she did she was surprised I was there. I was upset. I always wondered what would have happened if I just grabbed my stuff and went back, caught the meeting in time and said “turns out she was late, I’m back!” Would they have still let me into that meeting on that first day? Maybe not. I will never know what happened in the second half of that first meeting that day.

  Twenty

  May’s Love Language

  Your love language was simple, or a mix of things and strung together like popcorn on string. Your love language was a mix between spending time with people, laughing, and music. At least this is what I picked up by spending time with you.

  You had an ear for music and would constantly hum the latest pop tune or classical music. Beethoven, Bach, and any current pop star artist at the time, you kept it in your head. Not missing a single note.

  Your love language was different from mine. Spending time with people was less for me, but I did like it sometimes. I guess because what tripped me up the most was talking. But your love language opened up my eyes to see what else was out there.

  * * *

  “I came in like a Wrecking Ball, never felt so hard in love”

  It was Miley Cyrus’ latest hit that year and you kept singing it right next to the bedroom door near the pantry and kitchen that day. And I wondered if that was your way of telling me you liked me back or was it just a song stuck in your mind that day.

  But I could not help wonder how that song fits so perfectly for our relationship. You were trying to get me to open up more and I was too stubborn to do so. I was not so easily letting you in, even though you kept on trying. It was so easy for you to be around the other two roommates, that I often felt different for not opening up so soon or really on what to talk about. Silence was not such a deadly thing to me as it had meant to you at the time.

  Twenty One

  Resilience

  I remember the day May had fainted. Probably one of the hardest times of seeing her in a vulnerable state. But May soldiered on like a trooper. I remember coming home that day with Yulonda and she said, “What happened?”

  “I had gotten too hot. But this fainting was something unusual.” May said sitting on the couch in the living room. “But when I had fainted, my coworkers had gotten concerned and called an ambulance to take me to the hospital.”

  I could not take hearing how in such a vulnerable state May was in, so I shouldered to our bedroom, having hearing the rest of the story from there.

  “The process of being in the Emergency Room did not take long. They checked my vitals and the results came back normal.”

  I breathed a sigh of relief at knowing it did not turn out to be something more serious than May just being too hot. That night laying there in bed, all I could think about was if May was really okay. That worried me the most. What would have happened if she had fainted and there was no one to see her? I pushed that thought out of my mind.

  So before May went to sleep for the night, I turned over and said, “If you need anything, I am here for you.”

  She said, “Okay, that means a lot.” and shrugged off to sleep.

  Turns out this occurrence would only happen one time and she would be okay for the rest of the summer.

  Twenty Two

  Always Ask, Never Expect

  Always asking for a car ride was something I had to get used to while being away over the summer. I could not drive yet and needed someone to take me to work everyday. You taught me to always ask first and never just expect for someone to take me. That it was courtesy to ask and make plans rather than just assume I will get a ride that day. This was a hard pill to swallow for me because I never considered my actions being taken in that way. Till this day, I always ask at the end of a conversation, “Would that be okay with you?”.

  It taught me to learn how to be open with people, and give them a chance to have a say on what the plans were while we were making them. It leads to not having one sided conversations. I was just used to being told what the plans were and expected to follow through that I did not consider someone else could take it as anything else. So when it came to having to negotiate my car rides daily, that I had to learn to ask was it okay with them first to see if they were able to take me.

  * * *

  Security At Its Finest

  Security is important wherever you go. But this job really showed me the level at which the job was taken seriously. People always had to show their badges and always had to be abreast of the latest news.

  “You are some of the most promising students who have beaten out thousands of students”

  It was one of the introducers of the programs provided by NSA. She was saying how it was an awesome experience to be here and how great it was to provide experiences towards interns who are willing to learn hand-ons for the job. We then went over some logistical information and information about taxes before continuing on to the next steps.

  It was a vivid day stacked with nerves and excitement. It was also the first time I had to really talk with my roommates about riding with them. This was the third day into the program and we were still just getting to know each other.

  So during a break in the meeting, I went up to them and asked, “So do you mind if you take me to work everyday?”

  I was happy when they said yes. But nervous as to why I had to ask such a question if they knew I did not have with a car.

  But it dawned on me that it was their time they were taking to drive. So for each person that drove me for that week, I agreed to pay them for taking me.

  After that meeting ended, we meet with our prospective bosses.

  Mine had an assistant show up instead because he was in a meeting at the time.

  “Hi, my name is Jane Henson and I am the assistant to Michael. “

  ” Hi. My name is Christine Davis. “

  My heart was jumping out of my chest. Could she possibly hear my heart pounding?

  She went on to discuss the prospects of the job, who I would be working with, and how the job would go.

  “So this will be the first time we had a summer intern and we are very excited to have you.” Jane begins. ” The job will be in our Information Technology department and you will be placed on a project and be evaluated every week on how well you perform on that job. I do not know specifically what project you will be assigned to yet, but it will be exciting. Also we are not located in the main building, so you would have to shuttle to get where we are located. Do you have any questions for me?”

  “No questions. Just really taking in everything that you just said and am excited to be working with you all.”

  “Good. Glad to have met you.”

  The meeting with the assistant was no less than thirty minutes, having taken place over some food and coffee. It seemed like this was going to be a smooth process and that everyone will be welcoming. After we had gotten finished and headed back to the main building where the main meeting had taken place, it was time to go home.

  Twenty Three

  Background: A Time to Remember

  Even with all the ups, downs, and insecurities this will be a time to remember. A time spent loving someone the best way I could. A time spent working on something we all loved to do, which was
language learning, programming, and analyzing those programs.

  It was time spent struggling and figuring out a ton of information. Processing what it means to work for an internship of this stature, processing what it means to be a lesbian, processing what it means to be in a relationship, and processing what it means to find love and joy within yourself for the sake of your own sexuality.

  It was a time processing this new reality, but now it is time to end.

  My relationship with May Zhao did not work out. The summer was ending and so what was left of our relationship. We had been stuck together by chance. It was a good summer filled with happy, sad, and angry moments. I learned a lot about myself through this experience and learned I needed to be more open. It’s what I could not give because I did not know how to yet. There is still a chance I learn this along the way.