Of course I’ll miss her though. Lying in my bed tonight, I thought about her lying next to me. But that thought can only be a memory, all our yesterdays are all we have of each other now. But it still does seem like just yesterday that we held each other and kissed on the cold and dew-moist grass at that after-prom party, with every other couple somewhere else doing the same thing. In that moment I felt that we had something else that no one else did: love. And I refuse to believe that it was anything other than that, even if to her I may just be a brief, fleeting memory of a first time. But only love can break your heart. To her, I may only be a part of her past, and a small part, a place and a time in her life, only a memory, and I don’t know if I’m okay with that just yet. I don’t know what she’ll be to me.
Sarcasm is a barrier. Apathy is a barrier. These are things that I’d used to protect myself from getting hurt for so many years. The less you put in, the less disappointed you can be, the further away you are, the more protected, but the less you can get out too. I distanced myself from my own feelings through walls of apathy. I shattered these walls to let Lila in. And I’m glad that I did. But she was always in control, from the very beginning.
In that moment on the grass after prom, I thought that I was holding the person that I could very well spend the rest of my life with. I felt special, happy, content, and complete in every way, because that’s how a great partner, the perfect partner, should make you feel. No matter who you are, if you’ve found that special person, you feel like a king, like a god, like everything is right in the whole world because all the little pieces just seem to line up perfectly and all your worries and troubles seem infinitesimal next to this big love of yours. But how do you reconcile young love with young lust?
It didn’t matter if other people thought of us as that couple; sure, people liked us and saw us as the awfully cute pair that we were, but what mattered was that we saw ourselves as that. That was love. True love. Young love, maybe, even first love, but a love nonetheless. And I believe that. Maybe she was just the kind of girl that you meet when you’re too young, and so you fuck things up because you think that there’s just too much living left to do. I don’t know though. Part of me still blames Lana Del Rey for all of this though.
I know that I really did love her, and I’d like to think she really loved me too. I know she did. It was that full-bodied kind of obsessive love. The kind of love you love before you really know how to love yet. Because, in that kind of love, you love with all of who you are, and that other person becomes a part of your life and you of theirs; you’re not only inseparable but intertwined, cosmically, you feel. And you don’t think about what you’re doing, you don’t make plans, you just think about how you’re doing it; you think, in your heart you know, that the two of you are together and will be for the rest of time because it’s simply this pure sublime perfection, it’s bliss. When you’re in this love, there’s no perspective, and that’s the best thing, because every heartbreak of the past, everything before it fades away and becomes nothing. It’s your first love, it may even be your best love, and it will shape the way you love for the rest of your life. And nothing can ever change that. Because, well, if I believe in anything, I believe in love.
And maybe we loved too fast, maybe in loving, I lost perspective or reason, and in that cloud, I lost something I could otherwise have kept, but still, would it have been worthwhile? And that’s the thing, you can never know if what’s not was ever meant to be. I can’t say how it would have ended if we hadn’t broken up, or even if it would have ended at all, but what I can say is that we had the time we did, and it was great. Maybe we burned too quickly, but we sure burned bright, like fire and powder. That’s why I refuse to love moderately, for without risk there is no reward. It was just that, for us, the time was wrong.
Our relationship ended before it was over, and that’s just it. But as I lay in my bed, brooding on the old, listening to the breakup playlist I’d made, I still remember things with a fond melancholy, a true nostalgia, as we so often should of things past. Laying in my bed, I thought of Lila. And I thought, of all the words of mice and men, the saddest are, “It might have been.” And I thought, April is over, April may very well be over, but we all need that one that got away don’t we? Don’t we?
-END-
Acknowledgments
THANK YOU.
To my parents, for shaping me into the person I am.
To the music that saved my life.
To Dr. Besinger, for truly saving my life.
To Mr. Fliegel, for starting me on this journey.
To my friends, and everyone who has supported me.
To Alex, the person that made high school bearable and my companion on the road; to Tarek, who did the same for me and more during college; to Alexis, Ellie, Chai, Aniesha, and Katarina: friends, editors, and encouragers all; and to Kamil for giving me the last push that I needed to keep living and keep going.
To Sunset View Elementary, to Francis Parker School, and to the University of Southern California, and every teacher who shaped me, challenged me, taught me, and cared about me.
And to you, reading this book, you are the reason I live and breathe, thank you for your support, your love, your understanding, even your hate, and thank you for reading this book. I can’t express how much it means to me that another person chose to read my work, I put so much of myself into this I can’t possibly thank you enough for caring and reading.
Never forget that you can make a difference, never forget that you can make the world a better place. If this story can be distilled into one thought, it is this: small people facing big problems. By this I mean that individuals can confront monumental and systematic issues and make a meaningful difference through even the smallest acts of compassion and understanding, and that is how we can all shape the world into a better place for all.
And one more thing, we can end gun violence, and you can make a difference in the lives of others.
Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, with all of who I am, thank you,
Thomas Kenyon Marshall
About the Author
THOMAS MARSHALL is a Southern California native, now living, working, and writing in the Bay Area. He grew up in San Diego and attended the University of Southern California where he studied both Business and Screenwriting, graduating in only three-and-a-half-years. An unashamed cliché, Thomas collects both books and vinyl and spends his free time enjoying both as well as cooking, adventuring with friends, and volunteering as a creative writing teacher for high schoolers.
For more Information
Facebook –https://www.facebook.com/thomas.marshall.2014
Twitter – https://twitter.com/ThomasKMarshall
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/t.k.marshall/
Website/Blog – https://thomaskenyonmarshall.com/writing
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-marshall-39060996/
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No More Dead Kids Page 22