Due to my proficiency at my instrument and the thinness of the higher ensemble, my band director asked for me to practice afterschool with the 8th grade band, albeit I was a 7th grader. At one of these practices I met Jacob, who sat two chairs to my left in the grand arc. We held the same instruments in our hands, sharing the supporting lines of second and fourth horn, allowing our sounds to join the blending of sounds and create an experience that many embrace, the cathartic experience called music.
I didn’t think much of him at the time. I was focused on the song, the work, the music. After he left our school, I wouldn’t see him for another two years.
Lines cross. I transferred high schools my sophomore year, and met him yet again. I did not recognize him at first, but a friendship began to emerge through our numerous discussions on our bus rides home. Our discussions spanned from our past experiences, our future dreams and aspirations, and daily occurrences.
Alas, one day I saw him sitting there, head covered in with a black hat with a potent yin and yang. I had never seen him sit silent, never seen him unhappy nor unsatisfied. I let him be for a couple days, but I wasn’t sure what to say or how to say it. Eventually, I managed to find his phone number through our old school directory.
His father had suffered a heart attack. He had survived with no major implications, but Jacob was shaken. Never had he felt so weak or powerless. And I just listened as he spilled his worries, his fears, to me.
Things returned to normality, eventually. We grew closer, heads side to side as we shared our days. I would savor those last moments as our bus pulled up to my stop, when he would help me with my bags and wrap me in the warmest of embraces.
Our conversations spanned to frequent aim sessions, and gradually became hour long telephone conversations. Eventually summer came, and he gathered enough courage to ask me to ‘catch a movie’.
Since the age of 13, I had my entire life planned out: I would go to college, gain a degree in International Studies, (emphasis on Latin American Studies), and attempt to ameliorate the conditions of women across the world. I had previously sworn not to fall in love, as I did not want my emotions or the possibility of a family to inhibit the fruition of my aspirations. I was a feminist; I did not desire to be confined in the bonds of marriage. I was a Catholic, and so many aspects of life seemed incompatible.
Of course I said yes.
No words can adequately express the elation that I felt to have him near me, nor how internally conflicted I was in regards to my relationship with him. How much I loved the moments in which his lips met mine for everyone to see, yet how much I hated myself for letting it to happen. How much I felt secure as his arms held me beside him, yet how restrained it left me. And how much I trusted him.
It lasted like that for about four months. Eventually, he stopped calling back. We went to homecoming together, but he avoided me the entire time. I wanted so desperately to understand what caused this line to be drawn, but he wouldn’t open up. And as much as I desperately asked for a reason as to why, he never gave me the truth.
Proximity, yet gazes averted. Voices sounded, yet not towards each other. And an emptiness, a void of emotionless existence, enveloped me. I tried so desperately to feel something, anything. The scars still remain.
He didn’t utter a word to me for over fifteen months.
The lines are being crossed yet again; apparently, I’m going to the same college as he is.
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