Passion Flowers

You’re in your early teens. It’s the middle of the summer. Schools in your town have been out for a while now, and you’ve just been bumming around your house. Your father goes out every Sunday, from late morning to early afternoon, to play paddleball in the courts by the boardwalk. One day he drags you out of the house for some air and exercise. He rides there on his bike, and you follow him on your scooter. He gives you a spare paddle and ball to play with on one of the empty courts. You’re bored and lonely. But at least you get some exercise.

Your father drags you out again next Sunday. That’s when you meet THEM. You meet for the first time at the playground less than a minute’s walk away from where your fathers are playing paddleball. You both hit it off almost immediately. Within minutes you both are running around, climbing on the monkey bars, sliding down the slides, swinging on the swings, laughing and smiling like idiots. It seems like a simple friendship. You hug goodbye and say “See you next week!”

Then you don’t see each other for a few weeks. You miss them. A lot. You go back to the courts every Sunday, hoping to run into them again.

When finally you do, you both hug and talk like you haven’t talked in months, laughing and smiling again. You buy ice cream together. Theirs is vanilla and yours is chocolate. You trade licks, not caring about “germs.” You learn their favorite colors and games and books and shows, and they learn all of yours. You both lose track of time, and before you know it it’s time to go home. You hug goodbye, a bit longer than last time.

Then you don’t see each other again for a few more weeks. You miss them terribly, more than you’ve ever missed anyone before. It wasn’t the same as missing an old friend after moving away, or missing a relative that you visit once a month. This was different. There was a chance of you two meeting again, but it just wasn’t happening. Not fast enough, anyway.

One Sunday afternoon you take a red rock from the ground use it to write their name on the wall of the empty court, along with the day you two met. You thought it would be red since the rock is red, but it was actually gray. You basically just scratched away at the white paint, revealing the gray concrete underneath.

One Sunday night you walk into your mother’s room crying because you miss them so much. You tell her you love them. Your mother tells you that it’s just infatuation, and you shouldn’t be so upset about it. Perhaps you should have listened. But perhaps nothing much would have changed even if you had.

The next time you meet, you both are a bit awkward with each other, blushing lightly and looking away every so often with sheepish smiles on your faces. At around 1pm you both are sitting on one of the benches under the shade in the playground. You both mention that you like the other, as a friend. Then they ask you if you’re in a relationship. You say no, trying to hold back a huge smile because you have a feeling you know what they’re going to ask next. You hope that’s what they’re going to ask next.

Then they do. And you say yes.

The summer is wonderful. You both spend more time together in the playground. You hold hands, and share more ice cream. You go to museums together. You play the same online game almost every evening. You go to the city for their birthday with their dad, holding hands as you walk down the street. You have hugged many times, but not yet kissed. You don’t want to force it, and neither do they.

Then school starts up again. Months go by. The two of you start talking less and less often, because of school. Sometimes they don’t do their homework, and get grounded, which means they can’t play the game with you or go out with their dad on Sundays. You feel saddened by this. You start missing them again. You try to keep in contact through gmail chat but it seems like they’re rarely ever on. You start wonder why this is happening, why things are going this way.

It’s been almost 8 months since you started dating. You barely talk anymore. Maybe you’ll chat on Gmail once a weekend, but that’s about it. You wonder if they even love you anymore. Finally, one day, while on a phone call, you voice your insecurities, and tell them you want to break it off. You tell them you don’t want to be in a relationship where you’re doing all the work. They understand. They let you go.

Years later, they contact you again. They say they still have feelings for you. But by then you’ve already long since moved on from them. Not to mention you’re already in another relationship. They understand.

They tell you that back then, they were suffering from depression, which caused them to suffer in school and consequently get grounded often, and also caused them to become withdrawn from their family and friends…and you. They didn’t realize what was going on at the time, and so they couldn’t really talk about it. You wish you had noticed it, so you could have been a little more understanding, so you could have helped them through it. You wished they had noticed it, so they could have told you about it, so they could have gotten help for it. But it just didn’t end up that way. But now they know better, and now you know better.

It’s not that it wasn’t meant to be. It just wasn’t meant to last.

Young love isn’t meant to last. It blooms like a passion flower in mid-summer, then dies off in the autumn unless by some miracle. It can bloom again and again year after year, but it will never survive the fall. But that doesn’t mean that its beauty can’t be appreciated while it lasts.