It didn’t matter that we weren’t old enough to vote, drive or even rent movies without our parents. I knew that we would be together forever. And she knew it, too.
We met through friends and instantly fell in love. From there, everything else just clicked. Our parents happened to be old friends from high school. We lived in the same neighborhood. We were both romantic homebodies who were happy to give up our social lives for the chance to build our comfortable little snugglefest together.
So we quickly settled into the routine of an old married couple. At 14. We receded from drinking beer on the levee with our friends (this was New Orleans, don’t judge) and soon spent our weekend nights watching movies and cooking dinner at one of our houses. We held hands comfortably like old lovers. We didn’t feel the need to fawn or kiss in public. We lived in this uncharacteristically deep, calm love that was well beyond our years.
And people didn’t know how to handle us. Some were amazed. Some were jealous. Some thought we were ridiculous. We didn’t care. We listened quietly as people told us that it would be nearly impossible to stay together through high school, a likely college separation and the perils of navigating our 20s. And when they were done lecturing us, we smiled politely and changed the subject. We didn’t feel the need to argue. We knew what love was, we knew how strong ours was, and that was that.
We spent the better part of a year in this idyllic phase. I wrote her a new song for every month we were together. For my birthday, she meticulously decorated enormous poster boards and planted them on my lawn in the middle of the night. We ached for each other while at school, spent our weekday evenings on the phone together and lived for the weekends when we could actually be together.
But things slowly became more complicated. All I wanted in life was to play music and be with her, but she slowly developed a desire to socialize more and broaden her life beyond our little faux marriage. We started to fight about this. And other things. This is when our youth got the best of us. We didn’t know how to fight. We were young, scared and utterly unevolved from an emotional standpoint.
By the end of the summer of our sophomore year, we began to realize how hard it might actually be to stay together. Our friends and family noticed this dynamic and were kind enough to not say, “I told you so.” The truth is, we were all saddened by the impending romantic demise of the two sweet little idiots who thought they could make it. Because we all wanted us to make it. We were like the Rocky Balboa of young, idealistic romance.
When we finally broke up, after almost two years together, I opened my first journal and started spilling my guts. The entries went something like this:
“THE WINDS OF CHANGE ARE [EXPLETIVE] BLOWING TONIGHT!”
Looking at them now, I can see that they are (at best) ridiculous, immature and pompous. But they are pure. And they are heartbreaking because they are pure.
I used to wish I could go back and talk to that kid. Teach him all the things I now know about maintaining a healthy relationship … how to validate, communicate, compromise, blah blah blah. Basically, to save him from all the emotional turmoil of that breakup. After all, I have spent a lot of time learning to be a centered, balanced husband and father who can keep his life and the lives of his family on the rails. And I so desperately wanted that kid to know that there is a way of life to be had that doesn’t live or die on an unpredictable wave of romantic whimsy.
But I don’t wish that anymore. I realize now how much that experience shaped who I am today. How it is a part of me that I can’t delete. But it’s more than that. There is a small part of me that misses that stupid, 14-year-old romantic kid. The way he bombastically stomped through the world with a certainty and emotional ignorance that I have lost.
So, lately, I oddly find myself chasing after him. Trying to get a little piece of him back, so I can face the world with a touch of that perspective.
MARK DUPLASS
A cinematic multithreat, he wrote, produced and stars in the new movie “Blue Jay,” about high school sweethearts who accidentally reconnect 20 years later.
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