Chapter 1 – Adulthood

I have been doing a great job not thinking about him for the past 20 years. At least, I think I have…

What I mean is, I hadn’t been thinking about him much at all, lately. And I strongly believe this is what being an adult is all about. You face your responsibilities and stick with your choices. In my case, and for everyone else who was a teenager in the 90’s, I guess it also involves wearing better fitting clothes and not saying the word “like” so much.

I guess by the time you are almost 40 you are an adult. No excuses. And your thoughts and acts are yours to blame. You can’t use the teenage card anymore and act as stupid as you please ’cause it simply doesn’t work that way. It’s like you lose your poetic license… or something.

It is always harder around this time of the year, though… when he pops into my head, totally uninvited.

The thing is, every thanksgiving, my mom’s husband insists on taking us to this restaurant that has this jukebox so old it only plays like the same 5 songs over and over again. So, inevitably, it is going to play ours… at least 5 times. Even if I’m not ready to hear it. And I will think about him.

Rayanne thinks part of my problem is the fantasy. She says that the fantasy is always perfect and, since it doesn’t revolve around bills to pay and your simple everyday life, I use it, unconsciously, to keep him there, untouchable in a glass pedestal or something just to make sure no real relationship could ever compare to the one we could have had. Not even the one we actually had at one point… Because nothing will ever be as perfect as something you can’t come close enough to… you know… break.

I understand what she means. I really do.

I don’t mean to disagree with her professional opinion or anything, I mean, she is an actual psychologist and I am clearly not, but every time that song plays I catch myself wondering if the butterflies on my stomach could still be felt again. It feels to real to be a fantasy.

And then, I look around and I wonder if the couples I see holding hands love each other with the intensity that we did when we were teenagers, or if they are just together because that was the safest choice, the easiest choice. I wonder if people get married because at one point it becomes somewhat … expected.

I mean, is everlasting love even a thing?

I also refuse to believe that that kind of love, the kind that makes your body transcend to a different dimension is just an immature teenage concept, not meant to be felt in adulthood. A trick from your brain that you could feel over anything, like food or money or something. Because just… how sad would that be?

Technically I know adulthood is real and teenage love is not. I mean, I have that information floating inside my brain. But, am I supposed to believe it now just because I’m supposed to have matured ? ‘Cause if I am, then all that means is that I’ve just done a terrible job growing up, since every time our song plays I forget all those concepts, I forget reason and I possibly even forget my own name.

I guess my point is: Why are we even considered stupid when we are teenagers just because we are fascinated by love and so intelligent when we are adults if most of us adults clearly have forgotten how to love? Yet, we keep telling our children that love is in fact the most important thing there is and that it should, indeed, take your breath away. But sadly, the proof that we have for that is just a long lost memory that died inside a teenage dream. Probably tragically.

And that’s how much that song gets to me. The lyrics that were meant to be for me open a half-healed scar that let’s all those memories out … and I catch myself crying quietly when those long-lasting Sunday nights come again, missing those days and this gang, specially when real life gets too boring and too real and I can’t find anyone else to blame for the choices I’ve made.

I guess, allowing him to take over my thoughts says something about my life I am trying not to see…