‹ Prequel: Desperate for Closure
Status: This is a true story. Please comment so I can share more of myself with you. :)
A Word Like Love
Midnight Christmas Flowers
I had been planning my wedding since I started watching TLC in the 10th grade. I fancied myself as knowing everything Say Yes to the Dress, Cake Boss, and Four Weddings could teach me about how to get married. I had it planned to a tee: the dress, vintage with a full skirt and yellow cowboy boots, the swirls of yellow and eggplant and gray in a rustic southern California ranch. The way my husband-to-be would look at me as I stepped in, dressed in perfect pure white, the virgin bride.
It was all I could hold on to after my first kiss was destroyed by a game of spin the bottle and rumors of my promistcuity spread like forest fire through school setting my terminally single status on a permenate lock.
Trouble was...I knew nothing about love.
There had been guys, guys that lasted for a second or a minuet before falling out of my life leaving all but memories and Facebook statuses to show that they'd existed at all. And movies, which I have to blame in part for the content of this story, in particular for the expectations that almost ruined so many chapters.
This is the story of how I learned how much I didn't know.
And I only have flowers to blame.
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Small Florida towns get more and more picturesque the closer you get to the ocean. They're beautiful, if not average and extremely hot, populated by snow birds and the old folk that can't travel back to their summer homes in the good ol' New England.
Tourists though, they never seem to realize that people actually live here in "Paradise". That we too drink flat beer in peoples backyards and wonder about what to do besides go to the beach for the zillionth time. Instead they all believe we should spend saturday night like they do: decked out in Tommy Bahama clothing while watching the sun set (despite the fact that we're on the east coast) and then going to sleep with our town- at 8 o'clock at night when the mall, restaurants, and stores decide they are just to tired of fielding tourists and teenagers looking for something to do.
On one night in December, the height of snow bird season, I was just another one of those teenagers trying to figure out how to spend a weeknight on winter break- a Four Weddings rerun just wasn't cutting it.
I can't really explain how I ended up buying a potted plant and developing a simple- which I deemed elaborate- plan to place it on the doorstep of a boy who alone filled my middle school diaries with his blonde hair. At the time I excused it as purly a willingness to move past everything that had happened, to make it up to him for the sweet presents I received from him on every holiday throughout middle school as I pushed him away again and again- something I later blamed on fear and my unforgiving sullen nature that characterized my middle-school days.
It was a five dollar plant from Publix, it's pink flowers seemingly glowing in dim light of the street lights as I struggled to find his house- he'd moved...it was only a matter a time before I realized the extent to which he'd changed.
His neighborhood was dark, the street-lamps few and far between on a dirt road board by murderer-hiding forests. At any moment I expected a scene out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, my heart beating loud enough for any carnivore or blood thirty beast for miles to hear and come collect their prize.
I simply didn't do things like this. I wasn't brave or courageous. I was afraid of heights, of dark woods, of scary movies. I hung out with my group of friends, one that slowly evolved along Darwin's lines. I wore a purity ring and was friends with the school pastor's daughter and well...I didn't randomly go to someones house and drop a potter plant on their doorstep.
But for some reason I did.
Maybe it was fate that forced me to do it that night. Maybe it was fear of another year going past, this final senior year going past, without reconnecting with this boy I filled songbooks for, with this boy I thought I loved, with this boy that made my middle school life worth living. Or maybe I was just tired of these nights spent watching Four Weddings and Nicholas Sparks movies just dreaming of the love I thought I knew all about.
Either way...it was his neighbor's house.
And this is where our story begins.
It was all I could hold on to after my first kiss was destroyed by a game of spin the bottle and rumors of my promistcuity spread like forest fire through school setting my terminally single status on a permenate lock.
Trouble was...I knew nothing about love.
There had been guys, guys that lasted for a second or a minuet before falling out of my life leaving all but memories and Facebook statuses to show that they'd existed at all. And movies, which I have to blame in part for the content of this story, in particular for the expectations that almost ruined so many chapters.
This is the story of how I learned how much I didn't know.
And I only have flowers to blame.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Small Florida towns get more and more picturesque the closer you get to the ocean. They're beautiful, if not average and extremely hot, populated by snow birds and the old folk that can't travel back to their summer homes in the good ol' New England.
Tourists though, they never seem to realize that people actually live here in "Paradise". That we too drink flat beer in peoples backyards and wonder about what to do besides go to the beach for the zillionth time. Instead they all believe we should spend saturday night like they do: decked out in Tommy Bahama clothing while watching the sun set (despite the fact that we're on the east coast) and then going to sleep with our town- at 8 o'clock at night when the mall, restaurants, and stores decide they are just to tired of fielding tourists and teenagers looking for something to do.
On one night in December, the height of snow bird season, I was just another one of those teenagers trying to figure out how to spend a weeknight on winter break- a Four Weddings rerun just wasn't cutting it.
I can't really explain how I ended up buying a potted plant and developing a simple- which I deemed elaborate- plan to place it on the doorstep of a boy who alone filled my middle school diaries with his blonde hair. At the time I excused it as purly a willingness to move past everything that had happened, to make it up to him for the sweet presents I received from him on every holiday throughout middle school as I pushed him away again and again- something I later blamed on fear and my unforgiving sullen nature that characterized my middle-school days.
It was a five dollar plant from Publix, it's pink flowers seemingly glowing in dim light of the street lights as I struggled to find his house- he'd moved...it was only a matter a time before I realized the extent to which he'd changed.
His neighborhood was dark, the street-lamps few and far between on a dirt road board by murderer-hiding forests. At any moment I expected a scene out of Texas Chain Saw Massacre, my heart beating loud enough for any carnivore or blood thirty beast for miles to hear and come collect their prize.
I simply didn't do things like this. I wasn't brave or courageous. I was afraid of heights, of dark woods, of scary movies. I hung out with my group of friends, one that slowly evolved along Darwin's lines. I wore a purity ring and was friends with the school pastor's daughter and well...I didn't randomly go to someones house and drop a potter plant on their doorstep.
But for some reason I did.
Maybe it was fate that forced me to do it that night. Maybe it was fear of another year going past, this final senior year going past, without reconnecting with this boy I filled songbooks for, with this boy I thought I loved, with this boy that made my middle school life worth living. Or maybe I was just tired of these nights spent watching Four Weddings and Nicholas Sparks movies just dreaming of the love I thought I knew all about.
Either way...it was his neighbor's house.
And this is where our story begins.
♠ ♠ ♠
Please comment if you want more....this is all a true story. There isn't an ending yet...it's still happening.Just...well support would be nice. Hehe.