Title: Finding lost love

By: j1m2f3

I think I need the therapist to read this if possible and give me some therapy to go along with some advice, just kidding, well sort of. My situation is really complex, to me anyway, and I would actually like to just tell someone about it and get some advice. It all started when my mother became a girl scout leader. I was about 10 years old at the time and the girl I fell in love with was 9 (I know it seems like we were too young to fall “in love“ and, as I sit here typing this 18 years latter, I cannot believe it myself except for the fact that I still think about her every day!). Anyway she was in my mother’s troop and also attended the same grade school as I did. Because her mother and my mother were best friends, They were always over our house as well. After a few months I met her brother and I would constantly use him as an excuses to go to her house. I saw her almost every day for about three years. I never actually told her that I loved her, hell, I really didn’t even know what love was, but I think she could see it in my eyes because I could definitely see it in hers every Tuesday morning when our classes would meet in the chapel for mass (we attended a catholic school) and we would just stare into each other’s eyes for the entire time.

But as the story goes, my mother was caught cheating on my father with my neighbor when I was around 12. It was only months after that when my father decided to get back at my mother by what else, sleeping with her best friend, and that’s right the mother of the girl I fell in love with. I found out about the situation when my neighbor’s daughter came storming into our house and started slapping my mother in her face. I guess they figured that I deserved an explanation for what I just saw and they told me the truth. Over the next few months everyone tried to act as if nothing had changed, but one moment that stuck to me all these years and kind of forced change is when I decided to go to church with my love’s family (I am calling my love “my love” only because I do not want to use her name) (I had stopped going to church on Sundays and my mother wanted us to go with her) and when I came home that afternoon my mother was crying and said that she was hurt that I would go to church with my love’s mother but not with her. It almost seemed as though I was crossing over into enemy lines and somehow betraying my mother now by being with my love. So we started seeing less of each other as we were still very young and our parents didn’t visit anymore and when we did see each other I did not treat her the was I should have. I was mean and cold to her.

This next few paragraphs I will dedicate to my own idiocy and naivety and to things that I still regret to this day. I guess part of the problem was the fact that I was so young and didn’t know how to handle myself in the midst such emotional turmoil. I can remember one of the last times my love came to the house she rode her bike over and I was playing basketball in the yard, I can remember throwing my ball at her bike and it bent one of her tires. I don‘t know why I did that and, to this day, it is one of my biggest regrets. I can still see her crying as she left probably wondering why I would turn on her like that. I am not sure if anyone ever told her about her mother’s and my father’s affair.

When I turned 13 our family moved. It was only about a ten minute drive down the road but it may as well have been across the country to a 13 year old kid. Since the move, I have only seen her a hand full of times. They came and visited us at our new house only once and it was very awkward to say the least. Even if I were to get her back into my life I’m not sure I would ever feel comfortable with us all in the same room ever again with the past that our parents share. But back to the regrets. For some stupid reason I kept telling myself that we were to young to feel true love, and I kept telling my self that I would eventually find a girl that I would “really” fall in love with, but as the years flew by and girlfriends came and went I started to realize that what I felt for her was true love. Skip through a few years to a time when I knew how rare she really was and how much she and those three years we were close meant to me and that brings us to my next regret. When I was about 18 years old, I saw her in a local store where I was sent to pick up some office supplies for my job at the time. The second I walked through the door there she was walking right in front of me and we just looked into each other‘s eyes again for the first time in years and it was as though I was a kid back in the school chapel. But all we did was stare into each other’s eyes and not a word was said to one another as we walked away from each other for the last time in person. I do not know it she felt the same way as I did that day but I honestly believe that she did because as we walked away, it was as though we were trying to be lost in each other‘s eyes for as long as possible until we could see each other no more. That moment ranks as the most surreal moment in my life (next to the time I was hallucinating on lsd, but that is a story for another session altogether). I went back to the store a few days later but could not bring myself to go inside to talk to her. I have no idea why I just couldn’t.

Fast forward to now. I have been searching for her over the past year and a half and the phone number where she last lived has been disconnected. She has moved from her last listed address and I cannot seem to find her. It is almost as though she has disappeared. Here is where I think I need some therapy, I am not sure if I could tell her all of this even it I did find her. I am so afraid that I will see her again walking by somewhere and blow another opportunity for my one chance at true love. I do consider myself a shy person but that is not so much the problem here. The sins of our parents seem to me the haunting problem and I am not sure that I can fix what may already be shattered. There is a passage in the Bible that I do not remember exactly but goes something like: Sins committed will hurt families for generations. Like I said that is not the exact passage but it is the general message. I can’t help but wonder if my parents have not only destroyed their marriage but also the love that me and my love once had.

Well, that is about it. As I look back on my life I only regret pushing her out of it. That being said, I would love nothing more than to have a storybook ending to our lives, get together again and live happily ever after. However I am realistic about the fact that I am 28 and she is now 27. She may be married (I believe that even if a woman is divorced she cannot remarry in the eyes of God because once you are married you and your spouse truly become one person) and I would never subject her and her family (if she has one) to the sins of adultery that quite literally ripped away my very soul. Another possible scenario is that she may not look at those days in the same way that I do. She may just see me as a childhood crush that is in the past and nothing more. I am more than willing to accept any outcome that may arise from telling her how I feel. No matter what happens I know in my heart though that no other woman will ever fully fill the void that I feel now without her. On the other hand, I also know that I am one of the luckiest people alive even if I never see her again because I know that for three years I had something that most people really do wait their entire lives for and many people never find and that is true love. So after all this I guess I really just need some help finding her and some advice on the situation and what you think about it. Am I just crazy because sometimes I really wonder if I am in love or just insane. If you have read through this whole thing and are going to give me some advice I thank you for your time in advance.

Sincerely,

J

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Friday, April 28, 2006 -
Answer by: werita