Looking up my Past

 When we went to Massanetta Music Camp every summer, we were filled with love for the chorus, but even more, we were in love with our freedom.  For a week we could listen to not only our peers, but also our hearts.  I loved certain young men, without feeling bound to them, except for my final boyfriend, Garnet, who was a year younger than me.  He made me feel beautiful and beloved. I went with him two summers and have never forgotten him.  Perhaps because he was so direct and without guile, I trusted every word he spoke.  I think we were about the same age anyway, as I was very young in my class, and he was older in his.  He had this amiability that I adored.  So, unlike my own family, who were all so intense and serious.  We got along without all the usual stress and ups and downs.  I lost the only person who was guileless.  I never had a boyfriend like that again.

Maybe because He was younger, no one cared about us.  Or maybe because we were both so naive.  Whatever the reason, I’ve never had that feeling again. Maybe because feelings are more intense the older you are, or maybe because I was too young to know any better.  Was I incapable of real intensity?  No, I think it was the impossibility of our connecting over a vast distance with no way of pursuing it.  This was before cell phones and gadgets.  We had no chance of continuing our correspondence except mail.  So, we both moved on.  But in my case, it was to boyfriends I didn’t really care about, and the result was ultimately fatal:  I married a man who didn’t love me and who I didn’t love.  But I had given up by then.  Even Dean was just a dream, and I never really knew him.  I made it easy for myself to give up.  Too many things had happened by that time for me to really care.  

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