old ghosts

Way back in 1988-89 when I was a college freshman, I had a fairly close friendship with a woman named Sharon. At the time she was going steady with a football player from another school -- and, you know, this is getting pretty hard to write. I have 15 years' distance from the situation now, so I think my perspective is a little clearer now. Let me tackle it another way, now that I've rewritten this paragraph 32 times.

We were pretty close. I characterized our relationship, to myself at least, as one where we were fairly transparent with one another. We talked about our goals, our struggles, our faith and our pasts with an openness that I had never known before. I don't know that anyone ever considered us a couple -- certainly she didn't -- but I wouldn't have minded. I even asked her to go out with me, knowing full well that she was dating somebody at another school.

Know something? This isn't getting easier to write about. I'm getting more confused the longer I write.

Essentially what it boils down to is I was in love with her. She was the first woman I ever had those feelings for, and even now 15 years later I'm stirring up something as I think about freshman year.

Sophomore year was completely different. Sharon distanced herself from me dramatically. Previously when I had visited her room, we could talk for hours. Now, she pretty much pretended I wasn't there. She was still friendly to me, but there was a very big and invisible wall. At the time I told myself that she had been bothered by how close we had become and had distanced herself from me. That probably is a bunch of post-adolescent hogwash, and the truth is that she didn't share my attraction and hoped that with distance I would eventually leave her alone.

I did, but oh how it hurt. It still hurts thinking about it, and I'm happily married to Natasha now and have been for five years. Throughout the rest of college, I felt like I had been ripped in two and kept waiting for her to come to her senses and "come back" to me. It wasn't until she got engaged to someone else that I realized that not only wasn't I in the game, I was playing the wrong sport. I must have held the candle out for Sharon for four years after my freshman year before I finally saw the light.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that men are essentially a bunch of losers. When we've been in a relationship with a woman and thought that she might be The One, it's damn near impossible for us ever to get her out of our mind and stop thinking that What If is really Should Be, and that given the right combination of events, things will work out the way we know they should. Am I making sense?

Probably this is why the Song of Solomon cautions us not to awaken love until the proper time arrives.