Apparently Mike and I ran into each other again in 2004, but I didn't remember it until this past year when he told me about it. It was August 2004, according to my journal, it was August 16th! Believe it or not I don't actually journal every single second of my life, but I always journaled about Mike because I had no one else to tell! When we ran into each other I was pregnant with Riley and really, really sick. I was on a lot of medicine at the time to try and keep the pregnancy and apparently it affected my memory. When Mike and I started talking again this past year he told me about meeting Mike Unrau, how I introduced them in the store when we ran into each other. I had no idea what he was talking about! But as we were reading through my old journal we came across this little note I had written, dated August 17, 2004.
"I dreamed of Mike last night and dreamed of our meeting again after 9 years. The dream was so real and so vivid I woke up emotional and now can't get it all out of my mind. And again I wonder, "why?". Why is the attachment so strong? Where is he? Is he home safely? Has he been home and redeployed again? Why hasn't he ever emailed again? That makes me think it's because something happened. Or is it because I told him I had to be careful because I do still love him but I'm married? If that's the truth then I have immense respect and admiration for him. It's driving me nuts! I feel like a 15 year old all over again...left with all these emotions and questions, aching for some sense of closure or some sort of goodbye. Instead I sit here and wait, yet again, like some form of torture. And I can't help but wonder again how I can love someone so deeply who I hardly knew and only had a couple of months with."
I could never explain the pull that Mike Roe had on me. It was literally love at first sight. I used to get angry when everyone in my life at 15 years old told me that I was too young to know what love was. They told me he just wanted to sleep with me and didn't care about me and I was foolish for claiming that I loved this boy. But oh how I loved him! I knew that my 15 year old heart wasn't experienced and didn't know a whole lot about love, but I knew I loved him. I loved him from the moment I saw him in math class and on the football field. See, when we spent all those wee morning hours together, I got to see the real Mike. I didn't see all the pride and arrogance that everyone else saw, or maybe I just saw through it to the real stuff. What I saw was a very gentle and caring person, what I saw was a boy who cared deeply about a lot of things but didn't want to put his guard down to show it. What I saw was a passionate heart that loved me beyond anything I had ever experienced up to that point. I saw someone who was hurt easily and had some past hurt in his heart that he didn't know how to deal with yet. I saw someone who just wanted to be loved for who he was, not because he was this incredible football player (though I sure loved to see him in uniform...giggle, giggle!) and because he was a smooth talker and knew how to talk to anyone. I saw someone who wanted to be loved as much as he loved, who wanted someone to care for who he really was. I remember thinking that I was the luckiest girl in the world to have this boy love me, choose me. I knew he had so much to offer and a heart bigger than I had seen in most people in my life and I knew that I wanted to be the one to love him for the rest of his life. I've always been thankful that he let me in, that he opened himself up to me with things that he didn't allow anyone else to see. You know they say that you can measure a boy by the way he treats his momma. And Mike loved his mom! They were (are) very close, that was one thing that really impressed me about him. Even though I didn't see them together much (she was always sleeping in the middle of the night!), he talked about her a lot and you could hear the love and respect in his voice. So even though I was 15, I knew that I loved this boy beyond what my heart and head understood and even though I didn't know a lot about love, I knew what this love was. I had an inkling in my heart that it was rare, but it wasn't until I left home and went into the world on my own, and had relationships with other men, that I realized that this kind of love does not come around all the time. Most people never get the chance to be loved like this and to feel love like this and I was so grateful I had, even if it was only for a couple of months.
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