Thursday, March 7, 2013

Sometimes You Just Know



When do you know you have found the love of your life? Does God send you a letter of confirmation? Is there a receipt you get, like a purchase? How long do you have to wait until you know? Or is it immediate?

I know I am not as wise as the old woman in the shoe, but I have had relationships in the past, crushes, first loves and first kisses. But when I came to college, I wanted to take a break. I didn’t want any relationship getting in my way of my career, or distracting me from my work. I shut that part of myself off, thinking that if I were to meet someone I wanted to date, I would. I was wrong.

In shutting down this part of myself, I forced my feelings away. I made sure I didn’t feel anything for anyone. No flushed faces or trembling hands or stomach flips. I wanted nothing, thus I tried to force myself to feel nothing. But it didn’t work.


I was talking to my friend Joshua about my hobby of Civil War reenacting, and he had mentioned he had a reenactor on his floor named Bobby, who was in my Greek Civ class. For the life of me, I couldn’t place this boy’s face. I tried and tried, but I told him honestly that if he wasn’t in the reenacting group on campus, then I didn’t know him. I kept that name in mind, and remembered it as I went into class a few days later. Pin pointing this boy in my class, I knew I wanted to someday bring it up that we were both reenactors. More friends who do this, the better!

A few weeks later, I was in a group that had prepared a piece from the play Agamemnon, which of course made me Cassandra. Cassandra was a crazy wench that was possessed by Apollo, who screamed at the top of her lungs and ripped pieces of her clothes to shreds. I had gotten a robe to put over my normal clothes to rip and a wreath to throw off my head, but my partner that I was going to scream at had skipped class. With less than 15 seconds to perform for the class, a tall, broad shouldered young man in a baseball cap and a sweatshirt runs in late, immediately making us grab him not only for the ease of signing him up, but because he was a phenomenal speaker of ancient text.
“Bobby, you have to do this!” Our group leader threw him a wreath for his head, and I immediately turned to look at him more closely. This was the boy that reenacts too!

None of us knew that Bobby hadn’t read the play. Not a single word, so as he read down the lines to find a screaming girl, little did he know how much screaming I was going to do. When my part came up, and I ripped and screamed and cried less than a foot away from him, his face slowly turned red with embarrassment.

Aw, poor thing. I remember thinking as I continued my act. I wanted to immediately stop and apologize for screaming at him. Some first impression, right? After class was over, I packed up my things, heading over to Bobby putting his books away.

“Hey, sorry I had to scream in your face. Thought I should actually officially meet you. I’m Emma.”
“Nice to meet you. I’m Bobby.” He said as we shook hands.

It was a normal handshake, nothing new or exciting. I didn’t have a flash of my future nor did I feel faint. I felt a warmth of meeting someone new, and I felt as though I wanted to get to know him more.

Facebook is a beautiful things when you want to find out more about someone. When I found Bobby on Facebook, his profile picture was a Civil War one, immediately making me smile. I distinctly remember thinking that I felt funny. A warm, comfort lingered as I looked through some of his pictures and reading his information. That all stopped when I found Bobby listed in a relationship with someone. My heart fell, especially at the date. Almost two years of dating? And she’s older? Ah, well glad he’s happy.

I felt a moment of loss, but I shook it out, officially shutting the door on any thoughts on any relationship with him. He looked happy, and I was happy. So I settled on a friendship, always having his girlfriend in mind. We became closer friends, always going to meals with our group of friends. Before long, he became my best friend.  I turned to him for everything, whether it be a guy flirting with me or my sister’s emergency surgery or a friend back home’s break up, I always turned to Bobby. I needed him in my life, and I remember a specific conversation with my father after he met Bobby for the first time. He knew he was in a relationship, and my father also knew that I was causing problems. I totally understand, because what type of girlfriend wouldn’t be jealous of another girl hanging out with her man? It’s scary and unnerving. But my dad gave me an ultimatum. I either drop my friendship with Bobby to save his relationship, or I back down my friendship to a minimal level for his relationship.

I suddenly had a tightening in my chest, like I couldn’t breathe.
“Dad, I can’t.”
“Why not, Em? He’s just a friend.”
“I know that, I know, but---I just can’t stand my life without him. I can’t imagine my life without Bobby there. He’s a big part of it now, and he’s my best friend. I can’t… I can’t do that.”

Our friendship suddenly became very close at the end of the school year as I began to fear my upcoming internship with the National Park Service. I turned to Bobby for comfort, since I didn’t feel good enough to be going. How would I give these tours?! How will I live?? But Bobby also turned to me, his relationship beginning to become strained. There was a night he called me, asking to go for a walk. He needed to talk it out with someone, and he knew we’d go to our spot and lay it all out for analyses, like we did with everything. The porch of an original building on campus, one that lived through the battle and housed wounded soldiers, has rocking chairs that we always would sit in. This time, I took a rocking chair, and he took a normal seat, immediately putting his head in his hands. He was lost, wondering if he was making the right choices. “What if there’s someone better out there for me? What if I can’t find her? What if I’m missing her right now? I just have  a feeling that there’s someone better…” He said as he turned and looked at me. I felt my heart racing, and my face was red. Red? I pushed it aside, knowing that it was just because of the warmth of the coming summer making me hot and red. And even with that small pitch to say, “Yeah, there is. She’s right here. I’d never treat you or any other boyfriend like that! I don’t treat people like that…” I didn’t. I couldn’t make myself say something like that. I wanted to take his pain away, yet I knew I couldn’t. There was nothing I could do. I kept pushing him to work it out with his girlfriend. It was just because they were far away. He truly cared about her, and not me. Right? Right? Yes.
I had convinced myself that there was no way he had feelings for me because he was with someone else. I thought she was better than me in every aspect of life, like I felt many girls were at the time, so he belonged with her. I knew he completed me, but didn’t belong with me. I was perfectly fine alone.

On the last day of school, while I was still packing, Bobby’s father and little brother had come to pick him up. I made sure he said goodbye to me, because I was going to be cut off from the world in a week at my internship, and I felt a building fear of the idea that I wasn’t going to see him again until August. I leaned up and gave him a hug, feeling his warm, strong arms around me. Even for that brief moment, I wanted to hold on tight. Why? My heart rumbled with an emotion I didn’t recognize as he suddenly let go quickly, pushing me away to state he needed to turn in his last paper. I watched him go, feeling hurt at his quick goodbye as I made awkward small talk with his father and meeting his adorable little brother. 

Before Bobby was able to come back, I excused myself for more packing, and proceeded to go back to my empty room. As soon as I did, I felt antsy. I felt sick to my stomach, like I was panicking. I paced back and forth, looking out the window to see Bobby’s family packing up their car. I wanted to reach through the window; I wanted to keep him here. But as they shut the back door, I froze as they got into the car and drove off. A moment of silence filled my room.

“My God, what have I done?”

It all hit me at once. I fell onto my bed, stringing my hair through my hands at my sudden realization. I couldn’t put the word “like” on it. That seemed too vague. That unknown emotion rumbled to the center of my core, and I couldn’t catch my breath. Every single fun time, memory, battlefield walk, discussion, hug or word of encouragement rushed into my mind as I realized that this whole time, as I encouraged him to work through it all, and keep trying, I was slowly falling for him. Every moment he told me of his dreams, his fears, his doubts, I encouraged him with my whole heart. I didn’t hold back from him, yet I held back from myself. I didn’t want to admit to myself that I had feelings for him because I couldn’t bear to think that I could destroy something beautiful. But was it truly beautiful? Or did I convince myself that his relationship was beautiful so I could be happy being alone? What had I done to myself? What had I done by not telling him the truth?

On top of those questions, I visited Gettysburg once more before my arrival to Virginia. A tough trip to return to your home without the people who make it home. I sat on Little Round Top, Bobby's favorite spot on the battlefield and the spot where he knew everything. I sat, wanted him there next to me. I couldn't get this ache out to stop hurting in the center of my chest. But how could I? It was in that moment where I realized that I might, in fact, need to tell him someday. He needed to know. But no-- not then. I sat in agony, knowing the amount of pain I would put on him with the truth. I vowed that day that I would ignore it, let myself suffer for his relationship to work. A sadness washed over me as my selfless decision felt final on that rock where I took one more step towards admitting it to myself. But why admit to something that wasn't true? I was happy alone, right? Right...?


All of these questions hounded me all the way until I arrived in my small house in the middle of the woods in Virginia. Surrounded by the Civil War, my ache to share all of these things with Bobby grew. I wanted him to see this amazing place, I wanted to see him again. I yearned to hear his voice. But I couldn’t tell him this. I didn’t want to make his struggle to make a decision any worse, so I wrote it down. 4 pages of pure emotion, I scribbled onto notebook paper every single colliding thought that kept nagging at me. I even asked him to visit me, because I knew I wasn’t going to send the letter. It was going to sit in my desk, a comfort to know that I at least admitted to myself that I had some unknown emotion, an unknown feeling pulsing from my chest.

But I broke. He had been 100% honest with me, about his struggles and his wonderings, and all I did was feed it back to him. I didn’t give him my true opinion or anything I was truly thinking. I told him what I thought he wanted. Until that one day, I finally sent him a text of the truth.

“I miss you. I miss you a lot.”

5 days later, after confessing to everything, I sat twiddling my thumbs in the Jackson Shrine. He said he was going to be there around 3:30, and it took every ounce of my self-control not to stare at the clock for every second.

I didn’t know what was going on with me. I was scared that it wasn’t real, that I had made this whole thing up. This comfortable, soothing feeling I got when Bobby was around, or this jolted excitement when we talked about our feelings for each other. I didn’t know if it was real or not. I hadn’t seen him in almost a month, and I just needed to see him.  Of course, right before 3:30, I get visitors that want the full story of Stonewall Jackson, which I graciously gave. I needed something to distract me. But as I talked to them in the room closest to the parking lot, I glanced out the window to see these two burly feet come marching up the walkway. I froze, knowing it was him. I had to finish this tour! So I blubbered on about the two birds on top of the bookshelf, getting their names wrong of course. But as I heard the door open, I immediately turned around to find a blast of white light from the summer sun flashing in around a freckled-face young man in a white button down.

Time stopped. I couldn’t even breathe. His piercing blue eyes softened as a silent message passed through us in that moment. This is okay. This feeling is okay to have.
He smiled at me, as I did the same. However, in that minute of looking at him, I knew it was over. My search, my need to be alone; it was all over. I fought back the words that suddenly appeared on my tongue, but were blatantly said in my mind.

“I love him. I love him, and I have always loved him.”

As my visitors left a few minutes later, I waited until they were far enough away from the door that the risk of them coming back didn’t exist. I immediately bolted to the room Bobby was standing in, and I jumped into his arms. I wrapped my arm around his neck, putting my face into his shoulder. Everything was alright. I was safe, and he was here. I felt our souls click together, and I knew then.

I had found the love of my life.




This post isn’t to brag or anything like that, but it is to show that sometimes you hide your feelings away too much. I know I hid everything away, for good reason too. It helped not only myself grow, but helped Bobby grow as well.  But in that one moment where my eyes met his—that’s when you know. Sometimes, you just know, and it’s a beautiful thing.