The past is doomed to repeat itself. I learned that a few days ago and I still feel like I’m stuck in the afterthought of a lost and forgotten time. Mind you I never forgotten them but kept them nice and safe so as to relieve the current stress of life with a joy of the past. I had to work in Louisburg, NC over the weekend where I met an old friend I use to work with at Winn Dixie back in the late 1980’s. We talked a great deal of all the people we worked with. About where they are now and how they got there. We caught up on each other’s lives and joked around like the past was the present.
Afterwards I felt all weird inside as many of those thoughts flooded back to the point that I felt like I was drowning to the deepest part of the ocean. And the only image I had was a young woman who is two years younger than me. Her name is Jeanette and she was the first woman I fell head over heels for. Her dimple smile, her tomboyish attitude loaded with a good dose of femininity. I could go on but truth to be told; she was the first girl I ever had a crush on. All through my school life I was never really attracted to any of the girls in my school. I did have a crush on Brooke Shields and Irene Cara but in my real life Jeanette was the first girl I really liked.
To be honest, I was 21, still a virgin and proud of it. Seeing that most of the people around me were making a lot of mistakes in relation to drugs, alcohol and sex I was glad in being me. After all the majority of my graduation class found themselves dead while a great deal others became parents before their 20’s while a few others stayed in their alcoholic/drug world. Many of us did go on to better things in life. Many others in my senior graduation class at school stayed the straight and narrow as other strayed from the path so to speak. I got through it by staying at the bottom of the social ladder. I’ll write more about that later on. But I survived it.
Jeanette and I over time started to spend time together. Depending on our work schedule it was mainly lunch or dinner. We talked and got to know each other more and more and a friendship was there. But it was only to be just that. She had a thing about dating people she worked with but if it meant that our friendship couldn’t go any further was OK so long as we were at least friends. Plus I didn’t know any dating techniques or try anything romantic on her but she did know I liked her a lot. I got a chance to spend time at her home meeting her sister and her son as well as the parents. Life was going great until I made a costly mistake.
One evening her sister and I were driving to Zebulon and as our conversation progressed I let slip a secret about Jeanette. The moment I said it I felt really sick inside me to the point I actually started having a cold sweat. The rest of the evening went OK but I felt dead. And sure enough the next day Jeanette let me have it. I didn’t get angry or defensive. I just kept quiet and as she spoke. From then on she hated me with every fiber of her being. She never smiled while I was near and seeing as we worked at the same store she eventually transferred to another store. Everyone kept asking what happened but I never told them. Never spoke about her again and tried to move on with my life.
Eventually I transferred to another store and eventually I did find a girlfriend but that didn’t last long. She was still in love with an old boyfriend that abused her. The next girlfriend was mental. Literally, the woman love to play mind games and kept testing and attacking me on trivial matters. Nothing like keeping a constant memory of Jeanette in my thoughts as I was going into train wreak relations one after the other. It got to the point that I left the state all together and moved far away. Even visiting other countries and just forgetting everything about myself and where I came from. It worked. All my past memories were locked away. They just became reference thoughts without the connections. But that personnel victory was soon to come to an end.
I was matched up with a Okinawan woman and our relationship was moving along pretty good. As we talked and got to know each other we found out that we had a great deal in common. She was perfect for me in ways I didn’t think of. She actually got me to improve myself without pushing or nagging. The real joy came when she became pregnant but that led to many unforeseen problems. My wife was having major back problems and she went through a depression after our son was born. Her mother came and stayed with us for a month to help her through this period but we had to make a decision. One I didn’t like to make.
My wife was having a difficult time while pregnant and handling being a mother. Her family lives in Okinawa and mine lives in North Carolina. A coin toss after days of figuring many options to solve our problems ended with the three of us leaving a lot of our stuff behind as we left California in a rented cargo van heading for North Carolina where my family would help her get through her physical and mental ordeal. I didn’t want to come back but I did it anyway for her and our son.
Eventually a got a job which led to a much better job which led me to Louisburg in a chance meeting with an old friend I long forgot about that opened up a floodgate of memories I tried so hard to forget. In all, I am coming to the end of my struggles and soon my self made crisis will be partly over due to another idiotic thing I did. I went and googled her name and within a few minutes I found her myspace account and sent an email. Can I make an ass of myself or what? But no reply and from the looks of her myspace account she hasn’t been there in a very long time. In time maybe she’ll find it and wonder who I am or she will be filled with rage and hate all over again. But never the less, she was my first true friend I ever had in my whole life. I can’t change the past but at least I can work on not messing up my future like I did to Jeanette.
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