True Love
This is the beginning and this is the end.
We’re going to tackle this together. Strong and confidently. Holding hands as we get through this.
From when I was a 16 year old boy onwards, this is how I’ve always felt. This is me putting my heart on the table, sliding it your way to take a look at.
Out of all of these photos that have been shared, this is where I put the most time, thought, energy, love, and hope.
I’m of the breed where if I tell you I love you, I’m really out on a limb because I save this word for the few people that are capable of hitting me in a certain way.
With that stated, it makes it easy to say without a doubt, I’ve never loved anyone more than this person.
This entire project was initially intended to have been between the girl I’ve loved for all my adult life and myself. A retrospective look at two people utterly and hopelessly in love, and their 10 year journey to finally find each other. Many of my favourite moments of us would have been recreated.
For better or for worse, that as well as this project didn’t turn out as I had dreamed.
Our chemistry was something I always chased for. Everything fit, amazingly and simply. She fit every hole I have, coming together like a puzzle. All the pieces that I didn’t know I was missing all along.
Our relationship that had been backed by 10 years of trust, support, and love, ended after a week and five days of a committed relationship.
I loved her fully and put her needs first.
The most important thing I can say is that I do not for a second regret this moment. Out of anger during her break up with me, I said I did, but that was just me trying to hurt after being hurt.
It’s time to share this openly and lovingly otherwise I’d never be able to go beyond it.
——-
The Memory
I’m able to tell you exactly where I was standing when I noticed her at my giant ‘lobster’ house party (weirdest statement I’ve made in this).
In my head, it’s one of the clearest memories I own. I was standing in the living room of my house as I noticed her out of a crowd. In a room full of insanity and commotion, strangers all around cheering for 2 lobsters… At the center of it all, I only noticed the girl with the short curly hair, retro hat, bright hazel eyes, and arms raised in celebration.
This is the memory I felt the most. I smile now thinking about it.
I didn’t get a chance to talk to her as much as I would have liked so after that night I made sure to find out from mutual friends who she was. I was extremely interested to find out. I got her MSN info, adding her to my list, blown away to find out that she even remembered who I was, let alone wanted to talk to me.
She was seeing somebody else.
It was Valentines day, when she had finally got out of the relationship. When I heard the news, I did the only thing that made sense to me: I gathered all money I could find, ran to the corner store and grabbed a bouquet of red roses. It was an extremely rainy February day as I ran the 9 blocks in total it took to get to her house, flowers in hand. I knocked on the door, presenting the flowers forward for her to see when she opened the door.
It opened, as her grandmother saw me and my flowers. She shut the door, leaving me there. Confused and a little let down, I gathered myself up and knocked again. The girl finally opened the door.
She blushed. I blushed.
I was never able to escape the need for this feeling. Bringing a brightened smile to that young girl’s face.
As the kid in that doorway, and as the man writing this now, there was not a single person that I’ve met in my life that I’ve been more certain about.
As true as anything I’ve said in the last month, I would have married this girl and done everything in my power to make her extremely happy for the rest of my life.
You know what I would change about this moment?
Nothing.
——-
What Went Wrong
After 9 years of skating around our feelings I put it all out there and explained how I always thought she’d be the one for me. She reciprocates everything that I put out there. We’re soul mates and we’re lovers, we say back and forth, in a moment I can only describe as pure bliss.
I tell co-workers that this could be the one I settle down with.
The morning after our first night together, as I step off the bus we’ve shared on her way to work and my way home, I receive the text “It just felt weird.”
Completely crushed by her revelation I distance myself, thinking about her daily in the year that follows.
With this initial pain, I create the character of John Crooks in the movie The Bellhauser Cup, a character that is dealing with a similar pain. I think it’s the best acting I’ve ever accomplished.
A year later she reaches out to me explaining that she needs me in her life. She says she regretted what she did and wants to start fresh.
I eventually agree and reciprocate. As scary as it is for a man who was abandoned by the only strong female presence in my life at an early age, I let my walls down.
I choose to trust.
I’m told she’s moved to Toronto specifically to start a life with me. It’s something I want so bad with every part of me, that I believe it.
I want to be her boyfriend and tell her this, but she doesn’t want titles. After a few times of asking if we could place a title on us, my dreams come true and we’re finally boyfriend and girlfriend. For real this time.
It’s the beginning of a great time in my life.
I wake up energized singing love songs, my personal favorite ‘Wild Thing.’ As does she.
I go out of my comfort zone and introduce her to my dad. I rarely do this with anyone. They get along great.
We make couples costumes for Halloween, a first for me.
Finally, I ask her to move in with me. She blushes and says that’s really nice and we both giggle. I’m 16 again.
After a week and a half of living this way, she doesn’t want the “titles” of boyfriend and girlfriend anymore. She breaks up with me the day after Halloween.
And I’m severely damaged.
She wants to continue on being us, going slower. As difficult as it is for me to do this, I try my best, putting her needs first, trying to forget she said she was my soul mate only days prior.
Soon after, I get accused of being unfaithful. Repeatedly.
I had received a message on my Facebook from a book editor that I had introduced to her in the hopes of getting her a connection. I trusted her to see my Facebook, and had nothing to hide. The editor wanted to kiss me after seeing how happy I was dancing all night with my girlfriend. I laugh it off, not taking it seriously in the least.
I can’t say this enough, when I was with her I barely noticed another face in the room. I would have never cheated on her.
And I tell her this after every accusation.
I’ve had multiple relationships that I’ve cast aside to keep her spot in my life open. It was always this way. She was my sole focus.
I quote Nick Hornby on my Facebook wall in regards to her. “Some people just feel like home.”
It’s the perfect description of how I felt about her. When she asked about it, I didn’t explain. I didn’t want to impede on her desire for a slower moving relationship.
Through the entire month of November she refuses to kiss me at all and each one of my persistent attempts is met by her cheek. The electricity that I felt for each and every one of our kisses is turned off for me.
I run baths for her, clean her dishes to disengage fights between her and her roommate that she planned to move out on, and I just wait and hope things will get better as I leave her house every night she asks me to. Her in a bath I ran. Dinner on the table. Walking home alone, trying not to cry.
I’ve focused a lot of what social media platforms can do to bring us together. They can also separate.
What I ignore completely is that her ex has been leaving posts on her Facebook wall. Commenting “I want that to be us” on a picture of two anxiety-ridden people underneath a blanket.
By the end of a month where I received none of her kisses, she’s rushed off to Kitchener where her ex lives to deliver clothes, and only after she’s called me her ex’s name, I bring it up and ask her if she has been or is cheating. She says no and I believe her. I still believe her.
I choose to trust.
The next week we’re over, and she just wants to be friends and try to find the real “us”.
Within the week, she and her ex-boyfriend are back together posting pictures online for all to see.
You’ve hit rock bottom when you’re openly crying in your father’s basement to Queen’s “Somebody To Love.”
——-
The Photoshoot
In the final picture of a project that was meant to have been just for two people sharing their lives together, it’s just me.
In the cold of the winter.
Moving forward.
——-
What Do I Miss
I could give the typical ‘things guys like about girls’ list. That includes her smile and how she cocks her head back like Julia Roberts when she laughs, the way I felt her kisses with my whole body, but it wouldn’t be fair to everything I truly appreciated about her.
It was in the feeling of being free and singing in the shower together to her Glee soundtrack. The only person I could be that open and unguarded with in my life.
We’d eat juicy burgers together and I’ve never been more turned on by anybody, just from a look, a laugh, and a greasy hand.
The way someone holds your hand is a special thing. The way we held hands was no different. It would end up with her hand in mine as though it were a gun. I was the only person to ever play with and share her “gun” as we’d walk together shooting cars and passersby alike. It was fun, it was playful, and it was us.
This person and this moment were bigger than life.
But Life can be too short to keep chasing the impossible. I can’t wait another 10 years in hopes to date her for another month or less.
I’m going to miss the dream. And I’m going to miss the hope.
I’m too full to be even a little bit empty.
From these events, here is what I’ve learnt and concluded:
I was completely destroyed by these events and still recovering. I was really angry, depressed, and I think she is the only person with this being the only manner to have triggered mother issues for me. I was always afraid my mom would be at my door with missed birthday gifts, and a promise of love only to leave the next day.
I want something more concrete. I deserve something more concrete.
But I don’t regret meeting this person. Nor do I regret the chain of events that unfolded.
Look at the beauty that came out of all of this! This is what I’m getting at. Embrace these events and grow from them. I told her I regretted all of our time together and the manner in which I was treated after 10 years of back and forth. That’s not true.
I’m really grateful to have learnt so much about myself and everyone that got me here.
I sincerely hope they’re in love and that he can give her everything that I wasn’t able to in our short lived love. In all honesty, she deserves that.
It’s one thing to say someone inspires you. It’s another thing when it calls you to action. She inspired this all. She inspired me and in part she inspired you if you’re reading this.
In the end, she positively changed my life.
I took the road less travelled on this and visually recreated everything to learn about me. To figure out where to go from where I stood.
With all this love in me, I had to get it out. Thank you friends for helping me find its new found direction.
For the very first time since 16, as Ashley beautifully put it earlier in this project, love is going to carry me forward.
——-
Here’s To Life
I embraced all of this pain and hurt, rather than evading these types of feelings as I was used to. The results of being vulnerable have been tremendous and I’m going to post them Monday.
Let’s all breath together.
This is the first time I’ve really fully been able to be open to whatever, and whoever life brings my way.
I’ve learned to communicate on a higher level through all of this.
And I still choose to trust.
Don’t ever let the bad change who you are.
I believe in love.
I’m looking to get married, I want children, and comfortable with both of those facts.
But enough about me.
How are you feeling? I’d love to hear from you.
Thank you for following my journey.
Adam Ward
Many years later and we’re now right in the middle of the Marvel cinematic universe where anything and everything can happen. There is no end to the possible story lines that we might bear witness to. If they’re going to confidently march into something like Civil War, with the Infinity Wars not far off, its hard to imagine what could be off limits. Even box office poison himself, Howard The Duck, has resurfaced in the new films.
Adam Ward 