I don't want to say I have a photographic memory, but I tend to have the ability to pull random specificity from poignant moments in my life. Sometimes it acts on a trigger...usually a song that was playing at the time. It happened to me today, thanks to the 1980s Alternative playlist on Pandora. Here's the story:
It was the fall of 1992, and I was fully enveloped in the chaos and utter unpredictability of life away from home, on my own, on a college campus. Trauma is usually used with a negative connotation, but any situation, be it differently good or differently bad, can certainly cause mental trauma. I was really trying to get my feet under me after being presented with the traumatic situation that pretty much involved creating a persona that would be, ostensibly, the New me. It happens to everyone that either goes away to school, moves to a new neighborhood, changes jobs, starts a relationship, etc...you find that you suddenly have an opportunity to be something slightly different than you were in the past. I am sure some people who undergo a complete reinvention that is far away from who they really are tend to have some difficulty, but I'd like to think I stuck close to the tenets that had defined myself for my 18 years. But I digress.
The single most negatively traumatic situation I was dealing with was the separation from my girlfriend. Even though my rational mind would intervene with the proverbial "cold water" interpretation of my feelings as mere youthful infatuation, I was fairly convinced that I was in love with her. Even though that did in fact happen to be the case (considering over 20 years later I'm still in this situation), I was not in a position to really call it love...not at that age. One of the things that defined me was the aching pain of separation from the girl I had dated for a year and three months. I found that the telephone was not only an inadequate source of relief from this pain...but it created even more pain...in the wallet. I blew through my allotted $100 in phone bill in the first two weeks...learning the cruelty that was the toll call. We were in the same area code, so a long distance plan would not work...it was not until after we graduated that this would change, most likely a change that was conceived and propagated by someone whose paycheck was greatly supplemented by a love-sick teenaged me. I wanted/needed to see her.
Three weeks of school went by...and the day came that she was coming to visit. She had hooked a ride from a friend at Purdue that was visiting Ball State for the weekend. It was a Friday night. I was literally a nervous wreck all day. I had given her directions to my dorm, and she had told me she was to arrive around 6 pm. After eating dinner, I could do nothing but wait. After secluding myself in my dorm room for as long as I could stand, I emerged into the common area of the dorm. A group of my friends were hanging around there, and, as I recall, all of them asked me when my girlfriend was coming. I most likely responded with a countdown to the very minute. 6 came and went, and I began to worry. I began to pace at 6:15. I could no longer converse by 6:30...I felt ready to explode. I needed to get away from everyone that seemed to be staring at me...wondering where my girlfriend was. It was a case of anticipation like I've rarely experienced, hence the reason its so burned into my memory.
7 pm found me sitting in front of the dorm on a bench, fervently searching every car door that opened for the sign of her head. I was comforted at one point by a girl I'd met the week before...I guess my anguish was pretty apparent? When 7:30 came, I was beside myself. I remember no longer being able to sit still. I alternated between scanning the road in front of the dorm and the ground between my feet. There was nothing else.
Then, the door to the dorm opened behind me. I turned to see who it was...and it was her. She was accompanied by one of my friends, having accidentally used the back door of the building, and that friend knew exactly who she was and where I was. I levitated off the bench. Here's where the memory part comes in. Her long brown/blonde tresses fell in waves over her shoulders. She was wearing a black and white striped top and a pair of black jean shorts. Past that point, everything is pretty blurry. I introduced her to a bunch of my new friends, there were smiles all around, and I took her back to my room. Then, clarity. And the reason behind this diatribe.
We were together, and my heart felt like it would burst. We hugged. We kissed. And then I (as I had previously planned), I asked her to dance. The song was Close To Me by The Cure. I held her tight, and when I looked into her eyes, she was crying. I didn't know it was possible for a person to miss another more than I had missed her, but, apparently she had missed me as well.
Hearing the song again today made me think how well I have done in keeping her Close To Me ever since.
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