First love is a truly terrible thing. I wish I could explain this so that those of you who have not yet experienced this will believe me, but that just isn't how life works. Perhaps you'll remember my words in the back of your mind and then, someday, come back here and read them in a fresh light if you find they might apply to you.
He's sick to his stomach and shaking a little through the tears.
First love, the first time you really truly believe it is going to work out, is an intoxicatingly beautiful thing. You absolutely and wholeheartedly believe that you have struck a bond with a person that you will never find in anybody else again. Slowly, you feel comfortable with that person. Over time you feel you have grown so you mentally fit well together like you have with nobody else, and the thought of life without this person becomes unimaginable.
This is, in fact, precisely why these relationships can be so damaging.
Two people, on a very logical and grossly over-simplified level, will remain together so long as they believe that their life together is better than their life would be apart. When the idea of not being with somebody begins to be considered impossibly unimaginably bad, the relationship will continue to exist even when the situation is unimaginably bad minus one. When you believe that you will never find a bond with another human like you do with the first person you really love, life apart begins seeming infinitely worse, and this brings us back to my sobbing inconsolable friend.
***
The two white weathered shelves stood abandoned in the driveway.
His truck is this bizarre sort of contraption, even by the standards of a girl who spent a year trolling around in Magpie's frankenjeep. It's a low-to-the-ground truck, still outfitted with the tool enclosure the previous owner put on it from when it was an electrician's truck.
"Man I love Craigslist."
He opens the back and together we tip the first shelf so it can be carried to the truck.
"Huh," I ask, "You carry an extra mattress in your truck?"
"What?"
I looked at him for a minute. I knew guys who kept mattresses in the back of their trucks during highschool for various sketchy purposes, but we were both adults and that would be highly unusual.
It was very quiet.
"I suppose," he adjusted some wire baskets hanging from the ceiling, "I never showed you where I live."
I poked my head in, "It's like a spaceship, with little rattle-proof lockers and every wall used."
"It's actually mostly from IKEA."
"...versatile solutions for modern living."
We loaded in the shelf, and now that he realized I was comfortable with his story he was grinning and recounting all of it. "My last apartment had black mold, my housemate moved out on me under doctor's orders that it was going to make him absurdly ill. In many senses my quality of living improved when I started living in this truck.
"Huh,"
"I save a lot of money this way."
"Yeah I can't see a downside really, well unless girls don't like it?"
"I actually lost my virginity in this truck anyway, and I did have an apartment."
"Yeah, you know, there are some things people just believe they can't live without, and they'll go through fairly extreme efforts to even have pale imitations of them."
"Yeah, that moldy apartment rented out again almost right away when I left."
His truck is this bizarre sort of contraption, even by the standards of a girl who spent a year trolling around in Magpie's frankenjeep. It's a low-to-the-ground truck, still outfitted with the tool enclosure the previous owner put on it from when it was an electrician's truck.
"Man I love Craigslist."
He opens the back and together we tip the first shelf so it can be carried to the truck.
"Huh," I ask, "You carry an extra mattress in your truck?"
"What?"
I looked at him for a minute. I knew guys who kept mattresses in the back of their trucks during highschool for various sketchy purposes, but we were both adults and that would be highly unusual.
It was very quiet.
"I suppose," he adjusted some wire baskets hanging from the ceiling, "I never showed you where I live."
I poked my head in, "It's like a spaceship, with little rattle-proof lockers and every wall used."
"It's actually mostly from IKEA."
"...versatile solutions for modern living."
We loaded in the shelf, and now that he realized I was comfortable with his story he was grinning and recounting all of it. "My last apartment had black mold, my housemate moved out on me under doctor's orders that it was going to make him absurdly ill. In many senses my quality of living improved when I started living in this truck.
"Huh,"
"I save a lot of money this way."
"Yeah I can't see a downside really, well unless girls don't like it?"
"I actually lost my virginity in this truck anyway, and I did have an apartment."
"Yeah, you know, there are some things people just believe they can't live without, and they'll go through fairly extreme efforts to even have pale imitations of them."
"Yeah, that moldy apartment rented out again almost right away when I left."
***
"I plan my life out a lot. I always know what's coming."
"You don't think you miss some of the better opportunities by being so risk-adverse?"
"You don't think you miss some of the better opportunities by being so risk-adverse?"
***
"I hate my job."
"Yeah?"
"And so do you."
"Yeah"
"You want to be professional adventurers?"
"Yeah?"
"And so do you."
"Yeah"
"You want to be professional adventurers?"
***
"So he said 'you want to be professional adventurers?'"
"What the hell does that mean?"
"You know, quit your job, and go have fun."
"You can't do that."
There was a pause.
"You need money," he persisted.
"Well, we started working on getting some contacts so we could do freelance photography, pay for the costs of travel and such. You can live pretty cheaply if you put your mind to it..."
"What the hell does that mean?"
"You know, quit your job, and go have fun."
"You can't do that."
There was a pause.
"You need money," he persisted.
"Well, we started working on getting some contacts so we could do freelance photography, pay for the costs of travel and such. You can live pretty cheaply if you put your mind to it..."
***
"Sometimes," my boss said, "I worry that you don't like this job."
I'm not sure I said anything to that.
"What are you going to do?"
I'm not sure I said anything to that.
"What are you going to do?"
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