I found him after nearly 10 years.
Actually, it was easier than I thought it would be — Shelly has been finding people left and right on classmates.com, and I hadn’t even ever thought to check that out to see if he was listed. Oh boy, today was my lucky day.
And yes I did email him.
backstory: when i was a young lass (now that I’m old and crotchety), i met this guy, named alan, who was the airborne express delivery guy at the place I worked at. Turns out, after I had been working there for about four or five months, alan had the biggest crush on me. Everyone knew it in the store — except yours truly.
We dated and it was — to put it mildly — really intense. It was for me anyways. Alan was the guy who brought the freak out in me — and it was because of him i went and got my nose pierced. Yes, it’s true. Lisa @ 20 wasn’t as bright as Lisa at 29.
Alan and I dated for about six or seven months, and he was — simply put, my life. I lived, breathed, fucked for that man. Everything in my little world was wrapped around his happiness. Then the day after Christmas, 1991, he broke up with me.
We continued seeing each other on the side — you see, he cheated on me with his now-wife, and cheated on his now-wife with me before he got married — our ‘affair’ lasted another 6 months which lead to a blow out of me getting into fisticuffs with her at a bar shortly after my 21st birthday.
I never saw him again.
Alan, heh, I’m laughing now when i think about it, was the end all be all of existence for quite a few years. Last time I saw him was in 1993, and I didn’t date anyone again until 1995. I cried, bled, screamed and tore up because of that man.
See, I don’t know if Alan’s recollection of me is the same of what I have of him. This didn’t actually dawn on me until tonight when I dropped the email to him — thinking maybe i didn’t make that big of impact on him as he did on me. I’m trying not to let wishful thinking get in the way of memory. I remember the really stupid shit — the times when I was strong and I told him to fuck off and he’d show up at my house and we’d fuck for hours. What was it about me that drove him to her? Why wasn’t I good enough for him? All these questions have been burned in my memory — hell, Danny and I talked about this when I was in Grand Rapids. We were discussing about Danny’s reunion and I said “I have no idea what I would do if I ran into Alan again” — and I didn’t. I still don’t. Why does it matter — now, after all these years?
It shouldn’t, right? I mean, my god, look at how my life has changed — look at how much I’ve changed, look at what I’ve accomplished and done with my life with very little to build on.
According to his bio, he’s in the naval reserve now. He’s clean cut and changed — just as I have changed.
Maybe it doesn’t matter if he does respond to me or not — maybe it just matters that I made the first step to getting closure — and maybe he never realized how much he is part of my commitment issues — if only he had been honest.
I’m throwing blame on him, and it’s true. I never could stand for lying cheating and being dishonorable — and he was all three — but that memory, that memory we all carry of our first big love that burns into our hearts and changes us. That memory which we think is buried deep inside us isn’t — it’s always on the surface waiting to get out.
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lisa