By Cayla Meredith
@CaylaMeredith
*this image was found online and details the spot indicated in the story below. Would love to give the photographer credit but this was found on flickr!
A note from the author:
Sometimes when I don’t know what to do with emotions attached to past events, I try and put them on paper. It’s a different way of processing and a different way of reflecting. I always feel lighter after I write, and it continues to help me on my own mental health journey. Perhaps it can help you too! Hope you enjoy.
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I suppose this is the part in the book where Chapter 4 weaves the first three together; isn’t it?
I’m not sure.
What I’ve provided you with so far are snapshots of situations that have bruised me but shaped me- they are a part of a greater whole (and aren’t we all just a sum of our broken parts)?
But Chapter 4 is different. I wanted it to be different.
It’s about love.
Now- this is not a cushy story about love; more so an honest one of how I stumbled across it, like a foot catching a rock in the forest: quick, unexpected and jolting.
Chapter 4
He exists in a way that unsettles me; and I am unsure of what to do with this feeling.
After all, I am 18- what does unsettled even feel like?
He is confident, kind- a natural charismatic leader. He is high on everyones list, because back before social media everyone had lists.
“You should never stray from your list,” my friend Janel used to say.
We would talk about our lists deep into the hours of the night somewhere past lights out and before the breakfast alarm when, sleepily, everyone would tread downstairs to the dining room to butter their toast, to pour coffee, to say a prayer, to wake up. My friend would always race to sit next to me because I don’t like orange juice and I would frequently offer him my glass. Somewhere around mid-June I stop offering but he keeps asking, an annoying puppy wagging his tail, waiting for his treat.
I sit down.
I roll my eyes.
I hand him the glass.
“Schafer you’re the best, “ he says eagerly, finishing the glass in one gulp.
I think that guy is a doctor now.
Who even likes orange juice? It’s pulpy.
I’m avoiding the topic.
Unsettling.
Love.
Him.
Yes.
As Spring turns to Summer in June our days at camp are filled with laughter, adventure, swimming in the lake, singing, playing- freedom.
The weeks blend together and this place is safe, and I have never known safety so intimately before and I like it.
He is also safe. He is engaging and intelligent and we begin to spend more time together over cigars and clove cigarettes on back patios, on hikes, in his car, in mine.
We don’t touch. We talk. And instead of the actual physicality of unzipping my sweater I begin to reveal the intricacies of my mind to him in the exact same way; slowly, nervously, but with great intent.
We were raised in the church so this sharing of cigarettes and stories feels rebellious and wrong and right and we do it as often as we can, when we can, he’s an addiction, a sharp quick inhale of smoke that I want to hold as long as possible.
In a way he is Clyde and I am his Bonnie and brick by brick we deconstruct the foundation we were both raised upon. It’s both terrifying and liberating and the adrenaline of this casts us as Pariahs but moves us closer to each other.
That same Summer in August we are camping- three big groups from three different churches. We’ve spent all of July apart but we still write emails back and forth and we title them all to keep track.
He slides me a note during morning session:
Meet me tonight.
And I do.
The path to the beach is gravel and littered with large loose stones that roll between my feet and my flip flops every few minutes. Some of the tents around me are dark; some of them still have flashlights on- so when I pivot my heels and look behind me, the campground feels magical- like the inhabitants of each site are fireflies and I am Peter Pan.
I see him ahead on the path, hiding, but I pretend not to because I want him to scare me and pull me in, and he does. I grab the elbow of his sweatshirt, wrap my arm around his back, and rest my head on his chest for one second and it feels like home.
I have never known this feeling before now.
He grabs my hand.
“This way”.
He leads me up a steep incline into a short patch of woods, and through the contrast of the soft leaves + coarse trees the white light of the moon illuminates the water like black diamond.
We sit at the edge of a small cliff, the stones previously caught beneath my toes falling to the sand below with the soft evening wind taking their place.
If June was deconstructing a foundation, we lay a new one here in August. Something about this feels exploratory and free, like we are finally the artists of our life and tonight we paint together. We laugh, we look at the stars, we lay on our sides, he tells me he wants to get married young, he tells me he wants to teach overseas, we share silence. At one point we are shoulder to shoulder and I can hear the sound of his heart humming and it harmonizes with mine every few minutes, like they have known each other forever. There’s a certainty about the structure of his plans that unravels me, because I have never known structure before yet I have never been this sure. We don’t touch but I see him and he sees me, and this is the safe space I’ll go back to years later when I can’t sleep at night, when I can’t calm down, when I need to escape.
He tells me he wants to get married young. He turns his head towards me and asks me what I think. I can see the reflection of the moon in his glasses. I think he’s asking my permission, I think he’s planning for our future.
I like when he wears his glasses.
I tell him I believe in love but the reality is that we’re building this foundation tonight and I won’t walk through the door tomorrow. It will be years before I can intricately explain why.
Hours pass.
We part ways at the fork in the gravel road and this separation is the first foreshadowing in the novel of my life, the first crack in the canvas and I’m trying to keep painting but I’m too afraid. I don’t trust myself. I zip up my sweater and unzip the tent, no longer Peter Pan but a lost boy unsure of what to do, where to go, how to feel.
Katharine rolls over, opens one eye and pokes me in the side as I climb into the sleeping bag next to her.
“How was it?” She whispers.
The sleeping bag is lined with green plaid which I can barely make out in the early hours of the morning. I lift it up towards my nose, take a deep breath in and close my eyes. It smells like firewood, like damp dirt, like lake water, like a beginning or an end but I can’t tell which.
I exhale.
“The moon was nice”, I say.
********************************** Chapter 5 coming soon