My Sunshine

Every modern love romance has a song, a melody. Our song happened to be 'I Live My Life For You' by Lifehouse. It begins, "You know you're everything to me, and I could never see the two of us apart..." I haven't listened to that song in the last five years and hope to never hear it in the next five. One refrain states, "I've built my world around you."

I fell hard for her, very fast and much too completely. I found myself waking up and dressing strictly for her and rehearsing in the mirror glances I'd give her. We went a year into dating simply holding hands and caressing each other. She'd walk behind me, her hands clasped around my waist, her pelvis against my butt and her breasts touching my shoulder blades. Nothing in the world felt as right as the two of us, nothing. Kissing wasn't a part of our relationship at all. Spooning on the other hand, was. I did kind of hint around to the fact that I wanted to kiss, but she fanned her hand in the air and whispered, "let's take our time, don't rush it, it will happen when it happens..." A little let down, but not devastated, I just nodded as if to say she was probably right. I didn't know it at the time but those were the days of my life. I don't know if she would still say the same of me.

At the end of my freshman year she informed me that she would be moving away with her family. Her family had this habit of moving frequently. I always assumed they were running away from someone or something. I didn't know that, it just seemed that way. The moved posed a definite threat to our growing relationship as I saw it. 

"Do you have to, why can't you stay, and if you love me, why?" All things that I most likely expressed at the time.

"I just have to," was really all she could say.

And she did have to. I tried to understand and be supportive. I felt I was losing my best friend. My life seems to have a pattern that way, as soon as I become close to someone, something happens to separate us. At that time I was quite naive to put my trust in some pretty unstable notions. She promised things wouldn't change between us. She said, "it's just like we'll have a really big backyard between us, we'll call each other a lot and write all the time, too." 

And we did write, a whole lot. Our relationship for the next two years was based mostly on paper and telephone wires. The post office and the telephone service were our link. Cody, Wyoming was about two and a half hours from Riverton, and that's one giant backyard, full of highway and beautiful rolling hills and a shit load of sagebrush. Not seeing her every day was a challenge.

My sunshine had shifted north, and yet the distance was powerless in dimming her rays.