Next on the list is R from church. Out of all the boys on my list, I have liked him the longest. I tried to figure it out the other day, and I think it was something crazy, like four years. I was probably thirteen when I first liked him. We went to Japan together on a missions trip with our church, we roller skated on Tuesday nights with our youth group (Tuesday nights were Christian music night), and we were both in the living nativity together (naturally, we were both shepherds.) My church went all out every year with the living nativity. There was always a real person on the roof, posing as an angel, and real animals in a pen around the tiny nativity. (Confessional#3 I remember one particular night of the living nativity, my shepherd's headdress went awry and I went up to R and asked him to fix it, he gently arranged it around my face. I remember getting so nervous that I was so close to a boy and as a defense mechanism, I closed my eyes, and pulled the I can't see him, so he obviously can't see me trick, you know, the one that a three year old would use. Lord knows what he thought I was trying to pull. I tried to block that out of my mind, but so much time has past, that I just find it funny now.)
Every girl at youth group liked R. He was tall, had dark hair, was musical, and had these amazing blue eyes. We were real friends, he thought I was funny, and everywhere I went he was always one step ahead of me, with his hand out, waiting to escort me down the stairs, or bending down so I could climb on his back when I was too tired to walk. He would have done anything for me and I knew it. While we were on our missions trip in Japan, we went to the ocean. There was this huge, plastic floating island pretty far out on the water, I knew I couldn't swim that far, especially against the waves, so I sat on the shore, watching everyone. I was used to this, and didn't complain, I knew there would always be things I couldn't do, I just had to wait them out. I can't remember who it was, but someone took pity on me, and swam me out there. R promised he would bring me back, but for some reason, it was a lot harder swimming back to the shore. I can still remember him struggling, but pretending not to, so I wouldn't get nervous. I remember barely holding onto him and trying to utilize my floating abilities as much as possible, so I wouldn't weigh him down too much. He was scared to put his feet down to see if he could touch the bottom. He thought that if he stopped kicking long enough to see how deep it was and never felt the bottom, we would sink. By the time he put his feet down, the water was up to his knees. We both laughed nervously about what had happened, and he never spoke of it again. I didn't realize how scared he was until a couple years later, when his sister confessed that he had told her it was one of the scariest moment of his whole life, and that he thought we were going to die out there on the ocean that day. I couldn't believe he had been that terrified. The fact that he had waited so long to finally put his feet down, made me feel so loved.
I remember the day I stopped liking him. We were at youth group, and he had just lost at a game of basketball. He got so mad and started yelling, he threw the ball at these metal chairs and stomped off. It was so loud, I remember being scared of him, and thinking that I never wanted to be with anyone like that. I saw firsthand what living with someone who had a temper was like, and I didn't want to travel down that road again and deliberately choose that life for myself. When I was seventeen my family started going to a new church. I wouldn't see R again till I was a sophomore in college. When he visited me at school, all I could think about was how much I had changed, and how much he had stayed the same. I cringed when he loyally bent down for me to get on his back, for old time's sake. I told him I was fine, that I could walk, but he was persistent, I remember telling myself, this was the boy who saved you in the ocean, so I got on his back. I remember how horrible I felt after he left, knowing that I had outgrown him. His nervous laugh bothered me, he wasn't confident anymore, he was awkward and only talked about himself. I started to mean too much to him, so I pulled away.
And this is always how it goes, these boys always choose to like me when I finally get over them. I tried to keep in touch out of obligation, but there was nothing holding us together anymore. He got married last week, but didn't invite me to the wedding. I was a little hurt, but I realized that I couldn't always expect him to be there, offering his hand to me, or his arms to carry me. He's putting his feet down for another girl now, and I'm genuinely happy for him.
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