epikivel

The Story of Bonehead

I just finished watching "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" for the first time. I absolutely
loved it. I have to watch it again because I didn't quite catch on to all of The
Odyssey references, but it's been awhile since I read that anyway. Some were
simple to pick out, like the sirens and the cyclops. Others were a bit more difficult.
Even if one had not read The Odyssey though, the movie could still be entirely
enjoyable. It's intelligent and clever and random. Clooney is so great. All I want
to do now is go out and buy the soundtrack, even though country music isn't very
high on my list of my favorite music types. However, that "I Am a Man of
Constant Sorrow" song is going to be in my head for a long, long time, I can feel it.

I thought that I didn't want to go home anymore. There's no doubt in my mind that
in a few weeks, I will be going home for good...but I thought I wasn't ok with that,
but I think I was wrong. Whenever I am here for a long period of time, I come to
think of this place as my home, and I definitely love the friends that I've made here
as some of the best I'll ever make. But whenever I go home and spend time with
Bonehead, I realize that nowhere is home unless he is there. Why are we going
through such turmoil though? We worked out alot of stuff this weekend. It is so
hard to have a close relationship when you are 3 1/2 hours apart, and yesterday
night when I was with him, we had this total breakthrough conversation where he
opened up to me in ways that he usually doesn't...and mere hours later, I hopped
in a car and drove three and a half hours away from him and I won't see him for at
least another two weeks, if not more. It is so hard. It is alot of speculating what the
other person is thinking, alot of assuming and presuming, alot of emotionless chit
chat online, alot of wonder, and even some doubt. But if he wasn't totally worth it, I
wouldn't even let myself go through this separation, because it is definitely the
hardest thing I have ever gone through. It hurts though, alot. It is the worst
non-physical pain I have ever made myself endure, and I only keep doing it
because I know this is not permanent, I know someday soon I will be near him
again and we can resume whatever kind of "normal" relationship we had before.

Somehow, I feel that this is definitely fate, for me to be with him. I am not even
sure how much I believe in fate and destiny and all that, but this really feels like it
was meant to be. I know that sounds so cliche, and it probably is. That is just how
it feels, this perfect little story book romance. We met when he complimented my
earrings in kindergarten. Soon after, he moved in across the street, and he
became my boyfriend. At age six, he was making me bracelets. At age seven,
he was picking me flowers. He was my "boyfriend", whatever that means when
you are that young, for two and a half years! We remained close though, for the
most part, for most of our elementary school life. We played together after school
almost every day. When we hit middle school though, things started to change.
Thinking back on it now, I know we were still friends in seventh grade. We were in
the same English class, we'd sit together on the bus and walk there together, we
worked on projects together. But I don't remember anything else about our
friendship that year after I started dating Jordyn, my first real (gasp!) boyfriend. I
got in with Jordyn's friends, made many more of my own, and slowly became
more a part of the "in" crowd. My friends and I were always together, going out
every weekend, to the movies, out for ice cream, I would never stay in, I was
always on the phone. Not that I never talked to Bonehead, we still hung out every
now and again, but he had his own friends too. Jordyn and I dated on and off
throughout middle school, and I had a plethora of other flings as well, none lasting
more than three months, but I wasn't out for commitment...I was out for fun. When
highschool rolled along, I matured alot, realized the whole business of "popularity"
was stupid bullshit, and just started to be more of myself and make friends with
everyone. Bonehead and I reconnected numerous times because of classes and
such, but I still was making alot of friends and spending alot of time with them. I got
involved in alot of clubs, activities, finding myself, sealing my faith. I was one of
those girls that went to every school function, every little coffee house thing, every
single dance, every football game...whereas Bonehead and his posse would not
spend any more time in school than they had to (he was a self-proclaimed "dork"
in highschool, but I dispute that). They did their own thing, and he got into some
stuff that I never even thought twice about. We still talked though and in 11th
grade, I even tried to set him up with one of my best friends. It didn't work out,
luckily. He saw me through alot of failed relationships. I spent eight months of my
11th grade year stuck in a dead-end, unhealthy relationship that should have
ended when the guy lied to me about using drugs and getting himself into a
situation so bad one of his friends was very close to death. That summer I started
being very active in Young Life, a Christian youth ministry, and I went to camp and
met and started dating a very nice guy, Mike. He was a great kid, and it was nice
to have a relationship centered around God, but it was semi-long distance, and we
were just in different places mentally, so it didn't take much for me to end the relationship
when I ended up kissing a boy that I'd had a crush on ever since I laid eyes on him
in tenth grade. I mean, I thought this kid, Jeff, was gorgeous and so interesting,
even though he was obviously so bad for me. He was also a pretty good friend
of Bonehead's at the time. I would just like to add that I do regret kissing Jeff while
still dating Mike, and though I was totally honest and the first thing I did when I got
home was call Mike and tell him the total truth, I know it was the wrong thing to do. I
would take it back if I could, but you learn from everything. It's just bad to do that
when you hurt other people in the process. Anyway, Bonehead and I were
pretty close at this point, so I'd talk to him about Jeff, mostly complain I think,
hehe...Jeff wasn't the guy I'd built up in my mind, and I didn't expect him to be at
all, but it still didn't work out as I'd hoped. We had alot of fun and we always did
cool stuff, but our relationship was pretty physical and I was really starting to feel
like I wanted to date a nice Christian boy, if anyone at all. At this point anyone
should be able to tell how confused I was about what I wanted and about my faith.
When things with Jeff started taking a turn for the worst, I broke up with him, and
swore I wouldn't date again for the rest of the school year at least, and that I
wouldn't have a physical relationship either. So I just started hanging out with the
girls alot, going out and doing fun stuff, and loving it. Soon it became evident that
Bonehead felt something more for me than friends, and while I always loved him in
my heart, I thought about dating him for the first time. Over the next few weeks,
he started to prove to me that this was for real, that he truly cared about me, that
he loved spending time with me. On Christmas of last year we shared our first
kiss. My family had been arguing, so exasperated, I demanded that he take me
somewhere to make me forget about it. He took me to see Christmas lights, and
then insisted we stop somewhere to look at the starts. The song "Wonderwall"
by Oasis came on, and he started to sing it to me...and he sang, "I don't believe
that anybody feels the way I do about you now" and kissed me. I couldn't fight it
anymore. I am a sappy girl and I melted right on the spot. He was kissing a little
me puddle. Even after that though, I was going to stick to my no-dating policy,
and I didn't want to get involved with anyone, especially an atheist who was not
into any of the same things that I was! But he perservered, and I couldn't deny
that I felt totally comfortable around him and always had alot of good clean relaxed
fun with him. I really felt myself begin to care about him more and more, and want
to be around him more and more, and finally I just said fuck it, I'm going to go for it.
And we've made it this far. I'll be the first to admit that it's been a struggle. Not all
of it of course, but we have issues and we have things we have to deal with. But
we've gotten to the point where we can be pretty much completely honest with
eachother (although we both tend to hold things back by nature). I feel 100%
comfortable around him, and I never thought I would know such deep and genuine
love for someone. It is amazing. I can't imagine how I ever got along without him,
yet we've retained very independent lives of our own in addition to the one we
share together. Maybe that's in part because we don't have any mutual friends
and aren't willing to sacrifice our friends for eachother (which I think is a good thing),
so we get to hang out with our friends whenever we want. I am terrible at
expressing my feelings though, and he is pretty bad at it too, so that is something
we work at and I can definitely see a vast improvement. The fact that we are
willing to work together on things like that makes me very happy.

I never meant to fall in love at such a young age. But I'm making the best of it.