(Click here for the beginning of the story)
That was really the question in my heart.
I did not have many close friends from my high school days. Joining the Navy, moving away, and saying goodbye to my previous life was actually really easy for me. I had a couple close friends, but they kind of held on to me with an open hand mentality.
I did not want to be in somebody’s open hand.
I did not want to be in an open, all inclusive group.
I had nothing to offer anybody nor did I give any group a reason to include me in their exclusive circles. I was right where I deserved to be.
On the outside.
I had just returned from my first deployment. I had toured the nation of Iraq from the Kuwaiti border to Baghdad and then come home to soothing Tennessee. I spent a month home on leave and started hanging out pretty often with a small group of folks my age. We went hiking and to get burgers, bicycle riding and to sit around picnic tables talking, going through motions to be friends but I was always trying out, never making the team.
As much as I cared about being included, the things in Iraq which I had seen and done made me feel as though I could never be a part of this college aged social crew. The truth is I wanted to be accepted but did not want to invest the time or take the risks required to develop these relationships. I was content, at least superficially, to enjoy the month hanging out with the folks and then forget about them when I went back to Camp Lejeune.
I remember hiking and biking with this group and spending my time chit chatting and flirting with a couple of the girls who came along. That cute girl in the perwinkle sundress kept hanging out with these people. I really dismissed her pretty quickly. She was young. She was cute. She was smart…she was soon to be fully enrolled into the Feminazi Training Indoctrination Program, and my mom and sister liked her. I was not interested in her.
At one point during a ride around Cade’s Cove, I pulled my bicycle up next to a girl with long brown hair and started talking. She was sweet and intelligent, fit and refined, and seemed to enjoy my company. While talking and pedalling she said,
” There is no way I would ever go camping for more than a couple days…”
And before she could finish her statement the little girl with the periwinkle sundress, who happened to be riding next to the girl I was talking to, chimes in with,
” I would LOVE to go camping for days at a time…”
And then she pedalled away.
My thoughts…”Who cares what you would like to do. You should go home and play with your dolls.”
There was something about her attitude that caught my attention though. She seemed to never stick around long enough to see what my response was. She seemed to not pay very much attention at all to the opinions of the guys around her. It was like she was in her own little world, oblivious to the rest of us. She interacted with us, but almost as though we were just characters in a big play and not like we were the ones around which the world pivoted.
I kept trying to flirt with this brown haired girl, but I kept an eye on that sundress girl.
She really was in her own world in a lot of ways. She really seemed to either be completely and totally out to lunch or driven by a desire to please the play’s unseen director. As much as I wanted to deny it, I was deeply attracted to that kind of confidence.
As the month started to draw to an end, and the lazy days in the mountains numbered in the single digits, and my normal routine of living in the barracks and training for war crept upon me, I found my thoughts drifting back to those hazy, sunny days and the interactions I had with this enigmatic young lady.
The last interaction I remember from this period was back in the same church in which I had first seen her. I was being goofy and stood in a doorway and would not let people through the door until I had a chance to pick on them. I know, I know, such a bully kind of thing to do. These weren’t old people, they were my age and it was fun. When I did this to the girl with the periwinkle sundress, she just stood there and looked at me, then delivered a curt, gentle, and fiery, “No, move please…” and walked right by me.
I have experienced that before, but it usually comes with a lot of posturing. There was none of that. She conducted herself with the quiet confidence of a queen and glided by as though she wore glass slippers. I stepped out of the doorway and watched her walk by… and I really liked what I was watching.
I left a couple days later. For the duration of my 8 hour drive back to my home in Jacksonville, NC, my mind raced. Other than thoughts about firing RPG’s at cars that cut me off and how much trouble I would get in if I drove through the median of the interstate to get around traffic, I was fixed on her.
What I really wanted to was to connect with somebody in a lasting, meaningful way. What I did was dismiss everybody in that group. What I was left with was a few small memories, a flutter in my heart, and the name of a girl and her email address.
I returned to Lejeune and started hanging out with the guys who were quickly becoming my new family, but I did not tell them about this girl. In a moment of loneliness one night, sitting in my barracks room, I decided to send her an email.
“hello, I just wanted to drop a quick line tellin you…”