by Charles Reid

Created on: June 24, 2008

Once when the air was alive and the nights smelled of cedar, I decided to run away. Mind, this was not brought on by any harshness on my parents' part, nor of any resentment on mine. Rather, I was tired. That may seem to many to present a poor excuse for running away, yet then those people mainly refer to bodily fatigue, whereas what brought on my flight was a tiredness of the soul. I felt too sleepy in the mornings and too awake at night, and at both times I also felt dead, as if either just resurrected from the grave, or sentient past my own funeral. Both feelings were hardly conducive to sanity, and for a reason which I assure the reader was very good, I decided that I needed to get away from the house and the town where it had happened. Thinking about her was no good, but it was far worse to have her memory ingrained on the innermost parts of my soul, forever lecherous on my sanity and will. To live, I thus decided, I must remove from where it had happened. But perhaps I cannot escape her memory, for I find that I must now tell her story, which also is mine, in some way. I give only this advice before I begin: be not afraid of love, for that is the surest way to fall in it.

It was summer, and I met her when once the movie had begun production. Too late I joined the group to enjoy the subtle friction present between all the others, a friction which created an atmosphere so like an in-crowd, that although they welcomed me with genial Southern politeness, I could see I was apart, and that I would most likely remain thus.
Slowly aroused to the beauty of her who held the main part, her whom I was assured in my heart must be the most beautiful of all women, I took passionately to my pen and attempted to transcribe feelings too complex for such an early skill. Perhaps I was, and remain, gifted at the art, the fact remains that I was not ready for such a task as that which I'd undertook, and I was gradually awakened to this fact. I realized that nothing could capture either my feelings of love, nor the beauty of she to whom my feelings were directed. I swore in my heart she would be mine, and mine alone; but so do all when first they see the elusive nymph. Later they realize the promise is harder to keep then at first it seemed. But when again the lover smells the fragrance of a certain flower which he suddenly realizes she used to wear, the love is again aroused, yet with it this time comes overpowering shame at having forgotten her, and he then goes through so much pain that he doubts whether life were meant to be lived, or whether it was meant only as a mockery of man's desire for significance.
Still, I loved her. It could not be anything but love, I was certain. I had felt before the instant and overpowering tug of infatuation, and I could readily distinguish between my feelings for Lauren and the experience of a transient crush. What then must have been my delight when she of her own accord took me to one side to discourse with herand what also must have been my horror when she revealed in plain and unrealized cruelty the impossibility of returning my feelings. What followed I am sure I was not the first to experience, yet that made it no less difficult and heart-wrenching. The embarrassment, the shame, the anger, the despair, and at last the depression which forced me to determine upon flight. Why should love be present if only the few may partake of it? Why must it come upon us so early? What is the meaning of pain? I could not answer these questions, just as surely as I found upon stepping out the door that I could not run away. The memories hurt, but I loved them, just as surely as I loved and still love her, the glorious untamed beauty of one fine summertime.

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