The First Hurdle When I found out who she turned me down for, I fell off the edge of the world. I wasn’t myself. Rejection was unfamiliar, to say the least; angering, confusing, and dilapidating, to say the most. Before her, I had never expressed honest sentiments to any woman. I’d never told a woman that I cared for her, that I wanted her. So there I was, in my bedroom, listening to the droning tone of the telephone, thinking back to earlier in the day.

I went out to her house during my lunch break at school with flowers in hand and hope in heart. She met me at the end of her long country driveway, where she told me that she wouldn’t date anyone and that it had nothing to do with me. I believed her. But later that day, I found out that she was seeing someone who I respected very little; worse still, that they had started dating that afternoon. I had to call her because I didn’t believe the rumour. I wanted to hear it from her.

But it was true. She chose some ignorant twit over me. She said that it had nothing to do with me, that it just happened, and I remember wondering why it couldn’t “just happen” between us. When she hung up, her voice resonated through the dial tone like an ongoing insult. My emotion was unbridled; I acted without thinking and car tires screeched as I left home. I sped down a dark highway I had never been on before, not knowing where I was going, just what I was running from.

After an hour, I stopped. I could tell I was in the middle of nowhere by the unfamiliar trees all around me. I’d never be able to find this same place again. There was a ring in my pocket that I was going to give her that day, and I threw it as hard as I could into the dark forest. She had no use for me and I had no use for a ring engraved with her name.

And still to this day, somewhere deep in a place I’ll never see again, is my love for her, as lost as ever she made me.  ¶ 9:08 AM