Span

I was this close to messaging my first boyfriend today.

Pierce* was my high school sweetheart. We weren't the kind of "all-American" image you might conjure up, though. His heritage was of Africa and the West Indies. I was an immigrant from East Asia.

He was tall and slender. We were in the same AP Calculus class. He wanted to study astrodynamics. I wanted a boyfriend.

I really, really wanted a boyfriend. I technically tricked him into dating me. It was nothing short of intoxicating once I got him hooked.

It was intense and confusing and tumultuous all at once, as relationships at that age often are. He was extremely kind to me - the kindness was one of the most addictive elements.

All the while there was something that left me volatile, like I wasn't all that into him, but here I was, playing this part, and so I had to go on.

Until the curtains drew. The summer after we'd graduated, and inevitable we wound up oceans apart, for the first time, I fell in love - with someone else. While he was still writing love letters to me, mailing them all the way from the U.S. to Asia, where I was visiting my parents.

The guilt was tremendous. I did the only sensible thing I knew. I ran.

I wrote a curt note stating that I no longer wished to be bound to him or hear from him. And hoped that'd be the end of it.

"If you love me," I wrote. "You'll leave me alone."

Devastated, he continued writing for months (this was the era of snail mail), demanding to know why. I refused to disclose any details in my change of heart. After all, what kind of monster drops someone like a hot potato in this manner? Only a heartless bitch. In my inability to face myself, I couldn't face him.

The worst part was doubting if I had ever loved the guy, already knowing the answer. Kind of.

Took me years to realize I didn't know love then. I wouldn't for years.

It was the fall of my freshman year when I'd gotten another letter from my ex-liaison. He'd written an essay in English class, he said. He'd received positive feedback, he said.

The topic was "Someone Who Has Changed My Life". He'd forwarded a copy with the letter.

That someone was me. And that was the last I'd heard from him.

He said he'd cease contacting me out of respect for my wishes. He was that decent. And I felt like shit.

Years went by and I'd have more relationships, including my longest one, the one that ended in failed marriage, where I would question in retrospect, after all the dust had settled, "Did I ever love the guy?"

Thanks to social media, twenty some years since freshman year, it came to my attention that Pierce was in my circle of "friends".

At first I panicked. What if he says hello?

He didn't. Took me months before I even took a peek.

His hair was thinning a bit up top, just ever so slightly noticeably grey in the sideburns. But his face was essentially the same. The same exact kindness that radiates.

"I can't look," I told RJ, citing the possibility of photos of offsprings. "Why would that matter?" I wondered out loud.

Part of it was absolution, of course. If he was leading a good life, having left him wasn't so bad after all. "Look how great he's turned out!" I'd point and exclaim. How pompous of me, to presume I could've ruined a man.

And Pierce is not only one of the exes I feel this way about, in the category of "whom I've wronged". Of course, the guilt factor with Pierce trumps any other, as he'd never done anything to hurt me. He was never anything but kind.

The lingering guilt epps and flows. I debate if this is something I'd want to take to my grave. But I don't have a twelve-step program to use as an excuse to make amends.

More months went by before I clicked on Pierce again. I was eager to catch a glimpse of his life, reassurance that he was okay.

I see that he is slim as ever. In that regard, the years have been kind to him. No mention of a wife or kids. I see that he did get his wish of attending a university of science. I remember secretly deeming his ambitions foolish as I constantly caught his errors in calculus. I never once said a word. I was always on my best behavior with him. And it was exhausting.

Except for that one time when he thought Native Americans - "Indians", as we called them in the old days, were the same people as those who lived in India (ahem, that'll be West Asians to you these days). I raised hell then.

It was never going to work.

The impulse to jot him a note visits. What would I say? "Hey, just wanna say hi..." "Hi there. Hope you are well." "Hello. Hope life has been treating you well." All lame.

And what would I be trying to achieve anyway? Justification for my inconsiderate behavior all those years ago? If it is gratification I am seeking, the action to reconnect would be utterly selfish, probably only exacerbating the initial offense. Downright unethical. (And really I do not wish to "reconnect".)

And how prosaic and archaic would it be to hop from "no mention of a wife or kids" to "a lonely life"? (Granted, he did not have a lot of photos posted or tagged.)

He lives in Florida now, apparently. With JD, that makes two. I'd make up a country song along the lines of "All my exes live in Florida", but the humor is lacking. And I just don't have that many exes.

Guess I'll just have to let sleeping... exes... lie.


*Not his real name