Cast of characters

As previously mentioned, I'm pulling from my old journals for stories and while the two whole people who actually read my blog already know these folks i will soon be referring to, I thought I'd give a little insite anyway. Just for the hell of it.

Three boys played extremely significant roles during the time of my life that I'm focusing on. Two of them have been written about on this blog already, their impact still maintaining a firm grasp on my life and self. The other is someone who has in many ways been forgotten. A person who flitted in and out of my life quickly, yet dramatically, and it was really only by reading the words I wrote at 19 that I realized how my experience with him had changed things in a way I can no longer deny.

So here they are: Isaac, Peter, and Ryan (Peter's name had previously been omitted and instead been referred to only as Boy in the past but since I'm fairly certain he's not going to be reading this anytime soon, we'll give him his name back).

Isaac I met when I was 15 in Holland, MI, a small town where my best friend at the time had family. We had taken a Greyhound bus across the state to stay for a week, spending our days with her cousin Matthew and all his friends, who were our age. One of these friends was a cute, shy boy named Isaac. I was his first kiss late one night out in the rain and we stayed in touch for years after, sending long emails and pseudo professions of love. Isaac was my first faraway fantasy, a role Ryan later took on. He became this perfect being in my mind and the fallout on a winter night in 2001 has left me scarred in ways I did not realize.

Peter was for all intensive purposes my college boyfriend, even though at no point in the three years that we were on and off did we ever give ourselves a label of exclusivity. Regardless, we both always referred to the other as our exes and when he graduated the year before me, he professed my role as the person he felt closest to during all those years. Peter was also the first boy I ever slept with and therefore he played a role far more complicated in my life.

Ryan is most easily described as my actual first real love. And to this day he has remained the only person I ever have loved. He is the only one of the three who is still in my life as we do write, text, and call occasionally. And there is always still the inkling that our relationship is not something which will always exist in the past tense. He is also the only one who will probably ever read the words I've written about him over the years. Once I sent him the beginning of the short story I began on our relationship, his only comments were to correct a couple errors in grammar. He lets me tell the story the way I remember it and I appreciate that.

So there they are. I will be alternating between their stories as I write, I have no interest in being totally chronological, but use the labels below to section out each individual as necessary.

Let the stories begin!