Shit always seemed to happen in the summer. You were squatting in this old, giant house that had long been abandoned with your boyfriend. I remember he was a Vietnam vet who enjoyed his alcohol and pot – and he used this as an in to try to get to know me. I was a suspicious 16 year old and probably a little aloof, but I wanted to like him, for you.
The old house had a lot of windows, and I remember you telling me it was haunted, and I believed you. You saw spirits in the windows late at night. Of course, to me, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world that you would be staring out windows late at night. I would have too.
It was one of those drug filled summers that I wandered through as a teenager, wondering who I was. I already knew you were crazy as hell, but we had been, and forever would be, inextricably intertwined. I loved you from a remote place that kept me protected, but I was afraid of the crazy in both of us, so I kept my distance.
My adult life was really just beginning and I knew it. I had no idea where it was going, but I knew it had to be far from you and our past together.
In retrospect, the haunted house was really a metaphor for our childhood. In some ways it seems so remote now, yet I can remember it like it was yesterday.
I loved you but was too broken to show it.
I had to get out.