Posted April 21st, 2003 by Michelle

Today I’m going to tell you about my first heartbreak. It is the fall of 1986, and I am in Junior High in Morristown, NJ. We had moved there less than a year before, and I quickly made many friends since I was foreign to this little school. I was dating, as seriously as one can in the 8th grade, a guy named Joe. Joe was, to date, the best man I’ve ever loved. He was kind, funny, thoughtful, smart, and respectful. I remember the first time he told me he loved me- it was such an intense moment that neither of us could breathe. But- and there is always a but- there was this other guy, Eddie. Eddie did not possess the same qualities as Joe. But Eddie was an artist, a cartoonist and painter, and he played the drums. He was the first of my long line of big, hulky loves, tall, imposing, and manly. Eddie was in homeroom with me and my best friend Cheri, who was also best friends with Eddie. Cheri also knew Joe well, and knew our relationship well, and also knew that I was secretly in love with Eddie. But I believed that not only could I never leave Joe, but that Eddie had no feelings for me.

Eddie sat behind me in homeroom, and was also a big fan of the Police. The band, not the force. We discussed Steward Copeland’s drumming and Sting’s bass playing at length, and occasionally he would cartoon little pictures of the band for me. We laughed, we joked, we helped each other with homework, but we never actually flirted.

And then Christmastime came. Joe and I exchanged gifts early (a gold rope chain for him, a fluorescent sweater for me- do you remember that unfortunate fashion?). Before school let out for the holidays, Eddie gave me a card he had cartooned himself. The front, if memory serves, was a terrific rendering of Sting, but the words inside have stayed with me forever:

Everyone I know is lonely

And God’s so far away

And my heart belongs to no one

So now sometimes I pray

Take the space between us

Fill it up some way

Take the space between us

Fill it up

Fill it up

These words were penned by Sting, from the song “Oh My God” (which has one of my favorite bass licks). I read it, and the meaning was completely lost on me. I figured he was just quoting to, I don’t know, remind me that we had a common favorite band or something. So I took the card to Cheri, simply because I was thrilled that my secret crush had given me anything at all. She read it, and looked up at me with surprise, excitement, fear, and relief. I swear to you that all four emotions filled her face. “What?” I said. And she just looked at me until I figured it all out on my own. Eddie was in love with me. I was in love with Eddie. Eddie refused to disrespect me or Joe. Cheri had known the whole time, listening to both of us lament the other, and had kept silent in order to respect both of us. Amazing. The card was a reaching out, a hunting of possibility. I was beside myself.

I hardly remember what happened next. Within a week, I had broken up with Joe, and had taken up with Eddie, and it was bliss. I was brilliantly happy. I remember our first kiss. I had gone to one of his wrestling matches, and afterwards, had met him in the hallway. We were alone, under the ugly, bright, greenish-hued tube lights, and he reached down and planted a very soft kiss on my lips. We were both trembling. I remember thinking that this is how I wanted to feel about a kiss, this is what should happen every time I was kissed for the rest of my life.

And then… well. Eddie and I wrote notes to each other, about five or six a day, and we jokingly wrote, “To my mad love kinky sex slave” or something to that effect in greeting. Joking because we’d only shared that one kiss. Well. His father found one, and didn’t get the joke. Eddie was told never to see me again. I was crushed, and then destroyed when the next day I found out that the story about his dad was true, but that he was glad it had happened because he didn’t know how to end it with me. He wrote a note to Cheri, which was foolish, because he should have known that it would end up in my hands:

Dear Cheri,

What’s up? So here’s the thing with Michelle. My dad found a note (blah blah, whole story here). But there was something else. She, I don’t know, changed somehow when we finally got together. She just wasn’t the same. I know it’s beat and all (if I may jump in here, “beat” meant cruel or unkind) but I just didn’t like her as much anymore. I feel bad but I can’t lie, y’ know?

Anyways what are you doing tonight? Write me back.

Eddie

I got this note maybe an hour after he wrote it. And I tell you, it stings to this day. I guess he liked the brooding, angry, dark Michelle of those times than the happy, fulfilled Michelle that emerged in his company. Really, I don’t know.

Joe, who was devastated, had started seeing a girl named Lynne, and they stayed together long after I left New Jersey. Who knows, they could have married. She was a really wonderful girl and I didn’t begrudge either of them- they were really happy together. I don’t know where Eddie is now. I didn’t recover from the heartbreak and loss of those weeks for a long time. That was the last time anyone broke my heart until Valentine’s Day 2000, when my boyfriend of almost six years ended our relationship with a two minute phone call, never to contact me again.

So that is my story of heartbreaks. Really, I knew before both relationships, the first that began when I was thirteen, the second when I was twenty-two, that both of them were bad ideas. This is the mistake I intend to not make again.