Girls Love Their Toys

There was a time in her life when it had all seemed so much simpler and maybe that was just the way the world treated your first love. She had heard that there was no love like that of a mother for her child, but she wasn’t all that sure that was true. The boy that had stolen her heart had taken more than just that, he had grabbed her soul and run off with it.

She had given it gladly, willingly. It had been her nature to share herself with those she loved and it was something that she felt like she needed to do. It was almost an obsessive compulsion to try and show the boy that there was nothing that she wouldn’t do to make him happy. When he smiled at her the world stood still, but like so many boys he didn’t quite understand what he had in her.

It wasn’t that he mistreated her or that he didn’t care for her, but he didn’t quite understand what it was that drove her. He thought with physical actions and she thought with her heart. She had always felt that he had a tender side and that if he could get around the emotional walls that boys build so that they can become men she might be able to really share something special.

Again, it is not that it wasn’t special, it is, but there was a deeper level to it and she desperately wanted him to see that with her. If he could open his eyes he would understand that there was no reason for him to ever question her or wonder about the other boys.

Once he wrote her a poem. It was kind of silly, really rather foolish, but aren’t lover’s jokes just that way.

“Girls and boys have their joys, But The Girls just really love their toys.”
He had written it down and given it to her alongside a picture of himself, a picture in which a book hid his pleasure at the thought of seeing her. He never did understand that she loved the poem and the picture, that it was something that he had made and as such it was precious to her.

Her thoughts were shattered by a loud noise and the realization that she was thinking of a past that was long gone in terms of the present. It still made her smile to think of the poem and the picture, it was one of the few possessions that she still had, a thing that she had stashed away where it could be recovered. She giggled and said “My preciousssssss” and then got up to grab some paper and a pen. It was time to get organized.

Inside the bedroom she systematically took inventory of the possessions she had acquired since her arrival. Underwear, pants, bras, a pair of white Keds, pair of jeans, overalls, a portable CD player and three CDs. The Immortal Otis Redding, Johnny Cash- Greatest Hits and U2’s The Joshua Tree.

Those three CDs also traveled with her. They spoke to her in so many ways. At times it felt like Bono, Otis and Johnny were singing to her. She had sat at the dock by the bay, knew what it was like to have a ring of fire and The Joshua Tree, “With or Without You,” “Where the Streets Have No Name” and “I still Haven’t Found What I am Looking For” described her perfectly.

Sometimes it was still painful to listen to the album, to hear her life expressed so poignantly. Perhaps it was the music or the recent flight from her latest relationship, but she felt a little bit like crying so she switched on the player and suddenly she was a schoolgirl again

“I want to run
I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out
And touch the flame
Where the streets have no name”

That said it all, yearning and desire to be with him, to run away and give up the trappings of society. If he would have asked her to leave she would have gone with him, but he never did. And in some ways that was best. If she had known what was going to happen she might never have begun dating him.

The changes that she saw were so hard to watch, it was just raw. And the hardest thing was that he couldn’t see how he was being used, couldn’t stop it, or wouldn’t stop it. It felt like watching someone slip into madness, it wasn’t that hard to watch Alzheimer’s take her grandfather because he had been a bastard. But the boy, he had been special.

And she had tried hard to tell him, to save him when he wouldn’t help himself, but he wouldn’t’ listen, brushed her off and told her that she was acting foolishly.

The next song came on and there the truth of what she had been looking for was revealed. She choked back the tears for a moment listened.

“I have climbed highest mountain
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you

I have run
I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you

But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for
But I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”

Everywhere she went she still sought to find the magic of that first love, to recapture it and bottle it up where it could never escape her grip again. And try as she might it never quite happened.

Finally the third track came on and as Bono sang the first verse the sobs rolled out…

“See the stone set in your eyes
See the thorn twist in your side
I wait for you”
Deep, heart wrenching sobs that racked her body and left her tearstained face a mess.
“With or without you
With or without you
I can’t live
With or without you”

The boy was gone. The relationship was over and the time in which to mourn that loss had long since passed. The song ended and she forced herself out of bed and into the bathroom. As she washed her face she reminded herself that the future was ahead of her and not behind. Sentimental journeys were for the old and decrepit or the mentally weak. It was time to give this crap up.