First Love, thine furrow runneth deep. (Juniors in general)

Member Name: SlyClone2k

Product:	Juniors in general
Date:	21/02/03 (47 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Learning, developing experiences that shape and bind us

Disadvantages: Potential horrible pain that tortures the soul.

There was a day, many years ago, when had Alf stared out of the window and through bleary eyes and condensation spotted a small pied wagtail that had graced the garden for the last couple of weeks. The bird bobbed, tail wagging, and pecked at the ground collecting the crumbs from the grass. The beautiful dark feathers reminded him of the hair of the girl he’d left behind. The slim elegance reminded him of her delicate grace. The white reminded him of the clear ivory skin of her pretty face. He knew it must be love, he was thinking in rhyme.

He’d thought about how he had left her behind, this beauty that he’d admired from afar for such a long time, forced to move on by the powers of fate. He was never going to see her again. Dawning realisation cut through him. Made him feel sick to the stomach. Put him off talking and eating to his family and friends. Such unrequited love. Such sorrow. Such pain.

Like every teenager Alf had struggled with self image and self worth. Hair and clothing were virtually incomprehensible, burgeoning acne dappled his features and he was thrust in to an unfamiliar world, far from his parents at a boarding house. The trauma of going from the being biggest at junior school to the smallest at secondary had left Alf self confidence in tatters. This once happy extrovert child was becoming sad and introverted.

But the first day he went to school he saw a girl putting books in to the locker across the corridor from his. Alf was stunned by a shot of electricity that arced from the heavens above directly from the finger of Venus smiting him into a stunned terror. She shone like an angel, in a world that for the last two days had been filled with the harsh realities of growing up, her softness enchanted him.

He fell in love. So deeply that his mind wandered to her a thousand times a day. His soul yearned for her companionship and his dream were filled with time spent running through flowering fiel
ds in spring, and leaves fallen in autumn. But their leagues were worlds apart. She was extremely intelligent and excelled academically, while Alf was frequently down graded for lack of concentration. Their lives were never to cross. For five years Alf worshipped her, once or twice spoke with her, hiding his feelings for her in the abject fear of rejection that befalls most teenagers. Until the afternoon before he was due to leave a leaving party happened, and she was there.

Moments before Alf was due to leave he managed to summon up the courage that had escaped him throughout the rest of his boyhood. He spoke to her off his feelings, and they kissed, the grown up way, Alf’s mind swam with fear, passion, wonder, excitement and a lust he’d never known before. Her presence filled his psyche and a washed his emotions with desire. They stopped kissing. Looked at each other one last time and passed from each other never to meet again.

And so he stood, in his Nan’s house, not so many miles away, but a lifetime apart. It took a month for the pain to reside, and after that Alf never really felt quite the same again.

It was many years later when Alf had grown into a young man that anything, his lesson learnt, caused him such pain again. A difficult time transpired where his grandmothers both became ill with cancer. Their time was to be short, and Alf steeled himself for the inevitable.

But Fate, in a spiteful mood once more looked at Alf and realised there needed to be more sorrow. Alf was too happy, his confidence growing, once again believing in life as he had done as a child. Her target must have been an easy choice, as she sought to find the one thing whose love was unconditional, returned with fervour through the good times and the bad. The dog, who he’d come to love with a burning devotion, was also diagnosed with cancer. All too soon his dog had been put to sleep, lest he fade into an illness that would be
insufferable. The death of his dog was a hammer blow and left him feeling quite alone.

Once again the pain of love removed struck him, left him feeling sick, seeing shadows of the thing he cared for. Bitter tears collected and fell. With time his anguish faded and a new hardness veneered his personality and as his grandmothers passed away he wondered how it was that his sorrow was never so great.

Alf had grown into a confident man, still toiling with the ghosts that had haunted him through his teenage years. Facing the personality that he had developed and working to change the deep insecurities, like a furrow carved by a glacier, his adolescence had forged. But, as with everything in life, it was a difficult yoke to bear.

Alf decided there were two first loves. The first; love for the first person you ever love. The second; the love for the first person (or animal) that dies. Experience changes us almost imperceptibly, yet with it we grow stronger and, remarkably, still remain compassionate.

Summary: