I fell in love when I was fourteen years old.
It was’t actually falling, now that I think about it, it was more like realizing. I realized I was in love when I was fourteen. I think my heart always knew that I was in love with her, but my brain denied the idea.
It was a day that the clouds hung so low in the sky that if we only had the right ladder we could touch them. We had been watching the clouds all day, picking out shapes in the white cotton candy that filled the sky and making stories about the creatures that breezed by.
She shot up from the grass with a confused look on her face.
“What’s wrong?”
She wiped her forehead.
“It doesn’t look like rain,” she said befuddled. She looked around trying to find black in the sky. Then I felt it too, a drop of moisture from this perfectly sunny sky.
I only blinked one time, then is was down pouring.
We both got up and ran trying to find shelter, then she stopped. She just started laughing. I thought I was missing something, so I stopped too, and I realized why she was laughing. I started laughing too.
It was beautiful, the fact that it was storming in broad daylight. And we were trying to run away from it.
She looked into the sky with her big brown eyes and breathed in life. That’s when I realized that this was her; this was who she is. She is bright and beautiful as the sun, she can make you feel warm and brighten your heart, but she had an everlasting storm in her life. She did all that she could to turn a hurricane into just another summer rain.
She spun around to look me dead in the eyes, and I swear it was like seeing her for the first time.I mean sure, I’d seen her plenty of times, but I was just looking at her before. Now I see her, I don’t know what it is but there is something different about her.
The way she makes me feel, the way she effortlessly holds my heart in her hands. She has this whole time and I didn’t even know it.
I feel stupid for not catching her earlier when she’s been right in front of me this whole time.
She just smiles at me, and it kills me a little bit. She kills me a little bit.
I feel like my whole life I’ve been looking at the world upside down and I’m just now seeing it right side up.
I don’t know what love is. I’m just a boy, but if I had to take a shot in the dark I’d say this was love, and I can’t believe I’m just now coming to terms with it.
Off of the Deep End 