Who was your first love???

I met Jeanne on the school bus when I was in 7th grade, and she was in 9th. We both lived near the end of the bus route, so we were on the bus everyday for a long time. I thought she was the most beautiful girl I'd ever seen.

The next year, the bus routes changed and I was on a different bus, so I didn't get to see her that much. Eventually, though, we had a class together and became good friends again.

In the middle of one year, I moved, just to the next small town over. We became phone friends then, spending all our time talking, and writing letters.

When I got to the point I could drive, I went out to her house to visit her. One evening, she took me out to see her horse. She sat on top of the fence at the stable. We talked for a long time, and at some point, she put her arms around me, pulled me in and kissed me. I melted.

Unfortunately, things never last. She graduated high school, met some guy, got married. I moved on, heart broken.

Around 12 years later or so, I hadn't thought about Jeanne in a long time, and had had a few other heartbreaks since then, but one morning, out of the blue, I just had an intense urge to talk to her. I called the number for her husband. That was when I learned that they had broken up years ago. He gave me the number for Jeanne's mom. So, I called Jeanne's mom and just asked her to pass on my number.

A few days later, I got a call. Jeanne was in Las Vegas, and from the sound of it, she wasn't doing all that well. She was involved with a guy who she thought was mixed up in some sort of criminal enterprise. It didn't sound good at all. In spite of that, we talked for a long time, and it was just like it had been when we were kids.

A few weeks later, Jeanne called again. She had left Las Vegas and gone back to live with her mom, who lived just a couple of hours from me. We made plans and got together.

I melted when I saw her. She was so beautiful.

We stayed in touch for a while, and then — nothing. I didn't hear back from her. I had no idea what happened.

A few years later, I got a letter from Jeanne. She had met someone, she said, and gone off and gotten married again, but it didn't work out. We got together again for a while, and again, she just disappeared without a word.

A few years on, I got an email out of the blue. Jeanne, again. She had met yet another guy, and had been married yet again, and it blew up in her face, again. I was in a pretty bad place myself when this happened, so I wasn't all that keen on going through this story again, but Jeanne sounded like she was really on the edge, so we got together.

She came over and visited me. We hung out, went to dinner, saw a movie. I had a small apartment at the time, so I gave her the bed, and I set up on the floor in the living room.

Around dawn the next morning, I woke up to find Jeanne kneeling next to me on the floor. I lifted up the covers and she crawled in. I knew what she was thinking. I knew that she was basically giving me an opening to make a move on her. And I certainly could have. But I didn't. It just didn't feel right. It just felt as if I would have been taking advantage of her when she was vulnerable.

Eventually, she left and drove home. Shortly thereafter, in an email, she said that she had been thinking about me and had decided that I was "innocuous." I knew what she was talking about; I countered that I was just attempting to be a gentleman.

We saw each other a few more times. I introduced her to my friends. I got to meet her kids from her first marriage as she attempted to rebuild a relationship with them.

One day, I called her, and asked what she was up to. She told me that she was getting ready to go to London. On a trip? I asked.

No. She was moving there. She had met a guy online, and had agreed to go to England and marry him.

I'm afraid I lost it a bit, then. This was the sort of rash decision she made all the time that always ended in heartbreak and misery, and by this point, I'd had enough. I told her plainly that I thought she was making a mistake, that this was going to be yet another disaster that she would regret. And I also told her that I wasn't going to be there for her when it all went bad. I was done.

She left. She married the guy. That was almost 20 years ago now, and the last I heard, they were still together. So, I guess, in the end, things worked out for her.

When I think about Jeanne now, I basically have come to the conclusion that I was never really in love with her. I was in love with my image of her, the person she was in my imagination, and that she was never really that person in real life. And even though I have moved on to better things, I still miss her sometimes, or at least miss the idea of her, and wonder what could have been.

Oh, well. So it goes.