At the age of raging hormones, when most of my classmates were giddy with petty juvenile crushes, I experienced my first love. Parents and friends initially dismissed our relationship as a typical case of short-lived puppy love, but as time went on it became clear to everyone that it was something real and different: it was young love. For the entirety of my pre-teen youth Dylan and I were constantly together, but as the end of our freshman year of high school neared, it was abruptly cut short. I was moving to the opposite side of the country. We were completely distraught, nevertheless, we thought it best to block each other from our thoughts, move on, and experience new things and new people. Throughout my remaining years in high school I did my best to suppress the mess of unresolved feelings my heart held as a result of the relationship ending so suddenly, but as I grew older they only grew stronger and added to distant fantasies conjured up in my head. I imagined us seeing each other for the first time again and being whisked back into a fairytale romance. I imagined the life we had invisioned as kids. I imagined us growing old together. My daydreams, however, were tainted by the occasional news from my friends back home that Dylan wasn’t acting right; that he seemed sad. This news only fueled my fantasies and he began to relentlessly haunt my dreams night after night. Sometimes these dreams blissfully embodied the fabrications of my emotions but sometimes they epitomized my worst nightmare where Dylan would walk by while I screamed for his attention, as if I didn’t exist . As it turns out, these nightmares were not far from the reality that was taking place miles away.
As the years passed, old friends began to express serious concern. Dylan was becoming antisocial, they said. Dylan was talking to himself. But being so far away, these odd behaviors were hard for me to imagine and it was easy to dismiss them and keep up with my childlike fantasies and memories. Time progressed still and my inquiries about Dylan brought more bizarre stories. Rumors spread and speculations gathered. The school even had Dylan drug tested.
Between the incessant love I had been clinging on to so deeply and the inconceivable stories surrounding Dylan, my emotions were so confused and frustrated that I was completely exhausted. The chance to see Dylan and put my unsettled feelings to rest, however, finally arrived during last year’s summer, when my brother was to be married back in our hometown. My hope was either that, upon seeing him, I would discover that my feelings for him had diminished and I could move on, or, we would be struck by our love once again and create the fairytale fantasy I had been invisioning all these years. Whatever the outcome, what I truly needed was closure, yet the reality of the situation was something I could never have anticipated. The Dylan that arrived at my door was not the Dylan I had dreamed about. This Dylan was barely recognizable from the one I’d fell in love with. This Dylan stood like a statue when I reached my arms around to hug him. This Dylan stared vacantly ahead as I did my best to initiate small talk, unmoving, as if he hadn’t heard me. His eerie calmness scared me. I spent the rest of the night doing anything I could to provoke some sort of response out of him, but he barely blinked.
During the next few days of my trip I analyzed obsessively about what I had just experienced. My initial reaction was anger. Why was he doing this? Was it for attention? Why haven’t his parents done anything? Why couldn’t he just say something? I continued to see this new, stone-like Dylan each night with no success of having these questions answered. I waited for him to snap out of it, hoping to break him and find the old Dylan underneath. Finally he spoke. He told me he went to see a psychiatrist that day and that they performed a scan of his brain. What they found were severe abnormalities within his neurotransmitters possibly caused by a serious head injury. This hit me so hard that it knocked the wind right out of me. Something was seriously wrong. I felt so stupid for not realizing it sooner and disgraceful for being mad at him. I felt scared, not knowing how to react or talk to him. I became overwhelmed as the realization set in; that all the things I had imagined my whole life would never happen, that the Dylan I knew and loved was never coming back.
It’s an odd thing to grasp that someone doesn’t have control of their own brain. I’ve spent infinite hours trying to imagine what it would feel like to slowly feel your own mind slip away from you. What I’ve learned since then is that Dylan’s condition caused him to fall into a severe depression leading to a catatonic state. Like a person in coma, they are neither alive nor dead, and the grief from this sort of living loss I’m afraid will never fade. Although it is comforting to know that after years of uncertainty he is finally diagnosed and receiving proper treatment, it is an ongoing struggle to sort out and confront my emotions, as I feel uneasily stuck on the brink of a moral dilemma: Is this the time to be there for Dylan when he needs it most? Does he even know who I am? Does he remember what we had? Does he know who he is? Or, is this my chance for closure; to accept that the hilarious, smart and caring Dylan that I fell in love with no longer exists, and move on? My brother once told me that first loves last forever, however, in the case of my first love I’m not sure how forever fits in.
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