Mine was Jeremy, a name I had written hundreds of times on my seventh grade binders in big loopy hearts. He’d held the starring role in dozens of notes I passed in class and the daydreams that got me through fourth period science with Mrs. Banks.
We loosely kept in touch as the years passed, enough to keep track of one another as he went on to high school, and I moved an hour north. He liked books and politics, and lucky for me, I had just co-written a political book on the 2016 election.We often swapped songs throughout the day, as if we were making each other mixtapes. They were mostly cheesy tunes from the ’80s when we were kids.
I was finally his girlfriend. We talked about moving in together and getting married. He joined my extended family for a Passover seder. Then a few days later, I had dinner with his parents, his brother and his sister-in-law at their neighborhood country club.Sitting at a hotel bar in Washington, Jeremy told me he was scared of commitment, and he worried he would end up hurting me ― if not now, maybe years down the line.
It crushed me. I doubted myself in every way after that. All my insecurities ― every one I’ve had since I was that 12-year-old standing by his locker ― surfaced in ugly ways. It took several years until the sharpness of the break up had finally dulled. Around the same time, he relocated to Atlanta looking for change.
In the fall of 2021, I noted that a month had passed since we texted and promised to catch up on the phone.