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Paradise Lost

I don’t remember a lot about the final week of school that year.

As before, it was a bit of a blur while I was taking the chance to be near Maddie as much as possible. I would loiter nearby as much as possible. I would try and be involved in conversations if I could be. As much as I wanted to gather up as many memories of her as possible, I wanted Maddie to have memories of me too.

After all, she was “leaving” – and apparently might even love me. That’s what she had said, right?

The thing is that I still wasn’t aware in my own mind of how stupid my belief that she was leaving was. I was so completely virgin to having feelings for someone, that I didn’t know better. Looking back with hindsight, I can see that it was just easier to process my complete misunderstanding of my feelings and how she might feel about me in this crazy way.

I was heartbroken. I shouldn’t have been, but I was.

That final week was painful – even if I can’t remember many details about it, all these years later.

I do remember the final moments.

I caught a school bus home that day, and I found that I was the only passenger on that trip. I sat at the back so that I could look out the back window in the hope of getting one final glimpse of the girl I was convinced that I loved.

Fate held it its hand to me, and as the bus moved away from the school, Maddie appeared at the front gate with a group of her best friends. I watched and watched and watched as the bus carried on, with Maddie walking away in the other direction.

I watched until she was but a tiny dot in the distance.

She was gone, and my heart fell to pieces.

Once again looking back I know there was no reason for me to believe that I would never see her again, or that she was leaving the school – but the symbolism of her walking away in the other direction underlined it for me.

She was not only gone, but she was walking away from me.

I had never loved someone before, and now I was feeling my first broken heart.

That first year of high school had progressed from believing that girls were “germs”, to meeting a beautiful girl, to finding I had a crush on her, then discovering that I believed that I loved her, and now to losing her and having a broken heart.

It’s probably a story that’s happened a million times in a million lives around the world – but it was all new to me.

The school holidays were difficult – really difficult. I don’t feel that I was in a depression, not like I have discovered in later years in my life.

But I was in pain, I was hurting, and I was terribly sad.

Every Christmas my family went on a month long beach holiday during January, before returning home to get ready for a new school year in February – and I was dreading going back and her not being there.

We would drive to the beach for our holidays, and I knew that we would pass through Maddie’s home town on the way. I was dreading that too, because I recognised that it was probably going to be an emotional journey.

I was already thinking about her almost all the time, but passing through that town was going to underline the emotion.

There are a lot of songs I have collected up and related to Maddie over 40 years. Songs that match specific things that have happened. Songs that match specific feelings that I have had. Songs that match how I wanted things to go in the future.

Two in particular are my “theme songs” for my love for Maddie – and that day, the first was chosen.

I was already really enamored with this particular song, and it was quite popular at the time – I had already related it to how it made me feel to Maddie. As we got there my heart sank as I expected it would, but the universe reached out and played that song for me in exactly that moment.

We were on our way to a beach paradise, but I had lost the paradise of Maddie from my heart.

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