Lost -- or Never Found?

Scott R

When I was just 17 years old, i met, and fell in love with, a girl who was 16.She was bright, witty, clever and very beautiful. Though she dated many guys from our high school and was never 'my girlfriend', I thought the world of her and hoped for the best. Maybe, just maybe, she would see the love I felt for her and just maybe, she would decide that I was the one for her...

Well, that never happened. Though I tried and tried to connect, spiritually and emotionally, with her, she drifted out of my life after high school. I had tried to maintain contact with her as she entered her adulthood, to no avail. She was gone from me.

For years after, I thought of her often. Gradually, though, and eventually, I forgot about 'us'. She was gone from my life.

After over 20 years elapsed, she finally contacted me (via the internet). I was elated and so so surprised that this happened. I was besides myself with a gush of feelings and thoughts of why, after all these years, she had sought me out. For the past two years now she and I have communicated.

However, the same pattern emerged. She seemed less and less comfortable with 'knowing' me again eventually, and now we barely talk or write each other at all (again.) She is drifting away from me once more, exactly as she had done over two decades ago.

Sadly, I believe I now know why. During the conversations of the last 2 years she let me know for the first time, that before she ever knew me, when she was 16 years old (or younger even), she had suffered what she could only describe as a "traumatic" experience at the hands of her older brothers friends. Though she wouldn't come right out and say it, obviously, I thought the worst: she'd been sexually abused by people she thought she could trust. Of course, this information devastated me. I was enraged at her brother and his friends; I was very very upset for her; and I was very upset that this was the first I had heard of it [Understandably: back in 1970, if a young girl was abused, how was she supposed to deal with it? This was really long before any kind of therapeutic counseling was commonly available. And how could she divulge this tragedy to any 'possible' boyfriend(s), such as I had hoped to be?? Or to anyone, for that matter! She was so young!]

Well, that sweet girl, now a young 45 years, to this day, is unable to deal with the 'trauma' which occurred to her almost 3 decades ago... and I feel that every possibility of me gaining her affections, in this lifetime, has perhaps forever been squelched by this horror of her early past. Though she is not 'dead', the spark of her life within was seriously snuffed out back in a time before we ever met. So, too, it seems, was our chance to be lovers. In that sense, perhaps she has always been 'dead', to me, only I just discovered it. It is obvious to me, only now, in hindsight, that I never really 'knew' her; she never really 'knew' me, or her true self, for that matter. She 'had to' conceal her horror, not only from others, but from her own maturing self as well; and worse, she had to forge her 'real' self into adulthood, surrounded by this ugliness.

She is now drifting away from me once more. Will it be 23 more years again before she faintly reaches out toward my life???

For my sweet young could-have-been girlfriend/lover/wife/everything, I greave the deepest grief. I pray (in my way) for her recovery every moment I think of her. I pray for the young men (older now, too) who destroyed an aspect of her, so thoroughly. I pray for her brother, who certainly must know of the attack on her and perahps (I do not know) took part in it.

And I pray for myself (and my loved ones who must endure the hideousness of this deep dark secret she has been keeping from the world -- and me.) Constantly, I ask, if this hadn't have happened to her, or if she had had an opportunity to begin her healing from this tragedy back when it had happened, what would i mean to her today? Would we have become young lovers, and more? I will probably never know the answers to this. This is my grief.

Thank you for reading this. If you would like to email me any words of caring or nurturing, I will consider myself blessed.

"When you were born, you cried and the world rejoiced. Live your life so that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice." --Cherokee expression

Scott R



You can send email to Scott R at [email protected]

mail welcome



Anniversary date -
Date of post - 1-12-00

[return to home page] [column] [book excerpts] [honor page] [discussions page]