Hey, my first proper, grown-up post on this board. Been reading some threads and you people seem like a fine group of human beings
. I shared my story on the IMDB board and I wanted to share it here too, because in a strange way BBM has been a comfort to me and the situation I find myself in at the moment. I still can't quite fathom why, but watching it makes me feel better, like true love really does exist and I'm not imagining all of this. So here goes. This is my story...
It was late 1990. I was 22 and had just moved to a new town with my fiancé, to a new house together. He was in the forces, so I was used to the long, long absences and kind of leading a double life – one with a partner and one without. I was a faithful partner, in love, and never even thought about other men. So I busied myself building a social life, and joined the local amdram group – my other passion. Jacob was 20 and had been going to this group for years – he was born and raised in the town we’d moved to – but I don’t remember the first time I saw him, although he says he does very clearly. There were so many people there in that wonderful, warm group, and he was one of many friends I made there. I remember, though, the exact moment I fell in love with him as if it were yesterday.
Jacob was in a play touring the amdram festival circuit and I went along with some of the group to support him. We’d grown to be good friends over the 18 months or so I’d been there, but something physical happened to me that night – I was watching him acting his little heart out and suddenly felt like something had squeezed my chest until I couldn’t breathe. Excuse me while I get all melodramatic and say it was like a thunderbolt (you can stop laughing now ;-)) and I sat there wondering what just happened. I suddenly wanted to rush up on stage and hold him and never let him go. (Just to clarify - at this point my relationship was in some real problems and my fiancé was away on a lengthy absence.) After the play was over I chatted with him and the rest of the group in the bar and then made my excuses and left, but before I left the building, and I swear to God this is true, I felt a pressure on my back turning me round and nudging me back to him, where I hugged him and kissed him on the cheek and said “You were wonderful”. We looked at each other, smiled, and I left. Years later he said it was one of the magic moments of his life – it was for me, too.
At the next amdram meeting the next week we were standing behind a kind of ‘bar’ type thing in the rehearsal room and watching the rehearsal and chatting and I felt him slip his hand in mine – behind the bar so no-one could see. Someone came over to chat but I couldn’t hear – someone had turned the sound down on the world and all I was aware of was his hand in mine. Just for a minute, and then he let it go.
Things carried on as they had before for a few more months. My fiancé came home, and went again. We met every week at the amdram group and acted like friends - no more hand holding, but lots of smiles.
Then we directed a play with the youth group together, which meant that between us we took all the kids home after each performance. One performance evening one of the parents offered to help out with the transportation, which meant that I travelled in Jacob’s car, and after dropping off two kids we had one left, and us. My house was nearest, “I’ll drop you off first” said Jacob, “that’s okay, drop Nathan off first – it’s late” I replied with no idea of what I was doing. A pause. “Okay then”.
We talked in my kitchen, coffee went cold, I put music on (the song that became our song) and tried to make my freezing house a little warmer. We sat at opposite ends of the sofa, then moved closer, then hugged each other for what seemed a lifetime, neither knowing what to do but neither wanting to let go. Then we started giggling, and you can guess the rest…
My fiancé came back that weekend, and we ended it. No surprise to either of us. We had to stay together in the house because neither of us could afford to keep it on our own, but he went away for another long spell and Jacob and I were together openly for one blissful month. He said “I love you” and I said “I love you too”, we made youthful plans and talked excitedly about the future, but a month was all we had. My fiancé came back, we were living separate lives but together in the same house, he tried to persuade me to give it another go, but I was too young and inexperienced to know how to handle the situation – I told him “no” but couldn’t be mean, and that’s what it would’ve taken to stop him asking. Jacob couldn’t handle it, said he’d met someone else, and I remember as clearly as if it was yesterday, us sitting at the top of the stairs, both in tears, and me saying “I know I’ll never love anyone else this way – you’re it for me” – and I was right.
So that was it for the next few years – my ex-fiancé eventually moved out. Boyfriends came and went, Jacob’s girlfriends came and went, we remained friends – sometimes emotions spilling over into a quarrel when we’d fight like cat and dog and then not speak for weeks. I met someone and moved away, he moved abroad to work, and we kept in touch by occasional letter – sometimes old emotions spilling into the words.
He moved back to Britain and I got married. I remember us meeting for the first time for over 2 years about a month before my wedding. He asked me if I was happy and I said that yes, I was. Sometimes it’s easy to get being happy and having a comfortable and drama-free life mixed up and believe they’re the same thing. Jacob came to my wedding and, so I was told by a mutual friend, cried all the way home afterwards in the back of a car. It kills me that I didn't know what he was feeling and I wasn't there to comfort him. My husband was a wonderful man, we were comfortable together, but of course it was doomed. Over the next few years I got the occasional letter from Jacob and we even met once, but I was faithful to my husband and to our commitment together, so we remained good but very distant friends. Then, in 2000, Jacob and I spoke on the phone and got into a massive fight. I can’t even remember what it was about now, but it was serious enough for us to tell each other to go to Hell and mean it. I got rid of all the letters, photographs, deleted his address and phone number, got rid of any trace of him from my life. The anger carried me through a couple of years, my husband and I divorced, and eventually I met someone else – not THE ONE, but again, comfortable.
Time passed, and I wondered from time to time what had happened to him, if he was okay. Then last summer I watched a film double bill at my local arts cinema called ‘Before Sunrise’ and ‘Before Sunset’, and something just clicked in me. I got in touch with my old drama group and they told me he had got married and they hadn’t been in touch for ages, but they gave me his email address. Married… well that felt like a kick in the guts, so I thought best to leave it alone. But 2 months later I still couldn’t let it go, and I sent a very short and tentative message asking how he was and what he was doing. A reply almost straight away told me that he was now a teacher (so am I) and was divorced.
So in the last few months we’ve been writing a little and met for the first time in about 7 or 8 years, 16 years since we were together. It’s still the same, for both of us, as if the intervening 16 years never happened. We talked all evening, hugged goodbye, and he walked away… then turned around, came back, held me and kissed me on the cheek just like I’d done all those years ago. I’d already made the decision to move back if I could find a job – to be nearer to my elderly parents and closest friends – and had also already decided to end my relationship before Jacob and I even met again. He’s in a relationship too at the moment, one that is comfortable and easy, but wants me to be near him. He says it feels like fate to him, that all this has happened now of all times. I hope I can find a job there, I hope I can move back and find some peace at last, I hope that chain that links us and won’t let us quit each other will also guide us back to the place we’re meant to be.
Thanks for reading, it’s helped me to get it all out. BBM entered my life just when I needed it x
