Bye Daniel, Hello A.R.E. Pt. 3

Talk about funny! Donald was hilarious and had a laugh that made you laugh, just because. Infectious. But that was him. He was kind, thoughtful, affectionate, and interested in shy ole me. I don’t know why talking to him made me think of my father. I secretly thought of my father whenever a male treated me any kind of good.

What lessons would my father have taught me? Would he approve of the guys I liked? How would he talk to me about sex? Donald respected me. He didn’t pressure me like other guys or yell or argue or anything. He was different, for sure. I wasn’t use to good different. I was use to literally everything but.

I got attention from Donald. Not like with my father. I remember once my father came to visit me on my birthday at my moms house. I went out to the car just to see he had a “friend” with him. And guess what this “friend” of his name was? Angela. He introduced her as Angie but I didn’t greet her by her name. I sat in the back the whole time while he talked to her about me. Nobody really turned to talk to me. I felt like an outcast in his presence. I hated that feeling so much.

What I never experienced with my father was any sort of “surprise”. It was Valentine’s Day and Donald no longer went to my school, or any school for that matter. I missed seeing him around the small halls of my school. Not too often would I go outside around lunch but it wasn’t too cold out and everyone else was outside so I decided to go too. I walked down the stairs towards the front door and as I did someone walked in to get me. “Somebody outside for you”, they said with a grin. Nervous to go outside because I had no clue who it could be, I peeped outside the door. There he was. Balloons in tow, along with the grace of his smile, and a big hug was none other than Donald Brown. 

Me and my shy self accepted the gift and we talked, alone, for a few before I headed back in school. I had never been surprised like that. We weren’t dating. We weren’t exclusive by any means. We were just friends. Friends. I really enjoyed being his friend. His heart was so kind. No matter what else we had going on in our lives, when it was just us, it was really just us. Why did I compare this to my relationship with my father so much? Had I secretly missed him? Should I had made more effort? Should he?

Like all good things in life, Donald and I came to an end. He went to jail, again. I couldn’t get my father out of my head. He went to jail very often. So often he missed so much of my life. I didn’t want that for Donald and I. But I learned things happen for a reason and sometimes even when you love a person, they leave.

Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out /  Change )

Google photo


Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Connecting to %s