The author is at a party The photo is courtesy of Amie Parnes.
People remember their first crush.
My name was Jeremy and I had written it hundreds of times on my binders. He was the star of dozens of notes I passed in class and the one who daydreamed about science with Mrs. Banks.
Jeremy is the president of student council, a tennis player, and a wrestler. Each morning, he appeared on the television announcements with a smile.
When the school announcements came on, I used to watch the television set to hear the news. I moved my locker to be close to him because we weren't in any classes.
It was a difficult year in seventh grade. My parents were going through a divorce. A tumor was removed from behind my mom's eye. My sister graduated from college. My childhood home went on the market and was sold by Jeremy's mom.
Seventh grade was magic because of him.
He was kind. I wrote a lot of notes for him and he wrote me back. When my friends cornered him in the school cafeteria, I told them to push him in my direction so he could slow dance with me. He joined us, a group of twelve-year-olds, on a triple date to see the Steven Spielberg movie "Always." I watched him out of the corner of my eye for two hours and three minutes as I brushed up against him.
At the end of the year, he wrote "Love ya" in my book and asked me to keep in touch with him. When I read those words, I thought of a marriage proposal.
It was calledpuppy love. I felt like that cheapened it, making it seem unimportant. I was drawn to him because of his magnetism.
As he went on to high school, I moved an hour north so we could keep in touch.
I became a general assignment reporter outside of Philadelphia when I traded AOL instant messages with him. I told him about my desire to become an author after he started practicing real estate law.
I used to hang out on his couch whenever I was in Miami.
He was still in my mind even when we weren't talking and I was dating other people. He appeared in my dreams many times. He owned a piece of me, no matter what else happened in my life.
The tables had turned and he was watching me on TV. He sent me a message on Facebook after seeing me on CNN.
The boy in me was happy.
Jeremy wrote a message in his seventh grade book. The photo is courtesy of Amie Parnes.
From the morning until we fell asleep every night, we received an onslaught of text messages.
His flaws began to show up for the first time. He told me about a time in his life when he was stressed out and ended up in a drug rehabilitation center. He had been in recovery for a while, but he continued to stay in close contact with the group.
I always wondered if I was failing as a parent after I told him about my two-and-half-year-old son.
I was lucky to have co-written a book with him on the 2016 election.
We used to swap songs as if we were making each other music. When we were young, they were mostly from the '80s.
He boarded a plane to join me in Washington after I was invited to a White House holiday party for reporters. The date was our official one.
The weekend included a walk along the Lincoln Memorial and a trip to New York. We held each other's hand. We kissed on the lips. We were sharing a bed.
He agreed to join me in California for a week after he returned to Florida. He was watching from the front row as I spoke. We were together again and again for a few weeks.
I was his partner. We talked about marriage. My family had a seder. I had dinner with his parents, his brother and his sister-in-law a few days later.
It was going full speed, until it wasn't.
Sitting at a hotel bar in Washington, Jeremy told me he was scared of commitment and he worried he would hurt me someday.
He wondered if he could leave his life in Florida and stand on his own without the support of his NA group.
He didn't know if he was good enough for me. He had his own doubts about whether he could match up to me, a reversal of sorts from when we were in middle school.
There is a way in which life can change.
He said he wouldn't chase you around like a puppy dog.
It made me wonder what he had seen in me in the first place, because he had been seeing someone on the side.
We were breaking up, but we didn't say it out loud.
He told me on Sunday that he wouldn't worry about it. The thing will work out.
I begged him to change his mind after he set his luggage on a conveyor belt. "Don't go," I told him. Don't go away here. Don't leave with me.
He was moving slowly toward the front until he was out of view.
It made me feel bad. I didn't think I was good after that. When I was a child, I was standing by his locker and every single one of my insecurities surfaced.
He walked away from what we had. I wonder if he didn't love me after all. Is this all in my head?
I read a book about fixing a broken heart and met the man who wrote it. I hired a love coach who gave me advice on how to get Jeremy back. If he doesn't meet your standards, you need to walk away.
I pushed myself forward because I knew as much as I loved him, as much as our decades-long story was more captivating than if we had met last week on a dating app.
He sent me flowers and records after we broke up. He said that if he could work through his problems and fears, he would be able to come back to me.
The sharpness of the break up had dulled after a long time. He moved to Atlanta to look for change.
We used to text each other and he would call me at random. He would want to hear your voice.
He asked if he could come visit me after I got my vaccine. I decided to change the subject to avoid an accident.
He was still my favorite person. I kept thinking about him every day. I built a wall so I wouldn't get hurt again and it would take me a long time to recover from my injury.
If he would just let himself love me, there could still be a future for us.
In the fall of 2021, I mentioned that a month had passed since we had promised to get back to each other.
When my phone buzzed, I was sitting on the couch with my mom.
I opened it up because I didn't know who it was.
A woman introduced herself as a friend of Jeremy's, who had been with him in Atlanta.
She apologized if she was the first to announce the news. You should know that the time he spent with you was very meaningful to him. He was fond of you and thought you were great.
The memorial was from a funeral home.
She wrote a second message a short time later. He made poor decisions. He didn't want to be with you. I wanted to let you know.
He couldn't find his footing in Atlanta. The loneliness of a new town made him turn to drugs again.
The author was given a game by Jeremy. The photo is courtesy of Amie Parnes.
It wrecked me. The pain of it all was unlike anything I had ever experienced.
I was sad that our relationship had come so close to bloom.
I was grieving the death of a young person. When he and I drove through the Miami neighborhood where we grew up, I kept coming back. My friends and I parked outside of his old house in hopes of bumping into him. He once showed up for my 13th birthday party and carted a board game called LIFE. It was as if the universe was giving us a final tour of our adolescence when we didn't know it at the time.
It was like breaking up with him all over again, but this time there was no way to save the relationship. There isn't any advice on how to get him back. The hope that it would all work out, as he said in the last moments of our relationship, was gone. That's the part that makes me wake up at night.
He sent me an email a few months after we ended our relationship, saying that he was still hopeful that we would reconcile.
He said he had to say one thing. Despite where we are right now, and how bad things have been between us, I feel like the glass we share is half full.
I think about what could have been when I think about him. I wonder if he cut me loose because he loved me.
Jeremy told me that love isn't perfect. It isn't always the way you want it to. It is a love story, all the same.
Amie Parnes is a senior correspondent for The Hill in Washington, where she covers politics. She is the author of HRC State Secrets and the Rebirth of Hillary Clinton, which was a New York Times bestseller. She was a staff writer at Politico, where she wrote about the Senate, the presidential campaign and the White House.
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