Cool Things. Volume #6. First Loves.

FIRST LOVES

“We had found the stars you and I. And this is given only once.” – André Aciman.

In a lifetime of firsts, nothing quite compares to a first love.

THE BEGINNING

I met Jason Robertson at a house party when I was sixteen years old. He was fun and quirky and we shared a love of music and travel. Best of all, he had a wonderful family. Two brothers, both younger, and a Mother and Father who were two of the coolest people I’d ever met. His family welcomed me into their fold with warmth that’s never been duplicated.

In our seven years together Jason and I covered a lot of ground. Up and down the West Coast countless times to see concerts, back and forth to Vancouver Island where his family had a summer home. Those first few years were magic. We were in love, had a great future ahead of us. It was hard not to feel invincible. And incredibly lucky.

THE MIDDLE

But things started to shift around year five. I finished post secondary school and embarked on my first career in finance. Jason had never really worked in his life. He grew up in Shaughnessy, a moneyed neighbourhood in Vancouver where leafy trees hid spectacular mansions. His Mother’s side of the family were Vancouver royalty and she’d never had a job either; there was no need. A sizeable trust fund meant she could do what she loved to do: be generous with her time and money.

Coming from a modest, middle class upbringing, I was initially intimidated with his family’s wealth. It was a world I’d never seen. At first blush, Jason seemed wonderfully unaffected by it. But it’s impossible not to be influenced with the swaying force of money. The choice is either embrace it and do something good with it, or let it control you. Jason, through no fault of his own, chose the latter.

Knowing he would one day inherit a sizeable fortune, his ambition was stunted. This isn’t to say he didn’t have dreams, because he did. He was talented at many things, including music, but without the drive, the financial need to succeed, he coasted. And with my star slowly rising as I found my way in the world, a gulf started to grow between us.

THE END

Over the years, we’d both dabbled in drugs here and there, mostly weekend warrior stuff. I never chalked it up to anything other than youth and experimentation. And as a working professional, come Mondays, I was always back on track. Jason never had this structure and lacked the discipline to manage his free time. Eventually, he drifted further and further into drugs. I tried everything to get him out of it and failed. When I found a stash of needles jammed into the crumbled drywall behind our toilet, I knew he was gone. Beyond a place where I could help.

I was twenty four when we split up and the next year was brutal. It’s tragic to see someone you love disintegrate before your very eyes. I’ll never forget visiting my parents that one night – how my mom was acting strange and I felt a rip in my gut asking where my father was because I knew something bad had happened. Mom started to cry and told me Jason was dead.

He died alone in a Whistler apartment. One of the many heroin overdoses British Columbia would clock that year. He’d seemed to find his footing at last, or that’s what he’d led us all to believe; led himself to believe. Drug addiction is real and cruel, a cold hand that keeps clawing you back in the darkest times. For many, its impossible to escape the clutches.

A NEW BEGINNING

It took me many years to synthesize Jason’s death. I realized later, it was one of the things that held me back in ways I can’t really describe. When I finally addressed the long lost wounds, it was like the floodgates had opened. It was part of the metamorphosis that brought me to writing.

For that alone I am eternally grateful to him.

The thing is, I still think about him all the time. As a first love, I couldn’t ask for anyone more. He was a wonderful soul who just couldn’t move past his troubles.

I used to wonder what my life would be like if he’d never succumbed. Would we still be together? What would we be doing? How many more experiences would we have shared? It can be soul deadening, all these questions, so eventually I stopped asking.

Because the answers lie in my dreams: a place of memory, mourning and love.

xo