“When the Trees Glowed Green”

By: J. Dill

This year, I have learned that magic still exists. I also learned that I have spent a good portion of my life just simply surviving. Partly because some traumatic things happened, but the other reason was because I believed I deserved nothing more than to “just get by.” I didn’t grow up thinking that “just getting by” was my dream, but some of the pain in my life caused by others led to my internalizing their doubts. This year, I’ve had dreams and made connections that reminded me there is always more. For every hurt, there’s healing. For every broken dream, there’s another with wings. Healing and dreaming are merely a matter of opening my eyes.

Part of the process of opening my eyes meant looking at old wounds. Wounds that I didn’t know had festered into scars that had caused me to see the world through a calloused lens, one of sheltered protection. Of course, wounds never really begin as wounds. They begin with life, flowing, protected blood inside. Passion, energy and excitement. The particular wound that surfaced lately started with my first boyfriend; Ben. Damn did I love him. Fell hard and fast at the end of ninth grade.

It started with a feeling toward the middle of my freshman year. I was drawn to him, though I wasn’t sure why. Something about his goofy smile and bright blue eyes with beautiful white rivers lining his irises drew me to him. I used to tell Ben that he had “Spider-man eyes” because of how cool the white rivers looked as they webbed through the deep blue. He was tall too. Of course he was. I came from a giant family who taught me to take pride in giant genetics. Tall meant proud, tall meant strong. I suppose I internalized that stereotype as a teenager too.

And, Ben was a musician. He played acoustic and electric guitar. It probably wouldn’t shock you to learn that he was in a band. The summer we were together, I watched him play next to his computer; his “creative zone,” and alongside his bandmates in their basements. The creativity was so alluring. Ben helped me discover how much I loved my favorite band (who is still my favorite band), The Goo Goo Dolls.

We spent a beautiful summer together. We were officially a couple at the beginning of June, my favorite month. The beginning of summer and my birthday month. It didn’t take long for us to realize how much we liked each other during spring. I remember anxiously watching the clock in my career seminar class until lunch every day-the lunch I shared with him. I’d race down to the cafeteria as soon as our teacher said we could go. Most of the time, I just sat there as he made dumb jokes with his friends or tried to eat my fries. Occasionally, I’d offer some sort of sarcastic comment or he would direct one of his dumb jokes at me to try to get a reaction. For some reason, boys always thought it was funny in high school to “piss me off” because of how I reacted. I guess it amused them. Either way, lunches led to laughter, laughter led to lingering hall walks on our way back to class, lingering walks led to phone calls‒every day he’d tell me to call his landline at “2:45,” basically right when we would get home from school. And I did. Of course I did. I can’t remember everything we talked about, but I remember I loved talking to him. I remember sharing “epic” thoughts with him‒like our love for Lord of the Rings and music. Artistic things. Not a coincidence that we both loved those things, but that lesson comes later.

Summer with Ben felt like heaven. As often as I could, I would ride my magenta mountain bike to his house. I couldn’t arrive fast enough. I had just turned fifteen and every breath I took was dedicated to carrying me to the moment when I would see him again. I never could stay with him for long‒we saw each other during the summer days when our parents were at work‒but I remember how joyful I was when he opened the door. His door felt like a portal to heaven. Honestly. In the summer, when the grass and trees were glowing green outside, I was inside with Ben. Being held close. Experiencing my first kiss. Talking about music. Loving music. Hearing him play music and discovering that the world had deeper moments to offer. Ben was the first time I discovered those deeper moments. The first time I noticed that the trees glowed green.

 In my fifteen-year-old mind, Ben was forever. We had an unbreakable bond, everyone around us saw it. There was a picture taken of us at Phalen Beach, cuddling in the sand. Our friends told us we looked like the couple in Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novel, The Notebook. Everyone saw it. I felt it. He felt it. We were soulmates.

So, imagine my disbelief and devastation when I learned in August that we were being ripped apart. Split. Broken. He would be gone. I realize now I might be leading you to believe that he died. No, nothing like that. His dad got a new job, five hours away, in Wisconsin. Ben would be leaving at the end of summer. For two teenagers, without their drivers’ licenses, Wisconsin might as well have been across the ocean.

I was devastated. I didn’t realize it then, but what I learned about love that August is that if I found it, it would soon be ripped away. There’s a lot more I could tell you about how we tried to make our relationship work long-distance during my sophomore year. Phone calls only when my mom had unlimited minutes on her cell phone, seeing him once that year on Easter. But I’ll keep it short and share that I was devastated all over again when Ben broke up with me at the end of sophomore year. It was too much for him to hang onto me and try to start a new life.

Depression had already hit me after he moved, but it became so much worse when my heart was broken all over again when he ended things between us. A few months later, I learned that he found a new girlfriend. Crushed again. It wasn’t too long after I learned about Ben’s new life that I entered into the first of a few abusive relationships with abusive partners.

I experienced magic with Ben. When I lost him, I also believed I lost the magic. That love wasn’t meant to last, more importantly, that I didn’t deserve lasting, unconditional love. Ben didn’t want to fight for me, therefore, I wasn’t worth fighting for. I had hoped that Ben would still love me. That he would wait until we were old enough to drive ourselves to see each other. Old enough that high school was behind us and we could choose a college where we could attend together. But, two years was too long for Ben. And in my depression, I turned to a life with an abusive boyfriend, one that would be so toxic I couldn’t breathe. If I couldn’t breathe, then I wouldn’t remember how badly it hurt that my first real love didn’t choose me.

More years passed. Things change as they always do. I found a voice in college. I left the first abusive relationship and found someone else who I thought I loved. Believe it or not, but Ben reached back out to me at the end of our first year of college. He still loved me. He wrote a song about me. He broke up with the girlfriend he had in high school because she wasn’t me. He wanted to see me again. He said everything one would hope a lost love would. I met up with him again. Spring again. That seemed to be our season. But something had changed. He wanted me, but I didn’t want him “that way.” I didn’t feel the same. There was still a deep connection, I loved talking with him. But there was no attraction. I continued to stay in touch with Ben over the years. Off and on, we wondered if we would ever be together again. He went on to teach English in another country. I had a few babies with a few more abusive partners and became distracted by the demands of my life. Our paths came back together from time to time, but never quite aligned like they did in our youth.

This story is more about what I’ve realized about this relationship now, than what it meant in my past. Really, I’ve only scratched the surface of all the emotions, conversations and connections Ben and I shared over the years. But, in the last few, I cut communication off with him completely. I fell in love, for real, as a “real” adult, a grown adult. It didn’t feel appropriate to connect with Ben anymore, even if we never shared the connection we had in high school again.

But lately, I’ve been having dreams about Ben. He tells me he loves me in these dreams. He always seems desperate to find me. Desperate to create our connection again. I wondered why I had these dreams. I am a thirty-five year-old woman now. I’m not fifteen anymore. I am in love. I am happy in my current relationship. And, most importantly, my current relationship is the right one. The connection I had waited for my whole life.

So why the dreams? Not one, but many. I was too ashamed to ask myself this question when the dreams started a year ago or so. I love my husband, and the dreams made me feel guilty. I didn’t want anyone else to confess their love for me, even in my dreams, when I had true love in real life. But since the dreams continued, I started to wonder if my soul was trying to teach me something. Instead of feeling ashamed, I finally allowed myself to ask the question. Quiet space is hard to find in my life. So, if I want to dig deep, I have to find ways that work around my responsibilities. In the case of my Ben dreams, I chose to ask myself the question of, “Why?” on my drive to work. It was a simple choice consisting of intentionally placing my attention elsewhere. Usually, when I’m in my car, I make one of three choices: make a phone call, listen to my podcast or create a playlist of my favorite songs. Sometimes finding answers is as simple as shifting our attention. Instead of my usual three, I got quiet in my head as I drove. In the quiet, I asked myself, “Why am I dreaming about Ben?”

It didn’t take long for the voice to answer. The voice of certainty that speaks from my soul. The voice of peace and strength that I have found in myself these last few years. Some call that voice “God”, some call it a “conscious.” I believe the voice is my soul, my own inner spirit, who I truly am. That voice whispered, “You are dreaming of Ben because you need to remember the magic.”

From there, the rest of the answers flowed like a river, the same kind that I saw in Ben’s eyes at fifteen. I went on to ask myself more questions, to face them and allow the answers to heal me. I asked, “Why did I really love Ben at fifteen?” “Because we shared a deep connection.” Certainly, there was magic in Ben. He was a musician. He saw deeper truths. He motivated me to want to learn the language of the Elves in Lord of the Rings. His arms had a warmth and connection that I craved. But the more that I look upon my past with Ben, the more I see that the magic I felt with him really came from me. I saw the rivers in his eyes. I allowed the music he played to sink into my heart and make meaning. I carried the songs of our favorite band with me into adulthood.

I saw the trees glowing green.

 I felt their magic. Maybe my first human love woke me up to the love around me. The magic in the trees. The power of a melody. The warmth humans care share with each other. And, as painful as it was to lose Ben, that love did not die with him as I had previously believed.

I was lost for a while after Ben had hurt me. True love is vulnerability. But my dreams were telling me I needed to allow the magic to exist in me again. I needed to remember that the trees always glowed, and I had magic enough in me to see them.

What I sensed in Ben at fifteen was the healing power of love. The magic human beings feel when they connect with each other, when they connect with the deeper things in life. I thought that because my love with Ben didn’t last, that I was wrong to pursue real love at all. That magic didn’t really exist. Safety, comfort a beauty were a lie. I used to see them as broken glass. A sad, dangerous thing that I could never touch again for fear of being ripped open. I had spent too many nights crying alone in my room, certain that the ache of losing him, of believing I wasn’t worth fighting for, was endless.

Well, my dreams have taught me that safety, comfort and beauty are not a lie. They alway existed. I just needed to shift my attention. And truthfully, Ben turned out kind of shitty. He grew up to be a rather arrogant man, always one-upping others and purposely putting himself in positions where he could feel superior. That’s probably why I didn’t love him anymore.

But‒the magic I felt with Ben was real. It was something I could share with other humans‒ something I could find again. And this time, I am seeing the source. Me. My soul. The gift of love I have to give to the world‒and the gift of love that the world is always trying to return to me.

The gift of glowing green.

The gift of spring.

The reminder that life and love are always seasons. That humans can be like the trees‒rooting ourselves in our own magic, waiting for the seed that will grow in love and healing beside us.

My love, Tom, is the seed that was always meant to grow beside me. The proof is in our yard at home. There is a single maple tree whose trunk is rooted to the earth, yet as it grows higher, its trunk splits into two separate trees. Trees with their own branches, sprouting their own life, but rooted together.

So, for my last story of the year, I would like to share that the lessons we learn from first loves can stretch into all our later years. Wounds can form. Wounds that might tell you that you deserve pain, even worse, that you should pursue it because it’s easier to become numb than face vulnerability again. But I hope, now that you know that the love you might feel now is a seed of your own magic, that you might be motivated instead to see what you are capable of‒to see that love is never really lost. To know that there are magical seeds around, just like you. You deserve to grow. You deserve to love your own light.

You deserve to learn that the trees glow.

I fell in love as an adult, but still carried wounds from my past. Wounds that told me that magic had died. But my dreams have told me, the trees have told me that I am magic and more magic awaits. I am weaving a life of creativity and healing. And I firmly believe I planted those creative and healing roots at fifteen. I am grateful for that fifteen-year-old who was brave enough to love vulnerably. Who was brave enough to see rivers in the eyes of another. Who was brave enough to keep fighting for her life even when she was devastated. I still see her in me now. Brave. Adventurous. Seeking rivers. The seeds she gave me helped me begin the love I have now. And, truthfully, victory is always in the seeds.