Small Town

It was a small town, if you even could call it that. He had lived their all his life, it was the kind of town you see in movies where everybody knew each other and they could detect a newcomer as if it was a super power, the shops shut down for football games, and the prom because every member of the town had shared such an illustrious history that all includes the culmination of their formative years, it was the last time they were all able to just be before the reality of life really set in. Having to decide whether to move on from this small town or to stay and continue the beautiful simplicity of a familiar home. It was full of inside jokes and a healthy hierarchy all predicated on who they were in their years as children, but the prom always meant so much to the town. Everybody was so emotionally invested in the lives of their town members because it so closely mirrored many of theirs, and ones that had come before them. Even though it was a small town they of course enjoyed the cinema, how they could be taken away from the monotony of their everyday routines, especially the boy. He loved to go and be so taken with a larger than life figure going through the trials and tribulations that ultimately make him the hero he was advertised as, or the epic love stories where all had seemed lost but, the one thing that was the most important never was. He particularly enjoyed the romance pictures because he himself was smitten with someone. Of course this was a small town so it wasn’t as if he would meet someone late in his adolescence and be so overtaken with emotion that his ambition would fortify so much so that he would take a chance. He couldn’t give up everything he’d ever known for a “new to town” girl that showed him pieces of himself that he didn’t even realize were there. So he settled, well I wouldn’t want to say settled because she was everything that he imagined when he talked about the perfect love story. The “girl next door” well not exactly next door but it was walking distance and he had an arguably active imagination so it was okay. She was beautiful, strikingly so, but it had a hint of subtlety because she was grossly unaware of how beautiful she was when laughed, or how you couldn’t find a word if you were smacked in the face with a dictionary when you really looked into her eyes. All of these things were great but It really believe it was the way that she looked when she talked about her passion the way it washed over you like a warm bath, and caused every hair on your entire body to stand up. She was magnificent, and way too big for this town. I think somewhere in the boys head he always knew that she would realize that there was nothing in this town that she really needed, to be what she was always going to be. Not much scared him, but this was petrifying, the thought that the star in every one of his fantasies would vanish and he’d be left with just that. Fantasies. They were both seniors in their small town and prom was closing in. The boy wanted more than anything to tell her how he felt, just like he had seen in the final minutes of all the romantic pictures he loved so much. You already know how the boy felt about her and all of her essence and you could guess how it went across when he poured his heart and soul, because the girl was so good, she would never have made him feel bad for his declaration but she had to tell him she had already decided to leave the town after prom she was one of the ones that needed more, needed to get out. She had never felt like she really belonged where she was, she loved it and she had made friends that she knew she could count on for life, but she felt like something was missing. I think somewhere deep down the boy always knew she felt this way, the way he knew her was uncanny and he had been right, and knowing all of this, he still said what he had too. There was a part of the boy who didnt believe that she couldn’t have felt the same way, but he loved her too much to risk being wrong. So just like that, he let her go and shortly after prom she was gone. Before the school year even ended. She dissipated from existence in the small town. For the first few days she was dearly missed, but like with everything time begins to swallow the memory of her subtle qualities that made her once in a life time. Everybody except the boy that is, he stayed in the town, well near it at least he decided that he loved every ounce of it but he didn’t realize until it was in the rear view mirror, so he came back to teach in the small town, to be the guidance young boys like him would need to follow whatever it is they want and to never grow complacent because they might miss the moment where it all changed, as sublte as it might be. He wouldn’t let that happen, because its everything that they are and will become. He was happy, he often thought about the girl, he knew where she was and what she had been doing, she was working in the films creating those moments for people to fall in love, choosing the songs that would play when the unlikely couple would kiss for the first time and would permanently stamp there mark in the viewers minds forever, he wasnt upset because she was doing what she thought she needed. Years had passed, proms had come and gone but he never forgot any of them especially his. He can’t Exactly recall how long she had been standing in front of him, or how long it took for every hair to stand up on its end when he heard her voice, after all this time she still could turn him into that 17 year old boy with his heart in his hand, down on one knee prepared to give her the world. He had gone to speak, just a greeting, it was all he could manage, but she put a finger to his lips. She had something to say. The boy wasnt all that much for surprises, I think mostly in part to the fact that everybody knew everybody his whole life its hard to be taken by surprise. The last thing he had every expected was to see the girl again, I mean why would he? She got out, was doing what she loved with nothing holding her back. He thought that the sight of her was the last thing he’d ever expect but what she said next left him speechless. She told the boy, that she has been traveling the world running her life and it was all she thought she’d ever wanted, to touch millions with her passion the way she had done so many times in their town, but she had run out. Not of ideas, never that, it was the easy part she told the boy. What she had run out of was the passion, the why, what had driven her to be what she needed to be and inspire those millions. It was the boy. It was him who drove her to touch all that she did and it was paradoxical in nature. She had never realized it because if he had done what he did earlier in his life split her internally, about what she wanted or thought she needed she wouldnt have been what she was because it was the good that she saw in him, to put her first that ultimately made her thrive. She was heart broken because she had taken so long to see it, had to run out of one of the many reasons she was amazing to see the truth. That he wasn’t apart of what was holding her back, he was the driving force to help her pursue everything that made her who she was she just didn’t realize it at the time. I have to be honest, I don’t know the boy or the girl or even what happened after she had came to him with this realization, but whenever I tell their story I always want one lesson to be taken away even if you never speak of them or their story again. Always take a really good look at who you are, what you love, but more importantly who makes you happy because it’s incredibly easy to associate them with the place that you feel you’ve out grown, just know that you always find your way back home, just hopefully its not too late.