You Only Know You Love Him When You Let Him Go

It was my second summer working in the office of the Camp Ramah Kitchen. My first summer had been disastrous - enlightening, liberating, and miserable. I returned with a very specific set of circumstances set out in my mind: that I would have a different roommate, that my immediate partner for work would be the same person, and that my sister would be following close behind me. Given my position, it was required that I be one of the first of the kitchen staff on site. The grounds were all but deserted; mosquitoes swarmed in the absence of the half-thousand bodies they would soon have to feast upon. Mist drifted and danced over cool morning waters. The air sung of a promise that the previous year had lacked.

We sat in the office one quiet afternoon, sifting through the resumes of staff who had yet to arrive. I was placing wagers on which people I would be fond of and which I wouldn't make any particular attempt to befriend. The criteria were simple and arbitrary: age, name, past jobs, education. It would have been tragically naive to assume any true predictive validity. I shuffled across one resume that particularly caught my attention. He was older than most of our other hires, boasted a background in philosophy, and brought the name Michael to the table alongside pristine writing skill.

My boss was fairly quiet on the matter, except for some mild agreement, when I expressed my approval. At the time, I found myself caught up in a relationship of sorts, a rather complicated long-distance matter. I wasn't in a position to consider delving into anything laced with too much romance, so in retrospect I don't believe the thought ever occurred.

The game I'd taken to playing with new staff members upon their arrival was boisterous and intrusive. For two minutes, they were expected to tell their life story in as much or as little detail as they chose. Michael showed up with blonde hair and blue eyes, a chunk of height above my own, and a willingness to engage in my ridiculous game. I remember there were nearly a dozen of us who chose to socialise in my small cabin that night. He took up residence on the floor, knees to his chest and contributions made with equal caution and extroversion. I was captivated.

I was also dismissive of my own sudden attraction.

We'd known one another for less than three days before our first kiss. He must have initiated it, out on the end of that dock overlooking Skeleton Lake, because I was still caught up with the impression he was significantly out of my league. Which he was, physically and, in some ways, intellectually. But emotionally, he had plenty to learn from me. We spoke often about abstract concepts, spent more nights wandering through the questionable, dark areas of nearby land than we did most anything else. He asked me if I would be his, if just for the summer. By the time the rest of the staff arrived, Michael and I were a known item.

We shared beds and time, snuck back and forth between our two cabins despite most of our belongings settling into a single space. We were attached in a way I still struggle to comprehend. It wasn't always smooth sailing. Inside of two months, we explored the depths of a multi-year relationship. It's incredible how much time you have to get to know someone when their presence is available to you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Our connection was mature, too strong for either of us to fully understand while we were in it.

Sometimes it was physical, and when it was it was often followed by laughter. My younger sister walked in on us naked, which was her mistake for failing to knock. Once we'd finally managed to stop laughing, Michael went to console her in the most sensitive way he knew how, reaching sex-ridden hands into her freshly opened bag of chips and ensuring that, to this day, it was still a horrifying experience for her. A condom was lost (and later found) inside of me, which was our mistake for using the wrong size. We spent half an hour browsing articles on Cosmopolitan for suggested solutions, cackling through our own frustration and embarrassment. Other times, it wasn't sexual at all, but we still chose one another's company and conversation.

On occasion, we both fought against properly expressing ourselves. Emotional communication wasn't either of our strongest suits. Sometime after the midpoint of our summer, there was a full two day span when we didn't speak. Obstinately, I refused to break the silence. When he finally did, we walked up to the tennis court and settled in for a conversation that, even nearly four years later, still makes me uncomfortable to relive. He was attracted to another girl, he told me. A year later I learned he'd kissed her, which explained his distance and guilty conscience more thoroughly. I was calm despite the churning in my stomach and the hammering in my heart, thankful for the abundant darkness and it's capacity to hide my features. He asked me something to the effect of whether or not he was allowed to pursue that avenue. My response nearly restricted my breathing, but in my stubbornness I kept my emotions in check. He was absolutely allowed to pursue whatever he wanted, but he shouldn't expect to find his way back into my bed if that's what he intended to engage in.

I needed him to choose me, to give me some inkling of a hint that I meant as much to him as he did to me. He did choose me, stating with some sense of surety that we weren't something he wanted to jeopardise. We didn't spend that night together, but he kissed me goodnight under the glowing of my cabin porch light and explained he was only leaving because of the sickening heat a shared bed would induce.

It wasn't too long afterward when we found ourselves on another midnight walk with a very different tone. The summer was winding down, our last days together creeping up over the horizon. We were sitting on a picnic bench off of camp property when he asked whether or not we were going to make a go of things after camp, whether we were going to attempt to make things work at a distance.

The choice was in my hands, our potential future left for me to dispose of or to nurture. I dismissed the idea, feeling it was my responsibility to keep any wild ideas in check. Michael didn't fight me on it, but I wonder now how differently things would have went had I been more set on optimism than I was on realism.

He hated camp. Or, at the very least, he hated his job at camp. In a necessary move for his own mental health, he ended up leaving a week earlier than he was supposed to. I didn't ask him to stay, but perhaps I should have. I was hellbent on being supportive, and on keeping my vulnerability hidden from everyone's view. Our sudden end came with his very confident assertion that he loved me, and confirmations that we would cross paths again in the future. I cried partially because he was gone, and partially because I'd been fighting my own feelings all summer long.

The first message he sent after leaving reiterated his affection for me, extended an invitation to visit him any time I'd like, and clarified that, if he had any regret in leaving, it was for having left me behind. That summer was marked by the scents of white wine and fresh Belmonts. I can still feel the softness of his hair running through my fingers. He made off with a necklace that I loved. I still have a plaid shirt and wool blanket he'd brought to camp. In the Autumn months that followed, I smoked a package of his cigarettes just for the familiar tingling in my nose.

We've spent the years since that summer exchanging well-wishes and Happy-Birthdays. A week ago, he sent me an image of a note he'd written a few days after we met that June. In it, he'd referred to me as his "promise of redemption." I'm still sitting here wondering if redemption is what he found in those seven and a half weeks we had together, and I'm still incapable of properly expressing to him how deeply they impacted me.