Love

“Come on! We gotta get in line!”

She pulls me along by my hand, my feet resisting keeping up with my heart. The large crowds are enough to make me nervous without the added pressure of where they’re currently located. I’ve never been a fan of areas where lots of people gather. I’d much rather watch the Cleveland Cavaliers at home versus driving downtown to deal with traffic, parking, and the people. All those people congregating in one place to see one event; the excitement literally in the air.

It’s just not my scene.

Today, though, she grabs me by my hand and I can feel her excitement in her grip. Each finger grasping my own, urging me along. Urging me to follow more people passing by the teenager sitting on a stool with a red-and-white stick in their hand. It’s just about four feet in length. Around the height of your average 10-year-old.

The other people filter into line like cattle. Chipped paint latching onto the dream of its once-royal-blue finish divides the line of people as it winds back and forth on itself like some perverse, human-filled snake.

From a distance, I can see the length of the line, and a glimmer of hope rises in my chest. It looks way too long for some reasonable person to want to stand in for anything. Surely, we’ll divert course and find a new destination. The Panda Express off to the right looks enticing, except for the fact that my stomach is still flipping violently within me. Nervous stomachs aren’t new to me. It’s been an issue for years.

It’s been an excuse for years.

Would it be an excuse this time?

She turns as she lengthens her stride to get into that dreadful line quicker.

The smile across her face. The light in her eyes. The wind in her hair. Every cliche you can think of hits me like a ton of bricks. My heart skips a beat and for a moment I ignore the gymnastics routine my stomach insists on performing.

I smile back and follow her into the labyrinth. I’m sure my own dimples are doing their best to match hers now.

We walk back and forth in the twisting line until we hit the group of people ahead of us. I look around me taking it all in. She notices and pokes my shoulder.

“So, this is it!”

The excitement in her voice makes me smile. I can’t help it; most of what she does makes me smile.

“This is it,” I reply.

It’s hard to match her excitement, but I try my best. My stomach does its best to grab my attention again, and I look back towards the entrance of the line debating using it as an excuse. It may be embarrassing, but at this point it’s much less embarrassing than if I wait longer and have to walk back through all these people.

I shift my weight from one foot to another.

I open my mouth for the safety of a lie to come out like it’s down hundreds, if not thousands, of times in my past.

Except the next group of friends comes running through the entrance and follows the same back and forth path that we just followed. They stop right next to us and continue their loud conversation about their summer break. They look so happy.

My feet stay put.

My stomach groans in defiance.

“Let’s play a game!”

My friend pulls out his Blackberry and starts up a game of Monopoly.

I hate Monopoly, but I’ll take anything to keep my mind off the fear welling up inside of me.

Over the next sixty minutes, we pass the phone back and forth between the four of us, waiting for the inevitable. Each few minutes we stumble forward a few feet, only to stop and rest against that weathered, metal barrier.

It’s torture.

Every few minutes a reminder of my anxiety comes screaming past, as if to taunt me and my inevitable future. The screams are full of joy, maybe with a tinge of fear here and there, but it’s a different fear than mine. It’s an exciting fear. A joyful fear in the most contradictory way. The fear and realization of letting go and letting yourself be taken on a journey.

I don’t think I’m ready for this journey. My stomach certainly isn’t ready for the journey.

Another few minutes and the screams fill my ears again.

The screams take me back in time as I stare off into the trees.

Seven or eight months ago , on a random night in October, I found myself following my heart in a very similar situation, but the emotion fueling me that time was slightly different.

That time it was fueled by hope.

That night I took a leap of faith with a couple of friends at my side. Along with them, and the hope of what might happen meeting my friend’s sister, I said that I would love to go to the Seven Floors of Hell haunted attraction.

It didn’t matter that I hated haunted houses.

It didn’t matter that the thought of walking through one made my stomach perform somersaults.

It didn’t matter that the idea of purposefully getting scared enough to scream and run sounded like one of the dumbest things a person could do.

Hope blinded me to all those thoughts.

Hope guided me towards possibility. With my friends at my side, I walked into those dark, foul-smelling houses filled with all sorts of horrors, alongside a girl I had only just met gripping my sweatshirt like it was the last lifeboat on the Titanic.

Hope taught me life lessons that night: leaps of faith could be rewarded.

So, while I stand in the scorching summer heat all these months later, listening to the screams of others whistling past me at 70 mph, I swallow that urge to lose what little food I have in my stomach on the concrete.

Because that same girl that gripped my sweatshirt for some tiny sense of security in her choice to purposefully submit herself to being scared, which made no logical sense to me, was standing next to me bristling with excitement to do another illogical thing.

Sit on a sleek, aerodynamic steel beast that reaches speeds of 90 mph after dropping 310 feet with only a lap bar and gravity keeping you from flying to your untimely death. How does that make any sense?

Love doesn’t make sense. Love, in so many of its forms, teaches you to abandon your thoughts of what you think makes sense. It pushes you to be something greater than you think you could be, providing the courage to do things you never would consider otherwise. There is no logic when it comes to love. There is only love.

At this point, we reach the split at the top of the ramp. I can see the blue, red, and yellow metal cars glistening in the sun. The crowd is tight together to get as close to their turn as possible. Excitement remains thick in the air. I barely notice the question posed to us until she answers for both of us.

“We’ll wait for front-car!”

She turns to me, and the somersaults being performed by my stomach take a step back as my heart leaps up my throat daring to choke me. How can I say no?

“Sounds great,” I manage to stammer out. Who am I to deny her her illogical fantasies? If she wants to be at the front, well by God, we’ll go in front. I refuse to let her know how nervous I truly am. How the anticipation of the much slower line of people going two at a time to the front of the pavilion to wait for that beloved front-car experience is increasing my anxiety exponentially by the minute.

When the moment comes to sit down, I’m pretty sure I black out.

The next thing I know, we’re ticking, slowly, up the first mountain of the monstrous coaster. The dreadful ticking. It’s literally counting the seconds down until I die. At least that’s what it feels like. The ticking of life’s clock, waiting for me to reach the top so it can drop me like a 7th-grade egg drop completed by that kid that never pays attention in class and always forgets their homework. The figurative straws and tissues surrounding me would do nothing against the 310-foot drop that awaits me on the other side of this hill.

Oh boy.

She grabs my hand at some point, and it isn’t until then that I look over to see her beautiful brown hair blowing in the gusty wind coming off the lake. Her smile is bigger than it has been all day. She’s finally in her happy place after waiting almost two hours.

She’s incredible.

At the moment we crest the hill, I see the view before me, and my stomach drops along with the rollercoaster.

But what didn’t drop is my heart. That is swept away with all other thoughts of what is logical or illogical. It is the beginning of a lifelong journey learning that this girl will be able to convince me to do anything, even all those things I always told myself I would never do.