The Spice Girls...

I liked the Spice Girls, I was all about them when they came out. I even had a pair of moon shoes, because they looked cool on Baby Spice. Those things weighed a ton but I wore them proudly. I had their  albums, and watched their movie, I even saw a few of their concerts on TV. I was totally all about them.

I loved the Spice Girls. That was until I saw a poster of them taped to the ceiling in my first real boyfriend's bedroom. It was right above his bed. At first I was cool about it, well I like them too, but then as I spent nights over there, I started to resent them.

I didn't have the dirty mind that I do now, so I wasn't able to make smarmy jokes back then. I was Jealous of them. When I wasn't there with him (Let's call him Tito, that's as close as I can get without telling on him) they were watching him. When I was there with him, they were watching us.

Nights when he would fall immediately asleep instead of talking to me, I'd stare at them. Because I was and in some ways still a little insecure, I wondered who else get to stare at them. I wasn't feeling my girl power during those moments.

Eventually I stopped going over there to spend the night. Slowly but surely I just stopped going to see him all together. A few years later I happened to see him in town. My now 22 year old self was way more worldly that my 17 year old self so seeing him was just another day. After the exchange of pleasantries, and him giving me a ride to the nearest train station we agreed to a meal.

Dinner with an old flame is always interesting. You get to compare who's doing better since you broke up. Or you get to examine why you two broke in the first place. Or you can do what I did and asked the $20,000 question: So do you still have the Spice Girls taped to your ceiling?

He says, no, then he says something that made me feel so special. "I took them down after I realized you weren't coming back. They reminded me too much of you." My then 22 year old self said aawwww, so sweet. My now 32 year old self just rolls my eyes and shakes my head. I can't believe I fell for that.

He missed me is what he said then. If he was to say that to me now, I'd feel a little insulted. If he really  missed me the poster should have stayed up. As dinner progressed he told me how I broke his heart and that he still had my picture on his mirror. I realized that he still loved me. My confidence shot through the roof. The only problem was I wasn't sure what love was.  I did know I never felt anything close to it for him. Not in 1997 or in 2001 or in 2004 when I once again saw him in town.

For Boston being so small (so says New York) it's amazing how one could never see someone for years and still be a few blocks apart. It's easy to get lost in it, lost in your own life. I began to wonder if I have ever allowed myself to love. Clearly he held a torch burning for me for a while, but was it ever mutual? Things with Tito came to a screeching halt the last time we talked. I finally admitted that I never loved him. That's not something anyone wants to hear. I don't recommend saying it over the phone.

On Facebook today a guy mentioned the Spice Girls, which brought me to today's blog topic. I'm not going to say that they ruined my first relationship, because they didn't. I'm just going to say that  I wasn't feeling them as much I used to.