They asked me to write about it today.

For so many years, I tried to push all the memories far enough way to lessen some of the pain that rotted inside me. After a few years, I was able to sleep some nights without seeing him in my dreams, and I could go through my day without getting flashbacks of those few months that followed the tornado.

Somehow, I could never fill the emptiness in my heart that he left behind. Part of me didn’t want to, because forgetting could be just as painful as remembering and living with the ache that plagued me every day. But I needed peace. So eventually, I had to leave that place and try to get free.

The months that followed blended together as days turned into months, and nothing felt real in the aftermath of the storm that shattered Hawkins, Indiana. But it wasn’t a tornado, Dustin had said. Trying to accept the horrible reality took second place to my grief at losing him, and sometimes it felt far enough away that it seemed too eerie to be real life.

My bedroom became my tomb for weeks after he was gone. I couldn’t put the things that made me remember him away, but every time I opened my eyes, I saw something that made me think of him. His jacket flung over the chair in my room, all the Polaroid pictures I had snapped during so many opportune moments stuck in the mirror of my vanity and tacked on my closet door, and the stacks of tapes that he had given me on a pile on the floor.

Now, when I think about him, he’s like a mirage on the horizon during a hot day. I can see the outline of him: his bushy hair, his leather jacket under his denim vest, his ripped jeans, and his white Reeboks. But only when I close my eyes and force myself to remember does the image become clearer. I can see his devilish smile that I loved so much, the large rings on his fingers, the holes in his jeans, and his bat tattoos on his arms. The arms that had wrapped me in their warm embrace so many times as he kissed the top of my head and whispered, “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.”

The ache returns to my gut, filling my brain with images of so many happy times that I could never forget, making me cry softly.

I can remember the sound of the bugs buzzing around the light outside the trailer as the boombox played his favorite songs. The way he smiled and stuck out his tongue as he played the imaginary guitar chords to the song. The heat of so many summer nights tickling my skin as we sat outside, talking and laughing and listening to music together. How he looked as the sun washed over his face when he drove the van around, a cigarette in his mouth. The way it felt to lay beside him as he slept, hearing him snore gently.

None of it seemed permanent, somehow, like every moment was fleeting and would disappear in time. Like he would disappear.  So many moments with him, I felt like I was mesmerized by how very alive he was. Maybe that’s why the hole in me that he left behind could never be filled; there was just too much in Eddie that caused a gaping chasm in the world, forever devoid of life.

They say you can never forget your first love. Although time distorts the images over the years, blurring all the colors and the sounds, there is an imprint in me that will never fade. I was seventeen when I experienced the kind of love that authors write about, but they fail to capture exactly what it’s like to fall in love when the world hasn’t yet become cruel, when death hasn’t yet begun taking everyone you love away from you, and when the world is pulsing with so much life. It’s like there are never enough hours in the day to revel in the thrills of young love, and wanting to touch him and see him and hear him every moment of every day. They never get it right when they try to capture feeling the rush of experiencing the world with your best friends, relishing the dangers of staying out late, sneaking out of the house, and stealing liquor from your parent’s cabinet. Teenage love is all of that life exploding out of you, with no regard for the things that your parents worry about: the future, making a living, making ends meet, following the rules.

When he looked me in the eyes, smiling at me, the whole world felt infinite.

As I sit and stretch my memory as far as it will go, I can almost feel the rush of running across the grass until I collapse on the ground from exhaustion. The grass tickles my bare skin as I lie there, sucking in air to catch my breath from laughing so hard and running. As he comes up beside me, he blocks the sun from my eyes, and it forms a halo around his curly hair. He plops next to me, shaking his head and laughing from chasing me. Then he picks a blade of grass and tickles my nose with it, and I playfully swat his hand away. I lean into him, feeling the sweat under his t-shirt and the warmth of his body next to me. He flings his arm lazily over my shoulder, resting his head on the top of my head and saying, you’re such a pain in the ass.

But you love it, I respond with a laugh.

You know I do, he says.

I didn’t fall in love with “the boy next door” or a sandy blonde hunk on the football team, I fell in love with Eddie. He was a DnD nerd, a metalhead with long hair, and the guitar player in a garage band. I never expected it, but the feelings he gave me don’t lie. If I could bottle the essence of young love, it would be all the butterflies rushing in my gut the first time he touched me, kissed me, when he asked me out for the first time, when he told me he liked me, when he told me he loved me. It would be the electricity that shocked me when he looked me in the eyes, his mischievous smile playing on his lips. The overall essence of him that drove me crazy: the cigarette smoke, the aged leather of his jacket, and the faint detergent smell from the cotton t-shirts he had worn a thousand times before. Normally, those little things might mean nothing. When it’s love, those little things are everything.

The ache from missing him reminds me of the aftermath when he was gone from the world. They don’t exaggerate when they say that grief makes the world seem dull, like all the colors have been zapped away. A fog consumed me for so long afterwards that the rest of the world moving around me didn’t seem real. I felt like I was floating, a ghost among people, but they could see me, and they would watch me go by. They didn’t speak, but I know what they were thinking. That was Eddie’s girl. He was the one that killed that cheerleader, right? I wonder what that’s like to date a killer.

They don’t know. They’ll never understand. And I wouldn’t be the one to try and shatter the illusion. In those moments, I was too broken up inside to even try and say the words I desperately wanted to say. You’re so fucking stupid. You don’t know anything, and you listen to whatever they tell you. You didn’t know him; not like I did. If you did, you would see how insane that idea even is.

After a few months, my family packed up and moved away from Hawkins. I was too faded to even try to argue. Even though some part of me wanted to stay where he had left a presence, like all our favorite spots: the arcade, the movie theater, and the hallway in school near his locker, the other part wanted to put this nightmare behind me forever. My eyes were so tired from crying, and my body ached from tossing and turning all night as I tried to sleep every night, that I was desperate for respite.

As I watched the town of Hawkins disappear in the rearview mirror, the tears burned my eyes as they fell down my cheeks. If my heart could break any more than it already was, it would shatter from leaving home, leaving him, behind. But as the days and months bled into years, I was able to find some peace. During the moments that I was reminded of him, like when I heard one of his favorite songs on the radio, I could feel the tears come as I smiled, holding on to the memory of him as the time passed.

I was lucky to love him. I fell for a boy with soft, brown eyes and a contagious laugh, a boy who refused to cut his hair, a boy who got a dreamy look on his face as he played his guitar. A boy who was sweet, gentle, and more loving than anyone I had ever met. A boy who defied stereotypes and shattered preconceived notions of what he should be; instead, being unashamedly himself, in all his goofy splendor. A boy who kissed my forehead and called me “sweetheart,” who wrote me funny notes on crumpled composition book paper, littered with doodles and messy handwriting, and a boy who picked wildflowers for me from the fields near his house.

No matter how many years go by, I can never forget Eddie Munson. He made me feel things that other teen girls only dream about. I experienced a world with him that will defy time and space forever, never to be replicated for anyone else. Maybe, somehow, I knew the whole time that he wouldn’t be permanent, that there would someday be a world that he wasn’t in. That simmered beneath the surface during the time that I loved him, and while that scared me sometimes, Eddie chased that away when he looked deep in my eyes and said, “It’s going to be okay, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”

They asked me to write about the tornados in Hawkins, Indiana, in the year 1986. Instead, I’m writing about the boy that Hawkins forgot, but also the boy that was loved by many. Loved by me. Tonight, when I see him in my dreams, he’ll be smiling at me, holding out his arms, and he’ll say, there you are. I missed you, sweetheart.