Faith

At the age of 16 I had never seen a frozen lake. The sight of one induced both fascination and terror. It was the mid 80's and The Omen films had taught me to fear Rottweilers and falling through ice. The lake that lay before me was small, more a pond really, about 50m across. It was surrounded by forest; the moon shone bright above the lake and the trees reflected on the ice. It was one of the most beautiful scenes I can remember. The boy that had brought me there took my hand and tried to lead me out onto the ice. I was too scared, I pulled back and yelled my refusal loudly. He picked me up (I was a tiny 54kg, not the fatty I am today) and carried me out to the middle of the lake. I screamed and kicked and protested yet over the noise I was making I could hear the ice creaking and cracking under us. When we reached the middle he put me down and I stood, still screaming, but now also crying from fear. The boy took my face in his hands, forced me to look at him and said very calmly "I have told you that I love you but you still think I would do something that would put you in danger. How can I prove to you that you can trust me?" He then moved away from me and started jumping up and down. The sound of the ice cracking was almost deafening, the splitting sounds rang out and echoed through the forest. I couldn't understand what the boy was doing, why he was trying to kill us. I was crying and begging him to stop, eventually I collapsed to my knees and just cried, my face in my hands. The boy stopped his stomping and sat down beside me. "You need to learn to trust people, you can't live your life alone." He paused for a moment then looked me in the eye "this isn't a lake, it's a flooded field, the ice is no more than 50cm deep. Now will you please relax?" We looked at each other for a second, he laughed and I punched him in the chest as hard as I could, knocking him over, I was furious. I started walking back towards the edge, trying to be as dignified as possible while slipping everywhere. The boy caught me from behind, dragged me back to the middle of the ice and we chased each other, fell over, ran around and screamed and giggled as only teenagers can.
The impact and the significance of that night didn't really occur to me until much later. I had lived my life totally emotionally disconnected from each and all. Partly due to being raised by an emotionally absent mother but mostly as a defense against the bullying I had been subjected to at school. I didn't trust anyone and I would certainly never admit to feeling love. That lovely, charming, funny boy would teach me many things in the eight months that we knew each other. For his mere 18 years he remains one of the wisest people I have ever met. I owe him my emotional sanity.
We lost touch less than two years after I returned to Australia and for the most part I am happy to leave him to the realms of my romanticized youth. Events in my life at this moment have given me cause to reflect on what (indeed who) it was that made me who I am today, why I am able to remain relatively calm and objective while my family rip each other apart. Why it was that a disgruntled young would-be punk ended up with a degree in Biochemistry rather than a heroin habit. The people who influence us, the paths we take on our journey, are many and come in all shapes.
It is easy to look at a young troubled person and tell them things will be OK, it's much harder to look at an old, dying man and tell him the same. We can only speak from experience.