A Pair of Brown Eyes

It seems I always fall for guys with brown or hazel eyes. I don't know why it never dawned on me until just now when I was sitting here listening to the Pogues song.
I've been truly madly deeply in love twice. Once with the first ever guy I was ever with at 15 who I dated for 2 and a half years. (It's quite possible that it was 6 months too many.) We met when I was very young and fell hard. It never really made sense to me how and why I fell so fast, but I did and he was right behind me. After some time he moved closer to me as he was very far away at first, and it helped our relationship in some ways and hurt it in others. We were that couple that was NEVER apart. He was older, but I was still in high school. So for 8 or 9 months he would drop me off and pick me up at school. The only time we were apart was those few hours I had class. Subsequently I never had the time to do anything else. To my 16 year old mind hanging out with S and watching a movie was so much more important that going to the theatre for a girls night. He took precedense over everything. It was my first relationship and the first time I had ever trusted a man other than my family. Trust is a big deal for me because of my past. (That's another post entirely.)
I won't say that I was perfect in this relationship. Hell, no. We had problems, and a lot of them. More than just the fact that we were in some ways far too young to know what a relationship meant. I was clingy. I told lies about my past because it was easier than telling the truth. The truth hurt and I didn't realize that me trusting him wasn't all that mattered. I had to give HIM a reason to trust ME. But I never did. I lied. I did what I am so good at doing, I protected myself.
So, we got older and the relationship turned into a burden. It was an obligation. Amanda and S belong together. They're always together. I forgot how to be me without him, I had been part of an us for so long.
In the end, I was too much. I gripped the sand too tightly and it slipped through my fingers. He went to other people for comfort and our relationship couldn't last through that. He ended it. He broke my heart into a million tiny pieces that I didn't know how to put back together. I was isolated. I had abandoned all my friends for him, so that our relationship would be stronger. Never realizing that that would be the death of it. So he left, we didn't speak though we lived side-by-side. I cryed and ached for weeks. Eventually, as all hearts do, mine healed.
His eyes were a brillant hazel that were yellow when he was mad, and flooded with a cool brown when his heart flooded with love. I saw the yellow the most in the last months.
Then, the rebound. I was 17 and lonely, only knowing that I didn't want to be alone. I wanted to go out, I wanted to hold hands. I wanted to have fun. So I let my best friend set me up. With a preacher... I know that none of you know me well, but I am strictly anti- organized religion. I don't cling to titles. Not even athiest.
I went out with him anyway, needing to be with someone. Anyone. We dated for a while. Mostly double dates with my friend and her guy. I made a huge mistake. I let him fall for me. I won't say it was intentional or not because I don't know. I know when he looked at me I could tell he felt more for me than I did for him, and I didn't stop it. I let him love me, didn't even say no when he proposed after just a few months of dating. I had no intention to marry him. No desire to. I was 17, a junior, and wanted bigger things than to be a preacher's wife. I didn't even believe what he preached!
So, I started sleeping with S again. He made it very clear that it was no strings attatched, and I tried to believe him. But in my heart I still ached for him, and I was prepared to take the comfort of his touch any way I could get it. Even if I took it for more than it was. So I took my comfort, and when he refused to kiss me goodbye I left feeling cheap and cheated. The problem was I cheated myself.
I ended it with the preacher shortly there after. Told him that it just wasn't love and that my heart belonged to someone else. I gave him back the ring and hardly saw him again at all.
Then came W. I don't know what the fuck I was thinking. I met him online and he said the right words. S moved many many miles away to be with someone else. My heart had healed and when I told him good luck with his new love, I meant it.
So, W. He was what I thought I was looking for. He was strong, he was safe, but he was dangerous. You see, I met him (or began talking to him) when he was still in a prison program. He was dominant, he was attentive. And he was a jerk.
I don't mean a little mean sometimes, or whiney. He was an asshole.
I still moved 1140 miles away from home to be with him here in Boston. Maybe it was because I wanted to 'be with him', or maybe it was because I wanted out of the small town I grew up in. Many people guessed. Many people wondered. A swirl of assumptions and questions surrounded my move. No one ever knew it was because I was madly in love with his best friend.
I had begun talking to D on the phone when W was being an asshole. (Read: A LOT). There was a connection there I had never felt before. I couldn't be in love with D. It was his best friend. That's just wrong, I'm not starring in a soap opera here. (Well, it turns out sounding like one more often than not these days..)
Well, I moved. To be near D even though neither of us had the heart, or will, to tell W. No one knew how he would take this betrayal. Hell, I wasn't in a huge hurry to find out, W was a big angry man. I moved on September 29, 2008. One whole day after my 18th birthday. My father was outraged, my family confused. But I left, and I didn't look back as I boarded the plane.
It only took about 6 weeks of a bad life at home to figure out that this couldn't go on.
The only time I was happy was when I was in the arms of a man I loved more than life, and wasn't with.
So one day I left. I told him I couldn't do it anymore and I moved in with the man who had my heart.
So now I get to talk about the only one that I care to. Dan. He makes me so fucking happy. I thought that it was love with S. I though that my heart broke, or that S still had a large chuck of it with him now, but I was wrong. The first time Dan took my face in his hands and kissed me I felt it. Every single tiny shard in place, whole, just for him. I love him more than anything. He's the only man I've ever truly been with, body and mind. When I kiss him I mean it with more than my lips, I mean it with my heart. He is my everything. I'll go through a million S's, M's, and W's if that's what it would take to keep him. I now wear a modest white gold band to symbolize the fact that one day, not so very far in the future I will tack his last name onto mine. We're simple people, and goddamn it, I love every second.

P.S. He has the most beautiful brown eyes I've ever seen. I'd do anything for that pair of brown eyes...