Breaking Up Is Hard To Do,

                                             True Love and Sex

  I had all summer to mentally prepare for the new school year and I thought I was up to the task.  I had become very thin.  I hardly ate anything anymore.  I recall my dad saying, “That’s just about enough.  You’ve lost enough weight.”  Make up your mind!  I guess he wouldn’t need a wheelbarrow for me anymore.  When I was little, I would doze off in front of the TV and he would pick me up and carry me to bed.  He would whisper in my ear, “If you don’t loose some weight, I am going to have to get a wheelbarrow to carry you upstairs with”.  He had threatened me with that statement and made a joke of it for years when I was younger.  Now he was telling me what I wanted to hear and I was getting his attention.  I had been thin before but this time he took notice.       

 It wasn’t long into the year when I noticed a new guy in school.  I asked around and found out his name was David.  He was a year younger than I was in school but only six months younger in age and everyone liked him.  I fell head over heels in love with him from the first moment I laid eyes on him.  I thought he was not only cute, but he was cool in the way he walked, talked and in his overall demeanor.  Several girls I knew dated younger guys so I really didn’t think anything of it…but then it hit me.  I had a boyfriend who was expecting me to marry him.  Let’s face it, everyone was counting on me marrying him.  How was I going to get out of this?  I didn’t know but my heart was already lost and I knew the end was in store for my college man.  I was on the road to love and I wasn’t getting off.  

  We would only see each other at school so I was safe for the time being but I knew something was going to have to give.  I liked having someone I could go to school with to date.  I wanted someone to do things with.  I wanted to hold hands and kiss someone I loved.  The plan was already forged in my heart but I didn’t know what to do about my college boyfriend yet.  The problem of what to do was solved for me by my sister.  One of her friends confided to her that David and I were dating.  She confronted me with it and I confessed to her that yes, we were.  I then explained to her that I didn’t love my college boyfriend any longer.  I swore her to secrecy but true to form, she spilled the beans to my mom. 

  Christmas vacation was here and one of my most favorite times of the year.  My boyfriend was going to surprise me by driving from Georgia to West Virginia to stay with us for a week.  The pressure was on.  What was I going to do?  Well, I can tell you that the last few days hadn’t been pleasant.  When my parents found out about David and me, they were furious.  The person they thought was going to be their son-in-law wasn’t going to be after all and they really didn’t care for who I was now seeing.  Why were they so mad?  Nothing they said changed my mind.  They tried everything to make me see their point of view but I didn’t care.  I didn’t want to hear it.  The bottom line was they couldn’t make me love someone I didn’t. 

  I will never forget the night my college boyfriend arrived.  He leaned over to kiss me and when I didn’t really kiss him hello after months of not being together, he put two and two together.  He sat around like a wounded puppy for days, playing the song “Precious and Few” over and over.  It was awful for everyone in the house.  Why was everyone on his side?  Couldn’t they see that we were worlds apart?  What would my parents say if they knew he had pressured me into having sex with their virgin daughter?  What would they say then?  I can tell you what my dad would have done.  He would have packed his bags for him and sent him back to Georgia.  But I never told anyone about what he had tried to make me do.  I was too scared.                                                        

  My parents had decided it was time for me to make some money over the holidays wrapping presents in their friends’ department store that year.  My older brother had done it and now it was my turn.  I loved it.  After the holidays, I was hired as a part-timer.  The owners would come to our house and sit around the kitchen table and brag on me to my parents telling them I sold more than the full-time employees who had been with them for years.  This helped sooth the tension in the house over my dumping my older boyfriend, but they still weren’t happy with my choice.  I would never hurt any one intentionally.  They couldn’t seem to understand that my heart couldn’t be made to love someone it didn’t.         

 Granted, the way I dumped him was wrong but everyone was blaming me for hurting him.  The anger I tried to suppress inside was getting worse.  Sometimes I thought I would explode.  The anger had started when I was little but seemed, over time, to become a time bomb inside of me and I never knew when it would go off.  My mom said when I was little, I would throw myself down on the floor kick, scream and cry (sometimes pretend cry) until I got my way.  Usually, she stood right there and gave in to whatever I wanted.  But one time, I recall her just leaving me there having a tantrum.  She said she finally just got tired of it and said, “I’ll be downstairs when you get finished.”    That same anger and rage never left me.  I had just learned to control it better to some extent.  When it would come out, I would be exhausted afterward and then I would feel relief.  It would come up and out at the weirdest times.

 I was still treading on thin ice with my parents over my now ex-college boyfriend but there was no excuse over what took place next.  One Friday night, David dropped me off after a date.  We were outside kissing good night and my dad flew out of the house calling me a whore.  He commanded me to come into the house and forbid me to see him anymore.  Well, I ran inside and up the stairs crying and flung myself on my bed.  My older brother’s girlfriend happened to be there that evening and she ran upstairs, came into my room and tried to console me.  All I did was vow how much I hated my dad to her.  My dad traveled a lot for work and it seemed that he had begun to travel a lot more in recent months.  He would come home on the weekends and then leave again for the whole week.  For me, it became a relief when he would leave.  Sunday morning came.  I didn’t go to church anymore and it was time for him to leave again for the week.  I had gotten up very early, worn out over crying and had come downstairs, turned on the TV, got on the couch and had fallen off to sleep.  He came in the den, kissed me, and told me he was sorry for what he had said and done.  He told me how much he loved me.  I heard him but I didn’t care.  I hated him for calling me a whore.

  David’s birthday rolled around and he invited me to his house to have cake and ice cream.  He came to pick me up and we went to his house to celebrate.  His mom brought out the cake and I wouldn’t eat any.  I withdrew and made a total fool of myself, not even knowing why I was behaving that way.  I had a stronghold about eating in front of people for fear they were judging me.  Weight had become such a big issue to me that I wasn’t going to eat it.  It is not that I didn’t want the cake but I wanted to take it home, hide, and eat it.

 The time together at his house was fine except for the cake part but on the way home, he started talking about how funny I acted and I got defensive.  I immediately went into a rage and I started shaking I was so mad.  I took the piece of cake his mother had given me to take home and threw it on the sidewalk saying, “Here, have your dumb birthday cake.”   

 Then as quickly as the anger would come, the remorse would start to flow.  I couldn’t bear the thought of his rejection so I started to cry and made an excuse that I was having a hard time with my monthly cycle and that was the reason I lashed out.  I had started to tell little white lies to cover up any bad behavior I might have.  That one was the one that popped into my head and I wasn’t even close to my cycle.  He seemed somewhat soothed by my explanation but I am certain that I ruined his birthday.  

 He had been pressing me for a long time to have intercourse.  I just kept skirting the issue, telling him we would sometime but I wasn’t ready.  He would tell me of his others friends who were having sex, as if that would make a difference.  After all, I did love him.  Well, he wanted to know when.  When?  I had not had sex with my college boyfriend and I really had no intention of having sex with David no matter how much I thought I loved him.  I had been raised to believe that “good girls” didn’t do that until they were married but there were other reasons I didn’t want to.  I didn’t want any man to touch me but I was too scared to stand up for myself and just say no for fear of rejection. 

 My dad left my mom in the midst of all of this, which turned my world upside down.  I will never forget looking out the front door the morning after he left.  I felt like the Jolly Green Giant had socked me in the stomach.  I called my childhood friend from up the street and he came down and tried to comfort me.  He stayed and cooked dinner that night for my mom, my sister and me.  I wanted my dad to come back home and finish his job.  How were Mom, my sister and I supposed to live?  Who was going to support us?  Everyone had always said, “You are just like your father.”  Well, I guessed somehow I was going to have to take care of us but I didn’t know how.       

 Several months earlier, someone sent my mother an anonymous note saying my dad was “keeping house” somewhere else.  She confronted my dad with it and he told her,“ The boys at the Choo Choo Inn are just trying to get me into trouble.”  What a liar he was.  But as usual, she believed him.  But, she couldn’t anymore.    

 My mom asked me why I felt so bad about my dad leaving since I was not the one who had been left.  I didn’t know.  I was scared of what was going to happen to us.  He had always been our provider and protector.  But, what I did know was that I hated him for leaving me.  My thinking was, my two older brothers were gone and out of the house.  I was the next in line and I was left to clean up the mess.    

             From that moment, everything I believed and tried to be, in terms of trying to behave like a good girl, went right out the window.  I put the gearshift in me on neutral and started to drift through life with no purpose, no passion, and no destiny.  I hated my father. 

  My mom had raised me not to cuss, drink or smoke.  She did not want me to ever go out in public to smoke a cigarette.  She would sit up late at night and watch Johnny Carson after my dad left.  This was her entertainment at the end of the day.  She let me try to smoke my first cigarette with her.  Things around the house became more lax.          

  I liked the high cigarettes gave me in the beginning.  They also gave me a boost of energy.  Hello, cigarettes!  When I discovered something that gave me a rush or a high, I just wanted it all the more.  I didn’t want a little of it, I wanted it all the more and the more the better.  Less was not more to me.  If a little was good, a lot was a lot better. I felt this way about everything.

  Open wide the doors in my life because I just didn’t care about anything anymore.  I started having sex.  I started drinking Boone’s Farm also.  Drinking was a big deal for me at the time.  David would have his older brother or sister buy it for us.  I started doing all of the things that I thought nice girls didn’t or shouldn’t do.   

  If I didn’t want to go to school I would make up an excuse and Mom wouldn’t make me.  I was depressed.  Things were different inside of me and I had no clue what was happening.  The house that had been so happy (even if parts of it weren’t real) wasn’t happy anymore.              

  Trying out for majorette was coming up but I had already decided to graduate early.  My friend was going to do it except she was already enrolled in college and I had no clue what I would do but it sounded good to me.  Yes, maybe that was the answer I needed. 

 I sat at the kitchen table and had convinced my mother (again) that graduating would be a good idea for me.  She was in the midst of her crisis and was devastated by my dad not being there.  She was a one-woman man all the way, never planning divorce.  She was an excellent wife and mother who had raised four children, treating each one of us as if we were and only child.  She agreed that if I wanted to graduate early, then I should.  She wanted me to be happy.  The decision was made within minutes as to my future but nothing was ever said as to what I would do from that moment forward.

 Then suddenly, as if by some unseen force, my becoming a majorette had all been prearranged.  My boyfriend and several of his friends who were majorettes, rushed up to me one morning at school stating it was all arranged.  The band director was going to select me to be on the majorette squad if I would come try out.  Well, this was a new twist.  My dream!  My mind started to soar with the possibilities this could bring.  My popularity would come back, I would have lots of friends and I would purpose to do better in school.  I spoke with my dad on the phone in regard to trying out but he was not very encouraging.  He told me not to count on it.           

  All that was required of me was to show up.  I went to the gym and the band director came up to me and asked me if I was graduating.  I told him I had signed up to but I wasn’t going to now.  I discovered the woman in charge of graduation had somehow found out I was trying out for majorette.  She promptly marched over to the band director’s office and told him I could not be selected because I was due to graduate.  It sealed my fate.  I was devastated.  That was the beginning of the end of any sort of restoration.  It was awful and I hated her.  She said I had to go through with graduation even if I didn’t want to graduate.  I was on the roster and it couldn’t be changed.  And to top it all off, at the very last minute, it was discovered that I would have to come back the following year and attend high school half days because I lacked a course I needed.  I had to walk through the motions of graduation that year but the funny thing is that I didn’t formally graduate until the following school year.  What a mess!   

I just existed through the rest of high school, becoming increasingly unhappy.  It was decided after I graduated from high school, we (my mom, sister and I) would move from St. Albans, W. Va. to Richmond, Virginia where my dad had an investment business.  Mom and Dad had been trying to work things out.  My mom thought it would be better for us to go there so she would have a better chance of restoring her marriage.  She knew it would be monetarily better for all of us to move.  I was hopping mad inside.

 My last date with David came all too quickly.  The Saturday night before we moved, David and I rode uptown to get a pizza.  I knew I was leaving and I was heartsick about it but what could I do?  I felt somewhere deep inside that he was kind of anxious about me moving.  Did he have someone else waiting in the wings?  On the way home, we started to argue.  He mentioned us seeing other people and then I knew.  What about promises to love each other forever?  What about him being the first boy I had ever had sex with?  Didn’t that mean anything to him?  Was I to be tossed aside now like trash?  I threatened to jump out of the car if he broke up with me.  I told him that I would kill myself if he did.  I opened the door and pretended to start to jump out of the car.  Then I started hitting myself.  The rage within me was getting worse.  I hated myself.  I hated my life.  I hated my dad.  Things were happening on the inside of me that I just could not explain.  I am surprised he didn’t push me out of the car that night. 

  Nothing was sinking in.  I felt dead.  Leave my high school sweetheart?  Leave my hometown?  My life? (What life?) Long distance romances at our age were doomed to defeat.  I had already learned that.  He came to see us off when the movers had packed up all of our things.  I walked into my empty bedroom and looked inside my empty closet.  I walked around the house I loved.  It had never occurred to me that I would have to leave my home that had become a safe haven for me… so many memories that were good, yet bad-my church, the stained glass windows I had etched on my heart, the basketball court, my grandmother and extended relatives that I loved.  I hated leaving but I wasn’t in charge.  There was a tearful good-bye as I slid into the back seat of the car.  This put the icing on the cake for me.  How would I ever recover?