Everyone has something they don’t talk about. Someone that they don’t name unless it’s dark, it’s late, they can’t sleep and all things seem wrong. They won’t be right again, either. So in those moments I think there is someone lurking in everyone’s near periphery. I don’t know what you’d call that. To say it’s a person you’ll always love, I think, is an overestimate.
I don’t know if I say it that way because I think it’s true or because I’m terrified that there’s always going to be a part of me that belongs to a man who lurks in the shadows of the nights I can’t sleep.
Realistically I know it isn’t true. I know. But I’m not always on the same page as my rational self and I don’t always know how to tell her how to settle down. It’s something I’m capable of telling others, but never myself.
My first boyfriend filled a role I was desperate to find acceptance in. It’s a story I’ve neglected telling in its totality because I think there are some truths I’m not yet willing to face, regardless of how many other women I hear discussing their own shadow man stories.
I think the story of Pandora’s Box is just the story of women and how they learn their freedom isn’t really free. It’s guarded by a man holding the gateway to freedom shut. We don’t really know why we just know he does, has, and likely always will. I’m willing to bet my $0.70 to his $1.00.
You asked what my first boyfriend was like and what it was like when it ended. I think you knew that was the story I’ve had to tell all along. At least it’s the season of my life I think I’ve learned the most about myself from. I know the last few years, I’ve done more learning and growing than any other point in time but I still think that without those few years, there would be so many negative differences in my life that I don’t care to think about what I might have lost.
I love the reality I live in. I think some of life’s most undervalued blessings are friends who aren’t drama-centric. Family who supports you. A partner who is your best friend. To top it off, I have a roof over my head — even if I’ve had to pay for it a little later than I’m supposed to here and there. I’m embarrassed enough without having to admit it, even though my mom offered to pay the difference. See, it wasn’t even my fault I was late to pay my mortgage. It was just in the hand of cards I was dealt in that calendar period.
It wasn’t fair. Things are hardly fair, I’ve since learned. But you do get dealt new hands here and there. There are bits and pieces I want to talk about that I’ve been to afraid to leave behind. I wonder if when they’re on paper if I’ll be able to let it go and begin to shed the skin of the girl I was then. I don’t know, and maybe I’m a little too serious. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just as unsure as every other young woman was.
Somehow I’ve never felt like I belonged. I’ve learned, as an adult, that’s a symptom of anxiety. Of OCD. Of depression. Of ADHD. All mental health issues I’ve struggled with. There’s a certain vulnerability that comes with honesty. With brutal honesty and I’m prepared to be brutally honest because I think it’s time.
You know how you know it’s time? It’s when you no longer want to throw up when you smell their cologne on someone you don’t even know. When you no longer cringe when you see the same model of their car passing yours on the road. I don’t think I’ll ever stop at the latter, but it isn’t because I was put in a cage or brutally bashed to a pulp by a man. I think that I just let him be the final straw that broke the camel’s back. The last weight on my back before I fell.
I was the condition for the perfect storm. I’m not sure if you want to call them mommy or daddy issues, but I’ve been desperate to be wanted my whole life. What do you expect from a man who could smell weakness on me a mile away?
I smelled like prey — rotting a little from a not-so-recent wound. I’ve been wounded and bleeding for a very long time, by the time I found my way into working at the diner near my highschool. I graduated early because I had no friends there. It feels good to say that, however silly it sounds. I didn’t really have friends at my highschool because I didn’t know how to be friends. I was too lost down my own road and the fog behind me was too thick for me to find my way down a better path.
The diner had a fun ice cream bar. They only served a few beers, made homemade french fries and chips that were delicious, and it was right near the only movie theater in our town so weekend nights were busy. It was a great excuse to leave highschool after I graduated early, filling my days with making money instead of going to classes where I didn’t want to talk to anyone anyway.
I never learned how to cope with feeling like I didn’t fit in. I’d always run instead, leaving before I could realize the truth of the situation. I never had to grow through it — I could always leave. And I remember my mom telling me she was worried that would be a pattern in my life if I left the high school I went to (Bishop Fenwick) because I was so unhappy. Truth be told, I was unhappy anywhere. It was internal, it had nothing to do with where I was. Actually it had everything to do with where I was — but where I was in life. I’ve always somehow been a bit older you see.
I convinced my mom it would be better if I left high school instead of continuing to hang out with peers. She didn’t think it was a good idea, but she’s always wanted nothing more than to be the mom. She’s incredible and she had nothing to do with any of the choices I made. We’re friends now because I’ve learned that.
When I started working there, other servers told me not to even think about him. Naturally that was the first thing I did. He loved Disney, anime, vanilla perfume, Adult Swim, and little girls who were short, pretty-faced, and vulnerable.
The long story short is that I was desperate for attention. He loved vulnerable little girls. When he spread my legs and waited for the equation to be that I loved him, I said I did. I had no idea what that meant then, only that it hurt and suddenly the world was different because I was supposed to wait for someone else. Someone I could actually bring home to my parents. Someone I actually loved, someone who actually cared about me.
It did not take me long to get over his absence in my life. It will take me forever to rid myself of the wounds he created.
