This is an excerpt from what I want to call a memoir. But first, I must say that I am officially done trying to keep people around if I know they don't want to be. Chicago, I am breaking up with you. We CANNOT stay friends.
Tentatively titled: Coming and Going (this is somewhere around chapter 3)
...Somehow amidst my tequila-colored fog I found out that they had sex the first time they hung out together. I ran upstairs into The First’s kitchen and cried. Some drunken girl must have reported that someone was sobbing, and another mutual friend came upstairs and embraced me.
“I don’t know why you are crying, but things will be okay.”
I left a few mean messages on The Lover’s answering machine calling him a lying prick, and proceeded to avoid tequila for the rest of my life.
Time passed solitarily, where I had given it a go with my all-time high school crush, The Impossible. He was indie, and misunderstood, and quiet and literary, bearded with beautiful eyes. He led me on and straight-up rejected me on New Years Eve. I went home and cried but recovered.
The super bowl of that year brought back an old flame by surprise, but this time with no love involved. I exited the bathroom of the super bowl party at The Lover’s house, to have him pull me close to him and kiss me passionately. It was one of my favorite kisses ever. We hooked up on a regular basis until a weekend in February of that year when my life changed forever.
I was persuaded to go to a local concert by a friend who was best friends with The Impossible, who I was still obsessed with avoiding. I made my friend promise that he wouldn’t ditch me at this concert, but he did, leaving me alone to look foolish and worry about running into The Impossible. I saw a friend from my French class who was with a stunning young man that I had seen somewhere once.
Struck like someone stepping on a rake, like a cartoon, really, I just had to know everything about him. My friend from French class told me a lie, that he taught calligraphy. I later came to realize that he did not teach calligraphy, his name was The Love, and that his birthday was on my half birthday and vice versa. We joked about Slayer and played the piano. We colored with crayons. That night, I went home and drew a picture of his pretty face.
Myspace allowed us to communicate. We sent adorable little messages that would have made other people sick; we were just that smitten and innocent. About a month later we were “official,” and boy, was I in deep.
Since The First and I broke up, I kept in mind something he said to me, that, as I recall, at the moment of its speaking, actually hurt me very much. It was something along the lines that your first love must always end, and that your second love, as long as it is found with another person seeking their second love, will be the one that lasts. I held this to be true with The Love.
I have never felt more for another person in my whole life, that this person was mine and I was completely theirs like I did with him. I was myself, and he was himself and life was magnificent. Until.
There is always a “but.”
I was a senior in high school, and a damn good one at that. I have always attributed this to my ability, and extreme guilt, associated with getting work done. I was valedictorian, and with that title, my parents expected and persuaded and subconsciously suggested that I had to do something important with my life. I had no desire to do so. I was a young girl in love, I didn’t care what I did. I did love painting, but that didn’t matter at the time. By the time I was head over heels for The Love, I was accepted to the University of Vermont, in Burlington, Vermont.
Our last summer together was a beautiful one. We would make love for hours on end, just exploring one another like we were getting PhD’s in one another’s eyes. Deeply connected, we wondered what would happen when I went away. The time came soon enough, and I was away.
Just in case you are wondering, Burlington, Vermont is about one thousand miles away from Lisle, Illinois. The very second I arrived at Burlington International Airport, I knew I had made the wrong choice. I cried every single day and picked up the worst habits of my life.
I now chain-smoked Parliaments. I became a “vegan,” which really meant, I didn’t eat, and when I did, I threw it up. It got really bad. I would walk five miles to a grocery store to buy food and diet pills, come home, eat it all, then spend the rest of the night sobbing and puking. The best thing about bulimia at night in a college dorm, is that no one knows, or cares, why you are puking.
I spent time with my box cutter, elaborating mark upon mark on my wrists, forearms and thighs. One time I cut my stomach. That hurt. I made The Love so very upset with my behavior. We talked for hours every night, about how I just wanted to come home. Per his advice I started seeing a counselor.
I now tell anyone on a college campus who is seeking serious psychological help to avoid the free services your campus provides, because I ended up with a boy, who was practically my peer. Allow me to explain why this is ineffective.
The counselor rattled off a list to me:
Have you been involved in substance abuse? Yes.
Do you have low self esteem? Yes.
Have you thought about suicide? Yes.
Have you ever engaged in Eating disorder behaviors? Yes.
History of mental illness in the family? Yes.
My “peer” counselor had his plate full, wide eyed, he referred me to someone else.
Halloween of that year was the worst night of my life. Having finally hit rock bottom, I came home from working out with absolutely nothing in my system except diet pills and water completely delirious. My roommate was out of town, as she often was, and I was all alone on yet another weekend. I started reading a journal. I drew a picture. I called The Love. He didn’t answer. I called The First. He didn’t answer.
I picked up my bottle of sleeping pills and downed it. I hated everything. Hours later, The Love called me back and I was hysterically explaining that I was ending my life.
I failed. After getting sick and lying on the floor, I talked to my parents and told them I needed to get help and come home. I slept through the next two days, and my Dad came and picked me up. Goodbye Vermont, Hello Linden Oaks.
One good in this was that I was back with my beloved, safe, in a place where people cared I existed. I sought help at Linden Oaks hospital. I wish they still called places like that “asylums.” In any case, I was eventually put into the eating disorder program, aptly named, EDP, and prescribed antidepressants. I was there for about two months, and it changed my life. Meanwhile, I was accepted to the American Academy of Art in Chicago.
I could certainly complain about the awkwardness of having someone watch you use the bathroom, to be monitered while you eat, to be weighed twice a day, or just doing some of the activities we had to do in group therapy. But it did change my life. I now know what it feels like to be sexy, and smile in pictures, and eat what I want when I want, know that excercising in moderation is good for you, and that above all else, all you have is yourself. The Love enjoyed the person I became. But something was fading.
The Love was fading because of the more confident, indulgent in her feelings Ali that emerged from her homecoming. He was quickly falling out of love. We still took our relationship to new heights, traveling together, basically spending every waking moment together. Summer came and he graduated high school. Our summer was bipolar, ecstatic highs, and back breaking lows. When it came time for school, I started to question his distant nature. He spoke nothing of it. It was really frusturating to be with someone who I adored so completely and have so much less reciprocated. Other boys started noticing me. I didn’t want that. I wanted my Love.
The last time we made love was a drunken mess. I cried because I could tell he no longer cared to do so. I woke up very far from him in bed, shivering and looking out into the Chicago skyline.
It all came crashing down soon enough. We were done. I, not aware of my rumbling mental state, went to his house and destroyed everything I had ever given him. I also made the choice to go to his medicine cabinet and down a bottle of pain killers. A call to my mom later, I was forbidden from the Love’s household, and failed yet again to die.
I had to induce vomiting all night long. I was such an empty human being. I had let someone be my everything, and everything was gone.
My mind took that as the sign that this was a clean slate. Little did I know I was manic. It was great. I was creating art work constantly. Life was good, everything had meaning.
We both had changed forever...
So Yeah! That's just a little of my memoir about boys and stuff. It's also kind of a good bye to "The Love" who will be named Party Monster in my next allegory.
