Memory Bank (conclusion)

By the middle of my senior year I felt stronger. Toxic, as the boyfriend from home will now be referred to, had caused me more pain than even I could take, so I was plotting my way out. We did the dance of how he would change, how I would stop talking, how we would become anything other than ourselves to the point where I could not take it for one more minute. One evening in my parents house he came over to talk, but he didn’t talk, he never talked, he just sat in front of me staring at me with what I can presume was contempt and hatred. Once again I was charged with ruining another life, his. As we sat at the kitchen table I started telling him my feelings when he reached across the table, or more like lunged at me and covered my face with his hands. It was as if I had woken up out of a bad dream. In order to save myself, something that felt foreign to me by this point, I pushed him off to keep him from what I feared may be an attempt at suffocating me and screamed for him to get out. I yelled that my parents were due home any minute and he had to go. Stunned as if I had electrocuted him, he jumped back and skulked toward the door. I threatened to kill him if he ever came near me again. He left and all I felt was relief. I wasn’t sad that he was gone; I was just overwhelmed with the feeling of wanting to live. I didn’t contact First, as I had thought I would. I was feeling too humiliated at all of it, each bad decision, each purposeful wrong thing hung over me like a cartoon anvil I felt certain would crash down on me at any time. I spent more time in my room, isolated from my friends and activities. I would pull out the letters First sent me, toying with the idea of what I would say now that I felt like I was a broken version of the person he had originally met. I pictured myself writing him, “Dear First, I have completely and utterly fucked things up and fucked us over. I hurt you deeply and while I could not be sorrier, I want you to know I did it with intention. I am damaged goods now and I was wondering what you were up to.” I would pull out his pictures and stare at them. Seeing his smiling face brought calm to my tornado of a life. I wondered if he were happy. I assumed he had moved on and was now seeing a beautiful girl, smiling at her, planning their future. Time and again I would pull everything out to touch things, see his face, wear the necklace he gave me, sitting long enough to imagine I was with him, trying to breathe him in once again. I would even pick up the phone briefly, but ultimately cowardice would rule and I would put everything back in a box. I had reduced First to living in a box, much like I had done to myself. I had imprisoned both of us. I spent even more time on my floor crying trying desperately to let First go. He deserved to be freed from the dark, dank box I had reduced him to. I wondered if First thought of me. What did he remember? Was the pain I caused us all he was left with? My mind believed he had the same feelings that I had, where I had ruined everything in order to not ruin his life.
I was in high school as a senior doing my thing, looking normal, living broken, playing in band, singing in choir, trying my damndest to fit in. I only had a few more months of school when I would have to start making big decisions on my own. I should have felt free, but what I felt was lost. I had no idea what I wanted to be, or where I wanted to go, or who I was. Each day closer to graduation brought another unique set of questions I did not have an answer for. I briefly dated another boy from school who dumped me a week before prom. I made him take me anyway. He sat at the dance thoroughly pissed to be there, definitely pissed that he was with me, and never really talked to me again after that. I had given up First because I could not see him taking me to prom, so I was going come hell or high water. Was it worth it? Isn’t that what we ask ourselves every time we muck things up? Was it worth living the high school dream of going to prom? No. With First I was happy. With the senior boy who was forced to take me in spite of how he felt, I felt sad, unwanted, unloved. Even I could see the pattern by then. No First=me with every slap dick in a fifty mile radius. Even the few boys who tried to win my hand, so to speak, had no chance. I was planted like grass to the path I was on. The way was shut and no one was getting in. As high school ended all I could feel was numb. If truly I was victim, it was at my own hand. I had set my life up to allow myself to be hurt in every way imaginable. I made choices at the “y’s” in my road to take me into the belly of hell. I chose despair over joy, danger over security, and ultimately self destruction instead of self confidence. I had done this to myself. Although I will not take responsibility for other’s actions, I had no choice but to take the hard look at how I got there and why I stayed for so very long, putting myself in peril time after time. I was a coward. I believed every bad thing ever said to me and wouldn’t give the good things a moment’s thought.

My resume states quite clearly that I studied Philosophy at Ohio University. For all intent and purpose, I did, unless you caught a glance at my grade point average. That low ball number shows I didn’t study much of anything. I hadn’t wanted to go away to college right after high school. I wanted to work for a few years and get on my emotional feet before I headed out on the next leg of my journey. My mom, bless her heart, had no choices for college when she grew up. Being a poor female, she had the right to remain silent and do secretarial work. All she ever wanted was for us to get out and experience things for ourselves. All I wanted was to work, make a little money and figure out who in the hell I was. We had reached an impasse. I gave in because I had no back bone, no sure willed argument against it. I had no ideas of my own, or ability to make a decision. I originally balked at going, but my mom kept repeating, “If you don’t do it now, you may never get another chance.” She ended up half right. I went, flailing through college as if I was wearing clown shoes. I picked the first major that seemed even remotely O.K. and joined a sorority. I loved being in the sorority, though, it was one of the best decisions I made while I attended. The girls were smart, fun and kept me out of trouble. They became my family away from home. I obviously didn’t love every single one of them, but they were a good group. They were people to hang with, talk with and share life space. My freshman fall semester, I lived in an all girl dorm. It was the age of preppy. Nothing I owned looked as if I weren’t homeless. I was a baggy jeans, t-shirt kinda girl, and I was surrounded by an Izod, popped collar set. I wanted what they had, but I realized much too late it had nothing to do with clothes, or money or what they owned in the external. What I sought was the kind of clean cut all American happy look they seemed to convey. The preppy kids did not look like the broken, they looked as though they would get high paying jobs, marry people who would love them, have houses filled with children and lots and lots of love. What I was looking for was me, only a different me than the one I created for myself. Over winter break I found an outlet store that carried the very clothes I thought would make me feel “normal”. They were seconds and not at all the best full price shirts, but I so desperately wanted to break free of the confines of who I thought I looked like that I scrounged together enough money to buy a few precious things. I wore them proudly, collar up so I would look like the people I tried to emulate. I can’t honestly remember if it was after winter or spring break when I got an unexpected call, First on the other end of the phone. “I am coming up to Marietta College and I want to see you.” Marietta was on the way back down for O.U., so there was real hope I could make this work. “I’ll be there.” My parents were very skeptical of me driving alone before school started. Where would I stay? Why was I going? What would we be doing? They had questions and a lot of them. I had blown my parents trust to bits when I dated the other guy. They hated the boy from my hometown. My mother in particular never trusted him, and after we dated a while, I had changed, visibly and emotionally. My mother sensed that something was terribly wrong, but I wouldn’t tell her anything. I denied anything being wrong; I lied to her about him so many times she was hesitant to believe me about anything. I can’t remember what I told her about my trip to Marietta. My gut tells me I probably lied about that too, but I didn’t care this time. I felt no guilt, just a desperate need to see First again at any cost. I knew if my parents found out I had lied it would open up another can of worms for me, but I felt justified in my own mind. I drove the three and half hours to see him down the long stretch of highway, through the valleys, wishing the car would go faster. I felt real fear going on this trip, though. There was no doubt I had hurt us both. Would he forgive me? Would he see all the scars I now bore? Would I… was it possible to be me again, when I was so unsure of who I was, anymore? These questions plagued me during my drive. When I got to the college there was First standing in a parking lot. In that instant I knew I had to be brave enough to find all my answers. I would not take the coward’s way out and I would face him, if for no other reason than I felt like I had no choice. All the initial awkwardness fell away and I saw him, the him I had dreamed of a thousand times. I saw that he had scars of his own. His hair was disheveled, and his clothes showed the strain of the long trip to Ohio, but his smile, his eyes, they showed an older, more mature, version of the first boy I had ever loved. I noticed the sadness in his eyes that came from someplace very far from where we stood in that parking lot. I knew as he looked me hard in the face he saw it in mine, too. We had both earned our place on earth the hard way. He was the literal version of the starving artist. I had a few dollars and wanted to go somewhere to eat. I didn’t understand how he could not afford a pizza, that it was a luxury item for him. When I asked him, he turned to me and spat out, “You are acting like a spoiled sorority brat.” I reeled back from his comment and he quickly grabbed me into his arms and begged for forgiveness. I knew he didn’t really mean it, he was just tired and worn thin. He didn’t know that my clothes were as a much of a lie as what I had told my parents about where I was going. We didn’t know the details of how hurt we both were from making wrong turns since the last time we had seen each other. What we were certain of was there was still love between us. We leaned into each other holding each close, knowing the clock was once again ticking and our time was limited. That night we slept in the freezing cold in my car. His friend was camping nearby. We were both small and could fit on one seat of the Chevy Impala I was driving. We didn’t talk much that night. We hugged each other, kissed, held hands, and traced our fingers on each other’s faces. We watched each other sleep, listened to the sound of our breath as we inhaled in tandem. It was all so innocent, so striking in contrast to the life and lie I had been living. The sun rose and again and someone was leaving, but this time it was me. I went back to school and almost as if it had all been a mirage my life went directly back to where it had been. It was the very last time I would ever see my beloved First.
During the really gut wrenching moments of my life I searched for First. When I was due to give birth to Betty and I had made out my will, signed the last legal document, I wrote letters to all of my friends, including First. I didn’t have his address anymore, but I wanted to write the words just in case someone else could find him. When I was going through my divorce, once again I picked up the search, but had no luck finding First. One night in a rage Danny had burned every love letter I had ever gotten. He threw the whole entire box of keepsakes in the fireplace and said simply, “Get over it.” With no address or phone number to go by, I did what I could to find him, until it seemed destiny had once again played it’s hand and I was not find him then or ever. I had given up hearing from First. The moments I thought of him the most were when I was dating and he was the bar that other men had to reach. In my youthful ignorance I thought I destroyed all the lessons, all the moments that had meant everything. But the voice of First could not be silenced. His voice would stay in my head when I was feeling so alone, I felt I might die from it. I thought of him when it looked as though a man wasn’t going to treat me right. First became the beacon I followed to find my own heart, so one day I would have it give. One day, I found a man who loved me. He loved me as First had, completely. The greatest gift I ever got from First was the ability to recognize that love doesn’t come often, so it truly is better t have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. I learned that lesson so well, that I married the only other man who saw me all the way to my heart, my darling Michael.
First is happily married now. He is peaceful and funny and most of all happy. Just as I had, he learned the lessons of love and held close to the girl who would see all of him. Together they created their own happy ending.