...and then there's that...
I ran away from my first (and only) attempt at marriage. The marriage license that I paid for is still in the glove compartment of Daniel’s car. When I broke the news to him I was still too confused to really give him an honest reason.
“I just don’t know if I can be with one man for the rest of my life.”
“What?” He was so confused. He began to tear up; then I began to tear up. I didn’t know how I would clear up his confusion while I was so confused myself. He was lying on his side and I was sitting up facing him. The rope lights that we had put up around the room were getting dingy from the cigarette smoke and the king size bed I had bought off of my sister’s in-laws took up almost all of the space. Whenever our friends would come over they had no choice but to sit on our bed with us. If anyone stayed the night, they slept in the bed with us. We could fit three people comfortably; three adults and one kid was pushing it we found out, though.
He didn’t take his eyes off of me. “I’m really sorry,” I explained. “I’ve just been getting ready for this wedding that I was forced into and I really love you but I bought these champagne glasses that said, ‘Today I marry my best friend’ and it stuck with me.” I was so flustered that I couldn’t focus. My sister had found out that we were going to elope and got angrier than I expected. My brother-in-law ended up calling me and telling me what a scumbag I was. I told him that I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but in the end I caved and agreed to throw a small wedding. My mother and I rented an arch for the yard and I bought a cheap dress and decorations.
People kept asking, “Aren’t you so excited?” and I would think, No. And I looked at Daniel and couldn’t even conjure up that so-in-love-that-it-makes-you-cry feeling that hadn’t just faded but had completely disappeared. Now I was crying because I wasn’t so in love.
“But that’s why I want to marry you,” he said, “because you’re my best friend.”
Later I would throw in his face that I was more like a mother to him, but at this juncture I simply said, “I don’t know.”
I had lived with Daniel at his mother’s house for three years in the hopes that we would be together forever. With his neediness, though, his anxiety attacks, his total lack of emotional support and stability, I was drained of everything but the desperate need for my own survival. What remained in my heart was a loving friend.
I moved in with my mother the next day. If living with Daniel was purgatory, then this was hell. The beautiful thing about my mother other than her eccentricity (or maybe because of her eccentricity) is that she is always there with open arms, but you just have to climb over mountains of random junk to get to her. I slept on a couch that was half of a sectional and thought, Why doesn’t she put this piece of the sectional together with the other piece of the sectional to make a couch that my feet don’t hang off of when I lay down? Instantaneously I began to cry. What had I done? Daniel was laying on the wonderful king size bed that I had bought while I was on this squeaky piece of shit. I tried curling up into a ball, then placing my feet on the coffee table, then letting them dangle before finally giving up. I sat up and lit a cigarette. This was my life. I had screwed some other guy and then broken up with my boyfriend of three years. I could ignore the cold feet and the question: am I doing the right thing, but I couldn’t just dismiss my infidelity. Once I had actually had sex with another man I knew that my relationship wasn’t going to last. It wasn’t so much the guilt. I’m sure I could have come up with many excuses (and did as a matter of fact) as to why I did it and why it didn’t matter that I did it. Hell, I told Daniel about it later and he didn’t care. We both feel that sex is just sex sometimes. And he says that he already knew. The point is that my idea of true love was something that was pure. Two people with an unstoppable connection. No one and nothing could come between them. No lies. No sneaking around. Romantic to me wasn’t flowers and candy but scraping up change when you’re really broke and going to the dollar store to get someone a birthday gift. I had raped that purity. I didn’t figure out until later that it was because being in a relationship with Daniel was like the story of Sysiphis. I would push him up the mountain of accountability and he would roll back down, crushing me on the way.
I stared into the darkness of my mother’s living room and pictured the man I had cheated on Daniel with. The ash from my cigarette fell in my lap. That cigarette seemed like my only support. I could tell myself, “I don’t have my comfortable life anymore, but at least I still have my nicotine addiction.” I put out the cigarette and lay back down. I knew that falling asleep meant that I would have to wake up the next day and come to terms with this new life. Boy was I in for a treat.
During the six months I spent at my mother’s, I tried desperately to keep my friendship with Daniel. I would call him and we would talk until it got around to me telling him that I just wanted to be his friend and he would say, “I don’t want to be your friend.” I didn’t care about any of this. I wanted to be selfish for once. I refused to lose him as a friend. I had put too much effort into him to not get anything in return. Paying for everything because he didn’t have a job. Driving us around because his panic attacks made him afraid to drive. Comforting him even though I would be tired from working at whichever job I had at the time and too much homework.
My grades began to drop. I was still living on my mom’s couch, dating some skin-head that I knew was a complete idiot but was really good in bed. I was becoming the kind of person that I hated. The kind of person that I had tried so desperately to not become. I was trailer trash. And then I wrecked the car that my mother had given me because I was too drunk to realize that there were other ways to avoid a bad situation besides fleeing. If this wasn’t rock bottom then it was as close as I was going to let myself get. I had to get out of Jacksonville. Yes, I wanted to run away from my problems. My mother always says, “Everywhere you go, there you are.” I believe she got this from Mad Max. Words to live by really. I needed a change, though. I knew too many people in Jacksonville. There were too many potential situations there. Too many opportunities to blow off getting my shit together. Friends, parties, bars, boys.
I begged and pouted and cried like a crazy person until my mother agreed to help me move to Orlando. My friend was here and he was responsible enough to live with. More importantly, he needed a room mate and I needed a place. Besides, my mother loved Al. So, much like the Beverly Hillbillies, we packed my things onto the back of my mother’s boyfriend’s truck and, minus grandma in a rocker, moved all of it to Orlando.
Daniel is still one of my best friends, although he drives me crazy with his pessimism most of the time. He still lets me squish his cheeks and hug his head. I try to convince him that it wasn’t just him that was bad for me; I was bad for him, too. I babied him and he got worse and worse. When I met him he had a job and drove a car and went out with me. By the end of our relationship, he had no job, couldn’t drive and had gained almost thirty pounds. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like if we got back together. When he brings it up I simply say, “Move to Orlando” because I know he won’t.
I’m twenty-three years old. Sometimes it hits me: I’m an adult. I look in the mirror at my apartment in Orlando and concentrate on the thought. I feel the same as I did at eighteen. A little older, a little more experienced. That’s how age sneaks up on you, by distracting you. It waits for you to go through your first or second divorce, kicks you when you’re down, when you’re alone. I brace myself for it at times, preparing myself to be alone at age thirty, age forty, but I know there is nothing that will prepare me. I only have consolation in knowing that I would rather be alone than compromise myself again.
“I just don’t know if I can be with one man for the rest of my life.”
“What?” He was so confused. He began to tear up; then I began to tear up. I didn’t know how I would clear up his confusion while I was so confused myself. He was lying on his side and I was sitting up facing him. The rope lights that we had put up around the room were getting dingy from the cigarette smoke and the king size bed I had bought off of my sister’s in-laws took up almost all of the space. Whenever our friends would come over they had no choice but to sit on our bed with us. If anyone stayed the night, they slept in the bed with us. We could fit three people comfortably; three adults and one kid was pushing it we found out, though.
He didn’t take his eyes off of me. “I’m really sorry,” I explained. “I’ve just been getting ready for this wedding that I was forced into and I really love you but I bought these champagne glasses that said, ‘Today I marry my best friend’ and it stuck with me.” I was so flustered that I couldn’t focus. My sister had found out that we were going to elope and got angrier than I expected. My brother-in-law ended up calling me and telling me what a scumbag I was. I told him that I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it, but in the end I caved and agreed to throw a small wedding. My mother and I rented an arch for the yard and I bought a cheap dress and decorations.
People kept asking, “Aren’t you so excited?” and I would think, No. And I looked at Daniel and couldn’t even conjure up that so-in-love-that-it-makes-you-cry feeling that hadn’t just faded but had completely disappeared. Now I was crying because I wasn’t so in love.
“But that’s why I want to marry you,” he said, “because you’re my best friend.”
Later I would throw in his face that I was more like a mother to him, but at this juncture I simply said, “I don’t know.”
I had lived with Daniel at his mother’s house for three years in the hopes that we would be together forever. With his neediness, though, his anxiety attacks, his total lack of emotional support and stability, I was drained of everything but the desperate need for my own survival. What remained in my heart was a loving friend.
I moved in with my mother the next day. If living with Daniel was purgatory, then this was hell. The beautiful thing about my mother other than her eccentricity (or maybe because of her eccentricity) is that she is always there with open arms, but you just have to climb over mountains of random junk to get to her. I slept on a couch that was half of a sectional and thought, Why doesn’t she put this piece of the sectional together with the other piece of the sectional to make a couch that my feet don’t hang off of when I lay down? Instantaneously I began to cry. What had I done? Daniel was laying on the wonderful king size bed that I had bought while I was on this squeaky piece of shit. I tried curling up into a ball, then placing my feet on the coffee table, then letting them dangle before finally giving up. I sat up and lit a cigarette. This was my life. I had screwed some other guy and then broken up with my boyfriend of three years. I could ignore the cold feet and the question: am I doing the right thing, but I couldn’t just dismiss my infidelity. Once I had actually had sex with another man I knew that my relationship wasn’t going to last. It wasn’t so much the guilt. I’m sure I could have come up with many excuses (and did as a matter of fact) as to why I did it and why it didn’t matter that I did it. Hell, I told Daniel about it later and he didn’t care. We both feel that sex is just sex sometimes. And he says that he already knew. The point is that my idea of true love was something that was pure. Two people with an unstoppable connection. No one and nothing could come between them. No lies. No sneaking around. Romantic to me wasn’t flowers and candy but scraping up change when you’re really broke and going to the dollar store to get someone a birthday gift. I had raped that purity. I didn’t figure out until later that it was because being in a relationship with Daniel was like the story of Sysiphis. I would push him up the mountain of accountability and he would roll back down, crushing me on the way.
I stared into the darkness of my mother’s living room and pictured the man I had cheated on Daniel with. The ash from my cigarette fell in my lap. That cigarette seemed like my only support. I could tell myself, “I don’t have my comfortable life anymore, but at least I still have my nicotine addiction.” I put out the cigarette and lay back down. I knew that falling asleep meant that I would have to wake up the next day and come to terms with this new life. Boy was I in for a treat.
During the six months I spent at my mother’s, I tried desperately to keep my friendship with Daniel. I would call him and we would talk until it got around to me telling him that I just wanted to be his friend and he would say, “I don’t want to be your friend.” I didn’t care about any of this. I wanted to be selfish for once. I refused to lose him as a friend. I had put too much effort into him to not get anything in return. Paying for everything because he didn’t have a job. Driving us around because his panic attacks made him afraid to drive. Comforting him even though I would be tired from working at whichever job I had at the time and too much homework.
My grades began to drop. I was still living on my mom’s couch, dating some skin-head that I knew was a complete idiot but was really good in bed. I was becoming the kind of person that I hated. The kind of person that I had tried so desperately to not become. I was trailer trash. And then I wrecked the car that my mother had given me because I was too drunk to realize that there were other ways to avoid a bad situation besides fleeing. If this wasn’t rock bottom then it was as close as I was going to let myself get. I had to get out of Jacksonville. Yes, I wanted to run away from my problems. My mother always says, “Everywhere you go, there you are.” I believe she got this from Mad Max. Words to live by really. I needed a change, though. I knew too many people in Jacksonville. There were too many potential situations there. Too many opportunities to blow off getting my shit together. Friends, parties, bars, boys.
I begged and pouted and cried like a crazy person until my mother agreed to help me move to Orlando. My friend was here and he was responsible enough to live with. More importantly, he needed a room mate and I needed a place. Besides, my mother loved Al. So, much like the Beverly Hillbillies, we packed my things onto the back of my mother’s boyfriend’s truck and, minus grandma in a rocker, moved all of it to Orlando.
Daniel is still one of my best friends, although he drives me crazy with his pessimism most of the time. He still lets me squish his cheeks and hug his head. I try to convince him that it wasn’t just him that was bad for me; I was bad for him, too. I babied him and he got worse and worse. When I met him he had a job and drove a car and went out with me. By the end of our relationship, he had no job, couldn’t drive and had gained almost thirty pounds. Sometimes I do wonder what it would be like if we got back together. When he brings it up I simply say, “Move to Orlando” because I know he won’t.
I’m twenty-three years old. Sometimes it hits me: I’m an adult. I look in the mirror at my apartment in Orlando and concentrate on the thought. I feel the same as I did at eighteen. A little older, a little more experienced. That’s how age sneaks up on you, by distracting you. It waits for you to go through your first or second divorce, kicks you when you’re down, when you’re alone. I brace myself for it at times, preparing myself to be alone at age thirty, age forty, but I know there is nothing that will prepare me. I only have consolation in knowing that I would rather be alone than compromise myself again.