The Story of Us



I. We met, in grade five, the way two front bumpers meet of separate cars: one big direct hit that shook our entire worlds. A mutual friend introduced on the playground. A month later we were best friends at her birthday party. My favorite memory of you to this day took place in that pool: your baby blues sparkled from the fluorescent lights as water drops speckled your face. You were looking up at me with those big true blue eyes, and you were smiling in the chlorinated wetness with your softball t-shirt over your bathing suit. You were like that back then, hiding your frame in clothing that slimmed down an already small body. I loved you at this moment then, and I love you in this moment still. Our friend was jealous because she saw the connection growing; a bond of love and understanding that would surpass the one we both had with her individually by an entire ocean of feelings.



You sprained your wrist shortly after this, and we walked arm in arm during recess in the cold of winter. You were afraid of falling, but I refused to let that happen. I always try to prevent that from happening. We were two silly girls, inseparable by heart right from the very beginning. The only thing that kept us parted was being in two different classes, but the school officials corrected their mistake and put us together in sixth grade. Our link grew stronger-- it shined like ten thousand Christmas lights on the darkest black and white eve.



We met him that January, your first serious boyfriend, my first best guy friend. We three were the Musketeers, racing each other to every yellow-painted curb that we passed while roaming about the town. We were the indivisible Unit of Mischief, spending our time going to different apartment complexes so that we would have a place to sit and talk: talk about things that never made sense, talk about things that upset us, talk about things that made us laugh. The triangle of us sat and giggled for hours beneath a flight of stairs that led to neither of our homes. It was our place, our corner of the world.



We first smoked that year, smoked cigarettes and smoked marijuana. I called you “MJ” and “Mary Jane” because you had those exact initials, and I smoked it with you. It amused our disillusioned selves that needed something to do in a small town where there never was anything to do. The bars spread like the churches; therefore, it’s no surprise that alcoholism is high in this wooded area.



II. Seventh grade hit us like a bad LSD trip (thank God we never experienced the real thing). We weren’t even close to being prepared enough for that long, terrible ride into oblivion. Confused and lost, we fell in with the bad crowd, the only place to call home. And we did call it that. We were introduced to the world of partying, drinking underage, running from the cops, lying to our parents, going out with boys at least two years older than we (but sometimes even more). Our poor bewildered souls took solace wherever we could find it. We took the bottle to forget the shit at home, kissed the boy to feel something, anything, and lit the cigarette to prove we were strong. We were far from it back then; we were weak. Our minds and hearts and bodies hurt, but we kept on treading, spiraling down the fallen path of Teens Gone Wrong. We were staying up late, popping pills just to function the next morning, copying each other’s homework minutes before it was due, and trying to find our way back to your parents’ house on weekends through misty-eyed intoxication. We slept on your mom’s childhood bed. It was smaller than a normal-sized twin, but we fit on it perfectly. Lying next to each other gave more than just warmth from another’s body. It gave comfort too.



III. By grade eight things had gotten worse, and we still were running away from all of it every weekend: going to the teen center and spending most of our time in the alley behind it getting blazed with the older ones, walking to the school to attend the dances a few hours later, taking Anne’s Adderol medication for her, and feeding our “munchies” at Subway after getting high and dancing all night.



I got sick after Christmas break. A viral infection, a second viral infection, and eventually Strep throat followed by a bladder infection due to all of the antibiotics I had been given. I was exhausted with sickness and stressed with make-up work to do. I shudder when remembering how physically and emotionally depressed I had been from the toll of illness that the whole of me had taken. But remembering Valentine’s Day that year is what stings the most.



I was supposed to be on the look out for your father. You and a bunch of our friends were in your room smoking and if caught, things would go very badly. I was pretending to read when he crept up the stairs. I tapped the door as hard and unnoticeable to him as I could. It wasn’t heard. He entered the way the Big Bad Wolf entered the little pigs’ homes. The leftover odor was too strong.



He smacked you across your face in front of us. Once, twice, three times- the third time your head banged against the casing of your matted bed. He was grabbing your sides and vicious, trying to get the ashtray behind you. He hollered at all of us to leave; Ronnie and I stayed behind. You were on the floor when he finally left, hiding your face with your stringy blonde hair. I crouched down and hugged you, tried with all that I could to comfort you and convince you to let me see your face. When you finally lifted it, I saw that the asshole had left an actual reddened handprint. It’s times like these when a person knows that no matter what happens in the future, the friendship will never break.



I saw why you ran that evening. I knew why it was so easy and so necessary to inhale the weed and swallow the vodka. I knew one of the darkest secrets that crawled deep within you. To know one’s fears is to know the self they try to keep hidden from the world. Having such information is one of the greatest intimacies ever known to mankind. It’s a great privilege bestowed upon those whose sole job is to help keep intact the falsified image, the one the outside sees while trying to look in -- a façade of perfection. My purpose was to keep the secret, keep the disguise.



IV. Ninth grade entered the only way it could back then with, of course, a heavy bang. We should’ve joined the track team back then; we were quite skilled at running. I gave up Marlboros for weed. I figured if I was going to kill my lungs, I might as well get something out of it. You really began to drink and had gotten extremely close to someone who always had a source for booze and drugs. I will admit I was jealous every time I had to wait outside for you two to come back from scoring an eighth. I was also upset and alone. I felt that I had gotten shifted to the side and passed behind to the back burner. To make matters worse, Danny inserted himself right between us.



He was your second serious boyfriend with all the right connections to all the bad things we wanted. Along with his supply of buyers came his anger, and his fist. I should’ve handled this better than I did. My own anger and constant disapproval of him widened the growing wedge in our relationship. It was true love, you said, and couldn’t be given up. You decided I didn’t need to be around much anymore outside of school. We would remain friends but the wedge was apparent. My partying days grew farther and farther apart and were replaced with even more self-destruction.



It had always been an apparent part of my psyche since late sixth grade, but it was the only thing in sight now. Teen angst gave way to depression, pain and suffering to a degree no one should ever need to experience. Low self-esteem gave way to more and more antisocial behavior. I found myself alone in my room almost every night, scribbling down ranted thoughts, crying while screaming to angry bands’ lyrics, and fighting constantly with parents who had no idea how to handle their raging daughter.



An unknown emotion became a sufficient part of my every day life. The tick, tick, ticking of the bomb inside me threatened that if pushed far enough and hard enough, it would blow my barely-kept-together world into too many pieces to pick up. I hated myself and my life. A bad hair day would throw me into a fit that would result in the only outlet I had that calmed me. Scissors, hot candle wax, keys, pins and needles, the metal piece of a liter, and paperclips became my best friend, but my skin’s worse enemy.



I am fortunate enough to say that I never became addicted to all the alcohol and drugs we consumed. I am not lucky enough, however, to say that I’ve never battled addiction. A war against my inner self was fought and battled on the territory of my flesh. It was my remedy for a day gone bad. Enthralling like any other magic bullet, I fell headfirst in love with cutting, carving, burning, bruising, and branding my arms.



This annihilation of my body was easy to hide during the first few years. You were aware of the problem, but I kept it veiled for the first few months of school that year the same way you kept your father and Danny’s treatment of you concealed, but by second semester it became quite difficult to keep it as discreet as before. The scars and scabs were visible to everyone in my first hour gym period when the swimming portion of the class started. The lights made the reds, yellows, and browns look blue and purple. I remember how disgusted the gawking eyes had made me feel about myself. It’s bad enough when the entire grade level can point out the “messed-up ones with dysfunctional families,” but it’s even worse when they know what exactly is so messed up.


V. I remember how hurt you felt when seeing one of my darkest secrets. Your cloudy eyes told the tale of how this large bit of information was affecting you. You felt exactly how I did the day I saw your father’s handprint across your left cheek. You took care of me the way I had taken care of you before Danny’s joining in.



We had both seen each other completely stripped of our masks now, so there was no possibility of denying anything anymore. You told me all about what was happening in your love life and in your family life. I told you everything that was happening in my household, how I struggled with the identity of being the black sheep and weird one.



I was the unaccepted daughter with beliefs that conflicted and contrasted with much of the core values of the family. I was the successful daughter whose older siblings had helped pave the standard that I had to meander down. I would not follow in their paths-- my parents made that perfectly clear. You were the beaten child of a home that often turned away when they heard your body being knocked against the kitchen cabinets, the family that covered their ears every time the only thing that saved you was the lock on the bathroom door. A child who now was becoming an alcoholic and was stuck with a boyfriend whose own childhood abuse was being slammed upon you.