As I try to claw my way out of this depression I’ve fallen into, I’m determined to pick up where I left off….
We quickly tired of Cactus Jack’s & I found my new favorite pastime, DANCING!!! There was an all-ages bar called Jaime D’s that me and several of my friends frequented as much as possible. This was where I first danced with a boy, two-stepped. My mom & dad taught us how when we were little by having us step on their feet, while they danced & counted the steps. We also all learned to line dance there. We’d be dressed in the skimpiest tops we could find, the tightest wranglers we could squeeze into & my favorite red ropers. It was where we went to feel popular & we were! The boys would line up to watch us shake our booties! A couple of years back, I ran into one of the boys from those days. He told me that my friends & I dancing were the highlight of every weekend for them, that they came just to watch us! And you know what? It made me feel just like it did back then, like a giggly young girl who was hot stuff! It was GREAT!!
At this point, I’d made many friends in both Yukon & Mustang, two rival towns, but both like home to me. I’d never lived in one place long enough to establish real friendships like I had now & I made it my mission to make as many friends as I could, wherever I went. The crowd I met through Trey & Matt, Lynne & CeeCee, well we all grew pretty tight. Trey & Matt had some friends that were their besties & it turned out that the main four of them & CeeCee, Michelle, Lynne & myself all ended up pairing up with them in our own ways & own time. CeeCee & Wayne already had history. He was her first love & vice versa, but oh the drama that came with it all!! Then there was Michelle & Dwayne. Arguably all ‘bad boys”, some more than others. It was their friend Michael that caught my eye, though funny enough, it wasn’t through them. He was dating my friend Maye who was staying the night with me one night & he came to pick us up. He had a little grey S10 pickup that we crammed into. As we jumped in, I immediately felt crazy chemistry with this guy, the guy I just met who was dating my friend! (Insert facepalm here)…. regardless, he & Maye didn’t last long, it turned out he’d been two-timing her with his longtime off & on girlfriend whom he never claimed if he thought he could hook up with anyone else… In short, he was a player! But to me, that was the thrill of it all. Evidence that even back then, my picker was broken! He ended up coming to one of the after-curfew parties we threw after my parents were in bed & to this day I can still feel his eyes on me from the papasan chair in the corner of my bedroom. Finally, I was drunk enough to get sassy & ask him what his problem was. He clearly wasn’t used to girls not falling all over him, especially when our chemistry was palpable. It grew from there, although I still had Lee, who was a player himself & still my first love. And Michael, despite his vehement denial, did in fact have a girlfriend as well. In our defense, we were a bunch of teenagers who didn’t have a clue about what REAL love meant, much less monogamy. I was the only one of ALL my friends who hadn’t had sex yet. I was determined to wait until I was married because I’d been taught that I was worth waiting for & that God created us to have only one mate for life. I thought that was Lee until I met Michael. Lee pressured me all the time, and he was younger than me, which made me feel very naïve. Michael never pressured too hard (probably because he was getting it elsewhere). But I held out & held out. My friends, my age & older, had all done it & it’s all they could talk about. I felt so immature & out of the loop, but the crowning blow was when my little brother Dale did IT with his girlfriend before I had done it.
My parents went down to Dallas to visit Granny & Papa. They left my stepdad’s best friend’s HOT, older than us, son to house sit. He was super cool & cute & told us he’d let us have a party & he & his friends would supervise. I interpreted this as an opportunity to invite everyone I knew, which turned out to be around 200 people in our house after you threw my brother & sister’s friends into the mix as well. It was literally wall-to-wall people, playing drinking games, smoking pot, blaring music, making out & any other shenanigans we could come up with. That is until the cops showed up & people scattered everywhere. Literally. People hopped over the back fence, ran down the street in hoards, and even climbed on the roof! Being the genius I was, I hid under the bed, they’d never find me there. About 90 seconds later, two hands wrapped around my ankles and dragged me from my hiding spot. We had turned out all the lights thinking they’d think no one was there. So in turn, I had a Maglite shining in my eyes with a booming voice telling me he was taking me to the Barry House (whatever that was?!) if I ever pulled a stunt like that again. In turn, he pulled into our driveway behind our parents on Sunday evening & recanted the whole tale to them. My siblings & I were grounded for quite a while after that, until we finally drove our parents crazy enough, that they just wanted us out of the house.
Something in me changed after that, I don’t know if it was turning 17 that summer, or the rush I got from being the girl who threw wild parties, or just being the only virgin who was faking it all until I finally decided to “make it”. One cloudy afternoon in July, my brother & Lee had a baseball game. My dad took Susie & I to watch. Then after the game, we went to Taco Bell for some lunch. I remember Dad questioning Lee about his future, but I wasn’t really listening. All I could think about was how cute he was & how he had his hand on my knee under the table. Afterward, Dad dropped me, Susie & Lee back off at Susie’s. It had started to thunderstorm outside & Susie grabbed her cordless phone & some discarded cigarettes out of her mom’s ashtray & went out to smoke & call her boyfriend. Lee & I ended up in Susie’s room making out & I knew that was going to be the day I said yes. It had been a year, a week & 2 days that we’d been “together” and I owed it to him, right? Looking back at the whole thing now is still painful & degrading & says a lot about the way things ended up, not just with him & me, but in the way I perceived myself & treated myself, which led others to think it was okay to treat me the same way. He broke up with me a few days later & by the next weekend, I said “yes’ to Michael, just to spite Lee & let Him know he was nothing special to me either. I’ll never forget Michael’s reaction, he couldn’t believe I was giving in. He kept asking if I was sure & was so gentle. That became a turning point for us as well. We couldn’t get enough of each other. He was exciting, and convenient since all our friends were together & he respected my beliefs when others gave me a hard time for them. Not just regarding sex, but other things I felt strongly about as well.
As I mentioned earlier, a lot of our friends were smoking pot. I had tried it once before with Michelle, her older brother & Dawn. Michelle’s brother had made a bong out of a toilet paper roll & we passed it around the living room in their apartment. When it got to me, I hit it too hard & coughed into said bong & blew lit pot embers all over the place. I was humiliated & a little nauseated & decided I wasn’t a fan. Michael had to defend me about the peer pressure to smoke many times. It was endearing and made me feel special when he’d get sideways with anyone who gave me a hard time. Yet another of his attributes that made it so hard for me to resist him. Over the years we were never an official item, and I never let myself consider loving him, because that felt too familiar & like if I had, somehow it would burst our little bubble we had when we were together. It would be years later that I recognized that the initial spark he & I had, was the same, only different, as I’d had with Lee. It was love…
Now being the mother of four, two of them teen girls, I find myself reflecting on those days often. On the feelings I had, the strong bonds I felt, the beliefs I let fall by the wayside & I pray that I can instill better things in my children. I can look back on all my own personal circumstances back then & try to navigate my kids through their experiences so long as I can find a way to get them to relate to me. To hear me. To BELIEVE me. It all seems so easy in my head…. tell them the truth, back it up with scripture & tell them how valuable & perfect they are. All the things I’m sure my Heavenly Father had hoped I would hear from HIM & BELIEVE.
Though I still don’t have it all figured out, there are some things I can look back on now & self-diagnose without any degree in Psychology…. Things that are just textbook stuff to anyone who has sat through a Psychology 101 class. First, I definitely had Daddy issues. I’ve been a Daddy’s girl my entire life & after I moved out of his house & back home, is when I believe that started. He was too busy with nursing school & bartending to have any leftover time for me is how that felt. Then shortly after graduating nursing school, he decided to work for a traveling nursing company. Which meant he’d be moving all over the country for long periods of time. He was living the dream for quite a while, and had several young girlfriends, (one that I later found out was my age, but he lied & said she was two years older). I tried to move to California with him once, but he worked all the time & I was the loneliest I’d ever been so I came home. It felt as if I let him down when I moved back & I felt something shift in our relationship then. He told Dale & me shortly thereafter that he’d found a woman he was in love with & he was moving to Corpus Christi to be with her. I’m not sure why, maybe I sensed that he would never be coming back to stay, and it broke me. I felt abandoned & I told him so. We were sitting on the rocking chairs out in front of The Cracker Barrel when we had that discussion & soon after he was gone. It’s not that I blame him for what happened next…. Again, it’s just textbook Psych 101….
