First But Not the Greatest Love

Welcome to a Secret Subject Swap. This week 9 brave bloggers picked a secret subject for someone else and were assigned a secret subject to interpret in their own style. Today we are all simultaneously divulging our topics and submitting our posts.

My “Secret Subject” is: With Feb we think about love. Who was your first love? Do you know where they are now? Are you friends?

It was submitted by: https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

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I've talked about my first real love a time or two on this blog. It's not a sore subject. The relationship ended badly and our attempt at a redo ended even worse. But overall, I don't look back in anger. Oasis taught me not to anyway.

Let me back up a moment and focus on the qualifier "real" that I used here.

I had what I called, at the time, relationships in both middle and high school, but these were extremely superficial. I mean what else can they be in middle school? I had a longer relationship in high school, and I really was infatuated with the person at the time, but I can't reflect back on it and say I was in love or loved them. It was something to do really, and I didn't even cry when it was over. I was relieved. I wasn't in the right place to meet my high school sweetheart, fall in love, and marry at 18. That wasn't who I could be nor was it who I wanted to be. I was still exploring my sexuality, still not processing having been assaulted, still with so much resentfulness over the shitty childhood I had and how fucking awful living with my father was and then my stepfather after that. It wasn't an easy time and having been assaulted at such a young age, I wasn't every going to be able to have an intense romance. My innocence was long dead along with the child I never got to be.

I was so very angry.

It was the year after I graduated that I started this first real, serious relationship with one of my good friends all throughout school who had expressed having feelings for me but at the time I hadn't been ready to date. Anyone. It wasn't personal. I just couldn't do it. It took awhile for me to get to a point where I thought I was emotionally ready for it and to recognize the feelings as genuine and not some silly crush or feeling obligated because he had those feelings. Even then I recognized we're so often taught as young women to prioritize boys' feelings and shit over our own. Realizing the genuineness of my feelings did very little at first though. It was some kind of heartache for awhile when I first figured things out. I thought I had ruined my chance by never wanting to take it further when he did.

It all worked out eventually, and we moved in together when we were just 19. I really think that was our downfall. It was too much responsibility too fast. He had been really sheltered and never had to do much for himself. We both had issues, dysfunctional families... I had unresolved trauma. I HAD to get out of my mom and stepdad's home. It was all too much too soon, but we kept at it for a year and a half. Trying to manage an apartment and college and jobs and still make time for each other and our friends really made enjoying our new found freedom pretty difficult. It didn't help that my past with other dudes and me being queer made him insecure. And it certainly didn't help that I had like zero self esteem. We were an absolute mess.

To be clear, I don't think if we had gotten together under better circumstances that we might still be together. I'm so vastly different than I once was, and he's more or less an adult version of the same guy. A few more wrinkles, a little less hair, some life lessons, and even more responsibilities now than when we failed, but essentially he's the very same person I once knew. I had to go through literal hell to address my traumas and be reborn as something mostly whole. Kintsugi for the proverbial soul isn't exactly easy. And the older I've grown the more my humor has changed, the more I've addressed my innate biases, the more I've become intersectional, a feminist, and a far leftist. I would hardly recognize the girl I was when he met me, when we were together, or even the girl he left behind. Ive fixed so many cracks, she's virtually unrecognizable.

Life happens, as they say. And I'm okay with the direction life took for me. It hasn't been easy, sure, but I'm okay. I'm at peace with WHO I've become even when life isn't easy, and I think coming from where I did that's really the best I can hope for. It's better than a lot of folks who walked a similar path.

We aren't friends. I don't think we're allowed to be because new partners get insecure about friendships with old ones. At least that's how it usually works around here. (On his end not mine. I don't go for that shit in my personal life ever.) I do miss the friendship, but if I'm really truthful I know it wouldn't be much of one even without insecure significant others. We're too different. My values and humor are too different. And I draw a hard line on people who use vulnerable populations as a punchline. I stopped even being Facebook friends with all the people we hung out with at the time especially since one of those is a trump supporter who literally grabbed me by the crotch one night WHILE we were dating and they all still make excuses for it. Go figure.

We did talk a few times over the years expressing our responsibilities in why things went bad without reminiscing, apologizing without it being awkward. I don't duck or run when I see him in public which is rare now that I'm housebound. So it wasn't awful even though it really was my biggest heartbreak to date. And it wasn't something I held onto resentment over. But it's never going to go down in history books as a great romance or in my own history as the one that got away. But I did love him, and I'm thankful for everything I learned about myself and relationships along the way.

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Here are the rest of the participants!

Baking In A Tornado https://www.BakingInATornado.com

Spatulas on Parade https://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com

Wandering Web Designer https://wanderingwebdesigner.com/blog

Part-time Working Hockey Mom https://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch/

A 'lil HooHaa https://hoohaa.com/

Southern Belle Charm https://www.southernbellecharm.com

Sparkly Poetic Weirdo https://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

Medicated Musings https://mymedicatedmusings.blogspot.com

Dirty Little Secret

Today’s post is a writing challenge. This is how it works: participating bloggers picked 4 – 6 words or short phrases for someone else to craft into a post. All words must be used at least once and all the posts will be unique as each writer has received their own set of words. That’s the challenge, here’s a fun twist; no one who’s participating knows who got their words and in what direction the writer will take them. Until now.

My words are: Instead, Weight, Caught, Perspective and were submitted by the oh so awesome Jenn at http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/

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Instead of taking a right turn towards home when she left the bleached and in-need-of-a-paint job parking lot in her office building, she went straight then took a sharp left. A right would have taken her to her life. This way would let her escape domestication for a little while.

At work in that rundown office building adjoined by that disaster of a parking lot, she was a telemarketer selling products to people who couldn’t afford them from a cubicle that looked like millions of other cubicles staggered across the country like cardboard cutout prison cells. Every single day she was roused from dreaming by the shrill scream of the alarm clock. Every day she hit the snooze button until she was almost late to work. Every day she skipped dressing up, she skipped makeup, she skipped doing anything to her hair but pulling it back in a half assed pony tail. She didn’t know when she stopped caring, but she had. She used to wake up ready for the world to light her on fire. Now, she was mostly a fizzling match waiting to be tossed by the wayside. She sat in her cubicle dialing numbers, hating people, hating herself in a whirlwind of monotony that killed her little by little every day. Then she would leave her boring, shitty job, travel the 14.58 miles to her house by the same route (every single day), and warm up the same rotation of Hungry Man meals for her far-too-round husband who couldn’t be bothered to acknowledge her existence.

Once upon a time they were happy. They wed, they loved, they dreamed of a bigger life together. Maybe it was never meant to be. Maybe life happened. Either way, the dreams had shriveled and the love went right along with it. She hadn’t felt wanted in longer than she cared to remember. If she didn’t feed the man and wash his clothes, she’s pretty sure her existence in her life wouldn’t have mattered at all. Over the years, she lost any sense of self she had ever had.

Until she met him.

That day at work had started like hundreds before it. She sat at her desk wishing she were anywhere else, wishing she were someone else, wishing she could stick to a diet, that she could be bothered to do something with herself just to feel some semblance of confidence and hating herself for not bothering. She pulled numbers from her computer files contacting people who either hung up on her immediately or who called her any number of words that made her blush and want to waste away and die just for doing her job. This time she was selling some kind of shitty wireless mp3 headphones from china that probably cost a buck a piece and were being pushed for $49.99. Of course people were hanging up for that. Who needed a fucking mp3 player with everyone having ipods and iphones and other bullshit?

When she got Ken on the phone though, he was immediately different. She started in on her spiel speaking so fast hoping to catch the consumer’s attention before the phone was slammed down in her ear. He was laughing in her ear before her second sentence though. She was blushing and bracing herself for the worst when he said, “Slow down, Sugar. I can’t understand a word you’re saying.”

She apologized then, but he laughed that off, too, and asked for her name. She introduced herself and felt herself smile when he said he liked the sound of her voice. He asked her age. The two of them were only a few months apart actually with her being the oldest. She felt oddly euphoric when he said he wanted to know everything about her, but she told him that she couldn’t talk about that sort of thing on the phone for work, so he wanted to know when she got her lunchbreak and if he could call her then. It was odd, but she gave him her number unable to say no to the kindness she heard in his voice, unable, really, to say no to the butterflies she felt fluttering in her gut. What harm could it do? she thought. It was just her phone number. It’s not like she was meeting a stranger at his home only to end up on the 6 o’clock news when her body was found shoved into a couple suitcases, in pieces, and tossed in the dump.

Eventually, though, she did meet him at his house. It wasn’t until several phone calls, hundreds of texts and shared photos, and a couple of lunch dates later, though. He knew she was married. Unhappily married. He was divorced and after just a few dates said he was failing for her. It was passionate, a chaotic swirl of lust and caring and maybe love—things she hadn’t felt in a long time if ever--and it hooked her right from the start.

She hadn’t slept with him yet, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t thought about it time and time and time again. She wanted it. Needed it. The most that had happened even when she was at his apartment were short kisses that she quickly broke off out of guilt. That hadn’t stopped her from seeing him, though. It hadn’t stopped her from being at his house alone. She knew that no matter how little physical contact the two of them had, it was still an affair, but from her perspective, if things hadn’t been so shitty in her marriage in the first place none of this would have happened. It was just a matter of figuring out where to go from here…if she were honest with herself, though, she could have taken the steps to make this right by now. She had promised Ken that she would, that she was going to leave, that she was going to have *that* conversation at home, and she had had every opportunity to do so, but when it came time to do it, she paused. Every time. She was holding back.

The weight of her secret and the thought of getting caught were exciting in a way. This was the craziest thing she had ever done in her life besides that one time she went into a sex shop and bought a vibrator to keep herself sane. She was scared that taking away the secretiveness, the thrill of it, would take away the very thing that made her feel alive. She was like a junkie begging for another hit so she could feel something more than numb, so she could escape from the consequences of her reality. Then she would trudge home to her apartment that smelled of regret and microwaved Salisbury steak (hard to distinguish between the two) and smile a knowing smile even as she threw Hank’s yellowed briefs into the wash. She would hum to herself when she stood under the hot spray of the shower letting Caress Tahitian Renewal wash away her sins. When she laughed to herself at some inside joke she shared with Ken even while Hank was in the room, she felt free.

In deception she had found salvation. It wasn’t Ken that saved her though he was certainly the catalyst. She had saved herself, proven that she could still take chances and make her own decisions and break the psychological chains that had held her in such an unhappy place for so long.

A phone call may have started it, but in the end, she was the one who determined life was meant for more.

Maybe it wasn’t right. Maybe a lot of people would judge her, but it had been a long time since she felt this good and she planned to hold on to that feeling just a little longer before she decided where to go from here. The only direction she would be going soon enough was up.

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I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the character in this story, but I go where the voice takes me and this was the road she and I traveled together this past week writing this story. Now, I hope you will check out the other bloggers who joined up for today's challenge. You can find the links below. And thank you for reading. 

http://www.BakingInATornado.com Baking In A Tornado

http://spatulasonparade.blogspot.com/ Spatulas on Parade

http://berghamchronicles.blogspot.com The Bergham’s Life Chronicles

http://themomisodes.com The Momisodes

http://stacysewsandschools.blogspot.com/ Stacy Sews and Schools

http://sparklyjenn.blogspot.com/ Sparkly Poetic Weirdo

http://eileensperpetuallybusy.blogspot.com Eileen’s Perpetually Busy

http://batteredhope.blogspot.com Battered Hope

http://www.southernbellecharm.com Southern Belle Charm

http://www.someoneelsesgenius.com Someone Else’s Genius

http://thethreegerbers.blogspot.ch Confessions of a part-time working mom

http://singlemumplusone.blogspot.com Searching for Sanity

http://climaxedtheblog.blogspot.com Climaxed

http://dinoheromommy.com/ Dinosaur Superhero Mommy