Monday, December 5

Funny how things can change your life. Change how you feel, in a matter of seconds. Especially words. Words have a funny way of being able to make us blush, or make the blood drain from our face. To make us feel good, or to make us feel like we're gonna puke. I'll let you guess how these words made me feel. These 6 little words: "I had sex last Friday night." There it goes. My plans, my futures, my heart, all stopped with the reading of those words. My world started to collapse. My chest tightened. My eyes started stinging. I get out of bed and stumble to the bathroom, so I don't disturb my sleeping brother with my sobs. I lean on the bathroom counter, and start sobbing. I drool because I can't get enough air. I feel myself start to hyperventilate. My vision swims, the darkness closes in, and I pass out on the pile of dirty laundry........
           I wake up, maybe a half hour later, laying in my own puddle of drool and blood. My forehead is gashed, I must have hit it on the counter when I passed out. I finally get it together enough to text her back, ask her how she could do this. How she could betray me after she told me she loved me for the past 13 months. She tells me she likes this guy. She's known him for three weeks. She's pretty sure he doesn't like her back, was just using her. I puke in the toilet. Almost don't make it. She lost her virginity to someone who doesn't even love her. That should've been me. The sobs start again. I blow my nose a couple times, tell myself to man up. I want to punch a hole in the wall. Better yet, drive the 12 hours to where she is and kick the shit out of the guy that fucked her. I could do it. I would do it. I start to make plans, then catch myself. She would never forgive me. So I throw that out. Give myself a couple minutes to cool down, then ask her if she's told her father. No. I ask how it happens. She said they had been hanging out all day. He took her to a cemetery. We went to a cemetery together, once. Our first "date", although technically we weren't dating. It was a walk. Our first walk. Our first time spent together alone in over ten years. She tells me it was cold, so they agreed to get in his car. The backseat of his car. She says "things happen and then yeah." I hear, "We started kissing, then he fucked me in his car." This was not the way it was supposed to happen. She's only a sophomore in high school. We were supposed to make love after she graduated and got married, her first time. Not mine, because I made the same mistake my sophomore year. Only one tiny difference. It was with someone I thought I loved. She knows she doesn't love him, and he probably doesn't even like her. That makes it sting even worse for me. Every time I close my eyes, its all I see. Them, in the backseat of a car. Having sex. We talk, I forgive her. I want to talk to this guy, this "Michael." Peacefully, not hostile. She says she thinks it's a good idea. Although he's shaken up, because he's 18 and she's 15. Legally rape. If anyone presses charges. I consider it, but that won't work either. Again, she'd never forgive me. But there is a problem with this. He's shaken up because she's only 15. I want him shaken up, but not for that reason. I want him to know that it was supposed to be me, that she was too young, that he took her from me, that she was the only reason I can get through my life from day to day...but I could do that later. Tonight was for her. So we talk some more, only after a while, she's "real tired and needs to go to bed." What the fuck. Okay then. We can talk tomorrow.

       I don't sleep that night.

       I don't even close my eyes.