Cafe Hitch-hike

2004-12-13

Tradeoff

Here's something I don't tell many people:

My mom decided to leave my step-dad when I was 15, at the end of my sophmore year in high school. We moved away from our hometown for four months for a small but depressed community; it was a little ghetto in the middle of the country!

I was so angry at mom! My upcoming junior year was supposed to be the coolest one in high school! I was going to have a job, save money for a car, and play varsity sports. I was going to take the PSAT and visit colleges. I started seeing a guy who was my buddy's older brother, and things were getting very emotional between us. I was angry because she ripped me from all my plans and my life!

After we moved, I didn't even get a chance to say goodbye to a boyfriend I had in secret. I didn't get in touch with him because I never told my mom about him, and she would had shot me if she found out. I tried to keep in touch with my friends through letters and phone calls, but they soon got unanswered. It was as if they forgot I existed.

To make things more interesting, when we returned to the hometown, I had to attend a different high school. I wouldn't get to be with my friends and my sports teammates, and I had to start all over again. I was firmly convinced she did the worst thing possible.

Or was it? Towards the end of my sophmore year and before we moved, my peers were really starting to fuck up. Just before final exams, a guy I used to talk to was put in jail. He thought it would be funny to shoot at our empty high school one Sunday night. The stupid thing was the police were around the corner clocking speeds.

The following school year, while at my new school, I found out two of my former volleyball teammates started drinking in the girls' bathroom between classes. Another one of them eventually started doing coke, yeah, the real thing. A few guys ate lunch with me started dealing drugs with their dads and other family members. I used to see them drive pimped-out cars around town and wearing Fat Goose jackets instead of jean jackets, the sure-fire sign of drug money.

All was not bleak, however. A week after we returned to the hometown, I ran into my boyfriend around the corner from my new house! He worked for a linen company was delivering table cloths for a local restaurant. The weird thing was he worked in accounting and was not a driver, but filled in because no one was available to deliver that ASAP delivery. The strange thing was what we ran into each other within 20 feet! He was speechless! What were the chances of that?

Tim and I started going out and messed around a little. His sister, who was my only remaining friend, forewarned me about him: "my brother's bad...if you sleep with him, you pretty much slept with every other girl in this county!" She also told me he was very possessive

He didn't sound like great boyfriend material, and she was right. It was not always a great situation. If I wanted an evening or weekend to myself, he'd piss and moan. The guy had been around the block, to put that nicely, so he couldn't wait add me to his list. I had to scream at him again and again to knock that off. However...

...it seemed like my mom's divorce unglued my family. They always "partied", but this time it got in the way of their work, friends, money, and family. It upset me to see everyone fall apart from the drugs & drinking. My mother became negligent with me and my siblings because she was always drinking or hungover. My younger sisters got into a lot of trouble; of course, I tried to be the big sister, but they were pretty hell-bent on doing what they wanted.

Shit, it was all so messed up! I finally got in touch with my "friends" of before, and all I could see was how messed up they had gotten. It was also crappy losing my "friends", though I guess losing people like that wasn't that big of a loss.

So what does this all mean? It means that maybe my time spent out of town kept me from getting pulled into the freaky things my friends got themselves into. Maybe leaving my former high school was a good thing! What I thought was the worst thing to happen to me was actually a great thing.

The boyfriend, for good and bad, was my new best friend, and his sister and I remained friends. He also insulated me from what happened at home. I talked to him when I was feeling bad or didn't feel like going on. He took me out, and a lot of times it was with others in his family. I got to know them very well and wasn't a stranger to their events.

It was a tough time. I suppose my friends amd family could've ruined my life while my boyfriend just gave me headaches. Tough as it was, I guess I managed to get a better tradeoff.

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