“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger!” my mother yelled to me as I stumbled up the steps to my bedroom. Two years ago this was where I spent the majority of my time, locked joyously away from the world. The meaning of love destroyed, the aspect of trust abolished… everything I had lived for – gone. The question ‘how could this happen to me’ constantly in my mind. The words, “I’m sorry” echoing through my throbbing head every night. Completely and utterly alone in every sense of the word. Freshman year a chain of events happened that ended up changing my life forever.

Kayla and I had been best friends since we were born. Literally. Our parents were close and because of this we used to see each other all the time. We knew absolutely everything about each other and told things to one another that we barely admitted to ourselves. Our friendship was filled with secrets and promises that kept us more connected to each other than to anyone else. She was the only person I knew I could depend on. The only friend I would do anything for.
One day while I was over her house I got a very important text message. I had been flirting with this boy I really liked for a while and he finally asked me to be his girlfriend. I would say it ended up being my first serious relationship, but I wouldn’t want anyone to get the wrong idea. He simply ended up being the first guy that I genuinely had real feelings for. I remember talking for hours that night with Kayla, mostly about double dating. Both of us were ecstatic since she had just gotten into a relationship the day before.
Everything was perfect. I hung out with my boyfriend a little bit too much, but to be fair, he was the one thing that I always looked forward to. He made school and life in general better. I knew that even if we couldn’t see each other one day, we’d be together the next. He said things to me that no other guy ever came close to saying before. He continuously sent me adorable text messages and wrote a cute little paragraph about me on his myspace page. Mostly though he always showed how much he cared for me and I never had that before.
After constant begging, my mother finally agreed to have a “movie night”. This was what Kayla and I had been wanting for a month. During this movie night our boyfriends would come over, eat snacks, and watch rented Blockbuster movies until late. The only condition was that we’d have to clean the entire house. As soon as we heard this we sprinted through chores like our lives depended on it. Our boyfriends said they’d be there by five. So we waited. Then we waited some more. Finally Kayla got pissed off and called hers. She got an earful of his mother’s screams that stated he was grounded.
Mine on the other hand didn’t have an excuse of that kind. Nope. When I called him he said he’d be there in a ten minutes. After two hours of waiting, I called again and he said he’d be there in a few. The air in the living room we were in continued becoming thicker and thicker with every second that ticked by. At eleven o’clock we went upstairs to bed after throwing away the cookies we made for them. It turns out that my boyfriend was busy getting high. It wasn’t the fact that he preferred smoking weed to being with me, it was the reality that he told me he’d be there, told me what movie to rent, and then didn’t come.
After confronting him about being hurt when he didn’t show up, he acted as if it didn’t matter. I was scared. I didn’t know what to do so I just dropped it. I didn’t want him to be mad at me. I was a naïve freshman that knew close to nothing about relationships. All I knew was that I liked having him around, loved being with him, and didn’t want to mess anything up.
I should’ve realized that the way he acted meant something. The next day I got the biggest clue in the world about his feelings. That cute little paragraph that was about me on his myspace? Gone. My initial thought? ‘Oh, his friends hack his page all the time; one of them probably did it.’ I didn’t like that it wasn’t there anymore, but never once did I question how he felt. He told me he loved me the day before; there was no reason to question it. Right?
There was. That night he called me, said “I want to break up”, and hung up the phone. Just like that. Everything we had and everything I built our relationship up to be- finished. I was distraught. He seriously just pretended we never happened. Why would he do that to me? How could he? He was so amazing, so perfect and then in the blink of an eye I felt like an enemy.
I hated hearing about him, even his name made me cringe. He carried on his life as if nothing ever occurred. The worst part was that he was always so nice to everyone else. I felt as if he was putting on a constant charade to cover who he really was. I told myself that I would, could never feel the way I felt for him for anyone else. The thing is that he thought I was pathetic for feeling the way that I did. I never meant half as much to him as he meant to me.
. Without him I felt empty. When talking to Kayla she said something like, oh well, everything happens for a reason, but that’s a lie. It is me that determines who I am and in all, the main aspects of my life. What was I supposed to do when one minute he was my world and the next he was gone? Everything in me broken. Left with nothing. Nothing left to look forward to. No point in any kind of happiness because nothing would ever measure up to what I felt like when I had him and he was mine.
He just moved on with his life as if I never existed and some days I couldn’t even scrape up the energy to get out of bed. How could I feel that incredible and then have it taken away? What he used to say, the jokes, even the meaningful bull. The I love you’s. All of it – nothing. Lies. Some people say that they didn’t know what they had until it was gone. What if I knew exactly what I had and it still walked away?
I was over Kayla’s house as much as possible. Sleepovers, going to the mall, we did absolutely everything to keep my mind off of him. We helped each other though; her and her boyfriend broke up as well. It made me feel better knowing that we were going through the same situation together. She always told me I’d get him back, that he still cared about me. She even said that when he tried talking to her online he always mentioned me. I had been starting to get some text messages from him too and this made what she was saying somewhat believable. My hopes stayed up for months.
By the third month after the break up I still hadn’t given up. Actually, this was when the boy and I started to have around three hour long aim conversations. I remember feeling almost as close to him as I did when I was his girlfriend. Obviously now I see that I shouldn’t have even talked to him again after he dumped me for absolutely no reason, but hey, I really loved this guy. I realized that year that people can love at any age. That’s what’s so scary. When parents tell their children that they don’t know what love is they don’t understand how wrong they are. Love is an emotion, a feeling. I wasn’t upset for so long because he was my first boyfriend, because he wasn’t. I was upset for so long because of the way I felt for him.
A day after one of our aim conversations Kayla came over. Just a normal hang out day, talking about everything and anything while eating sour cream and onion chips. About ten minutes after she left I heard an incoming aim message sound from my laptop. I ran over and hoped it was him. Well. It was. Except it was Kayla’s screen name he was sending it to since she forgot to log out at my house. It said that the reason he stopped talking to her was because she had told him she loved him and then started dating someone else.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I instantly called her and after a lot of screaming and crying I realized what she had done to me. When asked he told me everything, too much. They kissed. They planned to date. They were “best friends”. He even said that she hurt him! What about me? Did no one give a s***? My best friend forever! The one that told me that I’d get him back had kissed him! Had told him she loved him. This wasn’t possible, it was a dream. It had to be.
It wasn’t. So that was it. I lost the boy that I loved and my best friend all in a few months. I had no one to talk to. No one. A few months earlier I could talk to either of them about anything, but now? I felt abandoned, betrayed. I barely ate. Not because I wanted attention, I just wasn’t hungry. All I wanted to do was sleep. I actually liked going to school because that passed the time and I didn’t have to think about anything that didn’t have to do with analyzing or solving equations.
One night though, coming back home from going out with friends from school I lost it. I couldn’t talk to Kayla about the movie or the funny things that happened at the theater. I missed everything that used to be considered normal. It was raining and I felt as if the weather was representing everything I felt. My mascara started to run and I opened my window. Black streaked fingertips ran over my scale like skin as goose bumps emerged on my arms. I ran my tongue over cracked lips before turning off my light, surrounding myself in darkness. As I lied down I felt as if my heart was as knotted as my stomach. I was trapped in whatever the feeling I had was. I felt as if I could never be genuinely happy again.
While this was one of the worst chapters of my life I got through it. I learned so many lessons because of this awful experience and I thank both of those people for that. I learned to never make anyone my main priority. Because he was I felt completely on my own and lonely as hell when I didn’t have him anymore. Once someone does you wrong, he or she will continue to do you wrong. This you can see anywhere every day. The most important lesson that I learned though, was that family comes first.
We all may think that friends mean everything, but they don’t. Friendships do change. I know everyone can think of someone who “would never do something like that to them.” Just remember, I had one of those too. We were friends since birth and it still happened. When I felt as if nothing was meaningful in life my mom was there. So was a lot of my family. I had countless conversations with them about both people who hurt me so much and they always listened. The people in your family are the people that you can truly count on. Friends come and go, but family is forever.