Survival

Once I'd managed to survive 7th grade (which was sort of a blurr), survived introducing my parents to all of my new friends, survived my dad picking us up and dropping us off at football games and movie runs....I was beginning to enjoy my new world and my new life. I'm not sure I came out completely unscathed but I made it.

In 1994 I started 8th grade. I think of all the times in my 28 years of life, this was my favorite. I was young, I had friends, I had family (even if I found them unbearable most of the time) and I didn't have a care in the world. Life was so simple. That fall when school started I wasn't the new girl anymore, I didn't bite my nails while sitting through class and I didn't try to hide behind my books. I walked with my friends, I passed notes, I laughed and just before the first football game of the season, I had my first boyfriend.

I was 13 and I thought he was amazing. He said he loved me, we talked on the phone for hours and I was literally walking around on a cloud. That Friday my friends and I took our saved lunch money from the week and bought the tickets to the football game. Football games are sort of a right of passage, I went to nearly every home game for 5 years and can honestly say, I'm not sure I ever once sat on the bleachers for an entire game. It was for socializing...or in my case, sneaking in to the woods to make out.

Yes, here I was the girl who hadn't even had her first kiss standing in the woods on that chilly September night making out with a boy I called my boyfriend. It was awkward at first, my hands were cold, from nerves and from the temperature and I didn't know where to put them. He wasn't much more adept at the whole thing but we fumbled around and figured it out. I suppose practice makes perfect. As time passed he worked up his nerve and attempted to go up my shirt...except in my infinite wisdom I'd worn a body suit. It was my favorite outfit, the one I thought flattered my 13 year old body. My jeans that fit just right, body suit snug against my curves (or lack there of) and of course the standard flannel shirt. Not willing to give up his hand moved through my sleeve, except there really isn't much room to those shirts...not matter, he settled for cupping my breast over my clothes. It was strange and not entirely unpleasant but strange none the less. My friend and her boyfriend weren't far away, with a similar situation going on. We'd later sit and laugh and swap notes and contemplate what people would think if they knew. These were the girls we were, we weren't trying to play the popularity game, we weren't trying to get boys to like us...we were simply going with whatever happened and trying to figure it all out as we went, in our own way.
It was a time of firsts, it was a time of innocence, of joy and pain, of laughter and heartache...and a time I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

That same boyfriend broke up with me not long after that night. We joked as the football season went on that he took a new girl in to the woods each week. For roughly 4 hours my heart was shattered, I cried, I sobbed. I sat in front of my mirror attempting to do something with my hair, curling the out of control bangs that were just so "in" and giving up and throwing myself on my bed. My best friend called, she convinced me to finish getting ready and go to the dance as we'd planned.

And that my friends, is where I met my first official rebound boyfriend. Yes, even at 13, there was a rebound guy.