However, I do realize that there is power in the written word and putting your goals out into the universe, so here are my updated blog goals for 2013:

I drove for hours and by the time I got there I was having second thoughts, but it was too late and too far to turn around and go home. I didn’t feel much like partying at all, but maybe my friend was right. Maybe it would help to be around new people and get my mind off of the same conversations with Eddie that played on loop in my head. Maybe it was time to stop dwelling on what I could have done differently or how I could get him to come back and embrace the moment for a little while. Besides, what if he found someone else and never came back? Was I just supposed to mope around at home, a lady in waiting, until I received word from Eddie about whether or not I was good enough for him after all? Forget that.

My friend gave me a tour of the small house he lived in with a few friends. I remember being surprised that he had his own room. All of my other friends who were away at college had tiny dorm rooms that they shared with roommates. For some reason, this revelation of unexpected privacy seemed to seal our fate in my mind. Not that he had done anything at all to give me that impression, he was being a perfect gentleman.

He gave me some privacy to rest and get ready while they got the basement ready for their party. At one point he came up from the basement and found me near the top of the steps. He looked down at me and said, “I’m glad you came. You look beautiful.” Then he kissed me. I gasped, surprised, although his advance was not unwelcome. He pulled away quickly and apologized, saying I probably wasn’t ready for something like that and he didn’t mean to push me. We didn’t talk about it anymore and before I knew it the house was crowded.   

 I don’t think I drank anything. I probably did my patented “just walk around with an empty red Solo cup and pretend to take a sip occasionally so that people leave you alone and stop asking you why you’re not drinking” move. I tried to smile and be polite, but frat parties just really aren’t my scene. Mostly, I sat on a sofa and thought about the fact that someone who was not Eddie had just kissed me and I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Actually, I did know how I felt: I felt attractive and this was a big surprise to me and also a big relief. I had been spending a lot of time, money and energy getting my body to look the best it possibly could, and I was actually pretty confident about the way I looked, but I wasn’t used to getting that kind of attention from other men. Or any attention really.

In high school everyone knew me as “Eddie’s girlfriend” and no one would dare to come onto me. Since I went to a women’s college, there weren’t any men there either and my only other guy friends were Eddie’s friends from college. No one in any of those situations was going to be putting the moves on me.I wasn’t the type of girl to pick up random men in bars. So where was I going to meet anyone now that we were both supposedly out spreading our wings or whatever we were doing?

I realized that when Eddie left I had been scared that I didn’t really have any other prospects, whereas he was literally surrounded by thousands of women at College Park and he’s never been one to have a hard time making friends. I have always had a irrational insecurity about just being myself. I’m scared that once people really get to know me they won’t like me any more. It makes me shy and reserved. Eddie leaving really brought it front and center and made me scared that if even he didn’t like me enough to stay then no one ever would. Having a friend who knew me well confirm that I was still likeable was a big relief. Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to articulate that to myself until I was standing in dingy basement counting the minutes until yet another tedious fraternity party would end.

Every fraternity party at every college is the same. A bunch of people stand around a basement taking turns playing beer pong, which people claim is a ton of fun, but is really just bouncing ping pong balls into cups. The guys drink from a keg and the girls are supposed to drink something called “jungle juice” that is a disgusting mixture of cheap alcohol and Kool Aid or juice. Then people make a lot of bad choices and wake up in the morning feeling like they have the flu. When you are in college these parties are labeled “having fun” and attendance is mandatory if you want to be “anybody.” If you have ever had actual fun, you probably know that it generally does not involve drinking mystery substances in a dirty basement then spending half the night in line for an even dirtier bathroom. I don’t know how many fraternity parties I endured in college, but there were a lot of them. This one was pretty much par for the course.   

That night, like he said he would, my friend gave up his bed and made himself a makeshift pile of blankets on the floor. He listened to me for hours talking about how I lost the person I thought I was going to marry. It had been a little less than a year since I had done the same thing for him.

He apologized again for kissing me earlier. I told him not to be ridiculous. His friendship meant a lot to me and it made me feel good to know someone else could see me the same way Eddie did.

Then I invited him back into his own bed.

We kept seeing each other for a few weeks. I guess you could call it dating, although we didn’t call it that. We both realized fairly quickly that it just wasn’t going to work between us. Finally, one day we sat in his car and had the “What exactly are we doing here?” discussion.  

I told him that I didn’t think this was going to work because the distance was too far and he had any number of girls fawning over him all the time, football star that he was. One in particular I met once when he took me to the pool hall. She was head over heels in love with him and being very obvious about it. She invited herself over the minute she found out he was there with me. I wasn’t interested in playing the role of a jealous long-distance girlfriend and I told him so. He laughed at me and told me to just admit what it really was already.

“Yeah, yeah, all that. And you’re not over Eddie.” He was smiling, without a trace of hard feelings.

“I will never be over him.” It was a simple statement of fact. It wasn’t that I had rushed into something too soon or that I didn’t like this person I was seeing. It was just that nobody else would ever be Eddie.

“You have to try to work it out with him. If I could go back and save my own relationship I would, but that’s over. You and Eddie? That’s not over yet.” It was a big deal for him to say something like this, considering the intense dislike that he had for my ex-beau.  

“How do I even do that? How do I save it?”

“I have no idea, but probably not like this,” he waved his hand back and forth in the space between the two of us, indicating our connection.

I knew he was right. I also knew that it meant I would probably never see him again if things worked out with Eddie.

It was the first time that I ever had to make a conscious choice to walk away from a friendship I that I truly valued.   

It hurt, but I did it. I turned and walked away, towards the past that I hoped would also be my future.

I haven’t seen him or spoken to him for about eight years, but don’t worry about my friend. He married the girl from the pool hall.

Part 9

This particular part of our love story is rated R and not intended for either of our mothers. Moms, we were both prefect all the time, I swear. Now stop reading. I’m serious. And don’t let any teenagers read this either.

Mom, if you are still reading, gouge out your eyeballs. You have been sufficiently warned.

It was August 2001 and I was at cheerleading camp. The sessions were over for the day and we were sitting in the stifling dorms, which did not have air conditioning. Every night we would pull our pillowcases out of the mini-frig in our room and settle in for girl talk.

“You’ve been with Eddie for how long now?”

“15 months.”

“That has to be, like, the longest relationship in the history of high school. I can’t believe you haven’t slept with him yet.”

“We’ve done…stuff.”

“Hand stuff under a blanket while you are watching tv doesn’t count. He’s a guy. They have needs. He’s not going to wait around forever. You always said you wanted to wait a year before you slept with a boyfriend. It’s been longer than that. Plus you love him.”

And that was the crux of the problem. Eddie was always respectful of my boundaries and never pushed me to do anything more than kiss, but we had been dating for a very long time and we were seniors now. We were among of the last of our peers still holding on to our virginity. Ironic, seeing as how we were two of the few in a committed, long-term relationship.  Virginity loss was a very hot topic of conversation and everybody’s was everybody else’s business.

I knew that according to the rules, we were supposed to get married first, but it seemed like a guideline that no one followed, like how people say you should to go to church every Sunday but magically all the pews are empty when it’s time for the Super Bowl.

I spent a great deal of time rationalizing the idea of sex. “When they wrote the Bible people got married at like age 13, we’d have already been married 3 years by now.” Or “In some cultures in other countries they don’t even have to go through a legal marriage, they just vow a commitment to each other and we’ve already done that. So, technically, we are totally already married in some remote African village somewhere.“  Or “I already know we are getting married eventually. So that means that our marriage will be still be ‘undefiled’ or whatever, no matter when we get started.” Or “Penguins don’t get married and God lets them have sex.” <—Deep thoughts from the hormone-driven brain of a teenage girl, right there.     

We weren’t afraid of STDs because we were both virgins. As terrible as it sounds, I wasn’t scared at all to get pregnant at 17. I already knew Eddie would be an amazing father one day. It was one of the things that made want to stay with him forever. I knew I was going to marry him and I knew that one day he wanted kids and he wanted them with me. I knew it in my gut like it was an indisputable fact. We were both smart enough to know that we wanted to get through college before we got married and started having babies and we thought knew enough to be able to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.  We talked about the possibility of an accidental pregnancy at length and we decided we both had enough skill sets to be able to find jobs and raise a baby together, although we realized it would be harder to do it as teenagers.  

Really, the only deterrent was our religion. Hence, all the time I spent rationalizing. Eventually my 17-year-old self decided that God made me a sinner and that was His own fault. Sex was a lot different than murder. Why should I sit around pre-meditating this kind of sin? It’s easier to beg forgiveness than ask permission, especially from God. (Quite a thought process, no? Did I mention that I was a teenager?)

It wasn’t long before an opportunity presented itself. It was August 25^th. A good friend was house sitting and decided to throw a small party. I got permission to stay with her under the excuse that I wanted to keep her company so that she wouldn’t be lonely in an unfamiliar place or by herself overnight. I omitted the bit about the party, naturally. I had never given my parents any reason not to trust me, so they let me go.  

I finished my shift at my part-time job waitressing at IHOP and drove half an hour to the house.

Half of the senior class was already there drinking Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Smirnoff Ice.  I was never a big drinker, but I thought I might need one that night. I accepted the bottle that someone handed to me and took tiny sips. The music was turned up too loud and our friends were starting to get rowdy.  I hate crowded spaces and I was getting desperate to get somewhere quiet.

Eddie appeared out of nowhere. He started over to meet me in the kitchen and as he walked through the room someone catcalled and waved a string of condoms in front of him, mockingly. He arched an eyebrow and accepted them. The roars of applause coming from our peers were thunderous.

“Holy s—! They’re finally going to do it!”

Ground, please swallow me now.

“Who wants to play strip air hockey?” Someone called up from the basement.

“I do,” I heard my own voice volunteering. Just get me out of this room. I’ll take my chances with the air hockey table.  

I am normally a more than decent air hockey player, but not that night. Every time I lost a piece of clothing I got more flustered and played worse. Eventually I found myself topless in a basement, surrounded by several of my drunk classmates. Not my proudest moment. At least I can rest in the knowledge that before I had children I was blessed with truly spectacular boobs and, thanks to that night, there are a few more people in this world who can attest to that fact.

 I was confident about my body. Between cheerleading, dance, tumbling lessons, and tennis I took really good care of it at the time. But I was embarrassed that so many people had already seen so much of it that evening.   

I put my clothes back on feeling like I should have had more to drink when I had the chance.

“Do you want to go upstairs?” I turned to Eddie, willing him to get me out of the extremely awkward situation I had put myself in.

Of course, that meant the catcalls from our peers started up again immediately.

He tried to lead me away from the chaos by heading upstairs to one of the bedrooms. Like a scene from a less funny version of American Pie, several of our so-called friends followed us and waited impatiently outside the door, banging and sticking their fingers through the crack between the door and the floor. They made idle threats to break in and take pictures. It was the epitome of class, obviously.  Everything I had always imagined it would be. Hearts and flowers all the way.

None of it mattered when he looked in my eyes.

“Are you ok? We don’t have to do this. We can just make some grunting noises for a few minutes and make them think we did so they will shut up.”

“I don’t want tonight to be about them.”

“Ok. I love you.”

“I love you too.”

“Are you sure about this?”

“I really think I am.”

“You didn’t drink too much?”

“No, I only had one and I didn’t finish it.”

“You can always tell me to stop.”

And then I was on my back and looking up at him in wonder, kissing him and hearing him whisper “I love you.” Over and over again like a record stuck on the most soothing sound imaginable.

“Eddie?”

“What is it, baby?”

“Stop.”

Just look at these two love birds at the Senior Prom.

Part 6

The next day was Friday. It was the end of the school year and there were a lot of assemblies and various other ways to avoid being in the classroom. For one such assembly we had to perform the dances we had done at King’s Dominion for the entire school. Eddie had volunteered to be our “Cold Hearted Snake” again. I was waiting backstage with Nicki and some other dancers when he came up to us, ready for the performance.

Before I knew it we were kissing. REALLY kissing. This was not the chaste and awkward pecks that I expected from him. He was full-on making out with me. In front of people. By this time I knew that the reason he had dumped me the previous year was because he didn’t want to be seen with me in public-it might have hurt his fragile reputation and all- so I was completely taken by surprise.

It wasn’t a particularly good kiss (It was awful, actually, sorry honey.) but it certainly proved he had gotten over that issue.

I didn’t want to get in trouble (we got demerits for public displays of affection) so I pulled away quickly.

“What are you doing?” I whispered, curious and not sure whether or not I was more irritated that he pounced on me in public without warning or that we clearly weren’t going to be compatible kissers. Also, if you recall, I didn’t even really like him all that much so I was a little put off.  

“Just saying ‘hi’ to my girlfriend.” Huh. That sort of had a nice ring to it. Maybe.    

He moved to stand behind me and draped his arms over my shoulders, resting his chin on the top of my head. That was better. It was kind of nice, actually. I liked that he was a full head taller than me. Did he just kiss the top of my head? What is going on?  

Nicki looked at me in complete shock. Word had traveled quickly around our small school, so by lunch everyone already knew we were “going out,” but this seemed pretty heavy for the first day. I looked back with wide eyes and raised my eyebrows, giving her an unsure smile. I tried to shrug, but his arms were heavy on my shoulders. I gave her a look that said, “I have no idea. Apparently I have a new boyfriend who is really into PDA and we do this now.”

We did our dance and afterward he brought me a small bouquet of flowers.

Where did he even get those and what am I supposed to do with them in the middle of the school day?  

“I heard that people give dancers flowers after dance recitals.” He seemed shy. That was certainly a first.

“Thank you. That’s…sweet.” Where would he hear that? From his mom? Has he been talking to his mom about me?

“I promised it would be different than last time,” He tried to explain the reason he was coming on so strong so fast.

“So far you are really keeping that promise, huh? This is different.” I was tentative, monotone, still not sure if I liked this new approach. I looked at the ground and twisted the toe of my jazz sneaker into the gym floor.  

“I will always keep my promises. You’ll see.” He stepped toward me and reached his hand out to touch my face, lifting my chin with his bent index finger.  

He kissed me again, softer. Better. Maybe we could work with this after all.

When he walked away I was surprised to be left breathless and vaguely disappointed. I didn’t want to be away from him.

At that moment I already knew I was in trouble. I didn’t have a choice in the matter. This boy was going to make me fall in love with him.   

Part 4

I miss my husband and I’ve been meaning to blog our love story like I’ve seen so many other bloggers do, so I thought that for the next week or so, while we wait for him to return from his mission trip and I have some extra time on my hands, it would be fun (for me, I don’t know about you) to take a break from my regularly scheduled programming to write it out. Here goes Part 1…

The First Kiss

It was a Saturday afternoon in November, 1998.  We were freshmen and our honors English class was studying Romeo and Juliet. (I realize that there is no cheesier way to start a love story than that sentence, but that’s what happened.) The class had been divided into groups of four and told to select a scene.  Our group decided that for our project we would take the balcony scene and act it out in two different eras, to illustrate that the story was timeless. Lauren and Gene would dress in costume and do it, as written, live in the classroom. I was shy and uncomfortable speaking in front of people, so the group decided that Eddie and I would record a video of ourselves acting out a modern day version and play it for the class when it was our turn to present. We would film it at my house because, of all our limited choices for a location, my parents’ house was best-suited for the scene.  Lauren, our group member who had also been my best friend since the second grade, would be there to operate the camcorder.

 We translated Shakespeare’s words to the best of our ability and I stood on the back porch and listened to one of the most popular boys in our class confess his (scripted) love for me while my BFF caught it all on camera. I don’t remember anything about the actual filming other than having nervous butterflies. I’m no actress and I hate public speaking. And I really liked this boy. This was not news, though, EVERY girl in our class liked him. He was charming and flirtatious and funny and smart and, best of all, he was fresh meat. We attended a very small private pre-K- 12^th grade school and most of our classmates had been together since at least kindergarten. Eddie came along at the start of ninth grade. Throwing a new boy into the mix was like throwing one bone into a kennel with a dozen hungry dogs.   

Eddie was not just any boy. He was tall (a rarity among high school freshman) and tan and athletic and he was in the honors program with us. Sporty AND smart. He wasn’t going to stay single for long. All week I had been hearing things from other girls like, “You’re doing Romeo and Juliet with him? I would kill for that!” and “Do you think he’ll be in your bedroom?!”  I seriously doubted he would ever be allowed in my bedroom. I also seriously doubted he would ever like me. Sarcasm, bad hair, and diluted fashion sense I had in spades, but the ability to snag a popular boyfriend? Not so much.  

And yet, there we were an hour later. Maybe it was because Lauren was with us or because we were working on a school project, I don’t really know why. My parents had never allowed a boy in my bedroom before that and they never allowed it again, but that particular day we found the three of ourselves sitting on my bed, our project completed, waiting for my mom to finish doing whatever she was doing for my siblings until she could drive Lauren and Eddie home. The combination of boredom and adolescence only ever leads to one thing. So, naturally, we started playing Truth or Dare.

I always hated Truth or Dare, especially with boys. Answering the Truth questions was embarrassing and I was almost never brave enough to pick Dare. Lauren and Eddie took turns daring each other to do stupid things. After all, there are limited options in a teenage girl’s bedroom. “I dare you to try to squeeze into one of Steph’s shirts, Eddie.”  Or “I dare you to hold this binder clip on your nose for a full minute, Lauren.” Once it became clear that the dares weren’t going to be so bad, I felt a little braver. Also, I was willing Lauren with every fiber of my being to read my mind and dare him to kiss me or vice versa. She knew how much I liked him. Of course, like everyone, she liked him too, so that had about as much of a chance of happening as me daring him to kiss her.  

He looked at me and smiled.

“Steph? Truth or Dare?”

“Dare.”  The familiar anxiety started spreading in the pit of my stomach. Do not puke.

“I dare you to kiss…” Please say you. Do not say Lauren. Please say you. Please say you. Oh God, what if he does say him and he’s not talking about his mouth? I’m going to die. His eyes darted around my room, probably sensing my discomfort. There was a stuffed Dopey, the dwarf from Snow White, sitting on my pillow. “…Dopey.”

What? He’s daring me to kiss a stupid stuffed toy? Um…okay. That was the dumbest dare of all time. At least my anxiety was gone. I reached behind me, grabbed the toy, and gave it a quick kiss.   

 “That wasn’t much of a dare,” I teased him, finding my confidence again.

“Well…I’m pretty Dopey.” His eyes were kind and his tone was playful. Is he actually flirting with me?  

“You could kiss me?” He said it gently and looked directly at me with such sincerity. He was confident and sweet and clear in his intentions, but he asked like it was a question, as if he was putting the ball in my court and it was fine with him, whichever way I chose.

Holy crap. Did he just say that? Am I breathing?

I nodded slightly, titled my head, and leaned in to just one quick, awkward kiss between two teenagers.

One kiss that was the beginning of everything.  

Part 2