Being Single For the First Time Since I Was 13 - Part 1
It would be all too easy to blame my serial dating on my parents' very messy, very public divorce. It would be all too easy to cite an over-generalizing quote by Sigmund Freud concerning paternal issues. It would be all too easy to overanalyze my situation and claim that, in my relationships, I look for the love that my parents, after twenty-seven years of marriage, let go of. It would be easy, but it would also be unfair and just plain wrong. After all, when I met my first boyfriend, Michael Negie of Donna Klein Jewish Academy, I was only five-years-old and my family still went on vacations to Club Med together and ate dinner promptly at 6 o'clock each night. No, this obsession, this addiction, seems to be something innate inside of me. Being in a relationship is, if nothing else, my natural state—it's what feels comfortable to me. For the first time since I was thirteen, I am actively fighting against this. At 19 years old, I am single and I am terrified.
My first boyfriend might have been Michael Negie (he was also, technically, my first husband—we got married on the playground. The bride wore Gymboree and the groom wore Baby Gap), but my first relationship was with Jeff Alden. We began dating in the winter of eighth grade, our relationship consummating at the Annual Eighth Grade Winter Dance and developing into a sweet, innocent connection. Our mothers would drive us to the movie theatre and we would blissfully hold hands. We would ride our bikes to each other's homes and sit across the room from one another, petrified to touch the other one. Sometimes, if we were feeling particularly confident, we would engage in the kind of kiss that is typically reserved for PG movies or television shows on The Disney Channel. It was all sweet fun. We said "I love you" without any concern for the gravity of those three little words. We had no concern for anything. I was actually the one to end things with Jeff. I broke up with him the summer before entering high school—"I want to be single in high school," I remember telling him. "I want to be able to go out with my friends and not have to worry about having a boyfriend." I was certainly lying to him, but I don't remember if I was lying to myself as well—I don't remember if this is something I actually believed or if I just wanted to be with someone fresh, someone new.
It became very clear very early on that being single in high school was not in the cards for me. The first day of my freshman year I locked eyes with a boy two years my senior. "I must meet him," I told my friends. I didn't know anything about him—not that his name was Jake Giorgio, not that he drove a shiny red car without a single concern for speed limits, not that he did not have a single concern for any limits, and not that he would break my heart in a way I wasn't aware it was capable of breaking.
I met Jake formally at the Homecoming Dance, which, at the time, felt like the most important event in the world. At the time, I was having difficulty adjusting to high school—my group of friends had shifted, my father had recently moved out, and I was having difficulty in my classes, but when Jake asked me to slow dance, all of that faded away into oblivion. All that mattered was the way his arm felt draped around my waist. After the dance we began seeing each other daily, much to my mother's concern. She did not approve of her youngest child dating someone older and, somehow, her disapproval made our relationship seem more significant. I felt like we were part of some great love story—the two teenagers who had to sneak out in the middle of the night to steal kisses from one another.
Jake was the first person I fell in love with. His was the first body I got to know as well as my own. His was the first brain I got to know as well as my own. Everything that happened with Jake was incredibly intense; from our first passionate kiss in his shiny red car to our first passionate fight in his bedroom. Our relationship ended just as it began—fast. One moment we were lying in his bed, holding hands and sharing secrets. The next moment I was finding out that he cheated on me and sobbing my eyes out in the way that you can only after your very first heartbreak. I remember blaming myself for him cheating on me. I felt that had I been prettier or smarter or funnier than he would not have felt the necessity to stick his tongue down the throat of another girl. It would take years for me to realize that his actions were a result of something within him, not anything having to do with me. There is that idiom about how it's "better to have loved and to have lost than never to have loved at all" and, while I generally agree with the idea that it's better to feel pain than no emotion; it's better to have heartbreak than complete numbness, I often wonder if my life and my views on relationships would be better had I not fallen so deeply in love with this boy who had a penchant for getting high in his attic alone (this made we want to save him) and ignoring me (this made me want to be better for him). Perhaps I would not be so dependent on having a romantic relationship in my life had my first serious one not been so complex, but, alas, it was and, alas, I am.
