Kaylin Mahoney
When you’re young and in love, talking to you is like huffing and puffing on a brick wall because nothing is going to budge. My family learned this firsthand trying to warn fifteen year old me about the boy I had fallen for. I get my stubborn pride from my father and my forgiving heart from my mother, but these traits betrayed me in my adolescent relationships. We started out as friends so when I lost my first love, I had to learn what every person has to learn; to be my own best friend and my own greatest love. Everything was easy with him in the beginning, the natural flow of teasing each other and whispering secrets late at night was intoxicating. Then, when it finally came, our first kiss was movie material. Walking home from a Halloween party early on a crisp, wispy November morning we hopped the fence to the high school football field, falling onto the fake turf. We could see our own breath while we howled with laughter right before he leaned in.
Loving him felt dangerous, but I could never pinpoint exactly why that was. He didn’t start to seem dangerous until six months into the relationship, but even then, he looked like an angel on the outside. The blonde hair that covered his pale blue eyes, the way he hid his gapped teeth when he smiled, even the raised red scars trailing his left arm. He looked more haunted than hateful.
It was the little things he’d do, like walk me to every class and make sure I’d eaten enough each day. It was always the little things that convinced me to stay. It was him sneaking me out for midnight misadventures and how he would find any excuse to touch me because he said it made us more connected. His love language was touch, but it wasn’t always gentle. It took my years to learn not to flinch after him. He could cheer me up better than anyone though. He always knew how to make me feel appreciated and beautiful, I never thought I’d find someone like that back then. High school insecurities kept me dependent on his attention, almost addicted. But after a while, the little things just weren’t enough, they weren’t sweet reminders of how much he cared, they were guilty apologies for the times he didn’t.
The cupcake phase lasted six beautiful months before turning stale. The change was immediate, the day he stopped taking his mood stabilizers it was like something had swallowed him whole and he had rotted at its core. He became more irritable and aggravated, he stopped going to classes entirely, and his anxiety snowballed into manic paranoia. Nights he used to cry were suddenly nights he would scream. It had always been the little things, those little powder blue pills. Once he flushed those, there was no going back. I was now promoted to his girlfriend/full time therapist.
Relationships are like boats on the sea. Some days the sea is stirring with life and love you could dip your fingers into and touch. Other days it is turbulent and unforgiving, the creatures lurking below the surface one’s you only see in textbooks. In the boat, you can choose to put on your life jackets and paddle to safer waters, finding a rhythm in each other’s chests. Or you can throw the oars overboard and wait till the storm passes, growing sicker of each other each time the waves sigh beneath you until you finally hit the sand. Instead, he chose to chain an anchor to our ankles and plunge into ice cold waters, drowning me with him.
For my sixteenth birthday he gave me a special present; a small, blue, handcrafted pipe. He knew I didn’t smoke weed; I knew he did. But I tried it, and I liked it. It had more to do with the ritual than the high. Finding a sacred spot. Packing the bowl. Flicking the lighter. It had a hypnotic rhythm to it. And the smell. It wasn’t good or bad, it just existed and clung to your clothes like a bonfire. He liked the release, the escape more. Every time I tried to bring it up, he’d become furious, threatening to kill himself and lashing out at me. So eventually, I stopped bringing it up. I was too young to know what else to do.
My father used to ground me from seeing him, my mother would tell me things I didn’t want to hear. It was exhausting rebelling and refusing every day. Packing clothes for the next day, sneaking out at unholy hours, running two miles to his house, and texting my parents I had to get to school early for a project. I was lying so much you would think I liked it.
In school, to pass the time when we got bored, we would write each other love letters, going off on tangents and doodling on the edges. Even at sixteen it felt childish and cliché, but I didn’t mind it back then. In between classes, we’d exchange the letters without anyone noticing our hands touch, it was exciting to indulge in something so intimate while our peers’ eyes were glued to their cell phone screens. It felt like being in a Taylor Swift song.
When he got drunk, I never knew what version of him I was getting. The longer he went without his meds, the more and more often it was the violent version of him. A tornado of random mass destruction; breaking bottles, grazing his arms with the shards, turning towards me with flames in his eyes, and painfully pinning me down on the bed. But in the morning, he’d make pancakes and we’d pretend everything was normal. In my heart I knew I was hurting, but he had my head so confused I couldn’t focus. How do you tell someone you love that they are poisoning you?
I think it took five tries before it finally stuck. Even then came constant phone calls from him asking “Why would you”, from mutual friends asking “How could you”. Those who knew the full story, those who didn’t, all they saw was his descent into drug addiction while I began to look healthier. He was looking weight, turning into a skeleton and I was gaining weight getting color back in my cheeks.
A year later, I was packing up my math notebooks when my teacher sat down in the desk next to mine. The bell had rung, my peers had scattered, and I was the only one in the room. Sit down, she said as my heart plummeted. Had I bombed the test, or missed an assignment? Was I in trouble? Slowly, carefully constructing her words, she told me how proud she was to see that I wasn’t hanging around that boy so much. I had never had this teacher before, but she had often seen me cornered in the hallway crying with him standing over me. She had always wanted to step in but never knew the right words. Her kindness meant a lot to me, even unacted upon her want to help allowed me forgive myself for abandoning him. She wasn’t the only person to say something like this to me, but her concern stood out to me. Even a stranger had a clearer view of my first love than I did.
What I wish I could tell him is that I’m not angry with him anymore. I wish that he knew that from where ever I am, I am rooting for his success, his recovery, his happiness. He helped me realize I am never alone in this world and I hope he has learned it too. I still write letters, I still dedicate poems to him, conversations to him. He is not just the baggage I have to carry-on or the awkward exes talk with each new partner. He will be a part of the person I am and those I trust will know his name as well. The good, the bad, and the ugly.