That summer…
1990…
Such a blur of color and sound, sun & cigarettes, booze & boys & parties & beaches & laughter & tears and just –
Fucking hell – wild abandon.
I quit college a year and a half after starting. As I said in my last post… I shouldn’t have been there in the first place. I wasn’t in the right mindset for college. Didn’t really know what I wanted out of life, not for real, and had no real passion for it. And without that, you honestly shouldn’t be there. It’s a money and time-suck if you don’t give 100% of everything you have to it.
And I didn’t have 100% of anything to give.
I was really only functioning on about 78%, myself, at any given moment… not that I was aware of that fact.
(I’ve changed that percentage number twice, lowered it, actually, because I realized just how little I was emotionally coherently functioning that summer)
After they brought me home from my college town, they tried to put me in therapy. It was a miserable failure.
I don’t know if it was because of the therapist they chose, or what they told him, but it was a train-wreck.
I walked in to that first visit, thinking I would maybe give it a chance, that maybe, finally, someone would hear me.
And the first words out if his mouth were…
“So your parents tell me you think you were molested,”
As if I were making it up, lying, or delusional.
Fucking train-wreck on fire, I was all done after that. I wasn’t going to tell him SHIT. He could fuck ALL THE WAY OFF.
And that was the end of therapy.
[and you have NO idea how difficult this post has been to write. All you see are the results. This shit – days – it’s taken days – and that’s not me. I’m “off the cuff girl”]
(Yanks self back on track)
I won’t lie. That summer? Best fucking fun of my life.
I have a million snapshot memories of that summer, lodged in my head. Smoky bonfires, sparkling lakes & rivers, scorching heat while laying on a rocky beach, smoking & stubbing out cigarettes in the sand, waiting for a tan…and the end of a hangover.
Snapshots of laughter, of rides in cars, cruising up & down main at speeds so slow, you could walk faster than the car was moving; memories of loud music, long hair & short skirts, dancing under gushing rain gutters on main street, not caring if makeup smeared & we had to drive home damp, later.
Snapshots of going to sleep after the sun came up, and getting ready for the day, only a handful of hours later.
Dancing wherever and whenever we damned well felt like it, because we just didn’t fucking care.
Snapshots of late-night conversations, of kissing in the dark, of a boyfriend… One I fell for so quickly… He was funny and smart. Sweet, and sexy & kind; older than me & treated me well. You can’t just do that to someone looking for self-destruction. I wanted to curl up next to him and not move again, because it was safe being fun and happy with him. I scared myself so badly… I ran, and ran, and ran.
I was an awful girlfriend. I know that now. I hid from him, wouldn’t answer the phone, asked my parents to lie when he called, refused to talk to him. In my head… I made excuses for myself.
It all kind of culminated one rainy day, when he stopped my friend & I, tried to get me to talk to him, and I ran off again, down the street, into the rain, as fast as I could. I was such a coward.
He didn’t follow, didn’t chase, so I vindicated myself once again, inside my head. I wasn’t enough for anyone, wasn’t worth it.
So… Fuck it.
I ramped up the wild side.
Threw all caution and common sense to the wind, and went completely berserk.
I slept around, drank…oh gods, probably my body-weight at the time, in booze. Mostly beer, because that’s what was cheap. But, whatever was available? I drank it.
I thought about trying drugs.
I did.
I had them – SO easily available. The town I hung out in was HUGE in drugs, and I knew most of the druggies. They might not have been my besties, but, they knew my name, & that I wouldn’t rat them out. We knew some of the same people, hung at the same parties, small town, you know the drill.
But – I didn’t.
I honestly, truly, never did try drugs. Not even so much as a hit of weed, or even so much as one pill of anything.
I saw – wow – I saw shit involving drugs I can honestly say I never expected. Shit I won’t elaborate here, because it’s past, it won’t do anyone any good, so why do anyone harm?
But I never touched them myself.
I thought about it. I was tempted.
And if it hadn’t been for my best friend, at that point? I’d have done them. I would’ve. I’d have caved.
Why?
Because I saw NO FUTURE.
All I saw for myself at that point was a black wall, and I was speeding towards it.
I was driving the car inside my head, and I kept mashing the pedal to the floor. I wanted it over.
I just – wanted all of everything – over.
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