Crazy, Hurt & True

            Fifteen. Awkward. Acne scars, baby fat, and growing boobs. Socially inept, desperate for a chosen family of friends with the same insecurities and bad taste in music. Not extroverted enough for the popular crowd, not brazen enough for the bad kids. Just introverted and new enough to slip through cracks and be invisible. I found my group of misfits. Outcast. Weirdos and dorks. Druggies. Cutters. Cigarettes and water bottles full of every clear liquor you can find in your dad’s unlocked cabinet. Still not weird enough to get truly bullied, but just enough to fit in one hundred percent. Chameleon since birth. Fake it ‘til you make it (this saying would come in handy only a year later). 

            Always looking for the perfect boy that would I would wish for on a burned-out star. Not realizing the quiet boy with a rare smile was the wish that was granted. Blurry vision and bloodshot eyes zero in on a blue-eyed artist that had serious mommy issues. He sold drugs. I liked drugs. Match made in heaven. My First Kiss, First Real High, First EVERYTHING. Within one month of dating My First Real Boy, we were holding hands in the back of a cop car. Got away with it. Got away with everything. 

            I lie. And lie. Drink, Snort, Repeat. Pretended to be good little Catholic girl. One year of dating. Blue eyes got arrested. Ninety meetings in ninety days. I didn’t have a problem he did. Thought I was the perfect girlfriend. Crying, drinking, high, rescue me. You’re the not the same person. Screamed it at him but really, we both changed. And because I was a talented chameleon, I fit in the rooms. I belonged. They were the chosen family. Sober at sixteen. GOOD NEWS! You get your feelings back. BAD NEWS! You get your feelings back. 

            What came with a clear head, was a smarter heart.                                                                                                                         Break up. Make up. Falling in love/lust with every girl he ever met. We need a break. Let’s open our relationship. Well, he saw EVERYBODY and I saw nobody. My best friends. My girls. My best friends “forever”.…my new unknown competition. Queen of the Universe to World’s Official Doormat. Sneaking sex in the most god awful places. Told to sit in the backseat while his new flavor sat in the front. Once they got sick of the idea of me being in the background…POOF! The girl in the box gone behind the smoke on stage. My deteriorating spine was starting to regenerate, and this starfish was going to swim alone. The Powers That Be put him in my life to get me sober. They took him out of my life to KEEP me sober.

And then…

Eighteen. Not as awkward. All the baby beer bloat sloughed off. Skin clear, but not without Kohl eyeliner filling in my eyes, like a Cleopatra out of rehab. Ugly ducking to a Swan. Two years sober. Shoulders high, forever present hoodie swapped for Hanes boy’s v neck white t-shirts cut at the mid driff, and too tight jeans. I was a puppy following Blue Eyes, listening to every command, accepting every treat, every punishment when not obedient. But one night under the Full Moon, I became a wolf. Danced with a man who was really too old for me, and very new to sobriety. His big, calloused hand from actual labor held out in front of me like a candy promising candy. Dance with me. No music. Just the crickets in the hot summer night in August, in an empty church parking lot, playing our song with no name. Stars. So many stars that begged for me to make a wish. The spell that man had casted over me lifted my very tired feet from the gravel beneath, and sent into a world of where fairy tales might come true.

Let’s be friends. Thought of myself as a martyr with that line every time I used it. It really was a cop out, and a way to make me feel better than just saying You’re an asshole and I don’t want to sleep with you anymore because all you do is cheat. Deep down though, I really didn’t want to hurt his feelings. I loved him. But I met The Clear Blue Sky under the moon, and danced until sun came up. Why have a little bit of blue, when you can have the whole damn sky?

First Love. First Everything. First Monster. The tongue that gave me my first clumsy French kiss, split into two. Calls over thirty times a day.

I love you.

You can’t break up with me.

We’re meant to be together.

You’re the only one that understands me.

You’re a slut. I’ll kill you. I could’ve slept with all your friends. I did sleep with all your friends. You’ll regret this. 

You’re so beautiful when you’re sleeping.

Woke up in my bed after a shower. Blue Eyes watching over me. Crying. Holding onto me with dear life. Anonymous calls to cops about The Clear Blue Sky selling drugs. Selling me. Planting substances in my car. Unknown chemicals in my gas tank. Flowers. So many flowers on my car windshield. Covered in spit. Feeding me that some one was after me. Naïve and still dumb enough to believe it wasn’t. feeling trapped in a cage, rattled by young love. The new man in my life ready to run for the hills.

Four months later. It was snowing. That quiet snow that was heavy, but peaceful. My phone rang for the tenth time and his name came up. I relented. Cops showed up at his house. They were into him and let him know.

His voice water logged from all the crying I didn’t think he was capable of.

I’m sorry. I’ll leave alone. I’ll never talk to you again.

And he didn’t. He kept his promise and disappeared. Relapsed. Took more girls as his hostages. Blue Eyes was my first. He showed me how love could be Crazy.

Clear Blue Sky was my knight of shining armor for two years. Devotion. Movie dates. Eating in the car watching the animals at Stew Leonard’s. Crazy sex in houses he was flipping. Dancing in the dollar store to Johnny Cash. Not drinking and going to meetings. Flowers on Halloween. Spit not included. Family loved him. A met fan who had adoration from Yankees fans.

But the sky doesn’t stay blue and clear forever. Sometimes the rain needs pour and the lightning needs to strike. Calls on his phone in the middle of the night. Not answering when I called. Connected so deep within each other that my stomach would drop just by looking at the time of the clock, thinking of him. The Full Moon stopped lighting our stage to dance and started to shed light on his true love. Love that was breathed in through a tiny glass pipe, that would shatter Our Fairy Tale. Relapses. Rehab. Starting over. Calling everyone we knew to help me find him. Shaking so hard from hearing his outgoing voicemail greeting, knowing his phone was turned off for a reason. Pain. Sobbing. Begging. Praying. Angry. Gullible. In love. On again. Off again.

I found him. Weeks of guessing where he was when he hid. Angry was my emotion, helping me drive my jeep with fury. But sitting outside that crackhouse, I exhaled a very tired breath. I called his phone not expecting him to answer. I found you. And he came out, lacking the soul I missed and loved so much. Weak. My bones were weak and sad was my emotion. Sad for the ghost that was sitting next to me.

My second love. My first of so many good things. The Clear Blue Sky showed me how love could Hurt.

Twenty-one. Still sober. A lone wolf trying to find a pack. Young people. They scared me. By the time I was seventeen I was really like thirty-seven. I gave up all my friends when I quit drinking, and never partied anymore and did actual teen-angy things. My sky was now gray and I was desperately searching for some kind of light. And then…

Online dating. Talk about a full on glamour spell. Creepy. Weird. Fun. No strings. Easy meet. A tall man, green eyes, shy smile, and not a liar. A hardcore kid at heart, dressed in a dress shirt and slacks. A car salesman. A CAR SALESMAN. Funny. Charming. Shy. Confident. Not sober. Not an Addict. Lived two hours away. Not too close so we could burn out. Calls that lasted for hours. No BS. He cheated in the past. I drank like a fish and used men. Our cards layed out. My body was a temple that he worshipped, but he was a God in my eyes.

He was in relationships before. I wasn’t the break-in girl for a man this time. I was all their firsts. Nothing like teaching a man that he could love someone else after you. We were planting roots. My perfect pumpkin patch.

And then my phone rang, and the Sky was calling me. Begged me. But I knew the magician’s tricks, even if he didn’t know them himself. Wished him the best. Didn’t think twice. Moving away from friends and family with a man that I knew was worth the change. 

Ten years later.

Thirty one. Still sober. Married. A little Buggy that has my brown eyes and his shy smile.

A haunted house.

A three-legged pitbull.

Debt.

Magic.

Our fairy tale.

Picnic white fences don't stay white forever. They weather the storms that come. Lot of sex. No sex. Deep and dark revelations of one another. Deep understanding. Compromise. No compromise. Death of friends. Family. People of who we were when we first met. Loving new versions.

Regrets. I have them. Could have done a lot instead laying myself down for men who were truly not willing to do the same. But it led me here. My yellow brick road that keep me going, holding hands with a Bear with green eyes. Tin Man, Lion, and Scarecrow included.

              The drinking. The groveling. The crying. The hurting. The fear. The pain. The growing. The feeling. LED ME HERE.

My Bear with Green Eyes showed me how

Love

could

and

can

be

True.