Writing in the night is all that feels right

There he was standing on my porch drawing on his cigarette. I panicked. My father would freak out if he saw this. He hates people who smoke and then I am going to get a lecture on all the health risks of cigarette smoking, and why I would be dumb enough to even consider going out with someone who took such risks.

    “Maybe you should go,” I say to him.
    “Ya I gotta get out of here anyway,” he says.
His golden brown hair and dark eyes starring back at me. My vagina getting wetter by the moment. I was in love with him. I was in denial. I didn't have time for love….not this kind of love anyway, not destroy your life and make you feel everything kind of love. My parents wouldn’t approve. He had no future. He was going to school part time at Columbus State and then working at Fed Ex. I would get a lecture on how I am throwing my life out the window by dating someone with zero ambition, which I couldn’t handle. I didn’t have the stamina to handle my parents disapproving of something else in my life. I was already under their constant surveillance. He smoked and drank more then anyone I knew, and my friends hated him, which is a different story entirely but needless to say none of them know that I am seeing him. As a matter of fact, I wasn’t even sure I was seeing him like what is he doing here…just randomly decided to swing by on a sunny afternoon. We only ever got together when I was drunk which was completely my doing. He messaged me all the time. He wanted to talk to me all the time. Truthfully I thought he was crazy. No one could possibly like me this much.
D E N I A L …..I was in complete and utter DENIAL.
    “Ok, well I will see you.” I said.
I gave him a hug and he left. I walked back into the house. My father was standing there.
    “It’s not serious.” I said, “So please, don’t even go there.
    “Ok.” my Dad said. “If you say it’s not serious, then I believe you.”
Whew, he bought it. Ugh bought what? We are just fooling around. We are just fooling around. We are just fooling around!! I keep telling myself this over and over again. No feelings involved. I can’t bring home someone like him. I have to go out with someone who is pristine, smart, insanely ambitious in their career, and hot (which is just for me because I can’t date someone who is ugly). But they have to approve! I cannot juggle something else in my life that isn’t good enough for them. They already constantly criticize my every move, although things were different now with college. I could lie about everything I was doing and they had no idea. It made things a lot easier on me. I always had so many expectations to live up to, perfect grades, perfect school, perfect clothes, perfect hair, perfect career which I had yet to decide on. I already caused such a huge disappointment by deciding to go to Ohio State, at least mostly with my Mom who insisted that I stay in Youngstown. My Dad did want me to go to a smaller school but he settled on Ohio State because it wasn’t New York. I really wanted to wanted to go NYU, and I could of most definitely have gotten in but I chickened out in the end. I didn’t think I would make it in New York, and the last thing I wanted was to end up back stuck in Youngstown.
    The truth is Jon was pure magic and I knew it. I knew it better then anyone. Through the baggy jeans, saggy hair, and cigarette smoke lied a beautiful soul. He was kind to everyone. He loved everyone. He treated everyone with respect including my friends even though they really weren’t that nice to him anymore.
    “You know he sleeps around,” my friend Anna would say.
    “So.” I thought. “Do you remember who you made out with last weekend? I think not!!” Oh wait, that might be me. And then that dumb boy actually had the audacity to approach me at the Mirror Lake Cafe.
    “Hey I tried to call you this past week but you didn't answer,” said random boy.
    “Oh, really? I didn’t see.”
    “Amberly!!” My friend Regina raced over to me. “I need to talk to you now!”
I turned and walked away trying to avoid his glaring stares.
    “I saw him from across the room and I tried to get to you sooner so we could dodge him, but I was too late,” Regina sighed.
     This was us…we were the good girls in high school. Straight As, top of the class, no sex, no drugs, no alcohol, and limitless possibilities lying in front of us. Now my innocence was slipping through my fingers faster then I could imagine. And it didn’t help that Ohio State was like a goddamn mecca. There were hot guys EVERYWHERE. Guys running around without their shirts off, sweating, playing volleyball, laying out on the lawn. And I was in the honors dorm where both men and women lived on the same floor because honor students supposedly weren’t as rowdy. Well fuck me now!!…I couldn’t get enough. The guys down the hall, pledged a frat and started inviting me and my roommates to their parties. My roommates didn’t like the parties but my high school friends came down from Youngstown and they were just as hooked as I was. The guys would be all over us going on and on about how gorgeous we were and dying to get into our pants. I was like a kid in a candy store and my mom just told me that I could have whatever I wanted!!
     Anna on the other hand wasn’t as excited and held back playing mother hen to all of us. It got annoying at times, although, I guess someone had to make sure we didn’t throw up on ourselves or pass out in the bushes. I am kidding. I NEVER threw up on myself and only passed out in guys’ beds. Actually that’s not true either, I never spent the night. I usually fooled around with them and then went home. I didn't like any type of commitment. I did spend the night with Jon though…..once. I fell asleep. It was an accident!! I jetted out of there the next morning though.
     I was terrified of love and furthermore I didn’t believe in it. I didn’t think anyone would ever love me for me. It was just…no one ever had. My parents weren’t really there for me. I didn’t talk about it to anyone and what’s worse is I portrayed the image of the perfect family, two loving parents, a daughter who made the honor roll with this bright future ahead of her. Everyone constantly told me how lucky I was to have so much. But it was all a bullshit. My Dad acted more like a dictator then my father. He worked all the time and I barely saw him. When I did he would yell at me or lecture me about the ways of the world, so we weren’t close. As a kid I wanted to go into dance but he did everything in his power to discourage that. I was artistic and open minded but that wasn’t acceptable to him. He pushed me into school and would ground me if I didn’t receive a B or above on a test. It was hard for me. I really didn’t like school and I felt very alone there. Not to mention Catholic school was no walk in the park. There was an insane amount of rules, and the other kids were really competitive and mean. I think we all had our guard up because we were treated so badly. I felt trapped like I was under a microscope at all times.
     My mother and I on the other hand were close when I was a kid, but as I got older things changed. I don't know if she just couldn’t deal with me growling up or if she just didn’t want to live that life anymore, but she really started criticizing my every move and randomly yelling at me. I became used to her moods being up and down. One second everything was fine and the next, she was screaming at me. We started to fight a lot and it would always end with her telling me she still loved me despite what I did. Her mood swings were of course my fault.
     This is how they both treated me, as if who I was and what I wanted didn’t matter. I grew up walking on eggshells and always feeling like something insanely horrible was going to happen if I didn’t play by their rules. So I basically gave them whatever they wanted, even if it went against who I was or what I felt. I wasn’t allowed to have an opinion and I was never allowed to be hurt by what was going on. If I spoke up, it was my fault for crossing them and I had to apologize. They never apologized to me, not once in 18 years.
So I didn’t believe in love because there was none, just an image that we handed to the world so that everything would be ok, even though it wasn’t. And more so, I created an entirely different person then the one I was in order to survive all of this. That was the person my family knew, the one my friends knew, the one everyone knew…..but it was all a lie. Underneath this sweet, submissive, rule abiding, good girl persona was someone dying to break free, to feel, to be alive, to do what I felt in every single given moment despite what other people thought or wanted.
     Enter Ohio State…..now I talked about the guys but I did’t explain the school itself or what the people were like. I grew up and up in a cut throat competitive world but this place was completely different. In fact, it was like day and night for me. My roommates were laid back chill people. They would go to parties in jeans and a t-shirt with a dab of makeup. I thought something was wrong with them. I didn’t know any girls who did this. All the girls I went to school with rolled out of bed like they just walked off the cover of an Abercrombie & Fitch magazine. I myself never went anywhere public without my hair done, nails done, make-up done, etc. More so, they weren’t mean. Now don't get me wrong it is not like they never said anything bad about anyone, but they didn’t try to sabotage people and bring them down. Actually mostly everyone at Ohio State was like this. They just wanted to live life and have a good time. This was shocking to me. I was so used people being at each other’s throats in competition and having to constantly compete myself, I was literally in cultural shock. I didn’t completely talk about this at the time because I didn’t understand really what was going on. But I felt like a fish out of water. I had no idea how to just be happy….to just be OK. As a matter of fact, I still don’t.
     These people started to break down the barriers that I spent years building up. Slowly the real me began to unfold. The wildness, the craziness, the life began to seep our of my pours but the lies ran deep and I couldn’t let go of everything I had ever known. I ran back to my high school friends and clung to them terrified of the freedom, I spent my whole life dreaming of.
     I dumped Jon…..I couldn’t take it. I couldn’t take his love for me and I couldn’t tell him the truth for I had barely come to terms with it myself.

     Ten plus years later, I am sitting on my bed crying. After years of drug and alcohol abuse, a multitude of sexual conquests, panic attacks, ADD, OCD, mental breakdowns, therapy, and mass amounts of pain, I am starting to wake up to who I really am.
     I completely severed the relationship with my parents. I couldn’t take it anymore, their judgements, their discerning comments, the constant criticism to live up to an image that they themselves have yet to attain. I tried talking to them multiple times about how I wanted our relationship to change, that I didn’t like the way in which they treat me, but they didn’t really want to hear it. So I decided to let go, give myself the love that my parents never gave me.
     My friends from high school, who I needed so badly at the time, have all drifted away, some through huge blowouts and others through natural changes in life, with the exception of one who was always judgement free.
     I realize I never left that moment standing on the porch trying to decide between my heart and my mind. I lost that day and everyday that I gave pieces of myself to other people….especially people who didn’t value me.
     This isn’t a story about a guy. This is a story about me learning how to love myself, to choose myself. He was what I wanted in the moment along with a multitude of other things, but every time I choose what was right for me, it seemed wrong for everyone else, my family, my friends. I choose my father in that moment and what he taught me to be right, but it wasn’t what was right for me. It took me a long time to realize that what my parents taught me was NOT ok, and the way they treated me was NOT ok. It is not ok to be disrespected or degraded….to be made to feel like who you are, what you want, the way you think, and what you feel are insignificant. And it is NOT ok to tolerate this treatment from ANYONE including family members. My parents have a value system that was built on lies and pain passed down from one generation to the next. And all I can say is this value system completely destroyed me and my capacity to love.
     I cannot really explain the mass amount of pain that I experience every day over what I have been through. I have anger, hate, sadness, rage. No one in family is more hurt by this situation then me. No one is in more pain, and no one has spent longer wishing, hoping, dreaming for a different reality then the one in front of me. But my father always said, “ You, can’t change people. People do not change.” What he was really saying is you can’t change me. I do not change. After 28 years, I finally got the message. It is his choice, I guess…….
But it is not mine.
     I choose more….more love, more hope, more freedom, more acceptance. I choose to change.