03.14.2017<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u00a0met my first husband in line for the bathroom at a St. Patrick\u2019s Day themed frat party twenty five years ago this month.\u00a0 With such an auspicious beginning, who would have guessed that it wouldn’t last? \u00a0I nearly didn’t meet him at all, as I was\u00a0about to leave the party because some\u00a0drunk frat boy had just smacked me on the butt.\u00a0 I realized my cup was empty when I went to\u00a0throw my green beer on him.\u00a0 I ended up shaking my cup at him and yelling, “Not nice!”\u00a0\u00a0while he laughed and shrugged\u00a0like, “Whoops, my bad!”\u00a0\u00a0It was time to go.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I didn’t want to ride the subway with a bladder full of green beer, so I got in the long bathroom\u00a0line and the guy in front of\u00a0me turned around, smiled\u00a0and said hi. I was going to smile vacantly and look through him, but I noticed that he looked kind of like Lloyd Dobler in Say Anything, which is a stupid reason to fall for someone, but I was\u00a020 and it was a good time to fall.\u00a0 I opened my mouth and something super sexy came out, \u201cI really have to pee, so don\u2019t stink up the bathroom or use up all the toilet paper.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0I was a sweet talking devil.\u00a0 How could he resist?\u00a0 He laughed and was waiting for me when I came out, so\u00a0we sat on a couch and started talking.\u00a0 I found out that he was not one of the\u00a0frat boys, but was\u00a0home on spring break from his college, which was four\u00a0hours away.\u00a0 Frankly, this made him even more attractive to me, as I tended to be far more enthusiastic about romances that seemed like they would be excitingly short-lived.\u00a0 It soon became clear to the fratties that\u00a0Lloyd\u00a0(not his real name, but let’s just go with it)\u00a0was not one of them, and they not-so subtly asked him to leave.\u00a0 He and I, along with my sweet roommate, who had been waiting while I chatted up Mr. Say Anything, got in a cab headed back to our dorm.\u00a0 My roommate was heading to bed and Lloyd asked me if I wanted to get coffee.\u00a0 I always say yes to coffee.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was\u00a0a magical night, lightly snowing and cold with a big bright moon giving off a glow that gave the trees and sidewalks\u00a0a sparkly luminescence. \u00a0I am not made of stone.\u00a0 How was I not going to fall in love with him?\u00a0 We walked to Harvard Square together and sat at the counter of a diner called The Tasty and had coffee and talked more.\u00a0 Elton John\u2019s Rocket Man started playing and he said his dad used to call him the Rocket Man and made him a t-shirt with the nickname emblazoned on it that he wore all the time when he was a little boy.\u00a0\u00a0After our coffee we went into the Store 24\u00a0and bought gummy worms and other candy that you can eat at 2 AM when you are 20, yet still avoid\u00a0heartburn\u00a0and belly fat.\u00a0 I saw a card that had a picture of a\u00a0chubby guy sitting at a diner counter and inside it said, \u201cmissing you\u201d and I told him he should buy it and send it to me and he bought it.\u00a0 Then we walked back to my dorm and sat in the lounge\u00a0watching MTV and\u00a0eating gummy worms and milk duds,\u00a0and\u00a0we talked on and on all night.\u00a0 When it was light out, we wrote our phone numbers on the back of a jello box (I seriously had eaten jello for dinner that night.\u00a0 How was I even alive with that kind of diet?) and then I walked him out.\u00a0 At the door he leaned in and kissed me and I remember it being this\u00a0monumental thing, where I thought, “Whoa….something big is happening.”\u00a0 Maybe it was lack of sleep and too much sugar, but that was the first kiss I\u2019d ever had where I saw fireworks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We spent nearly every day and night of the next week together and then he had to go back to school.\u00a0 I was sad that he was leaving, but it didn’t seem sensible to try a long distance relationship.\u00a0 The morning he left, we said that maybe we’d get together next time he was in town and\u00a0kissed goodbye. \u00a0I\u00a0was a\u00a0little relieved that it was over,\u00a0because the week with him had been way more intense than anything I’d ever experienced romance-wise and I felt like I needed to catch my breath.\u00a0 I was watching tv with my friends that night, when the phone rang and it was Lloyd, drinking at a bar near his school.\u00a0 He said, “I was wrong, I think we should give a long distance thing a try.\u00a0 I don’t want to wait and see.” I was surprised, but thrilled.\u00a0\u00a0I threw caution to the wind and said yes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Everything about love was so new to me.\u00a0 I’d had a couple of boyfriends before, but it had never been like this.\u00a0 It all seemed like magic.\u00a0 He wrote me letters from school and would draw me funny cartoons and write silly poems.\u00a0 He took a train and a bus and traveled a ridiculous amount of hours just to come see me every couple of weeks.\u00a0 We were crazy about each other and never seemed to run out of things to talk about.\u00a0 We came up with silly ideas and stories and laughed like\u00a0maniacs. \u00a0We made each other mix-tapes.\u00a0 Plus, we were both young and\u00a0adorable and having the type of sex that young people with endless energy, are limber and need very little sleep have.\u00a0 Lots and varied. \u00a0Ah youth.\u00a0\u00a0I found a way to stay in Boston for the summer while he was home from school\u00a0(four part-time jobs!) and we spent all of our non-work time together.\u00a0 We loved taking long\u00a0ambling walks through the city.\u00a0 Sometimes we’d ride the subway to\u00a0a stop we’d never been to, then get out and walk around for hours.\u00a0The first time he asked me to marry him, we were on a late night walk,\u00a0 just four months after we met.\u00a0\u00a0Our summer together was ending in a matter of weeks and we were both starting to get anxious.\u00a0\u201cWe should get married!\u201d he said and I just laughed.\u00a0 But he stopped and spun me around so that he was looking in my eyes and said, \u201cI\u2019m totally serious.\u00a0 Let\u2019s get married.\u201d\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cBut we can\u2019t!\u00a0 We\u2019re too young!\u201d\u00a0 I said.\u00a0 I adored him more than I\u2019d ever adored anyone in my life, but I had no interest in being a wife.\u00a0 I still had two\u00a0more years of college. \u00a0He said we could do it and still finish school.\u00a0 Maybe we could just secretly get married,\u00a0 and we wouldn\u2019t even have to tell anyone? That idea actually appealed to me.\u00a0 I like secrets and I am prone to doing ridiculous things on a whim.\u00a0 We didn\u2019t do it, though.\u00a0 Before he left to go back to school he bought me a gold ring with a little heart-shaped amethyst stone in the center.\u00a0 \u201cWill you wear it on your left hand?\u201d he asked.\u00a0 \u201cI want everyone to know you are mine.\u201d\u00a0 That sounded like passionate adoration to me back then. I was all in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We should have done it.\u00a0 We should have made that spectacular mistake early.\u00a0 Gotten it out of the way and been divorced before we could\u00a0do any major damage to each other.\u00a0 Instead we had a long distance relationship while we were in college, then moved to Texas together so that he could go to graduate school.\u00a0 He asked me to marry him again when we’d been together 6 years.\u00a0 This time it wasn’t romantic.\u00a0 We’d been growing apart and fighting more and more.\u00a0 And then he had a health scare, something minor that seemed major, and when we got back from\u00a0the doctor he said, “Maybe we should get married?”\u00a0 And I said, “Sure, why not?”\u00a0 And we tried to plan a wedding, but neither of us was really interested, so we flew to Vegas and got hitched in the Chapel of Love.\u00a0 Maybe it was an attempt to get back to the days when we were younger and frivolous and did wild things together.\u00a0\u00a0Eloping in Vegas is some wild and crazy fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadly, I’d say that was the last time we ever had crazy fun together.\u00a0 Things quickly went to shit after that.\u00a0 The jealousy and possessiveness I’d mistaken for passionate love in him was starting to smother me.\u00a0 He\u00a0seemed to\u00a0disapprove\u00a0of everyone in my life: friends, family, anyone that took my focus off of him.\u00a0 I somehow thought that marriage would make this better, that he would feel more secure and loosen up a bit, but it seemed to make it worse.\u00a0 Two months after we married, we had a huge fight where he was angry at me for talking on the phone with my sister when he wanted me to watch tv with him.\u00a0 He yelled at me and punched a wall, and I grabbed our car keys and took off.\u00a0 I drove around aimlessly thinking, “I’ve made a huge mistake and I am going to need to get out of this marriage.”\u00a0 But I stuck it out for two more years.\u00a0 I always loved him and I kept hoping that the stress of both of us being in graduate school was our biggest problem.\u00a0 We still seemed really compatible, as long as I didn’t spend too much time away from him.\u00a0 And working full-time while going to grad school didn’t give me much opportunity for a social life, so things just went along for a while.\u00a0 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He was at the point in his\u00a0academic career where he was teaching his own classes, while working on his dissertation.\u00a0 He seemed restless and unhappy. \u00a0He began telling me salacious stories about a colleague who was having an affair with a student and I was fascinated and repelled.\u00a0 Somewhere in the back of\u00a0my mind\u00a0it began to dawn on me that he knew way too many details about this affair.\u00a0\u00a0One day I came home from class and he smelled like a fruity shampoo that we didn’t own.\u00a0\u00a0He left to go play basketball\u00a0that evening and\u00a0without thinking, I logged into his email.\u00a0 I’m not sure what drove me to do it.\u00a0 I’d never done anything like that before,\u00a0but it was easy because his password was my name.\u00a0 I found a chain of his emails with a college friend of his, whom\u00a0he was supposed to be meeting in New Orleans that weekend.\u00a0 It\u00a0was all about\u00a0keeping a secret from\u00a0me.\u00a0 It said, “Don’t worry, I’ll tell her I’m with you if she calls.”\u00a0 And it ended with “Fuck your brains out this weekend!”\u00a0 So then I knew.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’m not saying I was perfect.\u00a0 I know I can be petty and mean.\u00a0 Conveniently, I can only rememer two instances\u00a0of my egregiously\u00a0bad behavior towards him.\u00a0 One was in college when we’d had a fight and I hung up on him, then\u00a0got all dressed up and went to a party.\u00a0 I met a guy and ended up making out with him in a bathroom stall, standing on a toilet.\u00a0 I thought it was hot at the time and\u00a0now I can’t believe I didn’t get flesh eating bacteria.\u00a0 The other thing is shitty, but not nearly as gross.\u00a0 Once he was sitting on our bed, shirtless and I went over and poked him in the belly and made that “hee-hee” sound like he was the Pillsbury Dough Boy.\u00a0 This seems way meaner to me now that my stomach will never be flat again, due to having three babies.\u00a0 These days, I’d cut somebody who poked me and made the Doughboy sound.\u00a0 Then I would cry.\u00a0 But at the time I laughed maniacally at him while he stared at me in horror.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Also,\u00a0that amethyst heart ring he bought me?\u00a0 I lost it.\u00a0 He had another one made for me a few years later and I lost that one too.\u00a0 I was appallingly careless back then.\u00a0 But it may have been symbolic.\u00a0 That ring and that\u00a0relationship sometimes made me feel smothered and I would take it off for a while to breathe and be myself again.\u00a0 I think I knew it wouldn’t last, but I still\u00a0hoped it would.\u00a0 Maybe he felt the same way.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I found out he was cheating, I was devastated and furious.\u00a0 I kicked him out of our apartment and\u00a0proceeded to\u00a0cut all of the crotches out of his pants and underwear, then folded them up in a box for him to take with him.\u00a0 Surprise, asshole!\u00a0 I threw out all of the love letters he’d written me in college, including the “missing you” card from the night we met.\u00a0 I gave him back my wedding ring and told him it didn’t mean anything to me and I never wanted to see it again.\u00a0 I held on to being angry, because when I wasn’t angry I felt more\u00a0lost and desolate than I ever had in my life.\u00a0 I divorced him, even though I still loved him, because I thought that he’d end up ruining me if I let him stay.\u00a0 I don’t think it was the wrong decision, but it was one of the hardest things I ever did.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I wish I hadn’t thrown out all of our love letters.\u00a0 I wish I hadn’t let my second husband convince me to throw out the three wedding pictures that I had from my time with Lloyd.\u00a0 I wish I hadn’t lost the heart rings.\u00a0 I have no physical evidence left of that relationship and sometimes it feels like it never really happened.\u00a0 I’m writing it down now, while I still have the memory to do so.\u00a0 It’s already flawed and missing pieces, but I can still remember that feeling of first real love, long\u00a0before things got so\u00a0sad\u00a0and ugly between us.\u00a0 It was\u00a0a pure and beautiful thing.\u00a0\u00a0He and I aren’t in\u00a0touch today.\u00a0 I\u00a0once ran into him at the gym\u00a0a few\u00a0years after we split and we had a nice conversation.\u00a0 I haven’t seen him since then, 12 or 13\u00a0years ago.\u00a0 I’m not really interested in knowing him now and I don’t want him to know me.\u00a0 But I am glad that he was my first real love and\u00a0also that he was my first real\u00a0heartbreak.\u00a0 The love\u00a0we shared opened me up to so many good things.\u00a0 When you’re in love, I think you learn to\u00a0be\u00a0generous,\u00a0kind and vulnerable in ways that you never have before.\u00a0 Maybe that’s why we keep doing it, taking the leap even though it can turn on you.\u00a0 It makes all good things even better.\u00a0 But the heartbreak from that relationship taught me that I was strong, brave and resilient and that I\u00a0was capable of picking\u00a0myself up and\u00a0moving forward on my own.\u00a0 It has been immensely helpful to know that in my life.\u00a0 I am grateful for all of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
03.14.2017 I\u00a0met my first husband in line for the bathroom at a St. Patrick\u2019s Day themed frat party twenty five years ago this month.\u00a0 With such an auspicious beginning, who would have guessed that it wouldn’t last? \u00a0I nearly didn’t meet him at all, as I was\u00a0about to leave the party because some\u00a0drunk frat boy … <\/p>\n