Teenage Heartbreak

Once upon a time, there was an adventurous 15-year-old Girl, but none of her girlfriends would do things with her.  She’d grown up having to ride her bike places or take the bus if she wanted to go anywhere; her parents didn’t chauffeur her around like most parents do these days.  It seemed like none of her friends ever wanted to come over or let her go over to their houses either.  She hated doing things by herself and longed for companionship.

She was shy and self-conscious, and like most girls, she thought she was fat and ugly.  Her new year’s resolution was to run every day, with the hope that maybe she could drop a few pounds.  The running stuck (but so did the pounds).  However, the secret to her dedication was a boy.

Two months after The Girl started running, she ran into a 15-year-old Boy out jogging with his dog.  She had seen him at church the previous Sunday and thought he was so cute.  She gathered all her courage and awkwardly asked if he would run with her.  He agreed, and the next day he stopped at her house and they silently ran together.  It took a few weeks, but the silence turned to conversation as they grew more comfortable with each other, even if The Girl did most of the talking.

When they finally made it up to 3 miles, The Boy challenged her to run to seminary in the morning.  Even though it was dark, she felt safe when he ran with her.  (To make it on time, they had to leave by 5:30am; they were crazy!)  It was a couple months before The Boy confessed that he didn’t really like running.  When she found out, she decided to change it up and they played basketball, rollerblading, bike riding, and hiking.

Their parents said they were spending too much time together and they were treading the fine line of dating.  As much as The Girl wished the boy would ask her out, or kiss her, or just hold her hand – heck, just tell her he had a crush on her the same as she did on him – it never got further than friends hanging out.  All their friends pressured him to ask her out, but he never did, and to this day, she still wonders how he really felt.

But because they weren’t of legal dating age yet (16), The Girl started hanging out with him and his family more.  She would go over for scripture study or family home evening.  She’d play board games or jump on the trampoline in their backyard.  One time, the mom invited The Girl to come cheer her son on at a triathlon.  The Boy and The Girl would take the younger sister with them sometimes when they went running or hiking or whatever adventure they decided to go on to serve as their chaperone so the parents wouldn’t be so concerned.  The sister really looked up to The Girl and started confiding in her about everything.  But The Boy didn’t like having his little sister tag along everywhere.

So The Girl decided to invite another Friend along instead.  She’d known The Friend all her life; she lived just up the street from her.  They went to church together, but The Friend felt ostracized and sometimes skipped church because the other kids called her a slut.  Yes, she was ostentatious, very flirtatious, had many boyfriends even though she was only 14, and boasted about sexual experiences.  But The Girl, like Melanie Hamilton, didn’t really believe that Scarlett was the tramp she portrayed or that their peers insisted she was.  Even if no one else accepted her, The Girl continued to be her friend.

But The Girl was naive. 

During the summer one day when the two girls were walking home together from The Boy’s house, The Friend turned to The Girl and said, “You know he’s not yours; you don’t have a claim on him.”  The Girl thought she was crazy; of course she didn’t own the boy; they were friends, although it was common knowledge how they felt about each other.  The Girl thought she just had to wait till the magical age of 16.  But if The Friend was insinuating that she was going to try to break up their friendship and steal The Boy away, she was in for disappointment because The Boy surely valued their friendship and had more taste than that.

Little did The Girl know the power of feminine wiles.  She was absent from the trio for several days while she had family commitments and/or dental/doctor appointments.  And when she came back, The Boy wouldn’t meet her eyes; he acted distant and was obviously avoiding her.  At first, The Girl thought it was a repeat of the 6^th Grade Shunning she experienced when her two best friends turned everyone against her and she didn’t know why.  But this was a boy; boys weren’t that petty.

The Boy and the so-called Friend started to flirt openly, then they started to get handsy, and eventually they had total disregard for their parents and were blatantly petting in front of them too.  Rumors flew that she had stuck her hands down his pants and a few weeks later they were sleeping together.  The Girl didn’t know what to believe.  She didn’t want to think that This Boy, whom she’d fantasized about marrying, lacked the self-discipline to withstand such temptation.  She didn’t want to think that The Boy who had become her best friend had ditched her because she was too modest and too “slow.”  She felt stupid for being so blind.  She was betrayed both by The Boy she thought she might actually love, and by The Friend she’d stood by that everyone else talked trash about.

At Girls Camp that summer, The Girl was one of the youth leaders.  The Friend came to camp a day late when all the sleeping arrangements were already in place.  There was still plenty of room in many of the tents, but no one wanted her to sleep in theirs.  As one of the youth leaders, and trying to reconcile her feelings with what she'd been taught about forgiveness and judging, The Girl invited the friend to sleep in her tent with her and the other youth leader.  After one night, The Girl was relieved that The Friend decided to sleep in a hammock apart from all the other girls.  She tried not to badmouth the backstabber, but she couldn't quell the others' gossip, and she didn't really want to anymore.  When the boys from church came back from their river trip, they told The Girl about the crap they gave The Boy about his new girlfriend, and she shamefully felt somewhat avenged.

The Girl was lost.  She’d spent so much time with The Boy that she had neglected her other friendships, and she no longer felt like she belonged with their mutual friends.  When school started up again, she was trapped in the carpool to seminary with the handsy couple.  When The Boy’s mom would stop the car and yell at them to keep their hands to themselves or stop making sexual references in front of her, The Girl felt like she was in the middle of some other family’s drama.  In fact, she was.  Everyone kept telling her about what was happening between the families, and she wished they would just leave her alone.  She wanted out, but she couldn’t get away.  She tried to join other groups of friends at lunch but felt like an outsider and eventually hid in the library at lunchtime.  She was heartbroken and depressed.

The Boy’s family tried to send him to Canada to live with relatives to keep him away from the other girl.  But they ran away together for a few days, harbored by a friend.  The Boy’s family started looking for a new house across town so they’d be in a different ward.  The Girl asked a few friends from church to drive out of their way to take her to seminary till she got her license; they were unreliable, but she couldn’t handle being in the middle of the drama anymore.  (Once she got her license, she was assigned to take The Friend to/from seminary.)  The Boy’s father (who was in the bishopric) asked The Girl why she didn’t come over anymore; they missed her.  The Boy’s Mother (who served as the girl’s Mia Maid leader) kept calling her and invited her to play tennis with her, even after The Girl had gone on to Laurels.  The Boy would look directly at the girl as he blessed the sacrament, smirking, as if daring her to challenge his worthiness to do so.

When The Girl’s Sweet 16 arrived, she had fallen into despair.  While she had other minor crushes here and there, not a single boy seemed interested in her.  So she focused on other things outside of school – like her part-time job and the friends she made there.  She took a photography class in school.  When she got her license, she started exploring the city, taking pictures with the Canon AE-1 she’d bought at a pawn shop. 

One day, she discovered that a local swing band that she’d heard at the summer concert series was going to be playing at a hole-in-the-wall that used to be a teenage dive for garage bands where gangsta kids would go to smoke and hook up.  The owner was trying to change his image and wanted to encourage a cleaner crowd of youth.  The Girl took the flyer for the band and passed it around to her friends.  She helped the owner promote his venue and soon there was a small following of teenage swing dancers.  She didn’t feel so lost as she made new friends apart from school.

Like twisting the knife, sometimes that Boy would call her up and ask her on a date.  Technically, he couldn’t “date” his girlfriend because she wasn’t 16, so he would ask his old pal to go out to the movies, dinner, or miniature golfing instead.  It hurt like hell being out with him; he treated her with the utmost respect, opening doors, pulling out chairs, even putting his arm around her, always meeting her eyes and being polite.  He confused her by catching up to her on the walk home from school just like he’d done before, and seeing her to her door.  Why wouldn’t he let her be?

It was hard for her to move on when the pain was always right in front of her.  Fortunately, a boy in her chemistry class took an interest in her.  She was oblivious to the fact that he had a crush on her, but she appreciated his help with her school work, and enjoyed his company when he asked her out on dates.  Then other boys started taking an interest in her too.  She was finally getting asked out at 17.  And she finally said no when the boy who had broken her heart asked her out on another date.  It took 2 years to get over him, but she had finally rebuilt her heart and her life.  It was true that she kept future relationships at a distance because she feared experiencing that kind of pain ever again.  But she was happy. 

Fast forward 15 years.  The Girl is deeply in love with a man who treats her like she is the goddess of his world.  She, likewise, would not want to live life without him.  It was so long ago and she thanks God she never got more involved with the boy than she had. But sometimes she wonders if that pain was so intense because he was her first love?  Even if immature, youthful, and inexperienced, is a 15-year-old girl capable of such a thing?  Or was it just the betrayal and the drama she experienced?  Why is it that she couldn’t accept the multiple “friend requests” from The Friend who had betrayed her so long ago?  If she had really buried the past, why did it still haunt her in her dreams some nights?