Chapter 1
It was Sunday. The love of my life was outside doing manly things. I was flipping through Netflix as my youngest two were running around shrieking and just all around being themselves. I read through each description as I was looking for something to watch while I finished folding the laundry and getting things ready for the week ahead. I found a documentary to watch. It was about a woman who was catfished for 10 years. Catfishing is such a cutesy word for something that has the potential to ruin your trust, your self esteem and your life. As I'm listening halfway I start picking clothes out of the basket and folding them, separating them into piles while the story starts.
As I watch, a familar feeling spreads over me. You know that feeling you get when youre remembering something that makes you feel humilation every time you think about it so you try to avoid thinking about it? I'm taken back to a day in mid 1990s. It was the second semester of 8th grade and I seemed normal I'm sure. I had one best friend whom I adored. She was the sister of my heart. We lived on opposite sides of town but we still spent a lot of time together. As much as possible as two non driving teenage girls could who lived 30 minutes apart.
I rode the bus to school every morning and I'd like to think I was friendly to everyone. It was a mix of middle and high schoolers. On the bus I made kinda friends with some of the kids in the grades below me. One of the girls I thought was super sweet, big blue eyes a face full of freckles and was just fun to talk to. One day she starts telling me about her cousin who apparently was all the things teenage me found fascinating. I was intrigued. Looking back now, I know it was because I was a lonely kid, I was a bookworm who's mind was probably rotted by the copious amount of romance novels I read. I just wanted to be loved, to have a guy fall for me and be all about me like they did in the novels I was so obsessed with.
I can't remember how it started either she gave me a letter he wrote or she encouraged me to write him a letter. I just know that we started exchanging letters back and forth. I poured my heart into those letters, letting myself be vunerable in the only way teenage girls are capable of. Of course I told my best friend all about it and she was in it with me. Slowly things started to not add up. Every time we made plans for him to meet me somewhere or call me something came up. I started asking her why we never hung out outside of the bus, why couldnt I just come to her house and meet him there since he was supposedly always there. Then she drops the bomb her parents didn't want her hanging around me because her mom didn't like me. She couldnt tell me why. Meanwhile I was falling deeper for this guy I had never even seen a picture of, I'd seen a picture of his supposed child but never one of him.
This went on for a long time, this revolving door of excuses. "Hes out of town" "hes in jail" I just kept writing letters, and she kept giving me letters written by him. Then one day she gave me a letter in her handwriting. Why you ask? Because he broke his arm and couldn't write at the time. About 11 months after this started she tells me that her cousin, my penpal boyfriend was diagnosed with cancer and didn't want to be with me anymore because of it. I went home that night and cried. Cried because I felt like I'd never find anyone that liked me, because I was a fat, four eyed girl who was so uncomfortable in her own skin. A month after his diagnosis, we are sitting on the bus and she tells me that he died from cancer. I cried all day that day. My best friend tried to console me but I just felt so terrible that he died before we even met. A year. I wasted a whole year of my life writing letters back and forth convinced that this guy was gonna be my entire world for the rest of my life.
We stopped talking for a while because we had nothing to talk about. He was dead, there was no common ground for us to talk anymore. Then one day she comes to me and tell me hes not really dead, he just told her to tell me that because he was scared of what he was going through. I was so excited, I didn't even question the insanity of it all. We started writing letters back and forth. I tried to get him to meet me at my house so we could see each other and talk. I even set a chair up under my window so he could just sneak in the backyard and I'd let him in. I waited up til midnight that night only for him to never show. When she got on the school bus the next morning I asked her what happened, why didnt he make good on his promise? Is it me? Is it something I did? Something I said? She tried placating me with some sob story. I went into school that day, unable to really concentrate and my mind just overflowing with the constant catalog of everything that was wrong with me physically. From the size of my feet to my soft stomach to my small boobs to my face and my glasses. I worked up the courage to tell her to tell him I was done. I was going to move on, find someone who would want to see me, be with me, and wouldn't stand me up. We just stopped talking after that. I finished the school year, sticking with my friends that had been there with me and didn't ask me a lot of questions.
In hindsight, I should of known she wasn't the honest friend I thought she was. Sometimes when I'd see her in the hallway it felt like she was either laughing at me or going out of her way to avoid me. Almost like she didn't want her friends to know we talked. The letters in her handwriting, the fact that this cousin of hers was apparently Jesus dying and then resurrecting. The way these plans would get made and then broken. The fact that her mom supposedly hated me and she had never even met me.
I got over him, this phantom guy who was everything my teenage heart desired. I kept on with my unrequited crushes and just daydreaming about finding that guy who would give me my happy ever after just like they did in all my romance novels.
A couple of years later, I was riding the school bus home. I noticed her brother was sitting in the seat across from me. I said "hey I got a question for you". He looked startled I was speaking to him but I just went with it. I took a deep breath and said "how's your cousin Mikey doing?" He looked at me with the utmost confusion and said "I don't have a cousin Mikey" I sat back in my seat and let the humiliation wash over me. I cannot believe I was so desperate, so gullible that I bought into her little game. I went home that night, so embarrassed. How she must of laughed at me with her little friends. How stupid she must of thought I was. I never confronted her, I was too ashamed I had let my desperate need to be wanted by someone, anyone overshadow my common sense.
Back to the present: I feel so sick in my stomach as the woman on tv explains how she was betrayed for so long. I feel tears at the back of my eyes and all I can think about is sad little 14 year old me. How stupid I must of looked and sounded. I had put my innermost hopes and dreams in those letters to a dude that probably was just a figment of imagination. One thing I did learn was not to trust anyone who says "hey I got a guy for you to meet" or even someone on the hookup apps who might be a bot or someone pretending to be someone they are not.
I just wish that I could just find out the why. What possesses someone to lie and play with someones heart and mind like that. On some level I'm still fucked up from it. It drove an already low self esteem down the toilet and so many nights crying myself to sleep wondering why boys just dont look at me. Why don't I fit the perfect teenage girl mold so I can wear clothes from wet seal and 5*7*9. All this time I spent searching for approval by males to validate that I am beautiful, that I am worthy.
The petty dark side of me wishes someone made her hurt like she hurt me. That someone destroyed her faith in herself and made her question the reality of anyone liking her after that. That she went to sleep more than one night questioning her self worth and if it was worth seeing another day. The need to confront her to tell her what she did was evil and psychologically damaging. But after talking to my best friend, who is still in my life 3 decades later, I decided that it's not worth it. She doesn't deserve to even be acknowledged because she lied and manipulated an already vulnerable person who just needed someone to tell her they loved her.
I pull myself out of my brooding about my past watching my girls run circles in the living room, chasing each other through the house. My husband comes in from outside smelling like the fall air, crisp and sweet. He leans down and kisses the top of my head. I know I found my happy ending in him and our family.
