The Story of My Life| Literally

From the time I was about four I knew I was a mistake. It was kind of obvious, and it wasn’t something my parents ever tried to lie about: they got married in February and I was born six months later. I always felt like they would have been better off without me; like I was the strain in their marriage—the reason they could never really make it work. I was the reason she was an anxious mess and the reason he drank and popped vicodin like it was candy.
I was a terrible child. I’m pretty sure I had ADHD, but everyone dismissed it because I was smart. I threw tantrums, I was defiant, and I never feared authority. It was mostly because I was shuffled around too much and when I got to be home with my parents and they couldn’t make time for me, I needed a way to get their attention. They felt guilty punishing me because they knew they were never around, so I punished myself. By the time I was in elementary school I decided that on nights that they had to yell I didn’t deserve the comforts of a bed or my favorite stuffed animal. I would wait until they tucked me in and I would crawl onto the cold floor and lay there crying until I fell asleep. Looking back on it, that was pretty profound for a seven year old, and probably should have indicated what was to come.
When I wasn’t with my parents I stayed with my aunt and uncle and cousins. My cousins were like my siblings. We would sneak into the kitchen and bake brownies at midnight and we would get too impatient waiting for them to cook, so we would eat the half cooked mush. And then my uncle would stumble in drunk and we would all retreat to our bedrooms trying to pretend it didn’t happen. But then she would wake up, and both of them would be drunk and screaming. But it was better than going home, because at least here there were other people who understood what I was experiencing.
The year I turned eight I remember a conversation my parents were having that I probably never should have heard. I think it started with something along the lines of what they thought I was going to do with my life and my mom asking if it would be worth while; if I would ever amount to anything or have a purpose in life. I remember my dad saying that I made my grandmother happy after her husband died. I remember him saying that was my purpose and unless I found a cure for cancer I would never amount to anything more. I slept on the floor that night and I didn’t eat my dinner.
Middle school was full of bullies and a diagnosis of diabetes and nights wishing I would just die in my sleep. I was smart, I developed early, and I was one of those kids who was annoyingly good at a lot of things. I had a friend, C, and he told me I was ugly, but it was okay because it wasn't my fault—it was genetics. I met S who understood the depression and the moodiness and he shared his story about attempting suicide. He told me that cutting would take away the pain. When I first realized that A wasn't always a jerk I was crying because two of my friends ditched me at the town pool because my insulin pump made me look awkward in a bikini. He walked away from everyone he was with to make sure I was okay, and then when school started in September he gave up first chair violin to sit with me.
In high school I started to realize that I wasn’t like everyone else. Everyone else went to parties and drank and hooked up. I would sit at home reading and watching TV and crocheting. I pulled all As and I was in the top ten of my graduating class. My mom urged me to make friends and go out and I tried. But no one understood the crippling pain of depression, or what it was like growing up with an OCD mom and an alcoholic dad who thought you would never amount to anything and who didn’t plan on helping you pay for a car or college or anything. When my mom found out I was cutting myself she didn't even acknowledge it. She went in my room when I was at school and she took away my exacto-knife. That was all.
High school felt like it lasted a million years. I had a bit of a crush on S, and a lot of a crush on A. I knew A would never be interested in me as more than a friend, but S seemed promising. There were almost make-outs, there was hand holding, there was flirtation, but it never blossomed. And he was the first to break my heart. S used all the opportunities he had to toy with me, and he became the school’s biggest bully. He was the first boy who made me cry myself to sleep. A picked up the pieces, and he offered to stand up to my parents when the situations at home and my cutting got out of hand. I think he was honestly afraid I was going to kill myself. Senior year a friend of mine revealed to me that this boy I’d always been passively interested in, K, was into me freshman year and she never told me. I’m pretty sure it was because she wanted him, and she didn’t want to watch me happy with him. Senior year also saw me join a band with a bunch of guys I’d just met. They were fun and I was having fun and enjoying life for the first time I could recall. I went out on Friday nights and Saturdays and we went on adventures and played board games and Just Dance. We wrote songs about our fucked up lives and played a few shows. The band wasn’t going to last though, and we all knew it. I was being asked to join the band our rhythm guitarist and drummer had just left and even though I wasn't going to leave, it was a strain. Our lead guitarist and I started dating. E. And that was the thing that ruined whatever camaraderie we had left.
E bought me a rose on Valentine’s Day and I rejected him because I was still hung up on A. But as the next few weeks wore on I fell for him and we started dating at the end of March. I was finishing high school, planning to go to college in the city in the fall, and he was in his first year of college, living home. That summer I lost my virginity to him and then went off to school and it took its toll on our relationship. He wouldn't come in to the city to see me, so I was doing all of the traveling and working and going to school. Winter came and the depression hit me hard and I cut again. I turned to A to pull me out of my rut, and we helped each other. He was in the military and stationed in Greenland and the six months of darkness and the freezing cold were getting to him.
E and I survived until my third year of college. We had our fights and we had our wars. We had broken it off for a few days at a time here and there, but we were hopelessly and helplessly in love. The time we were together was filled with snuggling, late night adventures, christmas lights, and lots of happiness. I had a good time with the friends I saw when I was with them, I have some classic roommate memories, and a lot to look back and smile at. But I was working a lot and I didn’t see E for more than a week sometimes. My third year of college though I was living with E. I had decided to commute since this would be my last year, and my house had a flood and all of my stuff was ruined. We had a fight over Columbus Day weekend. I bought him a sweater at Kohl’s and then we went out to eat and he told me he wanted me to go home. We had a huge fight. The next day I went to his house and found him in the sweater I bought him thinking we were going to make up and he ended it. Devastated wouldn’t even describe it. A was training for his deployment and he was in Germany with no internet and he told me he was sorry and we would talk when he got back to his station in the UK.
E and I weren't over yet. We got back together on Thanksgiving and we had another Christmas filled with love and family and talks about some day when we would be married and have kids and our own Christmas traditions. We broke up again in March and that was basically the end. We had a quick fight and we both screamed it was over. I cried for an hour and I told A and he said I should be happy because this was what I wanted. A and I had the feelings conversation when we were drinking one night early in his first deployment. It was February and I had a distinct memory of the two of us walking through Target right before Valentine’s Day back when we were in high school and him saying it was a stupid holiday. I agreed. It was. But then I thought about him every February. And this one was no different. It had been a year since he was home on leave. I saw him once while he was here and he had just started seeing someone we went to high school with. We went out to lunch and went for a drive and he looked over at me with one hand on the steering wheel and one on the shifter and he scrunched up his face in a quizzical way. He asked if I still had feelings for him like I did in high school and I shifted uneasy in my Northface. I reminded him we were seeing other people and the conversation ended. When we were drinking and talking online though, he revealed he had feelings for me and he wanted me to wait for him. He had three years left in the service and then we could be together, but he didn't want to do the long distance thing again. So when I ended things with E, he was happy.
I moved on. I went on a few dates with M, a handsy EMT who took off his pants on the second date and who made out with me on a subway platform on the first. It was a cold and rainy night—the second date—and I hadn't slept, and that was the last time I saw him. E picked me up from the train station because I was a mess and he offered to stay the night. I told him no, but he came back the next morning, skipping work to make sure I was going to be okay. Then there was D. He only got one date because he had a really annoying voice. He was a really sweet guy, just not the guy for me.
E and I started seeing each other again unofficially. His dad was sick and I was close with his family, and it just made sense. But I took a job in Boston over the summer and his dad passed away while I was boarding my train. It killed me to not be there for E, and so I did the least rational thing I could think of and I hooked up with the second S. He was short, dark skinned, and he had a really amazing accent. He did naked push ups on my floor after sex. He told me he loved me and ran after me to kiss me in the pouring rain. He would cook me breakfast and cuddle with me until noon on our days off. And when he left I cried, but I knew it wasn't going to last. 
When I came home from Boston E and I tried to move past the hurt, but right after we got back together A came home on leave and told me he wished I were single, and that he wished he was too, and that he hoped I would be single when he got out of the military so that after all this time we could finally make it work. A few nights later we went out for drinks, talked about high school, and went to Target. He bought a blanket and when he wasn't looking I sprayed it with my perfume so it would smell like me. He told me he loved me and asked me to marry him. E broke into my house in the middle of the night to accuse me of cheating. I confessed and cried until four in the morning. A decided he wanted to be official despite the distance, and he said I could see him in Florida in February when his family went on vacation, and I could come to the UK over winter break. I booked my ticket in October and then things went south and he wouldn't answer me for days and I ended it a few days before Thanksgiving. E came to my house for Thanksgiving dinner, and I got wine drunk and passed out on the couch and pretended that it wasn't weird.
E and I went back and forth until this June when we finally fell apart in a screaming match in the rain. I met J a week later. The first time I saw J I knew he could break my heart and I prayed he wouldn’t. We hung out a few times with mutual friends. We laughed and made math jokes and we flirted. After a second night of playing trivia and a night of bowling I asked him out for a drink. It took him four episodes of Friends for him to kiss me. We saw each other every night that week and Friday night we slept together. We decided to make our relationship official at the beginning of August, but I was already falling in love. We had an amazing summer. Once school started though our hours were sporadic and our schedules didn't match up and our only time together was in the middle of the night. We stopped having sex. We hardly cuddled or held each other. We usually only saw each other over the screens of our laptops while he was studying for energy conversion and I for organic chemistry. The first few weeks were really tough. He was angry and busy and frustrated. I wrote him a long note telling him I loved him and I left it on his car in the middle of the night on a Thursday. Friday he told me he loved me too. Saturday night I brought him snacks for while he was studying. I made sure to get all of his favorites. It was raining and I called him and told him to open the door. I didn’t even step inside, I kissed him and reminded him I was there if he needed someone to cuddle with, and he invited me over later that night.
Once we had gotten past the first few weeks of school I thought it would get easier, but everything was still hectic. I was working over thirty hours a week and trying to keep my grades up, he was just trying to keep his grades up. I would drive out to him at three in the morning to go on a coffee run or to hug him when he needed it, but when I needed a hug he was MIA. I knew it was coming when he didn’t answer my text about how I hated missing him; hated that we couldn’t do things normal couples did like go pumpkin picking. I prepared myself but it wasn’t enough for when he said we needed to talk. It wasn’t enough for when he told me we both knew that school was more important right now and that maybe we would have a chance later on in life. It wasn’t enough for the searing pain that I felt when he broke the only promise he’d made to me: that he wouldn't break my heart like A and E did.
It was a clean enough break. There aren’t any pictures of us, at least not to my knowledge. We didn’t have a drawer at each other’s places because we lived so close. We hadn’t exchanged material gifts. All I have is a ticket stub from a movie and all he has is a ticket stub and my note. Maybe someday we can try again. Or maybe we can be friends. I’m not too sure about that last part. Right now I just feel numb. I definitely failed my organic chemistry exam today. I was the first one done because I left a question blank, and the professor made me stay the full fifty minutes. I started crying in class. My car battery died and I had to wait for public safety to come jump me because I was in the ID only lot. Its been a rough week. Its been a rough twenty-two years. And I’m still fighting to get by.