My First Crush

All throughout elementary school, I was in looooove with one of my friends. Doodled his name in my binder and everything. He was funny, and cute, and smart, and for some reason he liked spending time with me. He would hang in the woods behind my house, and was always excited to run into me there, in the treehouse my oldest brother helped me rebuild twice. I could always count on him for an adventure, and we had plenty of them for the first couple years we knew each other. His name was David.

We got a little older, and he got a little more popular. He made other friends, who didn't think I was as cool (or maybe I didn't think I was as cool), and instead of being sweet to me, he started picking on me. He didn't have much fodder at first, but eventually he found a way to hit me where it hurt. In fifth grade, I had to switch from the gifted program back to regular classes because of a B I received. Social Studies, I believe. I've always been horrible at geography somehow. No clue how; it's not like continents will move enough in my lifetime to prevent me from memorizing the globe, but I digress. When my class realized the switch had been made, they were ruthless. David led the verbal assaults, snickering about how the Target Program must have finally caught on that I was dumb. When the rest of the kids in the program got up to go to the other classroom, I now had to stay behind. It was insult to injury.

"HEY! LEA'S NOT GOING TO TARGET! HEY! LEA! WHY AREN'T YOU GOING?!"
"I'm not going anymore."
"Yeah, I know! Because they found out you were TOO STUPID!"
"I'm not stupid."
"Yeah, okay. You only think that because you're too stupid to think anything else."

Sure, his joke writing needed some work, but it was enough to make me miserable. Week after week, I was left behind in my regular class. Week after week, I was laughed at. Week after week, I began to believe what they said. My grades plummeted. I remember wishing I wore glasses or braces, so they could make fun of something I could change. Unfortunately, me being a "slow" kid caught on.
By the end of the year, I came to forget what it was like being his friend. I could only assume he hated me, and my heart was broken for the very first time. I began to dread running into him. I hardly went into the woods all summer, but my heart broke further when I discovered one random Wednesday, that someone had set fire to the treehouse. My brother had already left for the Marines, so I deemed the whole mess unsalvageable, and never touched it again. To say I was devastated would be quite an understatement. That was also the summer I lost one of my first friends to a freak accident. Needless to say, I learned a lot about loss between elementary and middle school. Probably much more than my family felt comfortable acknowledging. Looking back, it was one of the more important years I've had, in terms of life lessons. I took comfort in the idea of a new start in a new school, and maybe making new friends, but on the first day of sixth grade, in my first day of science class, within the first few seconds of arrival, I noticed him. My old friend, my huge crush, too cool for me now. I saw him and didn't say hello. After a few minutes, he yelled across the room to me.

"Hey, Lea! You see the treehouse? You like what we did to the place?"

It felt as if I had been knocked flat on my back. All air left me, all color drained. I started to feel hot, and the room began spinning. I asked to go to the bathroom. With shaking legs, I made my way out of the room and down the hallway. There, in a stall, I cried for half of the class. I cried so hard I made myself ill. In between heaves and sobs, and the occasional vomiting, I struggled to make any sense of my feelings. I had never been so upset, and I had never felt so betrayed. Every breath I managed to take would echo against the cold walls of a colorless middle school bathroom, and my own heartbeat sounded like someone banging pots next to my ears. It went on that way for so long. This is a memory that stuck with me for years, and it sticks with me now. How could he do this? How could anyone do this?

High school came, and David became more involved with sports, more involved with his friends. We had gone a few years with zero interaction, but he suddenly started being nice to me. He would try to talk to me in the mornings in the cafeteria, and I would only cautiously respond. If he complimented my hair, I never wore it that way again. One morning, he told me I looked beautiful. I sneaked out and went home to change my clothes. I was convinced that everything he said had some double meaning, and his football friends were mean enough to me. I wasn't willing to be the butt of any more of his jokes. I eventually left that school to attend an alternate one, though not because of David. Not seeing him again was just a bonus.
I carried legitimate anger around for this kid until a just a couple years ago. It was a Friday night, and I was alone in my apartment. For whatever reason, I found myself very, VERY drunk, and very, VERY upset about my brother's passing. I thought of the treehouse. I thought of David. Fueled by bourbon and the ghosts of both my innocence and my dignity, I found him on Facebook. I wanted to send him a message, and finally had the nerve to ask him the questions I never thought I'd have the courage to ask. So I did. Why would he have ever done such a thing? Why had he hated me so much? What had I ever done but be his friend? Why any of it? His response blew me away. He started off by telling me how great it was to hear from me. He then said he wasn't actually the one who burned the tree down. He had no clue who it was. He said he didn't even remember telling me that he did, but he assumed it had to have been to get a rise out of me. And he was sorry. He had no idea how I felt about his actions back then, hardly remembered picking on me at all. He hoped I was doing well. He said we should catch up sometime. We never have. The end, basically.

And if you think this story fizzled and had nothing left at the end, you would be correct. That's how it felt as it happened. All said and done, I felt ridiculous. It has no real moral, other than to remind myself to have the courage to speak up when I need to speak up, and let go of things that need letting go. It would have saved me years of hurt. I don't know where that man is now, but I'm sure he's doing fine, and not at all concerned about the broken heart of a little girl from nearly twenty years ago. I'm sure we still have common friends, and I wish him nothing but health and happiness.
Anyway, you never can know the impact you have on others, and I can really only hope that nobody has a similar tale involving me. If anyone does, well..man, am I sorry.

xoxo

How Do You Like Your Eggs?

For just over a decade, I lied about how I liked my eggs cooked. I don't mean that my tastes changed, or I grew to like them a certain way later, leading me to say "my life has been a lie!" No. I lied. Flat out.
It started innocently enough, really. I was about fourteen or fifteen, staying at a friend's house overnight. She offered to cook breakfast in the morning, and asked the reasonable question you'd ask anybody you were frying an egg for.
"How do you like your eggs?" 
"Over easy, please."

Now I don't claim to know where my friend received her training, but these things were barely cooked. The whites not yet firm through, with the gelatinous ooze clinging to the fork. I noticed. She noticed. She offered to make me another, but I protested. "No, no. They're PERFECT." Anyone else would have found a way to laugh it off. Anyone else would have politely declined, put it back in the pan to scramble, made a bowl of cereal, maybe even pretended not to be hungry. Something, anything, to avoid eating undercooked food. But not me. Oh, no. At that age, my need to be polite, and make my friend feel proud of herself overwhelmed the need to save myself food poisoning. I ate them. I got sick. It was probably more from the stress, and less from food poisoning. After all, I've eaten my weight in raw cookie dough without so much as a stomach ache. But for my fourteen year old, crumbling self esteem, insulting my friend's cooking would have been enough to send me spiraling into anxiety for days. No thanks. At the time, I didn't think that meal would affect me for any longer than it would take to sleep off my nausea, but about two weeks later, the boy I was seeing offered to make us eggs. Why? Because, as I would learn, most dudes will eventually offer to make them, if only to be cute. I panicked. Images of the underdone, self-hate inducing breakfast from weeks before began to crowd me. The thought of saying something simple like "no thank you" never even occurred to me, though my mind was racing. Memories of every time I'd ever felt self conscious came flooding back, and my face felt hot. I didn't know what to do. Someone offering to cook for you should not induce anxiety. It should induce gratitude, or hunger, but definitely not palpitations or sweating. What if he can't cook? What if he's easily embarrassed like I am? What if I hate his eggs and he dumps me? My fears overwhelmed me. It was too much. I couldn't, wouldn't risk it.
"How do you like your eggs?"
"Over hard, please."
And so it began.

At first, it wasn't so bad. I could have my food however I liked at home, anyway. What I didn't realize was that, eventually, this would spill over into public food orders. And, as a teen in a relatively affluent suburb of Atlanta, I would spend an increasingly questionable amount of time at the local Waffle House. This was due in part to the fact that my hometown doesn't have much else for teenagers to do but loiter, and partly because most of my friends were drunk. Regardless, I ate a lot of eggs. I missed over easy, but I had been dating that same guy from before, and I had already been in too deep for way too long. My betrayal only grew with each scramble. I never came clean.

New relationships found me, and you'd think I could have broken free as soon as that first one ended, but I couldn't. These new people already knew me. They were my friends before they were dates. Plus, what kind of weirdo just lies about something so small? How would they trust me with anything else, if I've been lying to my friends and boyfriends for years about something so unimportant? How would calling attention to it make it any better? I felt trapped, but at least I could have what I wanted when I was alone. Trouble was, with choking them down in public so often, I never ever fried an egg at home.
And there was soon to be more trouble, when I became old enough to live with people I wasn't related to.
My hell had gotten worse. Obviously, when I moved in with my loving man (at the time), there was no more "I can have that at home," because he'd see me. We had the same home. He'd be there. To top it off,  he knew I hated runny yolks, because I had become so entrenched in my own lies that at some point I volunteered that false information. I would even come out and say that his food looked gross when we went for breakfast somewhere. "Ugh, I hate yolk! So gross!" It was unjust. I didn't hate it, I missed it. I missed brunch. I wanted warm, fluid yolk and dipping toast, and hollandaise, and to be myself, and not worry so much, and to stop internalizing everything I've ever felt, and not let something so unbelievably insignificant eat away at me. I wanted all of that, just not as much as I wanted him to find me sane. Appearing sane was my specialty, and had been for a long time. I could only blame myself. Nobody can truly be that neurotic, can they?

During periods of being single, this particular dysfunction hardly ever occurred to me, which was nice, but unfortunately, as soon as I started another relationship, I'd begin the deception over again. It was truly compulsive. All because of what? My weird anxiety from when I was a kid? While it's true that I've struggled with self worth, and an overwhelming fear that I am actually lousy with faulty upstairs wiring, even this seemed excessive. Surely, my self doubt and my desire to be loved can't be measured this way. Intellectually, I understood this problem was only a problem in my very own head, and that I had allowed it to continue to grow into its own tiny monster. Eventually, I found myself fed up. I am in control here, I reasoned. I had every right and every responsibility to stop the madness. I had to find the ability and the courage to laugh along, because this was going to be impossible to explain to anyone, and it was only going to be more impossible if I was going to try keeping a straight face while explaining it. I had to clear away the clutter in my head. I had to take charge.

So I stopped.Just not for the reasons you might be thinking

I mean, it wasn't because it was the right thing to do. Not because I suddenly developed the self love necessary not to stress over tiny issues. Not because this is seriously, honest to God, one of the dumbest non-problems any has ever faced. Not because I realized I was worried about a habit that absolutely nobody but me would even notice if I changed. I didn't stop because of some wonderful support system that encouraged me to be completely honest, regardless of consequences. I didn't stop because I came to the conclusion that everyone, in their own way, has their own egg lie, and the world would be a better place if we were our authentic selves at all cost.
No. I stopped because brunch became wildly popular in my age group, and nothing was going to stop me from ordering eggs benedict ever again. It's delicious, and highly underrated.

Anyway, the moral is not to date your friends. They might already know how you like your eggs.
I TAKE MINE OVER EASY, SOFT BOILED, OR POACHED, BY THE WAY.

xoxo