You're Not Special

by Meghan Rienks

  We made it back to Emily’s house two hours past the curfew her mom gave us. When I stumbled through the doorway, it was abundantly clear that we had not gotten away with anything. Her mom was livid. To make matters worse, my drunken racket woke up Emily’s little brother, who might have witnessed me vomiting in the bathroom sink. While Emily attempted to calm her mother, I begged Alexis to French braid my hair as I barfed (thankfully now into the toilet), insisting that “nothing says sober like a French braid.” To this day, an iconic quote I will never live down. When I was pleased with the braid in my hair and I stopped retching, Alexis put me to bed. That’s how we ended up here. Oh, and nobody knew where my phone was. Or my belt. And they were pretty sure the dampness of my socks was due to my bad aim while vomiting into the toilet. Cute!

  I profusely apologized to the two of them for my behavior. I asked Emily if I should say sorry to her mom in person, but she nixed that idea pretty quickly. It’s been ten years and I’m pretty sure she still hates my guts. So we hid out in Emily’s bedroom until we were sure her mom had left for the day. We made our way downstairs to ransack the kitchen for mashups to satisfy our hangover cravings. I peeled off to the computer in hopes of gaining some insight into the blank spots of the previous night’s story. I logged into Facebook and sent out a generic “Hi i got drunk last night and lost my bedazzled phone, does anyone have it?” status update. It received far too many likes and far too little productive information. My cursor blinked over my empty inbox, and before I could talk myself out of it, I started to compose a message to Jasper. I gave zero fucks. I was hungover, my body was throbbing in pain, I was pretty sure I had a concussion, and I had no idea what had happened between Jasper and me the night before. “Legit feel like death. Also zero memory of last night. Care to fill in the blanks? Also do you have my phone?” I pressed “send” and waited out *Jasper is typing*… I felt the weight of the couch shift as Emily and Alexis sat on either side of me. They silently handed me a burnt bagel slathered with whipped cream cheese. The only sounds between the three of us were the crunching of carbs and the pounding of my heartbeat as we waited for his response. “Haha oh shit. Don’t have your phone, might still be up the hill. What ru doing today? Can we meet up?” My breath caught and my stomach felt like I was on the Ring of Fire at the county fair. “Say yes!!!!!” Emily exclaimed, nudging my shoulder, and Alexis nodded in agreement. “Okay honestly I know what Molly told you and I know you guys talked about it and I’m sure I said something last night and can you just tell me how you feel right now because otherwise I need to move to Tasmania,” I typed, then took a deep breath and hit “send.” And waited. And waited some more. *Jasper is typing*… Before I could steady myself or confirm that tissues and ice cream were within arm’s reach, it popped up: “I like you Meghan. I like you like that.” And suddenly it didn’t matter that Emily’s mom thought I was a bad influence, or that I told the hot senior that he was hot, or that I had lost the phone I had spent three days bedazzling, or that I had a pretty severe concussion and had walked in my own vomit. None of that fucking mattered, because he liked me too. We went on our first date that night. We got high, went to go see Clash of the Titans, and he kissed me. And this time I remembered it.

  We kept “us” quiet for a while. We had spent the first half of the year defending our friendship to our peers, and the idea of having them say “I told you so” was a satisfaction we weren’t ready to give them. But actually I think taking baby steps with it was also a great way to ease ourselves into us becoming an “us.” Our seventh-grade fling aside, we didn’t know how to relate to each other on a level past friendship. It’s not like when you get set up on a date and you walk into the situation with your best foot forward and your hair perfectly done and that excitement of getting to know somebody new bubbling inside you. Dating a friend is like skipping all those steps and diving headfirst into something way more serious. It’s fucking terrifying. The stakes are higher and there’s a lot more to lose. Until we were sure that we could handle the inevitable outcome most teenage relationships have, we lay low. Plus sneaking around our friends, sharing knowing glances in the hallways, and ditching class to make out in storage closets was pretty hot.

  One day, about two or three weeks into our secret rendezvous, I was lingering by the door of my statistics class, waiting for the bell to excuse us for lunch. I was out the door the second it rang, and I was met by a nervous-looking Jasper standing outside. I whipped my head around to see if anybody had taken notice of the gesture, but Jasper didn’t seem fazed by that possibility at all. “Could you walk me to the library?” he asked me, hands fidgeting.

  “What? Walk you to the library? Why? I’m going to lunch,” I said, shaking my head with confusion as I continued my way toward the parking lot. He reached out his arm to stop me and asked again, “Meghan, please? It’ll just take a second.” I was too lazy and honestly too confused to object. I hastily told him that I would if he promised to stop being so weird and that it would only take a second, because I really wanted to get to Barton’s Bagels before they ran out of the sun-dried tomato ones. He chuckled nervously and agreed, and we walked toward the library. About three feet before the doors, Jasper stopped walking and looked at something behind my head. I turned to him in exasperation, and as I started to vocalize my frustration about whatever he was trying to pull, he stopped me. “Turn around,” he said. I rolled my eyes and turned around. The entire window display of the library was transformed. The usual poster board backdrop cluttered with announcements and pinned flyers was replaced with cascading gold fabric. On the stand where the latest book releases usually resided was instead a giant red gummy bear dressed in a tiny little tux and holding a tiny little sign that read: “Meghan, Prom?” I let out a gasp as I threw my arms around Jasper’s neck and pulled him into a hug. “I’ll take that as a yes,” he said into my hair as he kissed me on the top of my head. I felt like I was in a goddamn Disney Channel original movie.

  To state the obvious, the grand gesture of a prom-posal took us from sneaking our relationship past our peers to fully waving it in their faces with gold lamé and supersized candy. The gossip spread as rapidly as always, and then suddenly everyone knew. Including Aurora. If you grew up in the era of Formspring (formally known as Formspring.me), I just want to say that I feel for you. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, consider yourself lucky. Formspring was a website that hit its stride in the late 2000s as a platform where people could submit anonymous questions and messages to your profile. With their user demographic being middle schoolers and high schoolers, you can only assume the nastiness that took place. The day word got out that Jasper and I were dating, my Formspring inbox was flooded with scathing messages about the terrible person I was and that I should do everyone a favor and just off myself. The next day at school I asked Aurora if we could talk in private, and surprisingly she agreed. I tried to explain to her that I had never had any evil intentions when I agreed to help Jasper ask her to prom. I told her that at the time I was completely and totally unaware of my feelings for him, let alone his feelings for me. Her response to my ten-minute heartfelt apology? “Fuck you,” plus a slew of colorful and creative insults only a theater kid could come up with. It’s safe to say those “cool” kids never liked me after that. And homegirl holds a grudge too. Ten years later and she’s still got me blocked on Facebook. Now, that’s commitment.

  There is something to be said about your first love. As time and life move on, we tend to belittle those hormone-induced feelings of “love.” We embark on new relationships and forge new paths and each love we fall into makes the others look like puddles. As teenagers we’re told that there are some things in the world we just won’t understand until we’re older. These things that mean so much to us right now won’t cause us a thought down the road. While in the grand scheme of our (hopefully) long lives that’s true, it’s almost as if we’re expected to put our lives on hold until a quarter of it has already passed by. Falling
in love at sixteen is much different from falling in love at twenty-two, but they share the same root emotion. At sixteen I loved Jasper as much as a sixteen-year-old could. He was smart—the kind of smart that saw right through my ditzy reputation and pushed me to take more pride in the left side of my brain. He was the kind of confident I longed to be. Even as a teenager he carried himself with such self-awareness and worth that he commanded every room. But most of all he made me feel special.

  What’s ironic about your first love is that it’s usually your first heartbreak. Every story, both good and bad, concludes in some way or another. This story is not an exception to that rule. Jasper and I broke up a little over a year after we first got together. There was really no one event that imploded us; we just ran our course. Little habits I never noticed before began to get under my skin. That confidence I was so drawn to at the start now just read as pompous arrogance. I decided he chewed way too loud, and I hated the way he got moody before lunch. I hated that the jokes he’d whisper in class were at somebody else’s expense, and I hated that I used to laugh at them. I hated the stupid scarf he wore, and I hated how cool he thought he looked. At the time it was hard to wrap my mind around it. I just couldn’t understand how we had deviated so far from that path. All I wanted was to go back and be who we were when we started. In the span of a few months we went from googling the miles between our top colleges to arguing over anything and everything. No matter how much we fought it, our time was up.

  It started with a text. I had left school early that day, claiming I was sick, when in reality I was actually sitting on Sydney’s couch with our best friend Jake, watching Barefoot Contessa reruns. I don’t even remember what sparked this specific fight between Jasper and me; I just don’t think we ever stopped fighting. Whatever this one was about led me to text him something like “Can we talk at school tomorrow?” I can admit that in my adolescent years I was prone to instigating drama in attempts to get a reaction, which validated me and made me feel loved and desired. (I’m aware of how completely fucked-up that is.) In that moment I’m not sure if I said it because I felt insecure and wanted him to prove his love for me, or if I really did see the end of us approaching. Whatever my motive may have been, my phone vibrated with his response: “You want to break up? Fine. We’re broken up.” He had brought a gun to a knife fight. My empty threats and thirst for validation were met with a very harsh and very real conclusion. For hours I cried on the couch to the soft murmur of Ina Garten and Jeffrey bantering over nuts in brownies. At some point Jasper and I talked on the phone but I blocked out most of that conversation. I stayed home from school the next day. This time I actually did feel sick.

  Our breakup was messy. We were vindictive and vengeful and were able to hurt each other in ways only close friends could. About a week after our breakup, Jasper asked our mutual friend Katie to prom. He did it in the middle of the quad right as school let out on a Friday. I walked out of physics class and straight into an original song Jasper and his band were performing in front of the entire school. As the music came to a swell and Jasper’s lyrics hinted at the question he was about to ask, the crowd turned to me. Then he ripped his shirt off and sang the name Katie. In that moment I swore I could actually feel my heart break.

  A week after Jasper asked Katie to prom, he texted me and asked if I could meet him by the library after school. I’d be lying if I said there wasn’t still a totally deranged part of me that wanted him to try to win me back. Instead of the heartfelt and genuine apology I was looking for, Jasper told me I was depressing and dramatic and that I needed to get over it. I had told myself that if he acted like an asshole, I’d punch him in the face and it would make me feel better. I didn’t punch him. I just cried.

  I got asked to prom the following week by my friend Sawyer, who was far too attractive to attend any high school not on television. Like the kind of hot guy you see on TV and you’re, like, Wait, why don’t the guys at my school look like him?!?! Sawyer looked like that guy, except he actually did go to my school, and he would be in a tux in my prom pictures. It was a much-needed win. Plus, Jasper hated Sawyer, which made it all the sweeter. It was the perfect rebound. He had just gotten out of an equally long relationship with a similarly sticky ending. We were both frustrated and angry, and we found a way to productively channel that together. AKA we started fucking. As it always does, our exes caught wind of the news. And I kid you the fuck not, Sawyer’s ex-girlfriend, Paige, and my ex-boyfriend, Jasper, started dating. I fucking wish I was making this shit up.

  The day before prom, Sawyer got suspended. He had loaded a shopping cart at Safeway full of alcohol and condoms and attempted to just ride it out of the store without paying. Naturally, this didn’t work. I said he was pretty; I never said he was smart. The real kicker, though, was that he had done it on a school day, during school hours. Because he was under eighteen, the police were automatically forced to hand over all disciplinary matters to the school. Our douche lord of a principal decided that the most fitting punishment for Sawyer would be depriving him of senior prom night. The prom that I had bought a dress for five months earlier, the success of which was completely and totally riding on my date who could no longer attend. I spent my senior prom rotating between five situations: (1) crying alone in a bathroom stall, (2) asking the sketchy kids if they had any drugs, (3) getting the hired face-paint artist to paint a narwhal named Sawyer on my back, (4) stealing my friend Jake away from his date “because I needed him more,” and (5) my personal favorite hell: hiding from Jasper and Paige, who (rumor has it) had popped ecstasy on the bus ride over and had seemingly made their mission of the night to follow me around and hook up in front of me. Their pupils wide and their tongues down each other’s throats, they rubbed their sweaty half-naked gyrating bodies on each other. It was one of the worst fucking nights of my life.

  So, yeah. This was the breakup chapter. I hope you rooted for us and I hope you fell for Jasper as hard as I did. I hope that when I told you that it ended, you felt unsatisfied at the outcome. I hope you felt all those things, because that’s the shit they cut out of movies. The lights go dark and the credits begin to roll and we’re left with closure; we’re fulfilled and under the impression that everything always works out.

  I fell in love with these two characters and I wanted it to work out but it didn’t. It didn’t because they were seventeen and their worlds were bigger than their adolescent dalliance. It didn’t work out because they had lives to live in different cities and states, with different friends and different memories and different people to break their hearts. It didn’t work out because most of the time it doesn’t. He was (quite literally) a chapter in her book, and she was one in his.

  This particular story didn’t end happily ever after, but I don’t want a happy ending until I’m about to go, on my deathbed, surrounded by the people I love. To me, that sounds like a happy ending. A kiss scored by a Maroon 5 ballad is not an ending. It’s a beginning, really just a moment. We have those joyous periods of our lives and assume that they must be the last and only great things we’ll ever come across. Then eventually, when it does end, we think we’re right back where we started at square one. As if that period in our life was an unproductive detour. Just because something ended doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. It’s like skimming a book as fast as possible just to read the last sentence.

  If we can’t make light of and learn from our failed relationships, how are we supposed to succeed in one with the one we want to? You’re not Cinderella. Your shoes are not made of glass, and your “one true love” might not be just one. Your life has many great love stories. Some you leaf through casually, some you pick back up on a rainy day, and some you’ve packed up in boxes, never to touch again. One day you’ll pick your favorite story and you’ll read it until you don’t. Maybe it ends happily, maybe it ends on a cliff-hanger, or maybe it ends with a to-be-continued. You’re the one who has to write it.

  spackle your heart

  If
getting over a heartbreak were a science, Bill Nye would be all over that shit. There’s no equation or cheat sheet or methodology to get you through a breakup; each one will be different from the last, and the next will be entirely its own. So if you were looking for a secret to fast-forward your feelings and bounce right back, I apologize. You won’t find that here. Or anywhere, for that matter. Because that secret doesn’t exist. Or it’s Victoria’s, and I don’t think she’s looking to share.

  In my twenty-six years I’ve mended my heart of both hairline fractures and seemingly terminal shatters more times than I can count. And while I’d never claim any of them were easy, or that they didn’t come with their own set of unique turns, they all met the same end. While I don’t have a foolproof system in place or a timeline I hold myself accountable to, I do have steps I take to get me in the right direction. My own set of rules I consistently break.