Popular: Boys, Booze, and Jesus

by Tindell Baldwin

  If you’re there right now, I’m pleading with you to listen to my story carefully, because I didn’t listen when people told me how much this would change my life.

  It was one drunken night in his basement (every parent’s nightmare), and I decided to give in. I didn’t plan on it; I just got tired of fighting it. After we had sex, I left in a puddle of tears and called my three best friends for help. I’d broken a deep promise to myself, and I needed support.

  They met me at my house, where we sat in my room and exchanged stories of how we lost our virginity, and we cried. None of us claimed to be Christians, but we all knew we’d lost something valuable. We cried for our futures and for what we thought we deserved. We cried because something inside us told us we were worth more than bad decisions in dingy basements. We cried because when sex isn’t kept in the right context, it leaves you feeling empty and insecure. We cried because we no longer had a reason to believe we were worth more than sex outside of marriage. We cried because sex wasn’t the fairy tale we’d thought it would be. It wasn’t like the movies where it transports you to someplace amazing and then everyone parts ways and lives happily ever after. Sex was emotional and messy. It never left a clean break; instead it ripped us apart and left jagged edges that the next great love had to mend.

  I went to church the next day with my family, something that was required, and it was the first time I remember feeling numb in church. The music didn’t make my heart stir. Normally, no matter where I was with God, the music always called at something in me that begged for freedom. Beth Moore says, “Music is the expression of a freed soul,” and my soul wanted to be free. That day, though, my soul felt chained to this world. I listened with a sense of heaviness, and when the service was over, I said I was sick and went home crying.

  After I got over the initial shock of losing my virginity, I wanted to feel that closeness again, so I continued to have sex with my boyfriend. To be honest, sometimes I did feel close to him. This is the truth that adults are afraid to tell you. Here’s the other part of that truth, though—the feeling doesn’t last. The emptiness that follows does. Even though I loved my boyfriend, even though I could get lost in the moment, my heart kept telling me I was made for something greater. Even at a young age, I knew I was designed for intimacy to go with commitment. This is why sex outside of marriage left me insecure, because without commitment to back up the gift of intimacy, I had a chance of getting deeply hurt. I had a choice to make. Would I stay in this relationship, or would I break up with my boyfriend, make a new commitment to abstain, and move on?

  I wish I could tell you that I moved on, but I didn’t. I was so lost in my guilt that I didn’t want to be alone along with everything else. So I kept drinking and having sex, and we had an on-again, off-again relationship. I had to drink to have sex, because I was so insecure in my decisions. I felt so ridden with guilt, and drinking made me forget about the guilt. My boyfriend was “experienced” and I wasn’t, so I drank to feel the freedom to have sex. I drank because my body wanted what my heart knew was wrong. It still felt wrong, but my boyfriend never seemed to think so. I drank to forget that this wasn’t how it was supposed to be and because I was scared that if I didn’t have sex with him he would go somewhere else for it. He would often brag about our sex life in front of his friends, and I was so ashamed. I would ask him to stop, but to him it wasn’t a big deal. We were having sex, but so was everyone else. I didn’t have a moral compass to explain why it was a big deal, but it just felt like it was. It felt like a huge deal, and so I’d break off the relationship, and then when my heart would tear apart, I’d come back to him to mend it. I didn’t realize that something that was just a physical thing could have such emotional and spiritual repercussions.

  Our relationship was rocky before we had sex, but now we had something new to fight about. We were always fighting and making up. No matter how bad we were for each other, we were connected, and I couldn’t seem to make a clean break. Then, after a year of being together on and off, I made a decision that ended everything. I did what I always did and drank too much and made out with another guy. I woke up hungover, confused, and with a familiar guilt. After my friends told me what happened, I convinced myself that I could hide it from him, but in high school you can’t hide anything.

  When I saw him the next day, I acted as if life was normal and he’d never know. Secretly though, I knew I was spending my last days with him. On our last night together we went to a basketball game and then to his house afterward. I got drunk and we had sex, and it was my way of saying good-bye. The next day he found out.

  I was at lunch with my dad; he had taken me out to talk about my drinking problem. The past few times he’d seen me, he’d smelled the vodka on my breath, and he was out of ideas. Midconversation, my boyfriend called screaming at me. He had heard from friends that I had cheated. He told me it was over and hung up. I walked back inside the restaurant and told my dad what happened, and he told me to go, that my decisions had taught me the lesson he never could. I called in sick to work and went to my best friend’s house for comfort. I cried for hours and called my now ex-boyfriend until I gave up.

  That night I came home and saw that my parents had bought me a dozen roses to let me know how much they still deeply loved me. I tried to thank them, but I felt so dead inside. I put the flowers in a vase by my bed, a reminder that my parents’ love was all I had left.

  That night I put on the Keith Urban song “Tonight I Wanna Cry” and let it repeat over and over while I sobbed into my pillow. Keith knew what I was going through. The chorus sang over me as I felt each piece of my heart shatter. “Alone in this house again tonight . . . pictures of you and I on the walls around me. The way that it was and could have been surrounds me. I’ll never get over you walking away.” I don’t have to look up the words to that song, because they’re imprinted on my heart. A break like that will leave a mark, and the sound track that plays while you shatter will always be there. So that song stays there, a quiet reminder that what I went through was real and that despite everything, the God who saved me is alive and well. I have to believe God thinks of this song when He remembers that dark time in my life too. We all have memories that are played to music, songs that can take us back so far that we have to work hard to return to the here and now. My sound track from that time is filled with sorrow, song after song that reflected my heart’s pain.

  It’s so sad, so painful, but it’s where I was then. I didn’t experience a lot of joy, just heartbreak after heartbreak that I brought on myself. See, I was the one pressing play. I chose the album, picked the songs, and let them play. I drank until I didn’t remember making the mistakes. I gave myself away like I was something you get out of a vending machine, and so the sad songs played on. I didn’t know how life could be any different. I didn’t realize there could be a life outside the pain I was drowning in. I could have had joy. I could have smiled, if I’d only given up the things I thought were making me happy. I thought alcohol was making me happy. I thought sex was making me happy. They weren’t, though. They were just things I did to kill the pain of being unhappy and the pain of losing someone I believed I really loved. It’s a gut-wrenching feeling when someone tells you they’ll fight for you and then they walk away. It left me questioning a lot, but mainly my worth.

  I wish I could adequately describe the pain that followed my boyfriend leaving, but I can’t find the words. I can only say that heartache has its name for a reason. I don’t ache for him today, but I do ache to have that part of my heart back. I remember feeling chest pain, like a part of my heart had literally been ripped out. I felt broken, not spiritually but physically. Each day I was forced to look at him, knowing he had my heart. I couldn’t blame it all on him; I’d willingly given it to him.

  Since he was the leader of the pack, I was declared off limits. If he couldn’t have me, no one would. At school I would hear guys yelling, “Whore,” after me as I walked down the halls. I did my best to keep
my head held high, but it was all I could do to get up in the morning. Only a few things got me out of bed: my family and friends, and drugs and alcohol. I relied heavily on alcohol and marijuana to kill the pain in the months that followed the breakup. My friends were there for me as much as they could be, but they couldn’t stay with me at night. My family was great to me even though I didn’t deserve it. And even though she didn’t tell me at that time, my mom had a hunch about the nightmare I was going through.

  At first, I was banned from parties, because my former boyfriend told everyone he couldn’t be around me. So I was forced to stay home while my friends went out and kept me updated on his weekly escapades. To “get over me,” he made out with a lot of my friends, and I was left at home mourning the loss of him and my social life. Each time I heard about another girl he was with, my heart would break a little bit more. I didn’t understand why he couldn’t just forgive me, but his pride was stronger than his love for me.

  One particularly bad night he called me screaming that I was a slut, and how dare I think I could go to the school winter dance. He told me all the things I prayed weren’t true about myself. I’d always hoped I wasn’t the kind of girl that guys screamed obscenities at, but I took it; I believed every word he said. I got off the phone in tears and found a bottle of sleeping pills; I took ten and prayed I wouldn’t wake up. When I woke up the next day, I heard a small voice telling me, “This too shall pass.”

  Knowing it was going to pass wasn’t enough to heal the wound. The pain felt as real as the love did and was overwhelming. I was living my own nightmare, and each morning for months I would cry in the shower, begging that this day wouldn’t be the same as the last. The only thing that kept my head held high was the encouragement my parents had given me earlier in life. Even though it didn’t stop me from making huge mistakes, it came back to me later. Somehow, they did a great job of making me believe that I was worthy of love and respect. So while I wasn’t being loved by a boy and I was constantly being disrespected, my parents’ voices were still in my head saying this wasn’t who I was. The life I was living shouted to anyone listening that I didn’t think I was worth anything at that moment, while deep down in my heart a voice whispered that one day someone would love me for who I was and not for what I could give him.

  Sometimes it was so bad that each breath felt like glass shards digging into my lungs. I fell into a pit so deep I couldn’t see the opening. I tried desperately to get out of it, to take control, but the more I tried to take control, the bigger mistakes I seemed to make. This is when I began smoking weed before school. I loved seeing my former boyfriend because it was my only way to be close to him, but it hurt so bad I needed something to numb the pain. My best friend was going through similar heartache, so a few days a week we’d meet at seven in the morning and get high with a few guys in our grade. It helped temporarily, but the hours would pass and so would the high, and life was still the same.

  I wrote in my journal about the pain I was experiencing, putting on paper the feelings I didn’t want anyone else to know:

  I tell everyone that I’m over him. I even praise him for leaving me alone to heal. I say he did me a favor by speeding up the inevitable, and part of me believes all this. However, in the back of my mind he is still an ever-present voice speaking his familiar words of love. I’ve even moved on to better things, even a better guy, but behind every smile I hide my insecurity that I’ll never heal. I know he still has a grasp on part of my heart, and my mind wonders if he will ever let go. I don’t need him and I don’t even want him, but what I want is for us to move on and for him to let go. I want life to realign into a normal pattern where my mind doesn’t race every time he is near. I care about what’s ahead far more than I care about the past, but it’s hard to walk forward when you can’t stop looking back.

  Eventually, I started dating again. It looked like I’d moved on, but because the previous guy still had a part of me, I couldn’t move forward. I couldn’t let go even though I was ready to. I’m sad to say that it took years to let go of him, and the only way I eventually succeeded was by letting God repair my broken heart with His healthy one. Here’s another entry, which I wrote three months and two boyfriends later, still clinging to the one who left:

  Just when I think I have let him go, I stumble over an old picture or a song comes on, and my heart cringes. Then the moment passes. It hurts, but I’m learning to live with it. The pain never fully goes away, but I’m learning to live with the thorn that is his memory. He has become like a splinter stuck deep inside my heart, and I can feel the sting, but I can’t remove it. So I cope. Even when I find myself in someone else’s arms, the reminder of his presence stays with me. I can’t recall a day free of him in almost two years, and while my life is moving, I seem to stay in his gaze, still keeping a tiny memory of us somewhere deep inside. When the pain gets so bad I can’t bear it any longer, I let my heart dwell on him for a little while. I relive each kiss, each late-night talk, each party, and when I think I can’t bear it anymore, when I think my heart will break, I make myself come back. I force myself back to the present time and cry for my empty arms.

  Another month later . . .

  I wonder if you can really love if a part of your heart is missing. Mine aches every day for the one it lost, and I would give anything to take him back. Tears fill my eyes at just the thought of him. At least I can say I have loved.

  I used to love the saying “It is better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all.” After loving and losing too many to count, I know that saying is garbage. Don’t love until you find a man who is worthy of it. Don’t lose a part of you that can never be returned. It took years to get over my high school love. Our relationship wasn’t even built on anything solid, mostly empty stuff like parties and drunken sex. We cared about filling a void for each other, and in our own messed-up way we loved each other, but I wish I’d loved myself enough to say no. I wish I’d had the strength to be different.

  I remember one night before a party at his house, my best friends and I sat outside and took shots while we listened to “Just So You Know” by Pete Schmidt. The four of us had coined it as our song, and so we put it on and passed our handle of vodka around until we were drunk enough to forget whatever was going on in our lives. This was the first time I’d been allowed back at his house, and I didn’t have the courage to see him and his new girlfriend—one of my “friends.” So we drank and sang at the top of our lungs, each trying to drown our different pain.

  When we finally made it inside, I watched as he did all the familiar things but with a different girl. My friends and I ended up getting really drunk and spraying everyone with a water hose to deflect the tension. He ended up kicking us out. As we all said good-bye, I watched as she stayed behind. Same moves, different girl. Part of me wanted to warn her that she wouldn’t leave this relationship whole.

  For the next few months I sulked around the house, and everyone felt the weight of my sadness. It was only my little brother and me at home, so the attention was mainly on me. My parents were at a loss for what to do. They didn’t ground me, but they warned me that my behavior would only make the situation worse. They genuinely felt bad for me, but there was nothing they could do. I’d slipped down the rapids, and now I was dealing with consequences I’d created.

  One night my mom asked the question I didn’t want to answer: Did you have sex with him? The tears streaming down my face answered her greatest fear. I sank into her arms, not saying a word, letting the quiet sounds of my sobs speak for me. She brushed my hair with her hands like she did when I was a child, and for a few minutes life wasn’t falling apart. She offered no advice, no reprimands, no I told you sos. Just love. She let it pour from her heart into my broken one, and the rift that was between us sank away for a moment.

  I sat and cried in her arms for what felt like hours, and when I finally looked up, the only thing she said was exactly what I needed to hear: “I understand.” It was th
e hope I needed to be able to continue. She had lived past this, so maybe I could too. She’d married a man who loved her, despite their mistakes, so maybe I could too. If she’d made her way out of this thing alive, maybe I could too.

  Tears come streaming down your face

  When you lose something you can’t replace.

  —COLDPLAY

  Fifty Bucks and a Case of Beer

  There was a major question I wanted answered when I started sleeping with my boyfriend. I wanted to know what I was worth. More than that, I wanted to know if I was worth loving.

  One of my favorite movies is Almost Famous. It’s partly based on the true story of a journalist who goes on the road with a rock ’n’ roll band and falls in love with one of the band’s groupies, Penny Lane. Penny loves the lead guitarist, Russell, who is in a relationship but also uses groupies. Penny goes on tour with the band and lives in the fantasy that the tour will never end, and she believes Russell loves her. Meanwhile, the good-guy journalist, William, is falling for Penny. The tour is coming to a close, and they’re about to go to New York, where Russell’s real lover will be meeting them. At one point, Russell is gambling with another band, and he wagers Penny Lane for fifty dollars and a case of beer. William is watching and leaves brokenhearted. He goes to talk to Penny, who tries to convince William that Russell loves her.

  PENNY: YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT HE SAYS TO ME BEHIND CLOSED DOORS. MAYBE IT IS LOVE, AS MUCH AS IT CAN BE, FOR SOMEBODY. . . .

  WILLIAM: SOMEBODY WHO SOLD YOU TO HUMBLE PIE [THE OTHER GROUP] FOR FIFTY BUCKS AND A CASE OF BEER! I WAS THERE! I WAS THERE! LOOK—I’M SORRY.

  PENNY: WHAT KIND OF BEER?

  The first time I watched this I realized we’ve all been some form of Penny Lane, or at least I have. I had a price. It might not have been fifty bucks and a case of beer, but I had a price. I was fooled into believing my boyfriend loved me, that he would fight for me, and that he believed I was worth a lot more, but the truth was I gave myself to him for a much lower price. He said the right things, made me feel the right way, so I gave in. I thought it was love, but the minute I made a mistake he was gone. Like Penny Lane, I told myself that sex can be the basis of love and that what we had was love “as much as it could be.” Just like Penny, I ended up in tears believing I wasn’t worth anything more.