At the start of January 2012, I was still dating Micheal Hamburger. Which, at the time, I thought was incredible as he was my first long term relationship. And my first. New Year’s Eve I was to baby sit at his house because his mom wanted to go to a party with her husband. The only thing was that Micheal couldn’t stay there with me. Tonya, his mom, didn’t trust Micheal to save his life, so that ni…ght, as I watched his siblings–including his brother who liked me, was my age, and more trusted to be with me than he was–he was going to be at the skating rink, hanging out with friends and flirting with millions of girls. But that’s a story for later on. His elder brother stayed home with me, too, and together John and I hung out with Megan, Joel, Michael, and Johnathan.
We were playing dress up with Megan–John had let us paint his nails, when my boyfriend walked in the door. Apparently he had decided to go home because he hadn’t wanted to stay there while all the girls asked, “Where’s Lexi? Where’s your girlfriend at?” That was also the first time I had had a guy put a relaxer in my hair for me. And, the first time I had ever spent a New Year’s Eve with friends instead of family.
It was also the year anniversary of Candice living in our house with us. We had met her the start of 2011. The New Year’s Eve before. “Dad’s New Girlfriend.” The year before, I thought my brother-in-law had been fucking crazy. He had praised this lady, and when I meet her, she’s a gross, awkward girl with an obsessive boyfriend. And an awkward ex-husband. Stayed with us in Tooele, got pregnant, and moved with us to Nebraska. She was a total bitch. Not in the begining though. She was quiet. She didn’t say much. Once she got used to everyone though, she made herself right at home.
That year, my school was Grand Island Senior High in Grand Island, Nebraska. I lived in the furnished attic of a slightly cramped plain house with a water logged basement. My cousins even lived with us for a while. I was friends with all the lower classman, and I had the senior boyfriend they all wanted. I went every where with everyone, skipped class to smoke cigarettes and smoke weed, and flirted with all the lesbian and bisexual girls and got their digits. In a sense, I was the cool junior everyone wanted to know. The new girl who was cute, smart, fun, and easy to talk to. I was friends with the preps, with the stoners, with the smokers, with the nerds, and with the losers. I didn’t have a table at lunch time, because I didn’t have one group. I had all of them. To be honest, it was kind of cool, but then again it was also really annoying. My 16th year of my life I did a lot of stupid things. Like getting shitfaced at my cousin’s house with my cousins and their mom. Losing my V-Card to a complete loser. Dating said loser for half a year, and believing that being in Nebraska was a permanent move.
I only cut a few times. Once or twice. In fact, my cutting had become so infrequent, that I had completely forgot about all the razors. But that didn’t mean I was better. I remember John and I got into it terribly. I blacked out, broke my dresser, and gave myself a concussion against my room wall. It was one of the worst moments, when I realized just how destructive a turn my life had taken.
We moved in March. After coming home from school two months before John had looked at me and said, “What would you say if I told you we were moving back to Utah?”
I didn’t hesitate. I told him without hesitation that I’d go.
I didn’t hesitate. I told him without hesitation that I’d go.
I dated a guy named Micheal Patrick Hamburger. Folks called him Boots. He was a senior, a year older than me, and in the foster care system because his sister had told the courts that his dad had been a pedophile. The first time I met him was through two girls, Elizabeth and Star. I met them at a GSA meeting, after they had asked me questions about my experience being bi sexual. They had told me about their gay friend Lane, and their gay friend Micheal. So the next day I met Micheal Hamburger and he talked to me about how cute a dress was in a manfa he was reading…I thought it was him who was gay. I swear to God.
I didn’t find out he wasn’t until I met him that Friday at the skating rink. After spending a whole night talking to him, he tried saying he wanted me to be his girlfriend. I told him I needed to get to know him first. And he invited me to his birthday party. After that, things were set. We dated a few weeks later, and it lasted for 6 months, and ended in heartache.
See, he was a baby. A flirt. A liar. A tease. He wasn’t willing to see life for what it was, he only wanted what people would give him. He was always getting in trouble, and he wasn’t all that smart. But, I had been determined to keep our relationship in tact. I wanted to keep it together. But, after he lied on my niece, I had to let it go. Because family meant everything.
He had known I was moving a few weeks before, and asked if I’d wait for him. I never really gave him an answer, because I didn’t know whether or not I could. After we had broken up, he came to my house a day before I had to go out to Doniphan, and gave me a letter, telling me to come back if I still loved him. Which, I thought I did. Love him, I mean. But the moment I stepped off the train and was back on Utah soil, I realized I didn’t miss him. Not even a little bit. Over the months he’d try to get me back, but…the magic was gone, and I didn’t miss it.
I finally stopped talking to Ralph Christensen. It just happened. After we started talking again after I moved back I thought we could be friends. But he used me yet again. Over and over. And then I was done.
I started going to a school in Clearfield, Utah, the March we moved back. I was very disappointed because I had hoped that we’d move back to Tooele instead of an hour away, but it just wasn’t in the cards. My first week of high school life back in Utah public schools, I already had skipping partners, and smoking friends. In fact, a close friend of mine, Izzy, became my good friend because I decided I’d skip with her when she couldn’t find any of her friends to do so with. It was then that Izzy, Dylan, Sara, and I started skipping every fifth period and first periods, and going to the store and buying donuts. Then we got a free period so sluffing wasn’t sluffing anymore.
Tyler and I hung out every other weekend. I would go to Tooele from Clearfield and stay with Melissa, and then hang out with her and Tyler for three days before going back. It really made my days, knowing that he as well as all the friends I had left behind, still cared.
In the summer, I moved out to Tooele. I stayed with my friends Jaycee and Emily for a while, before eventually moving back with my sister so her husband could help me get ready for college. Then, on the 26th of September, my sister told me to back our bags.
We left at four o’ clock that morning to hide at a women’s shelter for three days, and then board a greyhound, and move back to Missouri. No one knew we were gone until we’d left.
In September, I moved back to St. Louis. My sister rekindled her romance and friendships with the people of her past, and I started going to a school. Theodore Roosevelt High School. At my school, the kids are rude and disrespectful and no one cares about anything. I didn’t really plan on making friends. Especially it beinf my senior year. But I meant Elizabeth Bauer. After her, I met Emily, Cattrina, Shannon, Kasi, Nick, Daniel, Shaheed, Travis, and Fatima. And Regina. And others. Not that I talk to all of them really, but they are people I’ve started to get to know. In fact, Nick is my boyfriend of two weeks right now. I like him, but things are so not weird that I’m terribly worried about it.
Tyler stopped being my best friend. He just…stopped wanting to be there, and I stopped waiting for him to come around.
I saw my mom. She’s obese. She has Cankles. Her rings are smushed onto her fingers. Her face is puffy. She has pictures of my sister and I all over her walls but doesn’t remember who we are. And I cried, and realized just how much time had passed, and how much I will always love her.
Scored a 20 on the ACT.
Sat down on a friend’s computer, and decided to write a reflection of the moments I remembered in 2012.
-MAL
