“It Was Like a Solar Eclipse…”

“Best Friend Forever!”

We all were lying on my bedroom floor in a circle, our heads all touching, taking a picture that captured the innocent girlishness I was soon to grow out of. It was my birthday, December 12, on a Saturday night in 1997. I was turning 13 years old and was so disappointed, that my favorite age, 12, (being my favorite number), was now over, but ecstatic that I was now a teenager.

I had my six best friends over for the first time, and I remember being sort of embarrassed of my house. My friends all had nicer houses, but mine was older, smellier, and just plain old shameful. We had moved from a nicer apartment to this house right across the street with plans of renovating it, but at the time it was nothing to be proud of. We had ugly flower wall paper that must have been there since the house was built; ugly green, worn carpet; a tarnished bathtub that supposedly the former owner had died in; the stove and sink were so old fashioned; and the cabinets so poorly placed.

I was the oldest of my friends at that time, and I definitely felt older.

We played games that night, or should I say I forced them to play games that night. I remember becoming frustrated; they just wanted to do their hair and makeup, a birthday party I thought was meant for a six year old. I wanted to stay up and tell stories about personal issues, and play intelligent games, or get out my quiji board. I remember always feeling older than my friends; I remember being curious about boys, but also curious about girls, a feeling that made me feel so awkward and so unable to relate to them; I remember being more fascinated with my homework and sports rather than pointless and/or girly matters as they were.

I could feel something in me changing, and could sense change all around me as that year ended. I’ve always been extremely intuitive and I knew I was meant to mature way ahead of my time. I was right…

Sometime around Christmas of that year my mother offered to take in my cousin; she was too much for my uncle to handle, and her mother was an alcoholic and abandoned her when she was born. My mother, being a nurturer at heart and a parole officer, thought she could be the one to set my cousin straight and give her a better chance at a better life. My cousin was one of those wild teenagers you saw getting arrested outside of the mall for stealing; or smoking in the girls’ bathroom; or punching someone in the face in the cafeteria. I was definitely afraid of her; every kid in town was! She was reckless, bitchy, ignorant, and downright intimidating. She was not even a year older than me and already had sex, smoked cigarettes, did drugs, drank alcohol, went to a juvenile detention center, got expelled from school. I remember there being talk about how her moving in with us would affect me and my siblings. The situation really didn’t affect my brothers or my younger sister, but it sure did affect me. Before I was like the sun, so bright for my age; in honors classes; one of the best players on my softball team; wrote and read for fun; was honest, optimistic, responsible, healthy…but she was like the moon, so dark and daunting. She was moving in on me and soon she would cover me up, with only a *** left of me to be seen.

"Popo...let's get the fuck outta here!"

“Fuck!”

“God damn, it, I told you we should’ve went to the fort!”

I threw my forty of Old English as far back into the woods as I could and followed everyone else. We ran through the opening in the fence and darted through the woods on the trail we always took to get there. It was so dark and my drunkenness wasn’t helping me at all; all I could see was my cousin's white sweater ahead of me. I just followed that, my heart pounding, just listening to the tumult of all that was ahead of me. The five of us darted through the woods as fast as we could, I, being the last. We jumped over mud puddles, over rocks, ducked under trees, ran up and down hills, until finally we were up by the other ball fields closer to my house. We got behind the school building that was at the exit of the woods and ran the back streets home. As we got to the corner two blocks from my house, we took a break and sat on the curb. We didn’t see any cops, and were finally able to relax and breathe…or at least they could relax. I looked down and saw my brand new white shoes, now covered in mud and grass. In my drunkenness I only half cared, but beneath that drunkenness and newfound ignorance, the innocent girl inside of me dreaded going home to my father, to try to hide the new shoes he’d gotten me; to make up an excuse why we were out until 1 AM before the first day of high school; to have to dart my mother threatening us with her piss tests. I dreaded all of it, and it all became more real as we rounded the block and inched further and further to my house, smoking my cigarette so hard and nervously I must have looked like a crack feign. My cousin didn’t seem to mind though. She was used to drama like this; she anticipated drama like this; she relished in drama like this. She was already enrolled in a school for kids with behavioral problems, so for her, this was all expected, but for me…I was just the innocent one, getting dragged into it all…and giving my parents aneurisms.

How exactly I let my cousin influence me, I’ll never remember. When exactly the change in me occurred, I’ll never remember. But the overall gist of those days I will never forget. I started smoking, drinking, stealing, and having sex at age 13, during the spring of 1998. We were both cheerleaders then. I grew more feminine in those years, and started to become more attracted to males. I remember though, that it wasn’t the male himself I was really into; it was the want to be wanted, the pleasure that came with pleasing. I let them all take advantage of me, and at the same time I was taking advantage of them. In those 3 to 4 years, I don’t even remember exactly how many of them there were. I lost all of my friends. I gained such a bad reputation that they were too embarrassed to be my friend anymore, or their mothers forbid them to hang out with me. In my ignorance and new found maturity, I thought I was too good for them though. I always felt ahead of them, but at that time I became so arrogant about it, so foolish, so uncouth. I just did what my cousin did…she was the negative influence in my life. How I could be so weak; how I could let that mature, responsible soul inside of me surrender to the darkness of her ways, I can not remember, but as I said, it was like a solar eclipse, and after every solar eclipse, the sun shines again…

To be continued…

(Please leave feedback...I will polish this piece soon.)