Mother was right about one thing. If you are a 15 year old girl having sex with someone other than your husband you ARE a slut. If you are a 15 year old girl having sex with your husband you might have other problems like maybe you married a cousin. No doubt about it though, sex at 15 especially with someone who had charmed you out of your hymen, equalled slut in my little world. There were exceptions. If you were one of the "it" girls dating one of the "it" boys and you had been faithful and true to one another all through high school then it was assumed you were engaging in pre-marital sex. It might have been 1969, two years after the summer of love, but Ft. Worth had a tendency to run about 20 years behind the times.
Mother was wrong about The Beast marking you. The Beast crawls inside your head and runs a constant loop of just how easy and foolish you are. It mocks and taunts you. It reminds you daily of just how much you have ruined your life. It's taunts are dubbed over a constant humming sound of stooooooooopid.
In Paul's defense, it's not like he just walked away without a word. He did tell me goodbye and reminded me that he always said he wanted to move back to California. He loved me, he assured me he really did and he felt certain that, "someday we will have our time together". I said the only thing I could think of, "I hope I'm not pregnant". "Meee too", he said, "I'll call you when I get a phone". Then he packed my heart, my soul, my dreams in his suitcase and left me empty.
I was in The Pit. While I had always had a talent for histrionics and could have received an honorary degree in snarkiness I reached a new level of "LEAVE ME ALONE". First I had to hold the deep, dark, awful secret that I was a slut. No one must ever know the truth. This was the secret I would carry to my grave and God willing that day would come soon. Additionally I had a constant internal debate that never stopped, "What did I do to drive him away? Why wasn't I good enough? vs."How could he be such a bastard and what long, slow, painful, horrible death would almost be good enough to satisfy my rage". It was a constant, "please, God, bring him back I am nothing without him" to "please, God, strike him fat and bald and soon".
My mother added me to her list of things that must be worried about constantly and felt it was necessary to stand and wring her hands and tell me that, "he's just a boy, you are far too young to know what love is", or "you are making this house a nightmare to be in, your black mood is scary, you look awful, you are sooooooo thin, if you don't get a hold of yourself, well, what are the neighbors going to think?"
"SHUT UP!", I screamed at her constantly. Inside my head The Beast laughed and laughed.
One night I was in my usual spot, in my room, in the dark. It was the only place I wanted to be. Silence, darkness, the truth of how stupid I really was, listening to The Beast. The constant ache for this man I loved with all my childhood ability wallowing in all things bleak, my mother knocked on my door.
"Lillybelle?", said my mother in her most concerned, worried voice.
"WHAT?" I snarled
"Are you suicidal?"
"YES, AND IF YOU DO NOT GET AWAY FROM MY DOOR I SWEAR I WILL KILL YOU BEFORE I KILL MYSELF. LEAVE ME ALONE".
My sixteenth birthday arrived. Sweet sixteen. Or in my case Surly Sixteen. "We can go get your driver's license", mother offered. This was a big step for her since driving a car before you are 30 was on the list. "No", I said, "don't see the point. I don't have a car, I'm not getting a car, you won't let me drive the good car, I can drive dad's car when he gets home from work which is after dark and I'm not allowed to drive after dark so it seems STUPID TO GET A LICENSE, MOM!".
Wasn't I fun?
In truth, I didn't want to find out that driving would be added to the list of things I could not master. That and the slut thing would just be too much. The Beast mocked my insecurity.
Soon I was in the doctor's office. I was in the exam room, mother and the doctor were in his office with the door closed. I don't think I actually talked to the doctor but I left his office with a prescription for tranquilizers.
Things got fuzzy.
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