High School

Time is such an odd thing. Looking back at my life over the past couple of years compared to how my high school career began, I've changed a lot; I'm a completely different person. I'm not sure about where to begin, so I guess I’ll start with what I remember.

I remember Caton and how our friendship fell apart over a boy. I remember the day Jesse died, seeing Cam cry. I remember going to Connecticut and meeting the most outstanding young men and hearing their stories about gangs and absent parents. I remember how perfect my last serious long relationship began, and how it blew up in flames. I remember starting my junior year with just my boyfriend by my side. I remember how determined I was to take a gap year to work and save money and then go to a college as far away from home as possible. I remember being dumped, in the middle of the week, in the middle of my work shift. I remember going home to my friend Chris and crying for hours. I remember realizing that I was alone, with no friends, and that it was in all honesty my fault. I remember telling my mom about the abuse, and how she made me feel with her words even though she didn’t know how deep they cut. I remember starting my senior year alone. Making friends quickly, and losing them just as fast. I realize now where I stand in the world, and it’s okay that I stand alone.

Thinking about it now, I was never really in the “popular” group. People often say that there are no groups in high school. Ironically though, the people who usually say this are at the top of the social hierarchy. I was never in that group, nor did I want to be. I liked my friends, and we had been inseparable since elementary school. We were our own little family. We had plans for the summer: amusement parks, birthdays, swimming trips, bonfires. If I had to list all the people I remember from that summer and why, I could probably write a novel about what happened and who was there.

Sophomore year we wrote a short memoir about a life changing experience that helped us grow and mature as people. We all wrote about really serious and intense stuff. A few of us were brave and shared (or attempted to, at least) a short synopsis about our papers in class. Our teacher, the wonderful Mrs. Violette, shared her personal story of how she's unable to have kids of her own. We took turns and went around the room. I remember two stories, only because I connected with them personally at some point. Ricky shared about his past experiences with self-harm and depression. I remember how he didn't make eye contact with any other student. Only occasionally would he look up at Mrs. Violette. He looked like he was trying so hard not to cry, but I could see the tears welling up in his eyes. Ricky and I have never really been ¨friends¨. We don't hate each other -- at least I don't hate him, I can't speak for him on the matter --, we just never really talked. Despite this lack of physical connection, I felt like I related to him on a personal level. I had written about the same topics (self-harm and depression) and my personal experiences with them in my own paper. I just wasn't bold enough to share. Maybe I could've helped Ricky not feel so alone if I had shared.

I also remember parts of what Jordan shared. She talked about how her and her mom didn't get along very well, and that her parents (at the time) were having some trouble in their marriage. She also shared about how her friend had passed away that summer. Looking back, I think I only remember that she had run out of the room in tears after telling us about the death of her friend. Once Jesse passed away was when this memory became more important and permanent. I also had a lot of trouble with my mother (I also wrote about my mom in my paper), and again Jordan and I weren't really friends. We just knew each other and were put in the same class. Regardless, I still felt a similar connection to her and I did Ricky after that. I can't recall any of the other stories (whether that's because no one else shared or I just don't remember), but this event really impacted how I looked at people in the halls. Everyone has a different story, and some people are fighting battles that I know nothing about. Just smiling at people and saying hello to a complete stranger can change his or her whole day. That's what I gained from the memoir unit: it changed the way I viewed humanity as a whole and people as individuals. I just remember thinking to myself that if we could get together as a single unit, and share these vulnerable parts of ourselves with everyone, maybe the school wouldn’t be such a divided and hateful place. Maybe people would be okay to go to school. Maybe we’d all get along.

I personally did not share, although looking back I guess I probably should have. I felt -- and continue to feel -- as though my story just isn’t as interesting as everyone else's. No one likes listening to sob stories -- that's what I viewed my life as: one long, drawn out sad story. I thought life was just one big competition and everyone else had a head start.

July 2, 2013. My best friend Jesse passed away. He drowned saving someone that at the time I really thought should have died instead. I have struggled with Jesse’s passing for the past two years, and to this day I still have not fully come back to “being okay”. I ask some of my close friends all the time how they move on after losing someone that you love. The answer is always the same: you don’t; you just learn to live with the hole in your heart and function without them. But this answer was never really good enough for me. I understand what they meant and what they were trying to say, but I refused to accept it. I needed something more. I was so angry at Brandon (the person Jesse saved) because he chose to go near the falls. He chose to go swimming in the river the day after the hurricane had come through and flooded the whole town. He chose to put himself in that situation. I came to acknowledge the fact that Jesse also wanted to swim in the river. He and Brandon went swimming with a group of friends. They all chose to put themselves in the water, and they all were aware of the danger: Jesse included. I don’t know if I have decided that the idea to go swimming was less of a bad idea, or if I still hold a lot of resentment for Brandon. But I guess that’s a story for another day.

I think back to the phone call from Anna that day. She asked if I had been sitting down. I told her I was. And she said “Jesse just died.” I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it. I just...laughed. I felt horrible, but I was so confused that it just fell out of my mouth. She said “I’m serious. He drowned. Turn on the scanner.” I turned the police scanner on and listened. There was a silence. They wouldn’t say a name but we all knew who it was. We waited for the next couple hours to pass. We turned on the television and watched the news over and over again until we saw his face. They had confirmed it. They had spoken to his family. It was real. I was so angry -- no, I was beyond anger. I was so far from being able to describe my feelings with a single adjective. I just...shut down. I cried. I sat with Cam’s dad Jack in the lazy boy recliner and we cried together. I cried outside Cam’s bedroom door knowing he was inside crying too.

I found out the next day exactly what happened from people who were there. Brandon went in the river first and got swept over the falls, and Jesse jumped in after to try and save him. Jesse saved him just in time. He had no scratches, no cuts, no bruises. He looked fine. You couldn’t even tell he had almost drowned the day before. But one of my best friend's had died, and it wasn't fair that Brandon got to walk away and Jesse didn't. Jesse barely knew Brandon. They had never met before and only recognized each other in passing at school. Brandon was not the kindest of people in high school. Although he’s only two years ahead of me, he was so far behind his peers as well as mine in his maturity. Brandon and I had a ¨thing¨ at the end of the school year before the summer Jesse died. It wasn't serious, just some flirting and revolting nicknames (i.e. ¨babe¨ and ¨cutie¨). I found out later that he had started dating one of the other girls on my lacrosse team, and never thought to tell me that our ¨thing¨ was over. Although we weren't technically dating, I still felt really betrayed and cheated. I felt like he thought I didn't deserve the truth, like he had the right to lie. Because of this, I already had a strong disliking for Brandon, but knowing that my best friend died...to save him? Just thinking about it made me sick. It fueled a fire inside me that I had never felt before.

We had a day at the local church for people who knew Jesse (specifically the teens) where we could go to mentally relax and talk about what happened if we wanted to, or get away from it and occupy ourselves with other (safe) activities for a while. When Brandon walked in the room, everyone went silent. I saw him and instantly I felt nauseous. I couldn’t believe he felt that he was welcome there (although he was). Looking back on it I am glad that he came; but in the moment, I just wanted to scream. Every fiber of my being was on fire. Not the kind of warm and tingling that you feel when you’re in love or get a surprise gift. It was the kind of warm and tingling you felt in your core, right before you puke. It took every ounce of self-control I could muster up to walk out of the room and away from him without causing a scene or breaking into tears.

It took me a really long time to get used to the idea of not seeing Jesse. I think the hardest part was knowing that he had such a bright future ahead of him. Because of a few ill choices, he lost everything: no prom, no senior skip day, no graduation, no college, no wife and kids, no grandkids, no future. I started drawing things for him. Mostly sketches of hearts with angel wings, his name is different scripts, and the verse John 15:13 (Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends). I had decided that I was going to get a tattoo of one of these drawings in memory of Jesse; that was the ultimate goal of all of the drawings. (Later, I drew something up that I decided to get on July 2, 2015 (the two year anniversary of his passing) to finally put to rest my outward grief and live in a way that would be honorable to Jesse without forgetting anything about him.)Jesse was the poster child for the bible verse. He was such a loving and kind person. He didn’t know Brandon, but he still risked -- and ultimately lost -- his life because of him, and I just wasn’t okay with that.

After over a year of grieving and sudden outbursts of tears and anger, my mom told me that her best friend was murdered by the girls boyfriend when they were in high school. She told me how long it took for her to live without her friend, and that she was still really angry at the man who killed her best friend. My mom said that forgiving him was something she knew she needed to do, and she wished she had done it sooner. My mom and I haven’t always gotten along, but hearing her talk about the loss of one of her best friends really opened my eyes to how the healing process works. She taught me that sometimes receiving apologies from people (even the person who caused you harm) just isn’t enough to get you through to the end; sometimes the best way to get over the hurt and continue on in the grieving process is to forgive them, to let go of all of the anger and the hatred. My mom has probably been my biggest support in coping with Jesse’s death so I really took her advice to heart. I had been going to a southern Baptist church for several years at this point and had always heard about the power of forgiveness, but never really needed to do so.

The summer of 2013, shortly after Jesse passes away, I started dating a guy named John. He was eleven months and five days older than I was, but we had known each other for a few years. We went to the same church, hung out with the same church people, volunteered at the same christian soccer camp every summer, even went on the same mission trips for three years in a row. Once, we went on a mission trip to Meriden, Connecticut to spend a week ministering to the youth there. I absolutely love traveling and volunteering, especially in places that most people try to avoid (Meriden would be on that list). I met a lot of great people, but the two that stood out the most to me were Jophy and his brother Jonathan. They told us about their involvement in the Latin Kings. I was aware of the gang activity in the area, and the war between the Los Solidos and the Latin Kings. I was not aware of the politics that came with being involved in a gang as I myself have never been in a gang or known anyone that had been in one. The story they told was how God saved Jophy and Jonathan from being killed and how they had turned their lives around for the better. Jonathan was walking down the street one night listening to music and Jophy had caught up with him. Jophy noticed someone walking behind Jonathan and didn’t think anything of it. But, as soon as he saw the reflection of something metal, Jophy jumped between the other man and his brother and was stabbed in the chest. After just losing Jesse because of a selfless act of love and compassion, this hit pretty close to home for me. Jophy and Jonathan went to the hospital, and Jophy recovered well and is fine now. The man that tried to kill Jonathan and wounded Jophy was a member of the Latin Kings, which the boys had been involved in but left. Apparently, the boys had an uncle that was “higher up on the food chain” in the Latin Kings and told those under him to leave the boys alone. After that, Jonathan and Jophy never had a problem with gangs.

John was apart of the Youth Band that the church had started up and they were going to do the worship music for all the events we held for the children and the teens that week. The group consisted of my friends Meredith, Caton, and Catherine. I am not a jealous person, but I have boundaries. The girls were very “touchy feely” with John: playing with his hair, always lifting his shirt to make fun of his tummy hair, even going as far as telling me they were going to slip him melatonin and shave his tummy as a joke. This crossed several boundaries and it hurt that John didn’t say anything to them. He asked me to say something because it bothered me and he claimed that it had bothered him too. So, I messaged the girls individually and asked that they explain what they were doing and what was meant by it. I wasn’t angry with them or upset. I told them I was hurt and that as sisters in Christ we should talk about our issues with each other and work through them as young adults. I was polite, I didn’t swear, I was as nicer than I should’ve been at 16. The responses I received though were less than polite, to say the least.

I think the most hurtful response was Caton’s. Caton told me that she really was only doing these things with John so that she could get under my skin. I had known that she liked John for a while, but it wasn’t my fault that he didn’t like her in that way. She claimed that I had “promised” to never date John again because it would hurt her feelings, but I don’t remember ever saying that. She didn’t even have a conversation with me. She just yelled at me and told me she hated me. The most hurtful thing she said was that I would end up alone, with no friends, no John and no family. And that when it happened, she hoped I would be happy being alone in the world knowing it was my fault. I know Caton probably doesn’t remember this, and I couldn’t tell you if she was still mad at me or not. I know I’m not mad at her, and I hope she does well and goes on to achieve all of her dreams. Unfortunately, I can no longer go back to the church that I grew up in because of this. The girls told all of the adults that John and I were sexually active (which at the time we were not), that I had cursed at them, called them horrible names, and that I was a fraud. To this day, no one at that church speaks to me. But they all speak of me. Rumors started going around that I was a slut, that I was cheating on John with several other people, that I had stolen things from the homes of the adults, and so on and so forth. All of the teens would come to me claiming that they were on my side and they knew who started which rumors. Everyone had a finger to point but no one wanted to take responsibility. I stopped associating with all of them. The only people I talk to on occasion is Meredith and her wonderful mother Stacy. I had never realized how much I had depended on the church and the people in it for support until they tore the rug out from under me. When they were gone, all I had left was Anna, Tina, Tameka and Kollin.

I have been friends with Anna since we were in the third grade. We both lived in Highgate Apartments, and we were both a little different than everyone else. So we stuck together. In the fourth grade, I met Tameka, and we quickly became best friends until the beginning of our senior year. In the sixth grade, I met Kollin; who apparently had moved away the first year I was at Barre City, but had moved back in the sixth grade. I met Tina in the eighth grade, and we were the only pair of the four of us that had never fought or had a disagreement. John was liked by our little group for a while. But when John and I started dating, everyone really began to see things in him that I couldn’t. In hindsight, they were right about him.

When John and I first started dating, we were really happy. We prayed together before bed every night, we sang worship songs together, we volunteered at all the same church events, we visited his family together, and he spent a lot of time with my family. About a month after he moved into my house was when my relationships with the people from the church went downhill. I stopped going to church because I was afraid of being judged and mistreated; I felt like I couldn’t be around any of them and be able to see when they meant what they were saying and when they were lying to be “good christians”. John still went to the church occasionally, but he stopped after a few weeks too. Looking back, I feel like this is where I should’ve noticed how much I had changed and had loss because of him.

I had started to become more lenient in my values and beliefs after I stopped going to church. Whenever someone had mentioned it to me or made a rude comment about my absence and my behavior, I got extremely defensive and told them off. I was turning into an angry, bitter person. Some days I still feel that way. John and I spent so much time together that I thought I was “madly in love” with him. I had convinced myself (with his help) that we were going to get married -- that was my first mistake. Because of this stupid notion, I changed my entire life around. I quit my job at Simply Subs to make more money and spend more time with John by working with him for his dad’s cleaning company A+ Touch. I reduced my hours with Joseph (one of the disabled kids I work with) down to four every other Sunday. We were together 20 hours a day seven days a week. After a while, I noticed John was getting more and more grumpy and easily angered. We started arguing and getting into shouting matches every night at work when we were alone. I thought that it was just something that couples do, and that I should just tough it out and try to work through our issues. I refused to acknowledge exactly how big our problems were, and that most of them weren’t because of a single action, rather they had surfaced because of extreme personality differences.

So many things went into my next decision. I ultimately just wanted to make John happy, no matter what. I thought that I could make him be nice, less angry, more loving, less hurtful. I justified my actions with the idea that we were in love and we’d be getting married. I wanted to survive for the moment in order to thrive later on. I compromised my morals and decided that giving him my virginity would make him happy and show him that I was a good person and that I really did love him. I can’t think of being intimate with another person in the same way now. The idea of being so vulnerable and exposed to another human being was over romanticized for so long that I had no idea exactly what I was doing. The thought of being intimate with someone in any shape, way, or form now makes me sick to my stomach. The sad part about the whole ordeal is that after we became sexually active, our relationship became slightly better. I thought I had done the right thing.

For a few months things between John and I were relatively quiet. I felt happy again. But something had changed in John. He wasn’t...there. Physically he was present and well, but mentally he wasn’t available, and he was no longer emotionally invested. I think at some point in my mind I had realized this, but my heart just couldn’t let go without trying every last possible solution. He started yelling at me more. Calling me degrading names. He turned into this obsessive controlling person that I couldn't recognize. He wore the face of the person I loved, but he spoke with a voice I’d never heard. John started controlling my money, how much I put in my savings account, when and where we went out to eat, what I ate, what clothes I wore and when I could buy new ones, etc. My mom told me that she saw how controlling he had become, but I blew it off. I told her that I had changed because he “opened my eyes” to an easier way of doing things.

I remember the night I realized how bad things were, and I started looking for a way out. John loves football, and that’s all he ever really cared about. I enjoyed some programs like A Football Life, but I really just sat through the games and the draft and the day-time television so I could spend more time with John. It was late at night, and we were sitting in my room rewinding and getting ready for bed. He was on his computer streaming the NFL channel to the t.v. I just wanted to sit with him for a bit before I went to bed. I wanted to physically sit on the floor next to him and watch t.v. That’s it. As I sat down, he pushed me over and asked what I was doing. I told him I just wanted to sit with him. He told me he didn’t “sit with sluts” like me. I was so confused. I just wanted to sit there. I didn’t understand. A couple weeks later, the physical abuse started. The first time he hit me is one I will never forget.

We had just got to the second building that we were cleaning that night, and it was the middle of January. The sidewalk in front of the door we went in through was very icy and slippery. John went in first, and I followed right behind him like we did every night. As he stepped over the threshold of the door, his back foot slipped on the ice and he fell towards me. I put my hands up to prevent him from hitting his head on the coat hooks that were on the wall. For whatever reason, he thought I had intentionally pushed him and that I was being mean. He stood up and just looked at me. At this point I had no idea that he was upset or angry or that he thought I had pushed him. I started walking down the hallway. He ran down the hall, spun me around so that I was facing him, and slammed me against the door. I remember feeling the door handle going into my back, and struggling to move out of the way. He held me against the door and started screaming in my face. He was yelling about how I was never good for anything. How I always screwed things up and didn’t know what I was doing. He backhanded me across the face. Once, and then again, and then a third time. I wanted to cry. I was in so much pain. I tried to explain that I hadn’t pushed him. I told him I was trying to catch him so he didn’t get hurt. He started screaming at me again telling me how I was a liar and a stupid bitch. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do. I started the vacuum and went to the other end of the building. I took my purse with me so I could take care of my face. When I started to vacuum, I started sobbing. I tried so hard to keep quiet so John wouldn’t come near me. I had finally hit rock bottom. And I knew that I needed to get out this relationship. I just didn’t know how.

I had a few friends that lived in Montpelier. I started messaging them on Facebook just to chat. I needed someone else to talk to -- someone that wasn’t John. I couldn’t tell anyone about the abuse because I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him to change. I wanted him to be the person I fell in love with the summer before. I asked my friend Connor who lives in Montpelier what he would do if he wasn’t happy in a relationship. I knew the answer before he said anything: break up with them. At the time I felt like this was going to put me in more danger. I never told Connor about the abuse or anything bad that happened between me and John. I would always lie and tell him that we were happy and that we were constantly going out and being with other people. I did tell him about what happened with my friends from the church, and how I was really alone with the exception of John. Although John was with me all the time, I still felt like something was missing from my life. I just didn’t know what to do. Connor and I went to lunch a couple times for chinese food, and we talked a lot when we weren’t both at work or busy with other commitments. He had become my friend and my confident.

Connor was and still is a great person. He always knew how to make me laugh, and he always supported whatever decision I wanted to make. He looked out for me, and I’m glad that Connor and I were friends at one point. But, as much as I liked Connor, there was always something about him. I constantly felt the need to be prepared at any moment for him to walk out. We weren’t dating, we didn’t have a “thing”...we were just friends. But friends can leave you, too. And that’s what happened. When we stopped talking, I was really upset. But I was so used to being abandoned that I accepted it as a fact and moved on.

By the end of my junior year, I was without friends, in a severely abusive relationship, telling lies daily to keep people from worrying, and was extremely depressed. I got a two on my AP Language and Composition exam, and was close to failing all of my classes. I had checked out of reality in order to survive the hell I was living in. I was ready to give up.

My mom threw me a surprise birthday party that summer. John stayed that weekend at his dad’s and never acknowledge my birthday. Mostly family showed up, my beloved friend Anna came, and a few family friends from Northfield. I relaxed the whole day. I laid around in the sun, we went swimming, my friend Mason came over and we went for a walk through town -- I truly enjoyed myself that weekend. I didn’t think about John once, and I began planning how I was going to leave him.

In July, I went to Boston and Nantasket with the family of another little boy I started working with named Jaden. The weekend we went down was the same weekend as John’s birthday, but he had planned on going on a fishing trip with his dad that weekend anyways. I went to the ocean for the first time, I spent time with my mom and my sister, and I enjoyed myself once again without thinking about John. We had been together for over a year at this point so I knew that no matter how I broke up with him, we both were going to be pretty upset about it. John had moved out over the following week by choice, and we were still together. We spent significantly less time together, but I had started to feel the real impact of my actions over the past year. But I knew what I needed to do. On our way home from work on a friday, I told him that I wanted to break up with him. And he asked why. I told him I wasn’t happy, and I wasn’t making him happy. We were both miserable and that it wasn’t good. After talking for a good hour and a half in his car, he had somehow convinced me that he was going to change and things would get better. This happened several times. I always tried to end things with John but every time I felt incredibly guilty and ended up staying with him.

John ended things on his own terms. We were on our way to clean the family practice floor of the hospital in Berlin on a Thursday night at the end of July, and he told me”I just want to be friends.” I didn’t really know how to feel about it, so I told him if that’s what he wanted and that’s what would make him happy, then so be it. The car fell silent. He asked me if I had any questions, or how I was feeling. It was the strangest thing to hear him talk like this. He was acting like a completely different person. I don’t know if he inquired about these things because he felt guilty or because he only said he wanted to be friends to get a reaction out of me. Either way, I couldn’t respond. I didn’t have words. I was angry because he got to end things, he got to feel happy about his decision, he could feel normal.

We finished work, and I got in my own car and went home, and he went back to his dad’s house in Northfield. I remember walking out to my car in the parking lot, and as soon as I got out of the hospital, I called my mom crying. She had texted me before hand telling me my friend Chris was visiting. Once I had started crying, I couldn’t stop. My mom just sat there and listened and asked what was wrong. I told her through muffled breaths and violent heaving that John broke up with me. I asked her to keep Chris at the house. She said she would. I got in my car, started it, but couldn’t move. I felt paralyzed. I had no control over my body. I knew on the outside I looked like a girl, crying in her car. But on the inside, I was screaming. There is no word or phrase that can describe how I was feeling. I just imagine this little “mini me” inside my body wailing, thrashing wildly. I have a very high physical pain tolerance. But when it comes to mental and emotional hurt, I had come to a place where I questioned everything. I wondered if people complimented me because they pitied me, or because they were just trying to be nice. I thought about how uncomfortable smiling was, when I would be able to smile again.

The drive home felt longer than it was. I could’ve gone down the beltline, taken a right at the light, another right at Allen Lumber, and been at my house in a matter of minutes. But for some reason I didn’t. I went straight through the lights, around Airport road, all the way down Upper Prospect and Prospect street, straight towards Currier Park, then down Summer street, and then to my house. The whole drive must have taken about thirty minutes. I stopped crying long enough to drive, but I still couldn’t think. I just...sat there. My body being controlled by muscle memory. By the time I got home, I had no idea how I had gotten there, but I didn’t care.

As I pulled into the driveway, Chris and my mom were waiting for me outside. I got out of the car, dropped my purse and my keys on the ground, and ran to Chris. I knew that at that moment, my life was not the same, and that I had no idea what I was going to do. Chris was my only friend that night. He hugged me and sat with me until I fell asleep between him and my mom. I woke up alone the next morning, and I cried again. The following morning was just as painful. And the one after that. At the time, I thought I was crying because I was heart broken. I thought that my life was over. Looking back, I think I was crying from relief. I felt like I was just floating around, hovering above the floor. This weight had been lifted from my shoulders and I didn’t quite know what to do with it.

I started writing to people on Facebook. I needed to apologize for hurting my friends and leaving them for John. I know, being in a controlling and abusive relationship is not my fault, but I didn’t help the situation by dedicating my life to him and ignoring my support system. I needed to fix things. I sent a message to Chris first; I thanked him never giving up on me even when he would’ve been better off to leave me alone. I messaged Mason, telling him how much I appreciated his devotion to me as a person and all the times he tried to make me feel loved and accepted. I apologized to my mom for not listening to her when she said that she saw something in John change. I spoke with everyone I could possibly think of so I could apologize for deserting them, and thanking them for not giving up on me and forgiving me when I should've been left to pick up the pieces on my own. I didn’t deserve such kind and loving people after what I did to them. I really didn’t deserve my best friend Reilly, either.

I think through everything that has happened throughout my high school career, Reilly has been my biggest supporter after my mom. We stopped talking for over a year because John knew that Reilly really liked me and John didn’t want me around him. After, I reconnected with Reilly because I knew that out of everyone I had hurt and disappointed, no one took my absence as hard as Reilly. I unblocked everyone on Facebook, and I sent him a message. I apologized for what I did and I understood if he didn’t want to talk to me or if he had moved on and didn’t want to be friends anymore. By some power in Heaven, he sent a long message back telling me how excited I was that I was safe and not dating John anymore. He told me how he was doing really well, and that he was enjoying basic training and AIT. I didn’t even know he was enlisting, much less that he had left already. I was shocked, but I was happy for him, and I was grateful that he was still my best friend. We texted, Skyped, and wrote a few letters while he was in AIT. When the time came for him to graduate and he got the chance to come home, I was so excited to see him. Unfortunately, his mom was not able to go pick him up in South Carolina, and his father was not willing to take the time to go get him either. Through some convincing, my mom let me and my uncle Tommy drive to South Carolina and back to get him and bring him home.

We left at 01:00 December 10th, and got to our motel to check-in at 23:15. In the summer, it takes around 18 hours to get from Barre to Fort Jackson, but not only did we drive down in the winter, we left right before a blizzard hit all of New England. It took us over four hours to get out of Vermont and into New York. After New York City, I drove. And we didn’t switch back until we got almost entirely through Virginia. I was so excited to see Reilly. I hadn’t seen him in over two years at this point, and I couldn’t wait any longer. On December 11rh, Tommy and I grabbed breakfast and went to Fort Jackson (which was about a ten minute drive from our motel). We sat in the back seat, and I waited for the formal introductions to stop and the graduates to come in. I looked at every face, and listened to every voice until I saw my best friend stroll into the church in his dress blues, singing the cadence with the rest of his class. I counted down the names till he was called to cross the stage. I waited for what felt like forever for the class to be released. Reilly, being the big goof he is, came up behind me and scared me. Showing affection in uniform is highly frowned upon because it is considered disrespectful. When a soldier is in uniform, he must act like a solider. Walking in uniform and holding hands with his or her significant other is acceptable (it’s looked at as the equivalent of locking arms as in the days of chivalry). Congratulatory hugs and kisses from his or significant other, his or her child and or parent(s) in instances of graduation or promotion ceremonies and return from deployment are also acceptable as long as they are kept short; but Reilly really didn’t care.

I remember him looking at him with a smile from ear to ear on his face and saying to me “Cheyenne, just shut up and hug me already.” I had waited so long for that hug. Not just the 36 hours it took to drive down to South Carolina and sit through his graduation ceremony. I waited over two years to hear his voice, see his face, to hug my best friend. I couldn’t help myself. I cried. I laughed. I sobbed. I was so full of excitement and joy that I couldn’t contain myself. Though he knows how much I dislike it and how self-conscious it makes me, he picked up and spun me around. Reilly has this way about him where he can always make me smile even when I’m on the verge of tears. When we got all of his stuff together and put in the car, we went back to the motel and played a few rounds of Battleship and Rummy. When we got to the motel, Reilly pulled out a teddy bear a little bigger than a standard pillow you have on your bed, and a necklace that said “Property of a US Soldier” in the shape of a dog tag. We went to dinner at Five Guys (none of us had ever been there before), and walked around downtown Columbia, South Carolina for a bit that night, and left around 10:00 on December 13th.

On our way home, there were several accidents on the interstate in New Jersey and New York. At one point, two of the three lanes after an on-ramp outside of Manhattan were closed, and everyone using the on-ramp was playing chicken trying to get into the only available lane on the interstate. We almost got t-boned in the passenger side door (which is wear I was sitting). I had the teddy bear Reilly gave me in my lap and I was hugging him (I eventually named him Stan) as tight as I could. I have extreme anxiety on long car rides, especially when there are no directions being followed to a new place. After the almost-accident, I started hyperventilating and had a panic attack. I went unconscious for approximately 90 seconds. When I came to, Reilly and Tommy were trying to talk to me and get me to respond. I was okay after that, but I didn’t sleep that night. It took us 23 and a half hours to get down to South Carolina, and over 26 hours to get home.

Seeing Reilly and knowing that I had begun to build a better support system for myself really changed my outlook on life. I was starting to feel some-what normal. I was happy for the most part. I just still hadn’t been able to deal with Jesse’s death, and the fact that Brandon got to move on and live his life. I remember calling Reilly several times a month crying because I just missed Jesse so much. I didn’t trust anyone else with this vulnerable part of me. I have had issues with self-harm in the past, and with everything that had happened I was seriously considering going back to hurting myself. Reilly told me about this thing he read online about how drawing with a felt tip marker on your body can be just as stress-relieving as cutting. So I tried it. Surprisingly, it worked. I always took pictures of the drawings to show Reilly, and he always told me how happy he was to know that I had chose to do something creative and helpful to my body than harming myself. This was really the turning point in my life where I realized that I have control. I have control over my life, I have control over what happens to my body, I have control over my life. I realized that I had the power to feel better about Jesse’s passing, and I had the power to grieve less and live more.

I walked around with the bear Reilly gave me for months. I did my homework with the bear in my lap, I ate my dinner next to it, I snuggled up with it at night when I went to bed. I still use the bear as a pillow, and the necklace sits on my dresser. Reilly stayed at my house for eight of the twelve days he was home. And I brought him to the airport when he had to fly to Texas. Reilly has always been my best friend, and I couldn’t be more thankful for him. He was the first person that I talked to when my biological father contacted me a few days before Christmas. Before I was born, neither of my parents really wanted anything to do with me. My mom tried to put me up for adoption but it fell through and she kept me. My biological father (Mike) walked out on me and my mom before I was born. Because of some abuse, my mom got a restraining order against him. My mom then dedicated the position of “daddy” to her best friend Fabio Moura, who to this day has been my rock. I had never heard of Mike, talked to him, or spoken with anyone else on his side of the family before in my life. I got a friend request from a Michael Hunter one day, and I asked my mom who it was. She looked at the picture and told me that it was my biological father. I got really scared. I didn’t know what to do. I talked to Reilly and I told him that I wanted to write Mike a letter, but I wanted Reilly to read it first. I wrote took several weeks to write and rewrite this letter. I didn’t know what I wanted to say, but I wanted to demonstrate how well I was doing and how far I had come without him. I wanted to remind Mike that I didn’t need him in my life, and that I hated him for leaving. I told him that I didn’t care how much my words hurt him because I had the right to do so and to say how I felt. I made sure to outline my boundaries and what would happen if he crossed them. I was really unsure on how the letter sounded. It was personal, and it meant a lot to me, but I didn’t want Mike to feel those emotions when he read it. I wanted him to feel the pain that I felt, I wanted him to feel the way I felt growing up. I wanted him to know that I had questions, but I didn’t want answers. I wanted him to explain himself, but I refused to come out and say it. After Reilly had read the letter, he said that it was good. Even he felt the anger and maturity in my words. So, I typed it up in a Facebook message and sent it. I wasn’t expecting a reply, and didn’t receive one for some time.

With all of the forgiveness going around, I knew that there were still things I hadn’t dealt with, so I eventually caught up with Brandon on Facebook and we reconnected. I honestly had no idea what to say to him. I messaged him and we started talking and catching up on life. He was graduating his AIT training soon and would be coming home for new years. I was so nervous about bringing up what had happened in conversation that I just couldn’t. At least not right away. We kept in touch for a couple weeks and before he came home I wrote him a long message. I apologized for any hard feelings or tears I caused by bringing it up, and I couldn't imagine what he feels like. But for me, I needed to get it off my chest. I told him how I had been angry at him for a long time about Jesse’s death. But that I had realized that it wasn’t his fault. Jesse chose to jump in. He wouldn’t have gone in the water if he didn’t see something in Brandon that was worth saving. I needed to honor Jesse and forgive Brandon. Jesse wouldn’t want me to be angry at Brandon for something Jesse saw as the right thing to do. I needed to forgive Brandon, and I did. Forgiving him was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I worked for a really long time on remembering all the good things about Jesse. He would come to my house every night during the summer and ask me if I wanted to go hang out with him and walk around the neighborhood. Whenever I was upset with my mom, he told me he would beat her up next time she hurt my feelings. He had this way of turning the worst situations into some of the best memories I have. He was the light at the end of the tunnel for me, everyday.

When Mike, my biological father, finally did reply, he explained that there was a lot of miscommunication and papers getting lost in the system. I was born in Colorado, and the court system works a little different than in Vermont. He claimed to have not been informed that my mom had left the state with me, but I really didn’t care what he had to say. What’s done is done, and I had moved on from it. Through him, I met my grandmother Dee-Ann, and she is the coolest grandma ever. I am Mike’s only child, but I have a few aunt’s and uncle’s and four or five more cousins from her and her second husband. I have grown very close to Grammy Dee. I interviewed her for my medical terminology course as she is the assistant director of the Physician Assistant Program at Touro University in Nevada, and she sends me pictures of everyone. She also lives in Las Vegas and has purple hair! All in all, I learned a lot about life, forgiveness, and family through this experience with Mike.

Hearing that my biological father was trying to reconnect with me really scared my step-dad Fabio. He has stood in as my father since I was born. Him and my mom have been best friends for many years, and he has always taken care of me. He sends me money to help pay for my car insurance and my phone bill, and is coming to see me graduate high school and be here for my 18th birthday. I haven’t seen Fabio (my dad) since I was four years old. He was born in Brazil, and I have many family members that still live here. My aunt Isabel and her son (my cousin) Victor, and my grandmother Cecil. Fabio has been my rock throughout my entire life. After I graduate college, we are planning on starting the adoption progress so I will officially take his last name. Fabio has always planned a large role in my life. Supporting my decisions in life, always giving me advice and kind words when times were tough. Hearing that he was scared that Mike was going to take me away from him and replace him as my dad was heart breaking. No one could ever replace Fabio as my dad. He has always disciplined me, loved me, and supported me like a father, and he will be walking me down the aisle when I get married, and we will dance together for my daddy-daughter dance at my wedding. He is my dad, and nothing could ever change that. To this day he is my biggest cheerleader.

Senior year got off to a rough start. I had patched things over with Anna, Tina, Tameka and Kollin, and we were all really looking forward to a pretty awesome senior year together. A few weeks into the school year, Tameka asked me for my opinion about her boyfriend. I gave her my honest opinion: I didn’t like him, I thought she could do so much better, and I knew she deserved a lot better. Tameka always came to me when stuff hit the fan between her and her boyfriend. She told me stories of how she would see him texting other girls saying “I love you too” and sending inappropriate messages to them. They would get in physical fights and he would pull her hair and raise his hand to her. Everything that I went through with John was becoming evident in her relationship. We had been friends since the fourth grade, and I promised her older brother Jerome that I would do everything in my power when he moved to Georgia to protect her. I remember one night she texted me and asked me if I could come get her for a few hours because the chair her boyfriend’s dad made for him broke and he was really upset and becoming aggressive with her. I told her I would, but I wasn’t going to bring her back to his house that night because she shouldn’t be left alone with him. She told me she’d try to talk to him and get him to calm down, and I didn’t hear from her about it again. The day after I gave her my opinion upon request, Tameka came up to me at school one morning and asked if we could go for a walk because she had something she wanted to talk to me about. We went into the hall and started walking. She told me that she didn’t appreciate my negative comments and “trash talk” about her boyfriend, and that I was being disrespectful. I told her that she had asked for my opinion and I refused to lie to her. She told me I shouldn’t have said anything if that was the case. She claimed to have kept quiet and been polite to John while he and I were still together, but that was false and I called her out on it. I told her I didn’t want her to come to me with all their problems because if she was going to get so upset about an answer she asked for, I was not going to deal with her constant complaining and griping about how terrible he treats her. She told me she didn’t want to be friends anymore, and I accepted that.

After class, I went to my locker and saw my friend Ashley. I started talking with her and we made plans for the following weekend. I put my binder away and took out my homework for my next class and walked on. Because Tameka’s locker is only two down from mine, she also was at her locker and saw me walk by. As I passed her, she exclaimed that I “should stay away from [her] because [she] was this close to punching [me] in the throat”. I was at my own locker. I didn’t look at her. I didn’t talk her. I didn’t even notice she was there until she said something. After this, things were quiet between us. We didn’t talk, and I still talked briefly with Anna. I entered the Miss Teen Vermont USA pageant and was trying to raise money to go (which I fell short about 100 dollars). I posted a short clip on my snapchat lip syncing to one of my favorite songs, and both Anna and Tameka posted on Kollin’s snapchat story a short clip mocking me and my involvement with the pageant. I decided to block all of them on every social media site I had: Facebook, Instagram, Ask.fm, Twitter, etc. This made Tina, Kollin, and Anna really upset, understandably. I could’ve talked to the others about what went down between me and Tameka, but at the time I just didn’t want to deal with any of them or take the chance of her using their profiles to harass me or see what I was doing with my life. I wanted her to be completely cut off from any access to me. In January I received a DM (direct message) on Instagram from this “Jordan” account. He started sending me inappropriate pictures, and asking for the same content from me. After not receiving any response from me, he made me his “Woman Crush Wednesday (WCW).” I was in the hospital at the time with a stomach infection and I hadn’t been on any social media in several days. When I finally did get on, I was greeted with nasty comments on the picture he posted of me, and several comments underneath his from another account. The other account was a woman, and on the WCW picture of me she told Jordan how much of a slut I was and that I was ungrateful and didn’t deserve to be his WCW. He commented back telling her off. After some arguing between the two of them, he called me an “ungrateful cunt” and started finding pictures from my Facebook on Google and posting them with rude and degrading comments such as “@cheyennebonnell , are you taking a s***? sure looks like it”. After reporting his account, and the woman’s account for sexual harassment and bullying, things on social media settled down quite a bit for me.

After things blew up with Tameka in August, I started talking to people that I wasn’t close to more often and became really close to Ashley and Sierra. I found out that Ashley and I had both been through the same things in life. We understood each other in ways that most people couldn’t because we had lived through the same stuff. In January 2015 we got matching heart tattoos. Even though we don’t talk often anymore, I will always love her and cherish the ink we share. I had been in the same advisory with Dustin since freshman year, and we were really good friends. I helped Ashley and Dustin start dating and I convinced him to ask her to the Harvest Ball (even though he didn’t want to go because he hates dances). I was so happy that my friends were together and happy. I knew that Dustin was going to treat Ashley the way she deserved to be treated, and that she was going to appreciate him more than anyone ever could. I was happy for them.

My little sister has a rare disease, and she had to be hospitalized in November. Even though I wasn’t friends with Anna, she had told my sister that they were still friends and Anna would always be her friend and love her like a little sister. This meant a lot to me, so when Jade (my little sister) went into the hospital, I messaged Anna and told her that even though we weren’t talking, I wanted her to know what was going on with Jade and that she could come visit her or call her whenever she wanted. Tameka found out (presumably through Anna) that Jade was sick, and she came up to me one day and asked if there was anything I needed. I told her no and thanked her for the offer. The thing with Tameka and her “act of kindness” is that it was prompted. She only came to me because Anna said something. It wasn’t genuine and I couldn’t respect that. Anna and I however talked things out and came to realize that things had changed since we were little, and we were both completely different people. We still love eachother dearly, and will always be there for one another, but we have wandered onto two different paths. Anna apologized for participating in Tameka’s doings, and I apologized for blocking her without talking to her about what was happened first. She told me that she had helped Tameka make the Jordan account on instagram, but stopped participating after Tameka started sending pictures. She also told me that the woman’s account was really one of Tameka’s male friends who had been talked into harassing me as well. Over the next couple months, Anna told me about every account she was aware of and all the plans Tameka had to make me miserable. But Tameka figured it out, and stopped confiding in Anna. The situation once again came to a slow boil for some time. I made peace with Tina and Kollin as well, and speak to Kollin as often as I can.

In March, a male Facebook account had started messaging me asking for pictures. As with the other accounts I didn’t respond. After weeks of belligerent messages, I posted a screenshot of what was being said and posted it for everyone on my friends list to see. I asked my friends to report the account for sexual harassment and bullying. Unfortunately, Facebook did not take down the account. I was so stressed and hurt by all of the comments made over the past six months that I broke down in tears. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I couldn’t continue on straight-faced and strong. People don’t realize how much their words hurt people over a period of time. I never found out who was running the fake Facebook account, but I have a feeling it was Tameka or one of her friends that had been convinced to play along with her little game.

Later that month, Ashley and Dustin had stopped coming to school. Dustin is a very artsy person, and he was practicing making these really neat roses out of regular printer paper. I asked him to show me how to make them and he did. He let me keep the one he showed me how to make, and Ashley got very jealous even though she knew and admitted to knowing that it didn’t mean anything. We talked less, but were still close after that. Things at home for Ashley were not the best. Her dad passed away from lung cancer when she was seven, and her mother has never learned to live with the death of her husband. She ended up taking out her frustration on Ashley. I don’t remember how many times she called me in tears and asked if I could come get her and let her spend a few days at my house. I always went and got her, and I never told her she had to leave. She decided that she wanted to move out before her mother kicked her out of the house, and I told her she could stay with me and my mom and I would help her get a car, a job -- we’d help her get back on her feet; all she had to do was call and tell me when she needed me to pick her up. She ended up moving in with Dustin, and stopped coming to school. She bought a car, and moved out, but she hasn’t been to school in over two months. For a while no one had heard from her or Dustin. I was worried, and so was Sierra. I asked Sierra if she had heard anything from Ashley in a while and she said no. Sierra and I started talking and we knew that if Ashley didn’t come to school, she wasn’t going to be able to make up the time she missed and was not going to be able to graduate. A few months later Ashley texted me. She was really mad that I had said anything about her not graduating, although I hadn’t spoken to anyone but Sierra about the possibility of Ashley not graduating. I told Ashley that she needed to come to school. Although she may not want to, she still needed to. It would’ve helped her have her own space and be around people who cared about her and supported her. I told her that I might’ve been wrong in asking Sierra about her graduating and that I was sorry if I had hurt her feelings as that was never my intention. I also told her that she couldn’t expect people to be okay when she disappears off the face of the earth for three months with no text to tell anyone she’s okay. I can’t help her if she doesn’t tell me what’s going on. She acknowledged that that was an unfair assumption on her part, and stopped talking to me. I haven’t spoken to her since.

In April, I went to the Accepted Student Day with my friends Alex and Jeff. I had never been to Maine before, but Alex used to live in the area so we weren’t completely lost. I had already enrolled to the University of Southern Maine (USM) and would be attending in the fall. I had applied as a Biology major, and had been accepted into the pre-med cluster to become a doctor. I changed my mind and decided I wanted to be a nurse. I decided to become a nurse because RN’s get to interact more with the patients and their families. They get to watch the healing process and are able to help the patient grow and become stronger. Being a nurse fit perfectly. I want to make a difference, and becoming a nurse is how I’m going to do so. I unfortunately did not get accepted into the Nursing program at USM as a freshman because I did not have the additional college math and science credits. my admissions counselor said that as long as I score high enough on my Advanced Placement Psychology and English Literature and Composition exams that I could transfer into the nursing program my second year at USM.

Getting into the my top college and planning out my future has really helped me reflect on the difference between living and simply existing. After Jesse died, I think I just continued to exist. I wasn’t really there; I wouldn’t say I had “checked out” entirely, but I definitely was not doing things that made me happy and I was certainly not being productive.

I learned the difference between victim and survivor; I am no longer a victim of domestic abuse, I am a survivor. People who haven’t been in an abusive relationship don’t understand what it’s like. Somedays you see what’s really going on, but most days you deny it. You make up excuses for that person’s behavior, you convince yourself that it’s your fault. people on the outside looking in just can’t mentally comprehend the complexities of such an extreme relationship. I forgave myself, and moved on to forgive the people around me who didn’t know.

I learned that friends will come and go, but the important part is to stay true to myself. And it took losing most of my friends and nearly all my support system to realize that people can only love you when you learn to love yourself first. But when you do that, the only love that matters is that which you show yourself. I found that working out and striving to maintain a healthier lifestyle is one of the most beneficial ways a person can learn self-love. Keeping my body healthy and moving lifts my spirits on bad days, and humbles me on the good days.

I've learned to accept it and live in a way that is honorable and respectful not only for Jesse, but for myself. What happened with Jesse was tragic, and I will never forget him or what he has and continues to teach me about life. Jesse has become an even bigger motivator for me. I know that Jesse always wanted the best for me, and he would still want me to continue with life and be happy. Admitting what happened with John was one of the hardest things I've done throughout my high school career.

But the most important idea I have learned over the past few years is this: the book isn't over just because the page ends -- how one chapter ends does not dictate how the next chapter will begin. It's my story, and I can write it however I want.

High School

July 16, 2015

It's Not Goodbye, Just Another See You Later

Continued Memoir

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