Finding Me Again

The One With the Flashback

The fact that I still do homework cracks me up. First of all, I’m in my senior year of high school- who really gives a shit about homework anymore? Second of all, it isn’t as if there is any point to me actually working in high school. I have this hope that I’ll be able to go to Vanderbilt, and study to be a family therapist there. But my dad was always right- I have way to much baggage to go follow the profession I want to follow.

*Flashback*

“…so I’ll study there for 8 years, to be a therapist. It’ll be amazing! The music scene there is raved about, Alec will be there-“

“Did I just hear Ally say she wants to study psychology?” I stiffened as my dad came around the corner.

“Your daughter was just telling us about why Vandy is her dream school.” Matty’s mother smiled up at my father, while my mother and brother’s eyes shifted nervously. We all wondered what he would say next, as Matty and his mother sat unaware.

He began laughing like a hyena, and the sound seemed disproportionate from his huge framed body. He practically shouted out his words with the all the force of his demented laughter behind them. “Ally can’t be a therapist! She has too much baggage for that nonsense.”

Matty glared at my father, while his mother’s eyes shifted to me quizzically, trying to see past the façade I had put on for the night. “What do you mean by baggage,” she questioned.

A sound from outside my window yanks me out of my memory, and I sat, appalled that I allowed my mind to wander that far into the past. I’d done such a good job of blocking it all out. I shoved my homework aside, pulled myself into pajamas, shut off the lights, and snuggled myself up under my shield of a comforter, blasting my Matty playlist.

I met Matty when I was about 3 years old- his mother and my mother were taking the same aerobics class, or some adult nonsense like that. Personally, I don’t believe in working out. If God wanted me to be skinny- I’d be skinny. But anyways, we would both sit in the back of the room and play games together while our mothers jumped around and tried to lose the baby weight that we had made them put on. As our mothers quickly bonded over the ridiculous moves their aerobics instructor had them do, we quickly bonded over anything and everything. We became the best of friends, and we were completely attached at the hip.

All through elementary and middle school, nothing changed. Matty and I went through everything together, and it only made us stronger friends. I grew to love him like family. Together, my mother, brother, Matty’s mother, Matty and I made our own little family of sorts. Matty’s father died before he was born, and Miss Balister hasn’t dated since then. My father wasn’t exactly a constant and pleasant presence, so he was not included in our makeshift family. I knew that was one of the reasons my mom and Miss Balister bonded so, so well- they both had experience with crazy husbands. Matty’s father had been a hard to control type of guy, and he eventually ended up running his car up a tree, coming home drunk one night, and killing himself in the process.

When we got to high school, mine and Matty’s dynamic began to change. Our mothers urged us to start dating, and eventually convinced us to give it a go. We worked even better as a couple than we had as friends, and we quickly became the most liked couple around town. It got to the point where our anniversaries were basically a town-wide holiday, and everyone would bring us cupcakes at school. It was ridiculous, but I wasn’t complaining, because hey- free cupcakes. Am I right?

However, that all changed when everything happened. Matty and I’s relationship ended without ever really ending, and I was constantly struggling to find closure, to free myself from his grasp. I had loved him so so so much, and it drove me insane that he would just stop talking to me the minute I needed him most. I would have been okay if he had wanted to break up- it would have shattered my heart, but we would have still been friends. But rather than just end our relationship, he pretended as if we had never even had a relationship, and that shattered my spirit.

After the fact, my makeshift family sort of fell apart too. Miss Balister- who I used to call mom- and I haven’t spoken in months, Alec and Matty avoid each other at all costs, and Miss Balister and Alec are hardly as close as they once were. It tears me apart to know that it’s all because of me and my stupid choices; it’s all my fault.

Before I knew it, my thoughts were spinning in thousands of different directions, each of which would take me down a memory lane that I did not want to travel down, so I pushed further under the comforter and went to sleep.