Don't Break Your Own Heart.

A girl recalls her first broken heart ever and the first time she lost her virginity.

  People always use to say to me, oh, what, you’re twenty one? You’re still a virgin? What the f**k, man, how? They’d stare at me like I’d grown another head and it had pushed my original over to the right to make room for the second. Most of the time they wouldn’t believe me, but if they knew me well enough they’d understand. The people I was fairly close to, excluding my mother who rarely had these talks with me, knew I was serious. It was a serious issue--its not like it was a defining choice stamped on my forehead that repelled any boys who might want to get drunk and suggest stupid things like going home with them, but it was a serious issue. It was important to me, it was something I had decided a long time ago, probably circa ninth grade when I realized some of my classmates were far past looking at naked pictures of people online and were now sticking their hands down each others’ pants in the gym locker rooms after school hours. 

A lot of things influenced the decision, I suppose. My mother was always very religious. She was a juxtaposed image of everything I never wanted to do, and everything I wanted to end up being. When I was younger I would often ask her how she and my dad had fallen in love, when she had started dating, when she’d gotten married. Before my more mature years, the answers were simple and short. “When I was eighteen. When my father allowed me. When we were ready.”  As the years passed,  the story would broaden a little, open up, reveal layers that I was glad I hadn’t understood as a twelve year old. “When I was sixteen, when my father realized he couldn’t hold on forever, when we decided we need to leave the country.”  Eventually I got the real answer, but I fortunately got it at an age I could understand it. “I was fourteen, I was a child and I crossed the border before I married. Just the two of us, but we knew it was right.” 

The answers hadn’t been too important to me before, but it really made a different to hear them when I did. To know that the only thing that truly mattered was that it felt right. No one else could make the decision for you. I’d only asked before because I wanted to find my mother in an awkward answer where I could point at her and say, “Aha! So you were sixteen! And you got to date!” 

I never really wanted to date. I just wanted to be allowed to date. I thought guys were cute, I understood what attraction meant and day dreaming occurred often, but I didn’t actually want to date. I just wanted to be liked. I just wanted to know I could date if I really wanted to, but I didn’t because I was in middle school and I was awkward, going through puberty and stages where I over dressed and stages were I didn’t give a rat’s a*s if I left the house in jeans and a t-shirt that were too big for me. Makeup was foreign to me and the few times I tried to apply it, I always came out looking like a maniac or three shades too light. Straighteners and hair curlers were alien objects, and despite the fact that I couldn’t have helped myself fix my awful fashion sense if I had wanted to, all I cared about was reading books. I was aware of new things like sex and how it was not okay to take your clothes off in front of just anyone. These topics didn’t interest me much, but I was aware they existed. 

Picture me, twelve years old, riding in the back of the truck with my two cousins, on my way to the movie theater: I was sitting comfortably against the window, my knees pulled up and resting against the back of the front seat. My wrinkled t-shirt was too big for me but I didn’t care because it kept me warm. My hair was a tangled mess in a terrible ponytail and my mind was pre-occupied with some terribly written, young adult’s horror novel about a monster in the basement. If I held the book any closer to my face, I was going to poke my eye out when I turned the page. I read furiously, intensely, because that was the kind of child I was. More preoccupied with the fictional word in ink than the fact that my  cousins, Maria and Joaquin were squished next to me, going on about how they knew all the worlds to “Hey Ma” by CAM’RON even though they had no clue what the hell the song meant, and what rated R movie they were going to sneak into later when we got to the movies. Every now and then one of them would look over and point to me. They’d giggle and whisper and shakes their heads because I such a nerd with my paperback book, my uncaring choice of clothing and my goody good attitude. Maria would reach over and pluck the book from my hand, losing my page in the motion and I’d spazz out immediately. 

“Hey, you’re gonna lose my page!” 

“Why you always reading books over there. You can’t talk to us or what?” She’d pass my book over to Joaquin who probably wouldn’t have understood the synopsis even if he’d read it. His brain wasn’t programmed to understand things in books well. He just knew he was cool because he was rich. His mom owned a great restaurant and anything he wanted, he could have. He’d hold it up in the air--he was too cool to just motion with it, and he’d shake his head. 

“Dude, you gotta stop being such a nerd. You never do anything. You just sit there and read.”

“Well I like to read!” It was true, I did. I enjoyed it so much it was ridiculous. My mom wouldn’t even take me to the book store anymore. By that age, I’d buy the book and finish it before we got home from the day’s errands. It drove her insane. She told me I might as well sit there and read the whole thing and she’d come get when she was finished shopping. I was okay with that. There was something so lovely and being entranced by a book. I would read each word carefully and be in awe of such perfect combination of words. If It was a good enough story, I was gone. There was no point in even tapping me on the shoulder because reality no longer existed and I was somewhere else. However, the three of use were fresh teenagers. I was twelve (close enough!) and Maria and Joaquin were thirteen and they didn’t understand what it meant to appreciate words. 

I reached for my book and Joaquin held it out of arms reach while Maria blocked any pathway to him. “Ada, we’re going to the movies not to the library.”

“And we’re gonna sneak into an R rated movie!” Joaquin had to pipe up for effect despite the fact that the past thirty minutes had been about just that. In the front seat, Erika, Joaquin’s big sister drove like she couldn’t hear us. The music was loud enough that she probably could make out the concept of our discussion but she sixteen and way too cool to care about where her twerp cousins did or why. 

“Yeah, and look what I found!” Maria held up a small tiny plastic square. It was shiny and silver with small red lettering. The focus immediately shifted from my worn out novel held captive to the amazing new packet I’d never seen before. They probably had but I doubt either of them had ever really seen one. Joaquin’s eyes were wide. 

“Where did you get that!”

“I stole it from my brother’s room!”

The three of us leaned in, hovering over the packet like it was going to do something amazing. Someone muttered “open it,” and after a moment of silence, Maria tore a strip off the top and dropped it to the truck floor. It looked weird, and round and plastic and I certainly didn’t want to touch it so she pulled it out slowly and held it up. It unraveled and hung loosely from her fingers. It looked gross. Like something an alien might wear. I poked it with my finger and recoiled, wiping my hand on my jeans. 

“Ew! Its wet!”

“Of course its wet, its a condom!”

“Yeah, cause you know what a condom is.”

The three of us, in the back of that truck spent the rest of the drive to the movie theater poking at the rubber and imagining theories of what exactly it did. We certainly knew where it went but it was probably good that we didn’t know what it did. 

That was the main shape of my adolescence. That moment, happening in different ways, in various degrees of knowledge. The other two always knew more than I did and I was okay with that. Our school, small enough that everyone knew everyone was visited by the VIRGINITY RULES van almost every year. They would hand out stickers and buttons and t-shirts, too and remind us all how important virginity was. It was better to wait until marriage because sex was a gift! Sex was one of the most important gifts you could give someone and it was not okay to just throw it around like a piece of paper everyone could sign. I usually threw the stickers away because if I kept them, the terrible two would probably laugh but I suppose I agreed with that black van and all of the people inside. It didn’t matter because I didn’t want to have sex anyway. 

My mom was religious, she was raised a catholic and was avid about going to church every Sunday and knowing all of the prayers. She stressed the whole No-Sex-Thing-Before-Marriage a lot. I never really understood why it was so important. We didn’t talk about sex much, or about falling in love very often because my mom was such a serious person. She was sheltering in a way, and she’d always tell me how I just needed to wait and my time would come and when it did, it would happen with someone I really cared about and was going to spend the rest of my life with. I really liked the idea of finding Prince Charming so I agreed with her. By the time I was in ninth grade, my cousin, who was also my best friend had already figured what she wanted. Or what she thought she wanted. I remember her telling me about the first time she ever screwed anyone. She told me it was painful. She also told me she loved him. I didn’t believe the second part, but hey, whatever rolled her dice. One by one, the majority of my friends would lose it and we’d all sit down together at the lunch table with out little milk cartoons and our styrofoam plates, asking questions and wanting to know details all about how it had happened and who it was with. There was always an awkward moment where the table would look around and calculate--organize--nosily check off everyone who’d ever shared a story and look at me expectantly. 

In ninth grade my answer was, “I don’t know, I just haven’t...” 

Tenth grade sounded like “I haven’t found the right person...”

Eleventh grade was more dramatic. “I’m waiting ‘til I get married.”

My senior year was a breakthrough. “Its none of your business.”

And it wasn’t their business! I wasn’t okay with just telling people who I didn’t and didn’t want to have sex with, who I had and had not kissed and who I didn’t and didn’t like. One, our school had three hundred kids in it. I knew every single one of them like the back of my hand. I’d gone to school with all of them since kindergarten and I also knew how nosy people were. Not to mention that my lunch table was filled with girls. Only girls. Most of them Mexican. Most of them nosy and most of them were born with big mouths. I’d be damned if I was going to put myself out there so next period everyone would know my life story. Two, I had grown in my four years of high school. Not to say I was finished and I knew everything. I was very self aware but I mostly just naive. However, the things that I did know, I stuck to them. I held those beliefs close. For whatever major influence that I couldn’t pinpoint then, I was a virgin by choice and I was okay with that. In fact, I was okay with it for as long as I could remember until quite recently.

It was never something I needed to do. It was just something that was going to happen when I was married and although I wasn’t sheltered from the world anymore, I knew how everything worked. I’d stuck my hands down someone else’s pants and I’d even made out with girls enough to know that for me, going all the way wasn’t something I wanted to do with just anyone. I wanted it to be perfect. Every moment of it was going to be wonderful and awesome, and it was going to feel like John Hughes was directing my life at that moment. I know that sounds really stupid, and rather naive but I truly and honestly believed it could happen. I was aware of the fact that there was a small chance it might happen before I was married but even then, John Hughes was going to be a part of it and it was just going to be this moment I would always remember my first time and probably be with them forever. I was so excited about the silly prospect of wearing the perfect shade of white at my wedding and dancing to “So this is love” from the movie, Cinderella. It was a song that often took over my day dreams. What I was not aware of, was the circumstance called life. 

Life. The whole reality that day dreams and fantasies don’t come true and not everything goes according to plan just because you stick to it. No matter what, life happens, and the whole my first time is going to be a Taylor Swift song is not guaranteed. 

That--That concept right there--it did not make SENSE to me. My brain did not comprehend it, and when Brooke called me on the phone to say, hey, its Friday morning. Its 11/11/11, Let’s day drink today! I didn’t know that every plan I’d ever made was going to get shot to hell. I didn’t know that drinking two full bottles of wine and then hanging out with him for a whole day was going to change everything. Now, you may stop and think to yourself. Two bottles of wine? Are you stupid? No, I’m not stupid. I’m someone who can hold my liquor and knows that two bottles of three dollar wine isn’t going to get me farther than happy drunk. Yeah. Now wipe that judgy look off your face so I can continue to how I drank too much jungle juice and got sweet talked by a guy with a ridiculous name and the most charming attitude I’ve ever met. 

No, you know what? I’ll skip to the part where he walked me home, a mile away in the freezing cold and put his mouth on mine so hard it made my head spin. It left me speechless and completely in awe and the next thing I knew, I was slipping my hands into his coat, wrapping them around him to the back so I could grasp his shirt and pull him close. His hands took my shoulders, pinning me against the wall and he pressed his entire body against mine in a way that made my whole being heat up from my toes to my neck and tint my cheeks pink in the darkness. There was little room for oxygen, I had to gasp and inhale some in time-intervals that were only split seconds long; in those moments where our mouths weren’t connected because our eyes were. It was so much of a drunken blur that I had to concentrate on not stumbling up my stairs. His hand was warm around mine and I pulled him up after me, loudly thudding up the pathway to my room.  The darkness was so much darker than usual but it was surprisingly easy to find him behind me. It was like our bodies were aware of each other, even if were way passed sober. Even if the darkness was pitch black. 

My mind was there, let’s make that clear, but it was like my character was not. If that makes any sense? I knew precisely what I was doing, who I was with, what choices were good and bad but I had no trouble in doing those said things and I was so much more attracted to his touch. I don’t blame of that on the alcohol, I’d been drunk enough times to be considered a veteran. I knew myself, and what I was capable of but this--being around him--having spent the entire day and night with him, getting to know him, it was like I was being drawn to him. To talk to him, to be near him, to touch him. My body needed to be against his and even in my drunken haze, I knew it. My only basis for this need was that I felt this crazy, unknown connection between us that I couldn’t explain, that didn’t make sense, but it was there. You know what I’m talking about. The kind of connection where you talk to someone and you feel like you’ve known them your entire life. Like they know you, and you can say anything without worrying about saying the wrong thing. Like just being next to them, sober or drunk makes your stomach do flips and cartwheels. (Yes, there was a time when we were both sober!) The kind of connection where you want--no--you need to know everything about this person despite the fact that you barely know them. Yes, I am aware of how this all sounds but once you feel it, there is no doubt it exists. You don’t have to know someone for months before you feel a connection. On the other hand, just because you feel that connection with someone, doesn’t mean they’ll feel it back. Its a tough concept that I’m still trying understanding. Honestly, how you fake the genuine things you say to someone, and how you touch them in a moment where nothing else matters? I honestly don’t believe you can. 

So there we are, touching, groping, kissing, somehow gravitating to the bed and it seemed right so I that I should crawl on top, twisting into the blankets and look up at the last second and smile so innocently. Like I knew there was nothing innocent about the way I would look at him but he would be the only one to ever know that.  The moonlight that rayed into my bedroom created stripes of light against his face that moved when he crawled toward me. He padded to me, hovering straight over my body and missed no beat before he dipped his head and caught my lips. I lost track of where one kisses ended and one began; there was nothing outside of mind except the way his mouth tasted on mine, and moved in sync without any effort. His hands lost all resistance and moved across my body like magnets pulling toward each other and at that moment, I probably would have swam underwater and found him a pearl if he’d asked me to...and I don’t know how to swim. I’d been this far, I’d been comfortable being this far and doing this with people but it had never felt more right at the moment. There was nothing in the back of mind telling me I might regret this in the morning, or maybe I should slow it down before we went too far. 

When I rethink the memories now, its like I’m watching a movie and the reel has been scratched or abused. I see everything in flashes, and hear everything in snippets. Some scenes are muted, and dark, and I only remember the idea of feeling like a whole other person and some scenes are loud in my ears to the point where everything else just falls into silence as I watch myself slip my hands under his shirt and moan his name loudly. He whispers my name in my ear and breathes roughly before both his hands move down to my pants, unbutton them and pull them off in one slow motion. They literally slid off my body and landed on the floor with a whoosh along with my underwear. He moved, crawling to a spot in front of my legs and with two hands, pushed them apart. He eagerly put his mouth on places I rarely let myself give into on my own and the sensation of being touched in new ways blew my mind. My eyes fought to stay open but it was too hard to not let my head fall back and gasp loudly. This part was not new to me, I’d done this before, but I didn’t do it enough that it was something so trivial. This part was not the part where I made the wrong choice--if you can call it a wrong choice. This part was fun, loud in my ears, full of rough kissing and quiet chuckles about words and phrases we mumbled to each other in the heat of the moment. That part was easy to be okay with because I hadn’t crossed over the invisible line I’d created for myself and I was doing so good! I was enjoying myself and I was here with someone I really liked and it felt so amazing. I was so caught up in the moment that when he placed a kiss on my cheek, very softly, very slowly and then another, closer to my ear it was hard not to notice the change in well...everything. In the way our breathing had slowed. In the way, his face nuzzled my neck and his hand grazed over my leg as he let out a small moan and said, “I wanna f**k you so bad.”

Honestly, those words weren’t even a little charming, not even a teeny tiny bit, but he’d said them, and now he was searching my face with the little light the night gave us and instead of just saying, “I’m not gonna have sex with you,” which was my usual answer when we got this far, the words did not come out. I just laid there, in silence, staring into nothing and it was not a bad thing, it was just something new to not immediately want to say no.

I’d been in this moment before--drunk, groping a guy I like (though this was the first time I’d ever known a person for such little time and been okay with being here) and gotten to this exact moment where he brought it up, and each time there was always this...knot....this pit in my stomach like I might throw up if I didn’t make it one hundred percent clear that I wasn’t going to give it up to him. This feeling where everything was suddenly like, you do this and you’re going to HELL. You do this and you’re easy. You do this, and you don’t get to wear white at your wedding. You do this and you’re going to regret it. This time there was no pit. There was nothing in my stupid brain saying, listen, you don’t know this guy, one day doesn’t mean s**t. Just because he charmed you with a bunch of philosophical questions, and intelligence doesn’t mean anything. Just because every moment of the time you guys spoke felt like you were in a movie, doesn’t make a goddamn difference because like is no movie and that’s plain stupid. There should have been something there telling me, hey, LISTEN MORON, just because he’s making the most adorable remarks all night about how great he thinks you are--the fact that he couldn’t stop asking Brooke questions about you--the fact that before you guys left, you straight up told him, “I am not going to have sex with you” to which he replied, “That’s okay with me,” DOES NOT MEAN ANYTHING because you don’t know him. There should have been, but there wasn’t, and so I, in my silence, pondered this, contemplated on whether it was going to be a bad idea, whether I was going to go to hell, whether I wanted to do this in general and yes, even in my drunken state, I was coherent enough to understand these things, but no matter how many long I laid there and tried to decipher why I wasn’t more worried about things I should have been, I just couldn’t. My head just kept saying, yes, I want to, I want to do this with this person even though I don’t know him, because there is a connection between us that just makes sense. So I did it. I nodded and I don’t even remember my words, but I said yes and I stopped him long enough to at least make it clear that it was my first time, and it was important to me and that we needed to go slow. My body was shaking again. Stupid Anxiety. In rare cases, such a this one, when I got this nervous my whole body would shake. Not the little shakes, or the ‘yikes, I’m nervous shakes’--more like, ‘what the f**k, do you have parkinson’s disease or something?’ shakes. I half expected him to laugh, but there he went again with his charm. He kissed my cheek again, and met my eyes. “Are you okay, you’re shaking?”

I nodded statically, and willed words to come to my mouth. 

“I have this thing where I shake when I get nervous around people I really like.” 

He kissed me slowly, my mind blanked for a second. “Don’t be nervous,” He whispered to me and with one hand he smoothed away a lock of hair away from my forehead and smiled. I know it sounds cheesy, but the way he moved my hair...the way he said the words...it was almost like he was nervous himself, like he was just as entranced and drawn as I was and then he leaned forward again, close to my ear and very seriously, very dreamlike, in a way that most people want someone to say it to them in real life but would never admit it, he said to me, “I’m honored...honored.” 

There was a distinction in the words. Like he needed me to feel them and know it was real and even when I replay the words in my head now, I still can’t bring myself to think that he hadn’t meant them. How can you fake something like that? How? 

He sat up for moment, moving my legs so they were around him and he steadied himself, put one arm by my head, his face close to mine. I blinked furiously, still in a shaky state and swallowed hard. 

“Can you just...just...try not to break heart...” I said. The words sounded foreign in my ears. I was caught between wanting to facepalm for saying something so stupid and being afraid because I actually meant it. He paused for a moment, I suppose pondering my statement or maybe just thinking of a good reply and then he finally opened his mouth. 

“I would never do that...but don’t break your own heart...I’ve done that before.” The words echoed loudly in my ears, each one fell distinctly on its own like logs falling to the ground and thudding individually. 

We had sex. There’s no point in describing the process no matter how wonderful it was, or how nice he was the whole time because despite the fact that he was wonderful, and he was nice about it doesn’t make up for the fact that now I have a broken heart. Yeah, we had sex and then we stayed up all night, playing twenty one questions and holding hands and saying stupid things like “Can I spend all day with you tomorrow?” Which we did. We spent all day together. Then we hung out again and again, and we talked about stupid things like Comics books and Superman and watched Sci-Fi movies cause we were cool like that and he would kiss me goodnight in such a way that when I got home I would play Taylor Swift as loudly as possible and twirl in circles because I was so f*****g happy. It was too good to be true, I should have known that but there was just too much naivety in me to understand that just because someone is nice to you after you sleep with them, doesn’t mean they give a f**k about you. 

The day he stopped talking to me, I was genuinely confused. What had I done that he suddenly was avoiding me? Literally, a 360 within days of kissing me goodnight, he was now avoiding me and blowing me off and I know it sounds stupid. I know it, okay? But to someone like me it doesn’t make any sense how someone can just stop caring. It eats at me. It grinds my brain together and makes me wonder, twenty four seven, what on earth happened. Was he using me from the beginning? Did I say something? Is he just fucked up? Is there something wrong with me? Its on my mind, a constant worry that doesn’t let me concentrate to the point where I want to throw up. I don’t want to go out, I don’t want to have fun, I just want to sit here and wonder and cry and throw up. My chest aches, physically, it aches to wonder about these things and I replay them in my mind so much that they start blur before my eyes and I wonder if any of it was the way I remember it. I don’t regret it. It was my choice, it felt right. Everyone tells me its not a big deal. They say, “Oh, you’ll be fine. I lost my V-Card when I was fourteen. Its just sex.” ...how is that not a big deal? Why would you losing your virginity at fourteen make me feel any better? Just because you didn’t value it in the way I did? It was a big deal to me. It still is. If it wasn’t, I wouldn’t have waited this long. Its not just sex, and yeah, I made the choice and there were factors that I suppose I should have taken less lightly but in the end, I did something because my heart said yes. Bottom line, it said yes, so I said yes and now I’m sitting here, the epitome of “every girl’s first time” as my friends say, and I don’t want to be that. Why would I ever want my first time to be like anyone else’s? I held out for so long because I was waiting on some prince charming that didn’t exist. Up until this point, I had never had my heart broken before. Ever. It blows my mind how this can bother me so much and bother him so little. I think though, that through all of this, the thing that bothers me most isn’t the fact that some guy slept with me and then blew me off.

Its the fact I’m sitting here asking myself whether I broke my own heart or not. 

Author's Note

Alrighty, this has been written for my fictional writing class. I had a limit on words or I would have kept writing. Please give your detailed feedback. Was everything leading up to them having sex too long? Did it help give the story more depth? Anything confusing? Any questions? Believable? Etc. Please let me know as its for a grade.