Addictions

A fictional story of a one young girls troubles through high school.

When you hear a word like addiction you think of drugs, or alcohol. Those are the most common types of addiction, and are extremely dangerous. Things like sex and self harm are also very dangerous addictions. But first comes another type of addiction I believe. Addictions such as needing to be loved, cared about, things like that. Those things fourm our further addictions.

I believe the most overlooked addictions are also those. To feel wanted. Its a pathway addiction. We get addicted to wanting these things, and when we don’t get these things we turn to drugs, alcohol, sex, even self harm. Why? They make us feel something. When you’re high as a kite on drugs, you feel everything so completely. Even if its trivial, you feel it. Don’t like that route? Then turn to alcohol. It’ll numb you, make you forget what you had been feeling. It stops you from wanting to be cared about, even just for a moment. Sex? That makes you feel wanted or loved for a moment. While its happening, it makes you feel needed. Self harm? Well that makes you feel the pain you’ve become numb to feeling anymore. When you’ve gotten to the point of not being able to feel the pain of being unwanted, unloved, that’s when you hurt yourself. You make yourself feel the pain.

I’ve felt just about every addiction I’ve listed, in every form possible. That’s all thanks to high school. For some people high school is the best time of their life, the glory years. For others, it’s the worst four years. The years you dream of getting out of there, and going to find bigger and better things. So we’ll begin my story with freshman year.

In complete honesty freshman year was just a dot on the big picture. It was the pathway addiction as I like to call it. Very trivial things happened in my freshman year. For the most part I was a good kid, got good grades, played sports, things like that.

Actually in all honesty for the majority of my freshman year I was a Christian. That’s how I’d grown up. With a religious mommy and daddy who wanted the best for their little girl. No drugs, no alcohol, and God forbid, no sex. Well mommy and daddy, none of those made it through high school.

Around the spring of my freshman year was when I started hanging out with this girl Tracy. She was a grade above me, a sophomore. We were in cheerleading together, and I thought that she was the coolest person around. Tracy went to parties, Tracy smoked pot, Tracy had sexual experiences with boys. Of course I was completely mesmerized by these things. They were things my parents had sheltered me from my whole life! And now I finally had a way of finding out about them!

The first thing Tracy introduced me to was pot. I smoked pot with her, maybe two or three times before the summer. I thought I was the s**t because of this. I was obviously the coolest kid, because I smoked pot, and the rest of my friends didn’t. During the summer Kelly and I began to grow apart.

Thankfully though right before school started though, she invited me to her 17th birthday party.

At this party I got drunk for the first time. That was interesting for me, this is also where I met a 21 year old guy named Mark, but people called him Bass because he had dry skin that looked like scales. Well Bass took an interest in me, So after I was drunk, and a little high he made his first move. We were under a pavillion at the grove Tracy’s family owned. We were standing behind a big brick stove where no one could see us. Bass kissed me, not only did he kiss me, but he started making out with me. He was the second guy I’d ever kissed before. So for me this was very exciting. He stopped when someone walked by, grabbed my hand, and  lead me to his car. He was just as drunk as me, if not more so. I didn’t know any better though, I followed him and got into his truck with him. We went for a little drive, which I thought was harmless. All my friends begged me not to go, they all thought he was going to rape me or something. I apparently knew better though, and went anyways.

I didn’t get raped, just so you know. But I did make a stupid mistake by going with Mark. Mark was the first guy who hurt me. Not physically, which is surprising considering I found out that a week before that party he had crashed his truck into my grandparents yard while drunk. No, he hurt me by rejecting me. After that night he never talked to me again. That was the first time I’d ever felt unloved, or unwanted.

I can’t blame Bass for my downfall, but he was my pathway guy, just like Tracy was my pathway friend, like pot was my pathway drug.. They lead me to make bad choices, which evolved into worse decisions.

So lets fast forward through sophomore year. It mostly consisted of me getting high or drunk with Kelly, and making out with guys whenever I got the chance. This was the year that my grades plummeted. My parents noticed something was wrong.

At this point they made the decision to switch churches, so that I could be around “more Christian teenagers” and “have a better faith base”. Yeah, well I made friends, but I was also a pro at faking things. I faked my way through that whole school year pretending I was a good Christian girl, who was just having some problems with keeping up in classes. In reality I just wanted to party.

During the summer of my sophomore/junior year I got my act together. I met this really amazing guy at church. Jake. He was incredible, everything a girl wanted. He was athletic, musical, nice, and sweet. He really cared about me. I fell head over heels for him, and I wanted to be that good Christian girl for him. So I cleaned myself up, changed my group of friends, stopped partying, and especially stopped making out with random guys. I wanted to be pure and a virgin for Jake. I thought we were going to get married. Well that lasted until around Christmas my Junior year. Jake decided to end it.

This is when I lost my s**t. I had been doing great in school, I was happy, I was getting along with my parents. I hadn’t drank, or smoked in months. Well, for some goddamn reason I believed that I could get back at Jake by making bad decisions. So on New Years Eve I hung out with my friend Pocahontas. Yeah, I know, her parents were definitely on something when they thought up that name. Well as you can guess I got high off my a*s, and drunk off my a*s too. I didn’t know who or where I was. Just like that. I was back to square one. I ruined everything, and like usual, I did a great job of hiding it. This time I was able to keep my grades up.

This was the time when I started getting more interested in sexual experiences. I started talking to lots of guys, sending them nudes, receiving nudes. I discovered masturbation. It was great, and until I met a guy I wanted to do things with, that’s how I took care of myself.

Don’t worry though, by January I had found a guy I liked hooking up with. His name was Alex. He went to my church sometimes, and just like me, he wasn’t as nice as he pretended to be. He was a lot younger then me, he was a freshman. But he knew a lot about sex. I guess you could say I got addicted to Alex. I wanted to be high with Alex, I wanted to be drunk with Alex, I wanted to do dirty things with Alex. But most importantly I wanted to be sober with Alex. He was the boy who helped my sexual experiences evolve full throttle. He was the first boy who I ever did anything more than making out with. By July I was seeing him almost every day, and we were having sex just as often. We were taking adderal and xanax daily too. We were the most fucked up f**k buddies around.

Well senior year rolled around, nothing changed, I somehow kept my grades up, I somehow graduated high school, I somehow got accepted to my dream college. Guess what though? None of that’s worth s**t now though.

Where am I now? I’m sitting in rehab, pregnant. With guess who’s kid? Alex’s. Where’s he? He got clean before me, and he moved away. I told him I was having our baby, and he convinced his parents to move across the country. So all that “fun”, well it wasn’t worth a goddamn thing. Because now I’m screwed up for life. My baby will probably be screwed up because of my mistakes. I’ll always be addicted. Addicted to something. To someone.

Author's Note

Please let me know of any grammar mistakes, if I should put more detail on the happenings of the young girl's high school years, and your opinions on the story.

Reviews

[Delmar Cooper]

It is a prejudice of mine to assume anything that begins in second person is more of a lecture than an informing. Just me talking here.

[Domi]

Thanks for your opinion Delmar :) It wasn't really meant to be a lecture or anything, just the thoughts of a young girl like that. I tried to get into the brain of someone who had experienced something like that, and give it an ending that was realistic.