Flight or Fight

My most horrific breakup was the first one. Puppy love, first love, my one true love. I was a junior in high school and he was a senior. He was headed to college in (not kidding) Kalamazoo, Michigan, and since we were in Massachusetts, we figured the long-distance thing wasn't going to work. We'd gone back and forth a few times about whether we should break up before summer or postpone the inevitable by living blissfully for three glorious more months. I decided on three more months of bliss, but Marco had a different idea.

Here we were at our friend Jason's house. It was early summer, and we were swimming in the pool. I casually asked what Marco and Jason had been doing the night before. They casually mentioned that they had been hanging out with Emily Smith... then they exchanged a glance. I'll never forget that glance. It was the glance heard 'round the world. It told me something was "up." 

"What'd you guys do?" I asked. And my query was met with silence. After a beat I continued. "Wait, Marco, did you and Emily...?" This query was met with a silent nod. At this point the edges dissolve from my memory. I let out a guttural expulsion of anguish and began to sob. Bear in mind I'm still in a pool. The love of my life had had sex with the blandest, strangest, weirdest, most nothing-like-me girl, and I was shrieking like a banshee at him — in a pool.

I sob-yelled at them, trying to form words that would hurt him but instead just roaring like a rhino emerging from the mud. I made it to my car, threw a towel on the seat and drove away, narrowly missing a few pedestrians and mailboxes. Unfortunately, I had to stop for gas. The attendant came up to my window and saw a sopping-wet, bathing suit-clad teenage girl sobbing recklessly. He asked if I was all right. I asked for five dollars of regular. It’s probably the craziest I’ve ever looked.

I cried for three days. Then my mom took me to a gathering of her closest girlfriends, and they schooled me on what it means to get your heart broken for the first time. ("Nothing will ever hurt this much ever again," my mom said, and nothing ever has.)

Marco, Jason, and Emily ended up spending that summer getting high on Ecstasy and hanging out in the woods. I ended up a few pounds thinner and okay. And life went on. — Bianca Brady

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