Timeline: Seventeen

(Wow, seventeen was quite the year. Sorry, ahead of time, for how many words I used to describe it.)

(And because linking seems appropriate for anyone who may be new—and thus confused—around here: One Through Six, Seven And Eight, Nine, Ten, Eleven, Twelve And Thirteen, Fourteen And Fifteen, Sixteen.)

1999, aged seventeen
It hits me as I'm sitting at a high school talent show one Thursday night in late January: I want to go to college, and I should really begin thinking about that. I buy a university resource book and place a dozen calls to colleges across the country requesting catalogs and as much free information as I can get.

One afternoon, in Spanish class, a friend asks a casual question about Jason. She asks how we're doing, and since we're doing fine, that's what I tell her. She then says, with a sincere smile, "You'll probably be one of those lucky girls who marry her high school sweetheart." And because it is what we've planned on, I smile. And then, an unexpected feeling overcomes me: I want out. I want to go to college and travel and he doesn't. I want a future beyond the city limits, and he doesn't. I feel like I have instantly grown out of us. Although I realize it didn't happen quite like that—it actually unfolds the way many things do in life: we push on and on and on until one day the weight of carrying this or that around becomes too much, and we have to put it down or it'll break us in half—it feels like I loved him one day and stopped the next.

The following day I do something I know will make him mad. I go to a party without him, while he's working. It makes me sick to think that this is what he breaks up with me over, but it makes me even sicker because I KNEW HE WOULD. He tells me not to go, he tells me I'll be sorry, he tells me he'll break up with me if I do. So I do. That night, at around midnight on February 12, 1999, he does, indeed, break up with me. Relief washes over me for a solid day before I slowly freak out. Wait, I think. What did I do?

Even though this is what I wanted, this is what I anticipated, I don't know who I am without him and it scares the shit out of me. So I decide I want him back. I spend the next month allowing him to treat me worse than he ever has before and will ever again. I beg him to take me back. I show up at his house uninvited. I call him repeatedly. I convince him to take me to our winter formal, which will go down as one of the worst nights of my life. A night I'll never forget. A night that makes me want to throw up, even now. That night should have been it. It should have been a clean break after that. But, lord, it wasn't. For another few weeks I continue to beg, to write him pathetic letters. I continue to lose weight.

And then, something happens. I am invited out by some girls on my drill team. They show me what high school should be like, with casual dinners and lots of laughter at things no one would find funny now. One night they bring me to one of their friend's houses—a guy—and for the first time in as long as I can remember I get butterflies. From that day on, I will never spend another moment on my proverbial knees, begging things of Jason, which makes him come running back into my life.

It's something I still laugh about, that the minute I developed feelings for someone else, he came rushing back in, ready to give it another go. He spent the next few months doing the calling, showing up uninvited, grabbing hold of me, territorially, in the hallway. And even though Jason wouldn't fully be out of my life for a while (we'd go through a million more shades of gray and we'd do our best to hurt each other another 4,000 times), I had taken one giant step forward. I had fallen for someone else. Someone who would spend the next few years trying to heal all the scars left behind by a too-intense love. Someone who would never fully love me back but who gave me all he could. Someone I still care for, am still close with.

Sometime in between letting go of my old ties and forming new ones, I decide to try out for an officer position on my drill team. It's a long shot—I am just a regular line member and hold no position—but it distracts me and gives me something new to focus on. I practice all day, every day. I walk around with a nervous stomach for weeks. Right before I am to walk out into the middle of the basketball court and dance the solo I choreographed to "Lucky" by Seven Mary Three in front of my entire team, a friend grabs hold of my arm and whispers to me, "Just dance." And this piece of advice is magical, and it's one I think back on often. When I'm nervous about a conference call, when I face another month of infertility, when my father lets me down, I find myself whispering to myself at all times of the day, "Just dance." It's the best piece of advice I've ever been given. And I do. I dance in front of my entire team, alone, and somehow—I still don't quite know how—I make it. I become an officer.

I spend the next few months—the rest of my junior year and the beginning of my senior one—dancing my way through all the pain. It's the most alive I have ever felt, dancing in the middle of stages and football fields and my living room, too. My new friendships grow stronger, my old life fades, and I am happy. It's new—this physical joy, all this laughter, all these things to look forward to. And, yet, I am still keeping secrets behind closed doors. I'm still skipping meals and lying. I'll continue to lie for years. I wish I could erase the memories from my mother's mind from that time, but I can't. I permanently damaged her while permanently damaging myself. You have to be a deeply selfish person if you choose an eating disorder, and during that time I was as selfish as I've ever been.

But all these years later, as I look back, I am still proud of this year. The year I shed things and figured out things and realized things and pieced myself back together and broke myself apart some more. Sometime in the middle of July of this year, my mom and dad took me around the country, touring my top-three college picks (one in coastal California, one in Georgia and one in small-town Texas). I began dreaming really grand dreams on that trip, while reading One Hundred Years of Solitude in the back of my dad's rental car. I began seeing myself as a college student, and the excitement that began buzzing inside of me because of those thoughts was almost like a current.

One day, on that trip, I stepped inside the Memorial Student Center on the Texas A&M campus—right smack-dab in the middle of College Station, Texas. As I stood in the middle of the sweatshirt section, taking in all the maroon and white surrounding me, watching the students pick up scantrons and blue books before tests, I just knew. I turned to my mom, and said, "This is it. This is where I'm going to school." And I can't tell you why I made that decision. Why this liberal, California-born girl felt so comfortable on such a conservative campus, but from the ruins of a handful of very difficult, very painful coming-of-age years, rose a bright, hopeful future.

On that day, I had come home.

Comments

[Jess]

It is a year to be proud of in all its flaws. I am proud of your year and I am proud of you.

[Nicole]

Chills, chills and more chills. This is so very well-written. I went through years of anorexia myself (eighth grade through my junior year of college). I haven't truly reflected on it yet, but reading details of your life is giving me a desire to do so. This really makes me want to reach through the computer and give you a hug and receive one in return. Thank you (again) for sharing.

[Raven]

Beautiful!

[Loralee]

I wish that I had figured out my life like that at that age. It probably would have saved me years of pain.

[Loralee]

P.S.
My roomies totally want to go to the pub gathering on the first day of BlogHer...I told them it was open to everyone, was that ok?

[merrymishaps]

Amazing. Your story, yes, it's wonderful -- well written and honest. But also, that you can write in so much detail of yourself at 17. I doubt I could dredge up more than a couple paragraphs!

[Someone Being Me]

Thanks for sharing another year of your life with us. I am not brave enough to face my high school demons yet. Not to mention the damage I did to my mother while damaging myself.

[slynnro]

I feel left out (no, really) never having this kind of dramatic relationship. I think those things bring so much into contrast.

[Sarah]

Another great one.

[K]

I'm impressed at how you remember each year so vividly.

On a side note: I am in love with your featured shoes. I loved the brown ones you posted and then went to the website and fell in love with the gray ones as well.

[Rachel]

Wow! Sounds like you learned so much at the young age of 17. I know that at 17, I didn't know much at all. I wanted to marry the guy that I was dating. I thought he was the one. What was I thinking?! It was definitely an interesting time in my life.

[Steff]

I had *that* relationship when I was in my early twenties....but i was/am a late bloomer! :-)

[Maryann]

Wow - what a great entry. It seems like you have an "old soul," and that totally comes through in your writing.

I actually decided that I would attend the college I did while in the campus bookstore. There was a pullover navy windbreaker emblazoned with the school's name and I really wanted it. My mom didn't want to waste the money on the logo-apparel if I wasn't going to go to school there....so I decided then and there they I would. For years I thought that I made an incredibly impulsive decision on such an important matter, but perhaps I knew deep in my heart that it was right...who knows.

[Katie]

I just read through all your other year posts. You are SUCH an amazing writer! Looking forward to the next one! We are pretty close in age :)

[Mom]

This entry is so beautifully written. I hope that you've forgiven me for any pain I've caused you, and maybe one day I will forgive myself for not facing what was right in front of me. Denial can be such a powerful emotion and destructive at the same time. I am very proud of you.

[Lauren]

I'm so glad you made the decision you did...to go to A&M, otherwise we wouldn't have the friendship we've had the past 8 years!