Things sure did develop between Mikey and I. Mikey finally moved up to Orange County (he was living in Sun City when I met him at Mater Dei). So, it was easier to go and see him…since my mom worked in Orange County and oftentimes I would hitch a ride with her and take her car when she was at work or I’d go to my Community College Physics class with my friend Jenny and then see him afterwards. We saw each other a lot during the summer, even though I had a lot going on that summer. I was doing the Physics classes at night while I was doing a High School drama class and play rehearsal for summer school, because I did it every year and I wasn’t missing out on the last year that I could do a play.
Despite my busy schedule, I made every opportunity to see Mikey and each time I saw him, I fell more in love with him. I was so in love with him that I couldn’t imagine my life without him. I would spend hours during play rehearsal thinking about him, us and the life we would have together. Every time Physics got boring I would doodle his name in my notebook or I would draft letters to him. I sent him the final drafts of the letters I had written through the mail…since our parents had scolded us for staying on the phone for hours on end. My mom was quite furious at the phone bill. His mom and dad were irritated with the phone bill, but his mother was even more irritated that he wouldn’t put down the phone to go to the bathroom…turns out he was taking the phone with him while he went to do his doody.
Each time we saw each other, the relationship got more intense. The more intense the relationship got the more I knew that Mikey was the man I was going to marry. At the time Mikey had wanted to be a High School History Teacher and I knew what I was going to be. So, I had already decided that if we ended up together, I was going to be the one pulling in all the dough, because we know that teachers make a crap living…and are totally underpaid for what they do. I was okay with this and I figured, I would go to Loyola and graduate in four years and we’d wait that extra year for him to graduate before getting married and getting on with the rest of our life together. Clearly, I was a planner straight out from the beginning, I had our future mapped out in my head. I could still be an astronaut and be with Mikey, it was doable. It would be more difficult, but I could handle it, because I could do anything I set my mind on.
Notice how much of this was in my head. At the time I was pretty certain that Mikey felt the same way towards me, but as the worm turned, Mikey was getting more scared and nervous about the direction of our relationship. He was worried about the relationship moving too fast and us getting too wrapped up and becoming another teenaged statistic…of kids raising kids. One day we were on the phone and he said that he thought we were playing with fire. I didn’t think so, I thought we were falling in love, which we were, but we were sooo young. He ended the relationship and I thought it was because I was too intense about the relationship, that I wanted what he wasn’t prepared to give me. I was feeling it, but maybe he wasn’t.
Hindsight is 20/20, if I would have given him a week and called him back and told him I couldn’t live without him in my life, he would have taken me back in a heartbeat and tra-la-la, I wouldn’t have had to suffer the way I did out of my own pride. Mikey even told me that himself…he told me he was young and dumb and had no clue what he had in front of him and if I would have pushed him a little, I would have gotten a lot back. But I wasn’t that kind of girl, I would never beg for a guy to take me back, I wouldn’t lower or demean myself by chasing a guy after he broke up with me. I wasn’t the jealous ex-girlfriend type. This man might have been the man I was going to marry, but I wasn’t going to beg him to love me, cause it just doesn’t work that way.
I figured that was that. He didn’t like me as much as I thought and that if it was really meant to be, it would happen, just not now. I would continue to be his friend, because I didn’t have any hard feelings against him. He treated me with more respect and love than any other boy his age or older had. I couldn’t be bitter and hate someone that I loved so dearly. I was a bit jaded from being dumped over the phone, but if that was the worst I had gotten from him, it was a lot less worse than I had experienced with the other boys I had summer flings with over the years. I was pretty hurt, but I was determined to move on and follow the dreams that I had with my previous plans. I didn’t have Mikey and that really hurt, I was quite miserable, but I still had my ambition, so I was hell bent on soldiering on. As naiveté would have it, I had no idea how hard soldiering on would be with a broken heart…
