Love After Life

September

September
Part 1
First Semester, 2014

There is a first time for everything. Everything is new to you the first time you do something. There's going to be a time when you take your first steps; when you ride your first bike, or you drive your first car. You will have a first day of kindergarten, then middle school.

Next, comes high school, which may perhaps be one of the biggest firsts during your adolescent life , but none of your first times could ever prepare you for your new home away from home. Let me tell you this, college is intimidating and honestly unnerves me to know end. College is a rude awakening.

By the end of my first week here at UCLA, I have already realized that college is the polar opposite of high school. Sure, you still have your social groups and stereotypes, but everyone here takes life and school seriously. There are no pranksters, or jocks who are only getting through high school because of their good looks and ability to throw a football 100 yards. Everyone here has worked to be here, and they aren't going to let anything ruin it, such as underage drinking.

I, for one, have never been a fan of going to parties and getting wasted, so that the following morning you wake up in a state of deliria. I get that the alcohol you consume can help take some weight off your shoulders, but the next day the problems will still be there, nothing has changed.

I never got out much in high school. I wasn't super popular and I didn't have a lot of friends. I was the quiet, reserved girl in the corner of the classroom with her head buried in a textbook. Part of the reason that I was timid and somewhat cowardly was because of the lack of love in my childhood. My mother passed away when I was three, and my dad was an alcoholic who abused his children. What can I say? I was the poster child for pity. So saying that it came as a shock that I dated-and fell in love with-the golden boy at North Coast Central was quite an understatement. Alex Andrews (aka NCC's golden boy) and I dated for a little over a year. When he asked me out, I was a sophomore and he was a junior

I fell for him almost immediately. He was easy to fall in love with. Perfection is easy to love. Don't we all do that every single day? We admire the flawless, beautiful things in life, not the ugly. Anyways, I loved everything that he was which was everything that I wasn't. He was charming yet equally egotistic. And he was selfish and conceited.

Alex couldn't go a day without boasting about how much money his family had or how many football scholarships he had earned. Everyone loved him, including me, and when I found out that he had cheated on me with the captain of the Varsity tennis team during my junior year, it broke me. I should've seen it coming, I knew him and his ways. He was a player and had even flirted with girls while we were together, but my love for him blindsided me. It made me aloof to the situation.

Now I am here--standing on the lush green campus, in front of my Comparative Literature class- -as a new person: one who has sworn off love and the whole dating fiasco for the rest of my life. My college life, that is.

After, tying my cocoa-brown hair back into a ponytail, I roll back my shoulders, letting out a sigh. I push my anxieties aside and walk inside the building. I have been doing the same routine every hour for the past week. I ignore the fact that I am a socially impaired freak who can't go a minute talking to someone of my age without feeling the least bit faint, and I pretend to be a confident college student. God, I should be winning an Oscar for my acting skills.

As I turn right to head down the adjoining hallway, I manage to run into a wall, causing me to fall. I put my hands out in front of me to soften the blow, but I still manage to hit my tailbone and elbow on the carpeted floor. The carpet did little to lessen the fall.