The truth about heartbreak

Chapter 1

Everything about grown up life looks appealing as a child. That's when wearing rose-coloured glasses and having a generally optimistic view of life is seen as hopeful and not naïve. I miss those days when the only damper to your days is a scolding from mom and the store running out of your favourite candy. But yet again, any chocolate coated candy can quickly turn your frown upside down. When did I lose that innocence and when the hell did I become such a shallow, emotionless and passionless young lady? I haven't even made it into my twenties- how much more disappointment can one stand?

My transport being delayed was the best thing that has EVER happened to me. Michael, my boyfriend, was waiting for me under a tree of a secluded parking bay. We've never really spoken on our own before, just the two of us, with the absence of all our friends. So when message arrived, courtesy of his then best friend, Peter, that he wanted to talk to me privately, I instantly had a stomach full of butterflies and heart-shaped irises

I quickly and stealthily walked to the rendezvous point and there, waiting for me was my knight in shining armour. The armour of course being our catholic school uniform, he looked dashing non-the-less- as always. I strutted across the parking bay, in what I thought was my "sexy catwalk strut" and there waiting at the end of imaginary catwalk was Michael.

I never once thought to question why he chose such a remote rendezvous point, but I wouldn't be kept in the dark for much longer and boy was I not ready for what he had in store for me. I mean we were only in the fourth grade! How much more advanced could a ten year old be? So, I of course opened conversation with a simple inquiry of the weather and how his day had went. And his response was just as animated but about something that I had not asked at all, in fact he deflected my question by posing one himself- "When are you planning to kiss me?" Boy-oh-boy was I not ready for that inquisition. To be more descriptive, it was like a slap to the face with a pair of smelly sneakers.

"I don't know... maybe when you decide to kiss me?" I had responded and it was a damn good one as well. I was just the right kind of coy yet innocently seductive as well. "I mean you are the boy, so you should kiss me," just listen to that, I was clearly on my way to relationship mastery- or better yet, seduction mastery.

"Ok well, I was planning to kiss you today," he had said and that answer left me spluttering like a fish fresh out of water.

"Surely we can't kiss today, it's after school- the school day has ended," well, there goes my seduction mastery.

"You're here now, so we can kiss right now. I mean, it's not like it's my first kiss," his response was my breaking point. Here I was, saving all this beautiful, thick and un-glossed lips for him and he didn't even have the decency to do the same for me.

I marched right up to his face and said, "Well this isn't my first kiss either," that was such a lie. As the expression says, I was wet behind the ears. With those words, I grabbed his face and kissed the life out of him and walked away swaying my non-existent hips- by that I mean I held his face in position, gave him the shortest peck in peck history and ran as fast as my long, thin legs would carry me, taking the first of many much needed breaths well past the school gates.

I think that is where I lost my innocence- my first kiss with someone I was not related to, in the shade of the solitary tree in my primary school parking bay- my most liberating experience to date. Regardless of all the new men I could meet and hook-up with, that single, innocent moment under that long dead tree will forever be dear to me and consequently my then boyfriend, Michael, will forever be engraved in my heart.

He was the first of many men that have come into my life, yet he will always be remembered. Though the only memory of him I choose to keep is of that beautiful boy who lied to me under that tree to get me to kiss him- and that image is as beautiful today as it was that day many years ago. But he grew up, and with growth he lost that innocence- or shed it rather. I can only assume that a boy's rite of passage has to include infidelity, lies and loss of virginity before the age of 16- yet that number is steadily decreasing along with the number of gentlemen in society today.

Michael and I have been dating on and off for the better part of three years now. We're in the sixth grade and sadly we've been separated. I still like to think that I'm in the cooler class although he would beg to differ. Coolness levels were determined by the number of times the class, in its entirety, got into trouble and my class had better luck counting the number of times we were not in trouble. We thought it was cool spending our lunch hour locked up in class while looking out the windows while our friends taunted us with their freedom- eating glazed doughnuts against the windows and laughing really loudly to a joke we were not privy to.

Yet that was a beautiful year for me. Though not everything that's beautiful lasts and I found that out the harsh way- NEVER trust your friends with YOUR man. I took that rule to heart upon my discovery of my boyfriend and my best-friend's indiscretions- such a cliché. And the saddest thing of all, I think I was starting to fall in love with Michael. So when I got home, I had a good cry about unfairness of the world and the retched behaviour of the two best people in my life. I soon wiped my eyes when the prospect of revenge seemed more appealing and absolutely lustrous.

The next day at school, I confronted my best friend and like the guilty party that she was, she unravelled like a cheap shirt. She cried and told me how truly sorry she was and that she hadn't meant to fall in love with him, but she was. It was all due to the many hours they spent together during lunch hour while I was detained in class like a convict. Now that got me even angrier, irate even, I was going hungry and reciting the school code of conduct from memory while they are glossing each other up like those darned glazed doughnuts- oh, revenge would be sweet.

So, I did the only thing I could do, I consoled her. I listened to her moon over what was originally mine, collecting data. I broke up with Michael's pathetic arse under the grounds that I was bored and I needed more excitement with someone else- there was no way in hell that he was going to get the pleasure of knowing that he broke my heart.

I didn't know I was devious until after I realised the extent of my vengeance. As I plotted against my two new enemies, bitter hatred and jealousy brewed from within me. I knew that words would not hurt them; after all there is strength in numbers, so I acted. I got a better haircut, completely changed my wardrobe- well within the constraints of uniform and the occasional chances we got to dress up in casual home clothes. I reinvented myself while completely ignoring Michael. For someone after an enviable reputation amongst his peers, the worst thing that could happen is for people to compliment the very girl he dropped like a hot jacket-potato.

The strain of trying to patch things up with me while keeping his girlfriend happy finally ended their disgusting, betrayal-filled courtship and the second he asked me out again, I told him that I was so over him. And I was. I was tired of trying to impress someone and fit into what they imagined to be the perfect girlfriend. For once in my life, I wanted to be enough. Not the image of what I could be- me, just the way I was.

It was with that realisation that I sought out a new beau. One who could love me and have me being enough.