The Girl Who Wrote The Dating Manual

chapter two

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Dedicated to Janelle07 for the amazing trailer! I love it so much; it is so amazing!

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I remember the day my mom and dad finally got a divorce.

            I was fourteen, and by then I was relieved. I was sick of the continuous fighting that always seemed to happen; the days of silent treatment, where I would feel like I was stepping on eggshells in their presence, like anything I said could very well set them off.

            After one fight, it had gone quiet, where the only sounds I could hear from my room—even with headphones in—were the quiet sniffles of my mother.

            “I’m done, Greg,” she had said, her voice cracking. “I can’t do this anymore.”

            My dad hadn’t argued. He hadn’t begged for her to come back like I thought maybe he might have. He didn’t apologize. Instead his voice was equally as quiet and sad as he said, “Neither can I. I think you’re right.”

            Thirteen months later, they were at the courthouse, signing divorce papers. I had been hopeful that maybe everything would be okay, but it wasn’t.

            My dad moved a state away, and picked up a girlfriend half his age along the way, Lucy, who thought of herself more as a sister than as a motherly figure for me. I saw him twice a year, for a week every six months, but that was it. He rarely called, and I never initiated conversation.

            My mom never recovered, never dated again, and so the rest of my time was spent just with her. Until I left for college, but by then we were ready to go our separate ways. My mother was hardly someone to idolize, and she was certainly no maternal heroine to look up to. She could go on living her life, and I could focus on mine. Simple.

           

            My friends had always asked me why I never dated anyone, and that was the answer.

            I didn’t date because I’d seen what love could do. I’d seen the heartbreak, the nights where my mother still cried herself to sleep, and I could still hear the sound of them yelling at night as I sobbed into my pillow. How could I love when those were the kinds of things that resulted from such an act?

            So I focused on studies, friends, college and doing the best I could. I joined the cheerleading team in high school, lived a mediocre high school existence and moved onto the things I actually wanted to do with my life. I never fell in love with a guy, and I was happy like that. No fights, no tears, no stress. I’d seen what romance had done to my other friends, and I wasn’t going to end up like that. And certainly not like my parents.

            Why love, when the only thing that love breeds is hatred?

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