When we got to Heather’s house, I was excited. Her family room was dimly lit, and love songs were coming from the sound system. It was the first time I had gone to a party with a guy, and it felt so romantic . . . at first.
After about two hours of slow dancing with our faces stuck together from nervous sweat and Ty’s hands roaming around my back as he held me tightly against him, I was ready to go home. I realized, too late, that I hated kissing Ty. He mashed his mouth so hard against mine that it HURT. I turned my face away so that he couldn’t kiss me anymore and managed to mumble something about my braces hurting my lips, so he stopped for a while—but then he started right up again. When I went to the bathroom, he followed me and waited outside of the door until I was done. If I wanted food or something to drink, we visited the table together. I started to feel dizzy and sick from the sweating, the groping, the music, the lack of air in the room and Ty trying to kiss me. I felt trapped and suffocated.
Finally, FINALLY . . . my dad came to get us. As we dropped Ty off at his house, Ty turned to me, smiled and said, “I’ll see you on Sunday, Patty.”
“Uhhh . . . okay . . . see ya.” When he closed the door of the car and went into his house, I heaved a sigh of relief. I couldn’t wait to get home and hide beneath the covers of my bed. My bed in my room. Away from him.
All day Saturday, I thought about Ty and how I was feeling. Every time the phone rang, I let my mom or dad answer it. When he did call, I was conveniently too busy to answer. If this is how a relationship is supposed to be, I thought, I don’t want any part of it. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t know how to tell him that I just couldn’t do this anymore, so I did the logical thing—I chickened out. On Sunday, I pleaded with my mom to call Ty’s mom to let her know I wasn’t feeling well enough to go to dinner at their house. It actually was the truth—just the thought of seeing Ty right then made my stomach turn.
As I expected, Ty called me the first thing on Monday morning.
“What happened to you yesterday, Patty? My mom was looking forward to having you for dinner, and she missed seeing you. And what about all day Saturday? I called and called but I never got you.”
My mind was spinning like an animal in a cage. What am I going to say to get out of this?
“Never mind,” Ty said. “You can tell me all about it on the way to school. I’ll meet you at the usual corner.”
“Uh, Ty, I’m not going to walk to school with you,” I blurted.
“WHAT!!?” He shouted.
“I don’t want to date you anymore. I want to break up,” I ventured timidly.
“What are you talking about? Is there someone else? That’s it—you have been seeing someone else behind my back. Who is it? I’m going to beat the snot out of him! I’m going to. . . .”
“Ty!” I interrupted. “I’m not seeing anyone at all. It isn’t that! I think I’m just not ready for a boyfriend. I don’t want to date anyone yet.” I was barely able to breathe from the pressure of trying to understand my own feelings and to explain myself. “I don’t want to belong to someone. I . . . I just don’t want to . . . .”
“All right, you baby. Whatever!” And he slammed the phone down.
I barely made it to school at all that day. My mom had to give me a tardy excuse because it took me so long to stop crying and to do something about my red swollen eyes. But the reality is I did make it to school. And I made it the next day and the next—and I walked down the halls alone or with my girlfriends. I didn’t need Ty to be glued to my side to be okay. He moved shortly after that, and luckily I didn’t have to worry about running into him in the halls anymore.
It took me a while to realize that Ty’s possessive behavior wasn’t normal and that wasn’t how a healthy relationship should be. You should never feel pressured into doing something you are not ready to do, like you are trapped or owned, or be made to feel guilty if you want to hang out with your friends or like you can’t do anything on your own without making your boyfriend mad at you. It’s just way better to be a boyfriend have-not!
Patty Hansen
NO RODEO ®
NO RODEO. © Robert Berardi. Used by permission.
Easy as 1, 2, . . . 3
People tell you what to do, what to wear, who to like, how to behave. People put demands on you when all you really want to do is be loved and accepted for who you are.
Malinda Fillingim
We had gone to a movie, and he was walking me to the door. Just as I was about to go inside, something stopped me and I turned around. He was smiling a little, and the stars in the background twinkled as if to say, “Go for it!” We both leaned in carefully and our lips met. My stomach was doing cartwheels of joy—it was the perfect first kiss.
Wait a minute! That wasn’t my first kiss—the last time I’ve seen anything that flawless was in the movies.
No, my first kiss was not touched by the twinkle of the stars or perfect movie timing, though I had dreamed about it long enough to hope that it would be. In my dreams, my lips met a boy’s in perfect sync, our eyes closed and our hearts pulsed together at hyperspeed. Plenty of other girls my age had already started kissing, and they all made it sound so easy. Even though I had imagined all the details of that moment in my mind, I hadn’t considered the possibility that I wasn’t really ready for the real deal. Instead of imagining it as a personal thing that I would have to grow into, I treasured kissing as a step toward growing up, one that all girls must do at the same age.
I didn’t realize how wrong I was until I finally had my first kiss.
My first boyfriend and I were watching a movie. It seemed like the classic setup for a kiss—watching a movie alone with a boy I thought I really liked. So why was I so shocked when he suddenly moved toward me, apparently hoping for more than just a hug? Why did I feel so uncomfortable and unprepared? When my lips met his, it felt like they were fumbling around in the dark, clueless and confused—and I didn’t like it.
In my cloud of confusion, I tried to make sense of my feelings. My friends all knew how to kiss and they liked it—at least they made it sound that way. After feeling so unsure about my first kiss, I became scared of trying it again.
Hoping to buy some time over the kissing confusion, I talked to my boyfriend about it. “Maybe we could just take it a little slower,” I suggested. I told him I just didn’t feel ready to kiss, but it wasn’t because I didn’t like him. I simply wasn’t comfortable with all that lip-locking. He didn’t get it—he said he didn’t really understand why kissing, of all things, was an issue.
I was shocked. So he was just like the rest, who believed that kissing was something that everyone our age did with no problem. He couldn’t believe that I would somehow be uncomfortable with it. I had thought that he was a boy I could trust and be respected by, and I didn’t want to change myself or force myself to kiss him just so I could have a boyfriend.
Obviously he didn’t want a girl who was honest with him like I was, and so we broke up—which hurt a lot at the time. It made no sense that a boy could like me one minute and then ditch me the next, just because I wasn’t ready for kissing. I trusted my feelings though, and I believed that when the time was right, the kissing would be, too.
A few years later, the time was finally right. I had been seeing a new guy who had a different attitude and personality from my first boyfriend. I started to think that maybe not only was the time right for the kiss, but the boy was right, too. After hearing about my kissing phobia, he had not run in the other direction laughing. One night under the stars, while saying good night to him, I noticed that my stomach was no longer telling me No! As I gazed into his eyes, wondering if after we kissed I would feel comfortable about it, he sweetly offered to meet me halfway.
“Emily,” he said, holding my hand, “how about this? I’ll count to three. I’ll just count to three, and we’ll kiss.”
I smiled and felt relief push me closer toward him. “Okay,” I replied.
And then, in the
most understanding voice, he counted: “One, two, . . . three.” We leaned forward, eyes closed, and we kissed. Instead of looking at him in shock afterward, I wrapped my arms around him. It was the only way I knew to thank him for such a wonderful moment. To know that someone could care about me and respect me enough to go at my pace made me happier than if I had been kissing boy after boy for many years.
The wait for the right kiss had seemed so long, but now I can trust that it was worth it. The kiss we counted out that night was better than the movies and the kisses my friends had been having, because at the heart of it was deep caring and respect.
Finally, when everything seemed right, kissing was as easy as one, two, . . . three.
Emily A. Malloy
Intimidation
Whatever you fear most has no power—it is your fear that has the power.
Oprah Winfrey
I was terrified to answer the phone. I loved being out of the house where I would never have to hear it ring, where I did not have to pray that someone was going to shout “Carrie Joy, telephone!” I was thirteen years old and I thought my life was over. In short, I was being bullied.
The first phone call came on a Sunday in November. I remember answering the phone and being surprised to hear giggling. “Shhhhh!” said one of them, then, “Carrie?”
“Yeah?”
“This is Natasha. How are you?” More giggles.
“I’m fine,” I mumbled as I tried to figure out what was going on. Natasha had never called me before. She was extremely popular and we barely talked at school.
“Did you kiss Alex?” she asked sweetly.
“What?” I asked, trying to stall for time. I could feel my heart starting to pound. Alex was Natasha’s ex-boyfriend.
“Did you kiss my boyfriend?”
What? Her BOYFRIEND? “No . . . I mean yes, but I didn’t know that he was still your boyfriend. I thought you guys were broken up. . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t know that you still liked him . . . ,” I trailed off.
“We were sort of broken up, but you really should know better, Carrie. Don’t you think she should have known better?” she said to someone in the background.
“Of course she should have.”
“Maybe she’s just too stupid.”
“She is stupid, and you know what else you are, Carrie? You are so ugly. I don’t even know why Alex would want to kiss you. Don’t you think she is ugly, girls?” They laughed as I silently started to cry.
“Carrie, you really look like a dog with your poodle hair,” Natasha continued on. “So why don’t you bark for us?”
BARK for them? Was she kidding? I stayed quiet.
“C’mon, Carrie! Bark you stupid poodle!”
“I am not going to bark for you, Natasha.” My voice quavered as I said it. Too humiliated to think clearly, I hung up the phone. It rang again, and I listened as the answering machine picked it up. It was Natasha, and this time there was no giggling or fake sweetness.
“You are going to be so sorry, Carrie. I am going to make your life hell. Get ready to eat dog food tomorrow.” Click. I burst into tears.
Monday came and went—with no dog food. I saw Natasha briefly in class, but there was nothing she could say in front of the teacher. I ate my lunch in my classroom. When I got home from school, there was a message waiting for me. Amid laughter, I could hear Natasha and her friends reading a list titled, “Ten Reasons Why Carrie Is an Ugly Dog.”
On Tuesday, Natasha marched into my third-period class with her friend, Diana, and told the teacher I was wanted in the counseling office. As the teacher excused me, I started to shake. We walked in silence and arrived at the counseling office to find it empty. “I need to talk with you in private,” Natasha said with a smirk. I stared at her.
Our “counseling session” was Natasha telling me that I was ugly and stupid and had no respect for people and their boyfriends. She told me that I had really hurt her and that she was not trying to hurt me, but this is what I deserved. She swore that if I told anyone about our situation she was going to beat me up. It was pure intimidation.
While we were in the room, Diana, her friend, found a picture of a horse in an old stack of magazines. Natasha held it up next to my face and said I looked just like it. “Don’t you think that you look like a horse?”
“I guess,” I mumbled back.
“And why are you so pale? Are you an albino or something?” I shrugged. I did not think she wanted to hear that it was because of my German and Irish blood. “You should wear more makeup.” She pulled a compact out of her backpack and started to smear concealer on my face. I wanted to tell her to stop, but I was frozen. This girl had taken over my life.
The next few months went on like this. Natasha and her friends screamed obscenities at me in the hallways and called my house to threaten me every night. The bathroom stalls were covered with obscene words claiming that I was easy with the boys. I got used to people whispering about me. I cried in almost every class. The best part of my day was when I first woke up in the morning and, for a few seconds, forgot that anything was wrong. Then my stomach would twist into a knot, and the constant feeling of dread would wash over me again.
I started to feel like there was no way out, that there was no one who could fix this problem and make my life go back to normal.
In early February, I was eating lunch with a few friends in my fifth-period classroom, where I had hung out during lunch period ever since the first phone call. One of my friends came in to tell me that Natasha was looking for me. There was a closet in the room that could be locked from the outside and I told them to lock me in the closet.
Knowing that I was trapped but safe, I listened as Natasha came to the door of the classroom. The girls told her they had not seen me, and Natasha left angrily. When they unlocked the door, I was shaking and crying. I could barely form a sentence as my friends marched me to the counseling office and I told Ms. Mulligan the whole story.
It was difficult to remember all the hurtful things Natasha had said, but Ms. Mulligan needed facts and so out they all came. As I watched her fill up pages and pages with the horrible events of the past three months, I started to feel a sense of relief. This was all going to end.
I cannot say that Natasha was a changed person after that. She never apologized. In fact, she ignored me completely as if she had forgotten that I existed. I, on the other hand, remember her well. I will remember her for the rest of my life. She changed me forever. As I stood in the dark closet that day, I realized that I had lost all respect for myself. I had allowed someone to take away my happiness, and I had given up control over my own life. Never again will I let that happen.
No one can tell me what to think or how to act. I know now that I do not have to listen to hurtful words. I am always free to hang up the phone. And more important, I am now always happy to answer it.
Carrie Joy Carson
[EDITORS’ NOTE: For information about dealing with bullying, log on to www.kidshealth.org/teen/ (keyword search: “bullying”). ]
8
CRUSHIN’
HARD
As you enter the classroom
Laughing and joking with your friends,
I see you break away from the group.
You are headed my way!
You stop to talk to me.
It only lasts a few moments,
But I feel as if I rule the world
And I have accomplished a lifelong dream.
Jennifer Lynn Clay, 12
My Story
A kiss can be a comma, a question mark or an exclamation point. That’s the basic spelling that every woman ought to know.
Mistinguette
It was weird how it happened. Actually, it was weird that it happened at all.
I was down in my friend Kyle’s basement with him. We were jamming on our guitars. Totally normal. Just hanging and playing. I was working on a song, concentrating really hard, trying to get the solo down. And that’s when it happe
ned.
Kyle kissed me. I was shocked. Stupefied. Anyway, I didn’t handle it well. I mean, I sort of screamed. Well, not screamed, exactly—it was more like a yelp. He had taken me by surprise. I had been concentrating on the song, not preparing for a kiss. The kiss. My first kiss. And it came out of nowhere. Kyle and I were friends. Buds. Totally tight, but not in a boy-girl kind of way.
“Uhh . . . sorry,” Kyle stammered after my yelp.
“Sure. No. I mean, that’s okay,” I mumbled incoherently, grabbing my stuff. “I should probably go.” Kyle didn’t even slightly try to stop me. He just backed out of my way as I zoomed out of the door.
I cried that night. Really hard. I kept thinking about Kyle’s kiss. Why did I yelp? Why did I do that? Lame, lame, LAME!!! It wasn’t as if I hadn’t imagined him kissing me a thousand times. I had. I just never thought he would. We’d been friends since the fourth grade. It had pretty much seemed as though he didn’t even realize I was a girl. I was happy just to be his friend. But then he kissed me. And it was so weird, because I knew the kind of girl Kyle liked. He’d been crushing on Courtney Davis all last year. She was blond. Popular. A Barbie. And I wasn’t. Anyway, I was sure I had blown it with Kyle. Now I was sure he thought I was the world’s biggest dork.
I didn’t talk to Kyle for the rest of the summer. My aunt in California had just had twins, and I went to help her. I was sort of like their nanny for the summer. It was a good job, and my aunt paid me big bucks—and she had a pool. But I kept thinking about Kyle, his kiss and wondering if we were still friends. Over the entire summer, confused thoughts ran through my head. Why had he kissed me? Why was I such a moron?