I was a rebellious teen. The right thing seemed to be just as much my choice to delineate as anyone else’s and therefore my
ideas of right and wrong were not heavily based on the normal values systems handed down to most children my age. Thankfully, I
decided that I would go a distorted moral highroad. Money and acceptance seemed a lot less important to me than being able to grin during
my last breaths. I think it was this focusing on my eventual demise that seemed to force me to prioritize my own life instead of
accepting the American SOP of young life. I didn’t rebel against authority, nor did I think I was better than, or smarter than
everyone else. I just needed to understand the why of it all. Why was I not born a man to be normal, or at least like men as more than
brothers? I felt connected to the self-imposed androgyny I saw in men. The lack of anything sexual in them was appealing to me. I
wanted that. Thus at a young age I realized I was destined to be alone in any arena sexual. Many experts decided this was a cry for
help, or I was a victim of some bizarre molestation. Unfortunately for them and the pompous college educations they toted like
membership cards to a higher society, I did not fit into any of the checkboxes on their diagnostics. The reason I chose solitude was
death.
My mother died one night on SR-50. She was hit by a drunk driver and sacrificed her body to shield my cousin from harm.
Paramedics brought her back seven times from the creator. She didn’t come home for a long time. My brother and I were left with
our father who did the most noble and wise thing of his life. He shielded us from the pain in games and boat rides. As she fought
for consciousness, my brother and I laughed and played. Months later, I stood in a field cold with sweat as I realized what I had done
and how much pain she endured to protect me. I was not her protector; I had failed. Death was one adversary that would always win.
So, I waited for it in the night and silently dreamed up a world in which my works would impress the one person whose opinion
mattered. My ward and protector all rolled up in a fragile body and tattered sprit. Her name is mother, mom, ma, mommy. She taught
me to think, adapt, react, and do what was right not what was easy or normal. She taught me to be a martyr. She was the first person
I learned to love and the carrier of my first lie. I told her I liked girls and thought I was a boy in the fifth grade. She was very upset. I
told her I was kidding and thus sealed my fate as a lone rider. That look told me that my idea was wrong, and I didn’t want to ever be
wrong. It went against all my beliefs. So I figured that in death I would get a chance for love. Until then, I would be alone and strong.
I never cried about that decision. I was too young to understand what it would mean to carry it out. I had no hormones driving me
insane. It was just simple to think that my creator had decided to test me and my reward was waiting behind some bright light my mother
would talk about some nights as her body mended from another of life’s beatings. Love seemed unrelated to the boy/girl fiasco
for one little androgen.
She grew up in a small town. I used to think she had the perfect life. Mom and Dad would wake her and her sisters up for church
Sunday. They never went hungry, or fought over wearing a dress. God gave them everything they needed and they gave god their
undivided attention as a unit, family. This was how I met the Keeners. They were the perfect family and totally alien to me. Her
mom and dad would hold hands and kiss properly after grace. They had little knickknacks and hand drawn pictures of Jesus
littering their humble home. Every basic value I kept out of duty, she had ingrained in her soul by the good book and the heavy
hand of her father. This I never got to see. He gave his belt to Jesus long before I found my way into that living room. But the
fear of it, like the fear of the lord was in her eyes. The Keener women were meek and not of the world. Dancing was a sin, as was
a game of go fish. Jesse would come over to my little apartment and play sometimes; Gin mostly. I talked her into poker once, but
after a hand she asked to play something else. I offered to teach her blackjack. Life was hard for Jesse as a child. She had bad
eyes and was forced to wear glasses most of her life. Her toddler pictures hid those perfect blue eyes behind thick bottle caps.
She never wore a Billabong jacket, or BK shoes. Her clothes were mostly hand-me-downs that would often not even fit right.
Being a servant never has paid well and her family lived like paupers as they built mighty treasures in heaven and when she would
talk about these treasures to me I couldn’t help but think she spoke of my love, which was waiting behind now pearly gates. Jesse was
naïve, but not in an ineffective way at all. She could balance a checkbook or sew a dress and was trained from childhood to make a
man very happy someday.
I remember thinking nothing of the 14 year-old wallflower as I sat on her desk in high school and started
talking to girl in front of her. She never asked me to move. Her only response was to move her stuff so I didn’t hurt it. This I noticed.
When I turned to say hi to one of my own, one of the geeks, she surprised me with blue eyes behind spectacles, and a smile that
hinted at the years of silent accepted oppression only understandable by the invisible flock of geeks and tweaks. This was the first
day of our acquaintance, and a friendship that would forever change both of us.
That summer Jesse went to England, and India with a mission group. Her parents went to China, and her other siblings either
worked or went to other countries to show people their way of life. Over those 3 months hormones took over my body. What was
once a crush turned to lust, and although I knew very little about any body but my own it seemed like heaven when a girl friend
decided to treat me like on of the boys. She seemed to understand I was supposed to be a boy. She didn’t run and it seemed
as if my heaven was actually right here on earth and I was again wrong. Life shifted as I realized that I wasn’t alone and that a term
existed for my kind. My body took on new meaning. It was no longer a shell that housed my mind and took my soul were wanderlust
guided. It was a home for sensation and happiness. I didn’t have to wait for death to give me another chance. I could live this life.
Then a boundary surfaced; one that I could not deny. Mother. Right and wrong rested on her lips, and I knew what her reply would
be to my discovery of happiness. So I did the one thing few teens think to do; I thought. I thought about the sensation I felt and the
happiness my new girlfriend gave me. I felt normal, and connected to other people. I could understand why people cried, and laughed.
I didn’t have to read about it anymore because one beautiful Native American girl had shown me a door I needed to find. I found
every thought torturously wandering back to her. Every crush I hid deep in my psyche came rushing back and hit physically in my
chest as she kissed me. She never tried to touch my breasts, and made me feel like I was her man. The role was comforting and
perverse at the same time. It felt wrong and right coincidentally. I was a child in turmoil.
Thankfully, I had a book on being a woman. It was my guide for impersonation and a How-To manual on dealing with the body I
was given. Lesbian was the term they coined for people like myself. Transgendered didn’t exist, and transvestites were freaks
and men. Of course this meant I was either correct and male, or incorrect and lesbian. I decided to explore my options as a lover
of women, but the idea of disappointing my only judge was an insurmountable obstacle in my path to enlightenment. Thus, when the
advance came one night in her bed as a rogue hand gently rubbed my belly and headed for the promised land, I took the hand and
dropped the match on the bridge that lead to happiness. She never really spoke to me after that. As an older woman I realize that
I probably hurt her as much as she liberated me, and the first martyr for my cause retreated to safer pastures. The summer ended
and school started once more.
Jesse returned ravished by puberty. It seemed hormones had awaken her just as well. Her previously thin body exploded into
curves that would have caught more mature eyes if it were proper. She seemed uncomfortable and elated with her new temple.
She knew that she was still a geek, and hated it. She seemed to cling to my newfound fame and me. I had organized a sort of
group of geeks over the summer and we were about thirty strong and tightly organized into a sort of club. We called it the Family.
Jesse seemed thrilled that I was using the skills I had gleaned from stories and nonfiction. Others took to my strength like a beacon
and I enjoyed the platonic respect of my fellow untouchables. We would fill the common area before school and discuss black
market items we were circulating for the norms, and new philosophies on how we could get our group more tightly organized. Young
sociopaths sought me out for advice on how to blend, or ideas on how to implement their insanity effectively. Pretty soon mine was
the most well known name on campus. I didn’t notice at the time; I had goals. I had to succeed, learn, and lead.
Soon more came to our group as leaders; and as the year progressed our bonds and numbers grew. Soon the popular groups
were taking notice and we started living the American dream. The younger ones would come to me for advice about how to end
up on top, how to be totally untouchable. I would dispense literary advice, or the advice of others that seemed worthwhile, and it
was always the right thing at the right time. I was infallible. Geeks in my school started running things, and I soon realized this was
how the real world operated. The smart ones ended up pulling the strings, and popular people either got smart or were left behind
to find safety in old ideals or numbers. Then I saw the one that allowed me to feel emotion go to another. Her leaving me was not
as painful as her choosing another. I realized an emotion alien previously. It was jealousy that tore through me like a jagged blade.
And as I grasped my chest in pain, the one person most unlikely offered me solace and a shoulder on which to cry. And suddenly,
the leader was fallible.
We were two teens too young for our fates and too naïve to understand the greatness we stumbled upon in a dark
room one crying, the other offering solace in the night. She was the perfect child, ideal in every way and so good and pure it seemed
to shine in those blue eyes and ready smile. I was the punk kid. Ornery and intelligent, I was the bane of normalcy and the champion
of change and creation. My life seemed dedicated to expanding my mind with any substance I could find that went well with Chaucer
or Stephen King. While she cared for the infidels in India trading food for salvation, I got the skinny on life, love, and temptation.
We were the perfect opposites until that night when one pure and one righteous stood together under the common ground of love.
She was a preacher’s daughter and I was a latchkey orphan. Her idea of a good time involved singing and writing in a journal. Mine
was a song or a good story. We fit and it was right as two children could make it in a world of sharks and demons. She confessed a
love for me as I told her of a love for another that seemed to mean little when she reached her hand out for a stray curl that was
trapped by my streaming tears. It was that thing I was missing and it was right. She was right and the wild Arabian horses that had
been dragging my soul in search of a noble cause had found a stable. I was relieved. We kissed that night. The promise made sealed
the deal and we emerged one person instead of two fifteen-year-old girls the following morning. Life it seemed could get no better.
I don’t know how I found love that night. It seems life started speeding up about that time. Colleges started asking for my
SAT, ACT, and ASVAB. Our dates were discrete, and we knew that we were only belaying the inevitable scrutiny of our
parents. I begged for her to remain silent until college and we could hide forever. We would hide from our lives and tell each other
stories about how our lives would turn out. We would name our children and hold hands. She would smile at my jokes and stroke my
ego as necessary. I worshipped her and she knew she was someone’s princess again. We were two children in love. Adulthood was
not a challenge, but our escape. We ran for it with open arms and dreaming hearts. For once, mother’s was not the only opinion.
Jesse taught me other ways to be right. She taught me kindness and compassion. She showed me that love is not a sense of duty,
or and obligation. It is a gift that we can share with anyone. And over the next few years I changed. I learned to smile at a joke. I
learned how to hold someone without trying to keep him or her from noticing my breasts. I learned how to accept my body and to
accept that someone else could actually have an interest in it. Honestly, Jesse made me a human. I think she found my soul and
turned the heat up. She became my heaven on earth.
For her, not telling was a burden. She started to withdraw and become depressed as she realized the burden our
dual lives were creating. At eighteen, I proposed and her smile at a new ring only lasted until she had to justify it to her parents. I felt
dirty for making her hide, and my pleas for silence eventually subsided into a silent acceptance of the inevitable. Sometime after her
eighteenth birthday she told her family. When didn’t matter for I had already prepared like a murderer on death row for the
inevitable blow.
Her mother came in the night and like the mob she gave me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Jesse told her family everything
and they were mad. I was the logical point for retaliation. This was what she had not foreseen. I was prepared for the worst and it
was delivered. Mother. She was one mother to another delivering my death notice to the lips of my judge. Fear racked my body and
again I was cold on the inside. I raged and fought without fists or energy. Duty became a word with meaning as I straightened my
spine and told God’s child I would rather kill myself than be executed. The trip home I was silent and Jesse cried as she hugged me
good-bye. I simply smiled and told her everything would be all right. She said she was sorry, and I told her it had to happen eventually
and thanked her mother as I headed towards the front door. I entered the dark house on top of the world. I was in a top ranked
college. Professors and community leaders looked upon me as a beacon of hope in the future. I volunteered for my community, fed
the homeless and visited old people just to talk about their lives and history. I never caused any trouble, and people looked to me like
my small towns potential celebrity. Police officers knew me by name because I had helped their little Billy learn algebra, and had not
missed one 4th of July picnic in 6 years. The kids all knew me as the big kid, and they would squeal with laughter, as I would figure new
ways to entertain them as their parents enjoyed the much-needed break. The $125000 in scholarships and offers meant nothing as
I mouthed the words to my mother that would forever destroy me. Gay. Lesbian. Freak. These were my new titles. Smart, and witty
were traded in for my real identity. I was wrong. My whole essence and at 19 years old I was a child again. The world had no meaning
as I watched her shoulders slump and tears start to run down those cheeks. I don’t remember how I ended up in the bathroom, but only
there did my tears find release. Crying was never an option in public. And as the hot tears fought their tensile grasp on an eyelash I
sought the only friend I thought I had left. The blade was hard to get out of the razor and a few drops of blood fell into the sink
unnoticed. I stood looking at it for a long time. As if mouthing silent words, my mind tried ineffectively to wrap around the task at
hand. Suddenly blue eyes seared through my memory and her smile after lovemaking. Dying was not an option. Little Helen was not
even born, and we still hadn’t seen real lesbians. Who would be strong for Jesse if I left now? The blade fell, and without comment,
my mind started to shut down all emotion. I managed to smile as the numbness hit. I was always the strong one, and would not fail in
this. There was no hoped acceptance, no one knew all along. We were both scheduled to meet with our parents’ priests and given
our lectures. We took the punishment for our love like martyrs and began the awesome task of leaving home and family. Rage and
frustration dictated us for the next few years, and we clung to each other for support. I told her soon we would escape it all. She
was my purpose, and I was her strength. I never cried after the day in the bathroom. She wept for me, and every tear on her cheek
was a fire through my soul. I was embittered with the world, and injustice. My morals challenged and laid waste by judgmental strangers
and families that would hurt their own. Suddenly, we were all alone in a world no one told us existed where we were punished for
our love. Jesse never quite regained her lost innocence; instead she walked through life as a perfect being betrayed by her life and
love. I made her happy. Her family made her whole.
College life made the change easier. Again learning became my solace, and I was quickly drawn into clubs and activities. Jesse
followed one step behind the whole time. Soon we were known as one. If I was alone on campus, her whereabouts were questioned
and the same for her. Strangers knew us a duo. She studied pre-med while I studied anything they would teach me. Calculus,
physics, organic chemistry, logic, and even a full size course on water management districts linked to the history of California were
among my courses. Every disappointed blow from mother fueled a fire in me to learn more, and be better. Those same blows
forced Jesse into a shell. She withdrew quietly, and soon bags formed under her eyes. She worked more hours at the pizza place
to help us stay afloat, and I did the same by taking on a second job. Tuition got harder for her at the top university. I had
scholarships, and she had aid. The difference hit hard, and soon it became impossible to pay her tuition. She withdrew some more
as her dreams of medicine seemingly faded from her. I fought harder by looking for more scholarships, and a better job. Soon she
would be a doctor. Soon life would be easier and we would start a family. She would smile as I walked in every night too tired to do
anything but hold her. I didn’t notice her lose weight at first, or the way her smile seemed faded. Her eyes were always so beautiful
that I couldn’t fathom that they were looking through me at a world she lost to love. Soon one semester melted into two years, and
disaster waited elusively to strike.
On her way home from work one night a man stepped out from the curb into the path of her car. She struck him and in one
inexorable moment changed our lives forever. The man was drunk, and mentally unstable as stated in the police report, but Jesse
was still told not to leave the city. Involuntary manslaughter they called it. She broke as her belief tried to wrap around the fact she
had killed someone. I arrived after her parents on the scene and was shut out by her father. Stone faced he held his child from me
as she called for her mother. I set my jaw, and stood silent wishing my arms would comfort her with this pain, and feeling defeated, as
I knew she would always call for mother in the end. It was the blow I did not want to ever suffer. Four years of comfort melted back
into isolation. Soon it seemed was drifting away from me.
The questions stung again. Are you a boy or a girl? Do you like girls? Is that your girlfriend? I managed a weak smile of reassurance
to Jesse as my world again started restructuring. Cope came in the form of fortifying. We had our ceremony shortly thereafter. My
brothers showed up, and her younger sister. It was a short ceremony and no one seemed to notice the silent gap caused by our
missing parents except for us. Kissing the bride seemed to hold little meaning when it reaffirmed but did not assure anything
different. She smiled in a way I could only remember from our youths. And though I was barely twenty and she was still 19, we felt
like an old married couple. The union marked open warfare with her parents and the battlefield was my love’s heart. I walked a
tightrope trying to balance my crusade for recognition as normal, an ever-challenging life as an aspiring biochemist, and the role of
the perfect life partner.
Another few years went by slow as molasses on a winter day. Jesse was working full time and volunteering as an EMT. I thought her
adorable in her little uniform, and we had found our place in lesbian society as a sort of ideal couple. Lesbians twice our age
hopped beds and we had eyes for each other only. The church we attended was primarily gay and lesbian and we were the voice of
the future. I ran the Sunday school, and she sang in the chorus. We would sometimes sing duets when she could convince me I wasn’t
shy. Life seemed so happy until Februarys. The anniversary of her shift from innocent to killer in her eyes started in late January.
We would go to the counselor, and she would withdraw from life for the next few months. The first year I got her a puppy. She was
a scared Humane Society reject that shook as I held her. Again I fell for eyes, and Jack came home with us for Valentines Day.
The two were immediately best friends and Jesse’s depression seemed to remit a little. After the second year, and our second
puppy Myrtle, pets seemed to fail as an option for treatment of Jesse’s depression. Soon it never went away. She started crying
for no reason, and clinging to me when I went to work. Sleep was riddled with nightmares, and I often would hold her sobbing as the
sun rose. We sought counsel, and advice from anyone and everyone with credentials. I was almost a graduate and I would tell her
stories about the house we would live in, and draw her pictures of children with our features mixed. She started visiting her family
more, and I welcomed the new smiles she came home with as a new strategy was employed to save the Keener prodigal child. Her
21st birthday marked the end of all I knew as stable and good.
We discussed colleges and found one we could afford. It was two hours from my school, and had a medical program that was
world-renowned. Her eyes lit up at the idea of finally being the professional she dreamed. I could only say yes to those smiling
disks worshipped for over half a decade. We found her a dorm style apartment in the college town and I kissed my happy married
life goodbye unwittingly playing the supportive wife to the death of my marriage. I still had to work, and took on another job serving
tables on the midnight shift at a local all night diner. Every break and weekend I could spare I was on the road to visit, and the now
empty apartment seemed dead and meaningless. Jesse was happy in a new world. She started forming new friends, and soon I was
being presented as a friend, not a wife. We had spent so long closeted to all but close friends I didn’t think anything of it at first. My
own schooling had started to suffer the new burden of a long distance crutch. Sleep was the hardest. Her breathing had become my
sedative, and soon I was up all hours writing poems and sketching in my books. I wrote research papers for fun on top of a
forty-page minimum school load. I took on more courses in denial of what I saw happening. My name was on top of every call in list,
and I even took on a job at the school paper as an editor; anything to keep my mind off the empty bed that waited for me when the
day ended. Soon my professors started asking me if I was feeling well. I had lost some weight and I would often forget to eat. Jesse
had called me and said I didn’t need to visit for a while. She had a lot of coursework to do and needed to study real badly. I sent
herflowers, and a love poem written during an advanced plant physiology lecture. She never mentioned them in our phone
conversations. Another ten pounds came off in the next month. Girls at my school started to notice.
Summer hit. I discovered energy pills, and started working both jobs full time. Jesse stayed for summer term, and I visited
twice a month. We would cuddle and she would smile at my new body. We went to our first gay rights parade and for the
first time I realized that I was not a minority. Women marched proudly with unshaved armpits, and baldheads. Breasts were
displayed not bonded. I felt that I had found a Mecca in this culture. Lesbian became a beautiful gift instead of a stigma. Jesse
seemed to treat it like a carnival. The only thing she seemed to find interesting were the dykes with tykes. We smiled over our still
unborn children and I mouthed our mantra: Soon. I watched her smile fade a bit and I knew that moment our soon would probably
never come. Coldness in the form of fear swept through me and I held her hand tighter against fate; convinced my strength could
pull us through any storm. Summer faded into fall and fall swept into a new year. January again.
Jesse came home for holidays, but stayed with her parents. Neither of our parents welcomed our significant other for the
holidays. When she stayed over for our little yuletide celebration, it felt like home again. I was barely 140 at the time and after a
direct intervention from my school advisor I saw a doctor. The tumor was behind my left ear lodged against a lymph node. I was still
being tested for Lymphomia. I didn’t tell her. I couldn’t. It was too close to February. I was put on steroids, but still had trouble
keeping food down. The New Year hit and depression hit the hardest it possibly could as her parents offered her the worst timed
pressuring. The check they offered for her college came with a price. I was the price and her depression became more than she
could bear. She came home for good it seemed without her degree. Fatigue made it hard for me to push through and I resorted to
pain pills mixed with speed to survive. This did not help Jesse feel any better and soon I was visiting her at the clinic. I told her
before my first surgery, and she stayed at the clinic for another couple of days. I was more than likely going to be fine by the
doctors. My immune system was a bit compromised but as long as I kept eating I was fine. I stopped shopping for groceries the third
time Jesse went into the hospital. When she was released, her parents took her home with them. She didn’t argue, and her father
came for her belongings. I handed them to him hard jawed and totally embittered with life in general. I welcomed the disease that
wanted me and stopped going to treatment.
Mother stopped talking to me as a friend when she remarried, and I didn’t have the nerve to say anything to her. I visited after my
hair grew back from the surgeries. She commented on my new body with enthusiasm. Her chubby baby had transformed into a
beautiful woman. The black rings were just because I didn’t sleep enough, and the shaking was blood sugar. I needed to eat that was
all. Jesse would come with me and mother would treat her like a true southern lady. Sugar coated disdain unnerved me, and again I
withdrew. We hit six years in October, and we went to our favorite restaurant. Our relationship seemed strained at best and I had
withdrawn all emotion into my old shell. She smiled politely, but the light was gone in here eyes. Kissing was polite, and sex was all we
had left. Jesse would stay with me when she could, but only for weekends at a time. The next year slipped past us, and again
February crept its ugliness towards us. I had stopped losing weight due to frequent marijuana use and went back to the doctors.
Hope started poking through the clouds as I put together Jesse’s final Valentine basket.
It was a beautiful sunny day and I smiled as I sketched in the courtyard of my university. Jesse would be home, in my home soon.
She had moved a closet full of stuff back in and started decorating things again. The scent of woman ness and candles was again
gracing my life. We had a long talk one night and she agreed that we had started to grow apart. I smiled at the thought I would hold
her that night and all nights forever as I closed the book and wandered home to my waiting prodigal wife. The apartment was alive
with smell and color. Unicorns decorated tables and flowers set in a vase on the dinner table. She would always decorate things. I
could barely manage to match socks.
Long forgotten the smile lit my heart as I headed to the light in the bathroom. Jesse would get my best massage tonight, and we were
going to go to the park for a walk. The door swung open to reveal my love fetal on the bathroom floor and my heart froze mid-beat.
The remaining pills littered the floor round the bottle. I could not, can not, process those moments. The lights of the ambulance that
took her away, her voice as they pumped her full of the anti-narcotic agent, and the smell of hospital in our home all haunt me.
The nurses don’t allow chocolate to patients. My watch and pocketknife will need to stay at the front desk. Are you family? I am
sorry, friends are not allowed to visit until after doctor allows. Could you come back later, Jesse is not up to seeing you right now.
I didn’t come back. I never came back. Sometimes the warrior never survives the battle. Sometimes the battle was never right or wrong
to begin. My sickness is in remission, and the scars on my heart are treasures not baggage. They are precious memories of a little girl
that saved another from herself; a cub turned martyr because no one could protect her in the lion’s den. Jesse started dating again
shortly after I left. He was a good mutual friend of ours, and I was happy to see that she was able to find that normalcy in her life that
eluded me in mine. I started seeing a girl that had a crush on me from the club. We tried to speak afterwards, but it was strained and
eventually she left me a note on my car asking me to not pursue a friendship. She cited the pain it would cause and I could see it. We
both could see it. Someday, she said, we might meet in the streets and smile. She will say hi, and I will grin in my normal fashion.
I hope someday will come soon. The soon that never happened. I want that soon.
So what did I gain from those years in heaven and hell? I still don’t understand the why of life. I am not really a lot wiser, or any
smarter than I was at fifteen. Jimmy Buffet said in one of his songs: “Well Jim, some of its magic and some of its tragic, but I had a
good life all the while.” Would I have stayed alone if I had known it would only end this way? No, not really. Life is here; it seems, to
teach us something bigger than ourselves. Love is the greatest emotion, and the best gift humans take for granted. No other animal
cries for love lost, or rages over things that might have been quite like us. Sometimes, I wish for my Jesse. Sometimes, I cry for the
lesson learned. I always smile when I see those eyes even if they are only alive for me in my dreams, and wishes. Jesse will be married
soon, and in my dreams she names her daughter Helen, and her son David. The children are beautiful and blessed with those same
wide blue eyes that haunt my dreams, and captivate her adoring husband. I am resigning myself to my art, and career for now. I am
not afraid to love, or to hurt anymore. The pain is always worth it anyways.
Mother called me the other day. She asked me why I messed up the only good thing in my life. Jesse was such a good
girl. Those words seemed to ease something inside. I told her I would find a better girl. Soon.