A Story In Search Of A Moral

Ohhhhhh yes. You're right. I did start the story of my first marriage only to drop it like a buttered tea cup, didn't I? Sorry about that.

I think the problem is not so much that I am embarrassed (I am not; although I should be) as every time I start to put it together in my head it comes out like a badly written short story; one in which the characters behave in inexplicable ways from start to finish. It seems... lame to tell you that I did x y and then z without being able to provide any insight as to why. But honestly, I still don't know. I have absolutely no idea why - when I was, say, 15 to 25 - I made consistently terrible decisions seemingly at random. I imagine being in the same situations as the younger me and it's like yelling at the screen during a movie.

"Noooooo! Don't! Go! Into! The! Woods! "

Now if I turned on the water in my newly purchased house and blood came gushing out I would turn off the tap, get into the car, drive away and never ever come back. Twenty years ago - as far as I can tell - I would have looked at the blood and the spectral demon glaring at me from the bathroom mirror and said, brightly, "Hmmm, we'd better split up and investigate. I'll take the basement."

What the hell? Why if I loved Julian with every fiber of my being did I initiate so very very many other relationships in his absence? Why if I felt at best lukewarm fondness and at worst utter contempt for Andy did I marry him? Dunno.

So I'll tell you the facts as I remember them but it's going to be a bring your own analysis event. Actually feel free. Critique away. The best I can come up with is:

1. alien mind control

2. I spent an entire decade more than a little tipsy

and, frankly, as plausible character motivators neither of those are going to make the New Yorker.

College. Junior year. I don't remember the pretext but I wound up in a conversation with Julian from one of my English classes and the sparks flew so fast and furiously that we stood in the pouring rain and made small talk. I was instantly besotted. I was also dating Mike - a former Marine recovering alcoholic ten years my senior - who lived with me off and on. It was a little awkward to encourage Julian's capital R Romantic courtship (flowers, tiny gifts, notes crammed into my mailbox at three in the morning) while gently dislodging Mike but I managed.

I just laughed aloud because I was sitting here thinking how deft and tactful I was about the overlap until I suddenly remembered the way I finally ended things with Mike. His closest friend was getting married and he was the best man. The bride-to-be had invited me to all her showers and prenuptial events and it was a big deal for Mike. So rather than attend the wedding as his date like I had promised I... left town and hiked the Appalachian Trail with Julian and his family. Subtle!

Good grief.

Anyway, I fell madly in love with Julian and it was dreamy. I think I made this analogy before but that year exists in my memory like a classic film montage with, like, I don't know, a Snow Patrol song playing in the background. All plaintive crooning and swelling strings. There were parks full of tulips and rambling explorations through old neighborhoods and lots of art and staying up until 6 in the morning and Granny Smith apples with English beer and brie. If we quarrelled I don't remember it and if I was less than entirely faithful at all times I do not remember that either. Like I said, I was besotted but I did not have the best impulse control, once upon a time. 

Here's a picture from 1992. We went to Cape May for the weekend. I just looked at this picture for a long time trying to see what I saw then but all I can tell you is that I thought he was the most attractive person I had ever laid eyes upon. I wanted to fan myself every time he glanced at me.

He graduated that Spring but I had a year left. He stayed in Baltimore with me and got first a retail job and then a poorly paid position with an itty-bitty publisher. Every time I read about the tough job market for current college grads I murmur in sympathy because the early 90's sucked too. We were, I think, quite happy and quietly domestic but there was lurking discord: he was waiting to hear back on his Peace Corps application. To me it felt like a guillotine, a sword of Damocles, a sentence of death pending appeal. Huh. I guess we did quarrel. I pleaded with him not to abandon me for two years and he pulled sad faces and said nothing that ever made me feel the slightest bit better.

Have I told you all this before? Probably.

Moving forward.

He left for Honduras and I sank into utter despair and finished my last semester of college in a sea of grief and cheap Kahula. Man, it hurt.

This is one of the inexplicable parts.

I was heartbroken, missed Julian like a limb, wrote him faithfully all the time, fully intended to go down to Central America as soon as I graduated and spend as much time as I possibly could with him and... I started a fairly serious relationship with a guy in Chicago.

In high school I dated a guy named Gregg. We broke up (obviously) but stayed friends (it was his wedding Patrick and I attended last month, actually.) One night after Julian left I called him at one in the morning, like you do, and got his roommate Chris instead. We talked. Then we talked again a couple of days later. Then we started talking all the time and shortly after this I went to my friend Christine's Easter brunch. She served ham and Bloody Marys and while the former was quite delicious the latter was more relevant because if I had not started drinking before noon that day I would never have decided that an immediate trip to Chicago was in order. But I did. Air travel between Baltimore and anywhere used to be very cheap and easy so once I had decided to go meet Chris it was simple to get a flight the next morning and - elevated by all that spicy tomato juice - I did.  

We started a long distance relationship with lots of phone calls, some visits, and a trip to Florida where we stayed for a week in his parents' unbelievable beach house in West Palm. At the same time I was still writing to Julian (skipping some of the, ah, details of home fire maintenance) and planning my first trip to Honduras.

Sorry, I really feel like I have told you all this before. I don't mean to bore you.

I spent a month with Julian, came back for my brother's wedding and called Chris. He was furious and said that my trip to Central America constituted a de facto break-up. I said, ah, no, really? and c'mon baby don't be like that. He told me to drop dead. That was it for him for a while but he reappears later so heads up.

I had gotten into law school by this time but had deferred admission for a year. I am... not sure why. Because I wanted to be miserable and broke and lonely and wait tables? Whatever the reason I was basically killing time in DC and after a few crummy months packed full of unfortunate decisions

(my father and step mother had allowed me to move in with them rent-free and had even given me the use of a car. they, um, had to take the car away again - ok! I AM embarrassed about something after all. embarrassed and ashamed - because I was not behaving in a responsible manner. let the record show that the witness has made the drinky-drinky vroom-vroom motion)

I fled my American Express credit card debt and my student loans and everything really and went back to Honduras. It was ok. I still loved Julian like Tabasco but he worked all the time and I was bored. In retrospect I should have written a novel or volunteered to do just about anything but instead I was sulky and everything tasted weird and we kept losing power and water and I was never entirely sure that armed militia weren't going to come and murder us in our sleep.

Here we are in our doorway in Honduras (Shawna just fixed the picture for me so it is right side up. many thanks to her. I still want photoshop for Christmas.) I had chopped off all my hair and I remember being surprised that Julian was so grief-stricken by its loss. Men are weird about hair.

When he had the time we travelled quite a bit through Honduras and the rest of Central America, experiences which I remember with more fondness than I viewed them at the time. With very little money our transportation and accomodations were always the cheapest we could find, so travel consisted of a couple hundred miles in the back of a pickup truck filled with dogs or sleeping in a building whose third floor leaned eleven feet to the left of the first floor. 

When I left to earn a little (very little. none, actually) money before law school I was sorry to leave Julian but I was not sorry to get out of Honduras.

I went to law school in Cleveland rather than Williamsburg Virginia because I concluded that I could not live in a town that did not have a 7-11. I could cheerfully strangle my twenty-two year old self for this decision because in-state tuition would have rendered law school a three thousand dollar mistake rather than the infinitely more costly one it became.

Someone in the comments asked about law school. Why did I drop out? Because I hated it. I hated absolutely every second of it. It was nothing like I expected it to be and I didn't understand one word in ten. Nobody read cases the way I did. Nobody seemed to be interested in the stories involved or the relative fairness of the decisions. Contract law might have been in Finnish as far as I was concerned. I was probably the worst law student in the history of all time and the entirety of jurisprudentia gave a sigh of relief as the door hit me on the way out.

Maybe that explains the next part of my life, a little.

I was drowning in debt, the only plan I had had for my life - Julia Valentine Blossom, Attorney at Law - was a complete bust, and the only way I had ever managed to even partially support myself was by waiting tables which is never a good route to prosperity. Julian was as hard to reach in Honduras as ever and he showed no signs of leaving early to come rescue me. Of course I should have rescued myself. I should have tugged on those wide bootstraps and slapped on a jaunty bow and done... something. But I didn't. I worried and I panicked and in my spare time I fretted.

I called Chris. Maybe we had been talking all along, maybe not. I don't remember. But at some point during the first few months of law school I called Chris and asked if I could come to Chicago for a weekend. I am pretty sure he said no. I am pretty sure I insisted until he finally said OK. It's a little fuzzy but I think I realized pretty quickly that Chris was not going to solve my problems for me. He was angry and no longer found me the least bit charming. His new roommate, though; he liked me. Yep, it was pretty clear after one evening that Chris' roomate Andy thought I was the knees of the bees.

Good grief I say again. This really isn't my favorite story.

Andy was a very nice computer programmer from Minneapolis Minnesota and what he was thinking I will never know. I could hardly have been more toxic at that period of my life if I had been bubbling green slime and stamped all over as biohazard. And to make matters worse he had just been about to embark on a very suitable relationship with the sweet friend of a friend of his. The very day my meteor crashed into his snowscape he had been scheduled to play tennis with a woman who kinda liked him that he thought maybe he kinda liked too.

I said, "Tennis? Bleh. Call her. Tell her something came up. Reschedule. Let's go drink and play pool."

So he did. Then he fixed everything. He loaned me a little money to tide me over in Cleveland. He agreed that dropping out of law school was prudent and helped me rent a room in a group house in Chicago. He drove the moving van for me and carried my couch into storage. When the first job I got making knock-off wallets in a Chicago basement (cold call, cattlesque recruiting actually) flopped he got me a job as a receptionist for his company and when I thought it sounded grown-up and sophisticated to get married he bought me a ring. I probably should have been grateful to him but in truth I just remember feeling vaguely annoyed all the time.

Whyyyyyyyyyyy? Why did he do all these things? His friends hated me. His family worried about my influence. I can tell you, I guess, why I married him (immaturity, vanity and anxiety) but I have never and will never understand why he didn't tie a brick to me and drop me in the nearest river rather than continue to deal with my pettiness and my peevishness and my... hey, embarrassment again.  

We got married in October the following year and we fought more or less every second thereafter.

The following summer I found myself alone at a bar one night and jostled into a guy with eyes like autumn leaves and a disconcerting sense of humor. We started talking and after half an hour I wanted him. I wanted him very very much indeed. I saw him three times before I finally confessed that I was married. He took it pretty well.

"You have thirty days to get out of your marriage or I am never seeing you again," Steve said.

The End

PS I just read this over and I am amused to discover that the story of my first marriage was really a story about Julian and how hurt I was and oh yeah I married whatshisname. I also was surprised that I do not possess a single picture of the guy. Not one and it's not like a ripped them all up in a fit of pique either.

PPS I think Andy wound up married to the nice young woman that he had ditched for tennis.

PPPS I think if Julian had really wanted to be with me he would have been.

PPPPS I think that by one's early twenties one should be past such things but I am willing to hear your shameful stories to the contrary.

PPPPPS Thanks to your clicking the advertiser for the cruise sweepstakes just renewed their ad through the end of the month - hooray for unexpected windfalls. YAY and THANK YOU! If you wouldn't mind continuing to click maybe they will buy space again in the future and I will use the money to take you all out to lunch. I also have an ad for a children's series called The Search for WondLa and The Well-Read Wife who does book reviews and has been very nice about buying ad space pretty often. 

Comments

[AnnaN]

Did you actually hike the Appalachian Trail or is it a euphemism a la Governor Sanford? And if it was the latter, was his family involved. Wait, before you answer, I need popcorn because I think this might beat my own torrid love affairs in my early 20s.

Heeeheeeeee!

[AnnaN]

Well, that last comment of mine could have been worded more better.

To add to it, in all seriousness, adults really don't change world view from MeMeMeMe to OhHeyOtherPeopleWithFeelings until they hit 25/26. So your seemingly inexplicable behavior was actually quite normal. (This is in no way meant to act as a rationalization/excuse for my own 20-something behavior which eerily mimics yours).

My stupid embarrassing moment/s? Over the course of 18 months when in my 20s, I divorced my husband, started sleeping (immediately upon separation) with his best friend, and at the same time took up a long distance relationship with a married man, then when things started falling apart with both, went half way across country to go on a trip and have secks with a third man (despite my gut feeling that this was a very very bad mistake I was making) who ended up stalking me. When my mother asked me why on earth I had done such a thing, I could only reply, "Well, I had already paid for the ticket." She rolled her eyes, as she should have done. Man, that really sounds bad all condensed like that when it seemed so normal at the time. Uch.

One month later, I found myself nekkid in a hot tub, drinking champagne and saying yes to a marriage proposal from a man I had met on the internet two months prior and had only seen in person the night before. But, for what it's worth, I KNEW that this guy was different. He was my Steve and we've been married now for almost 15 years and I've loved every minute of it.

So...happy endings to self-destructive beginnings! Oh, and I dropped out of law school my first year, too. :D

[Shana in Texas]

Wow! So, all that to get to Steve! I love it. Throw in a few dastardly characters add some travel passages fraught with peril and you have a real page-turner.

My own indiscretions were similar in theme with poor decisions made and unnecessary disregard for feelings. Not my best years or behavior.

[Falling]

Excellently timed post, as I recently went back and (re)read all your archives. What can I say--I love your writing and I prefer stories where I know how it ends (although I found myself weeping while reading about the miscarriages, even though I knew that Caroline and Edward were on the horizon). And I had been wondering, did I miss the second half of Poor Decision Making Theater, or did she just never come back to that whole first marriage story?

So now I know.

And, as requested, an embarrassing story of my own: I dated a guy throughout most of college. Let's call him Eric, for that was his name. He had Issues that I never really understood (because they were too! painful! to! talk! about!), but the manifestation of said Issues was that he sucked at being a boyfriend. He broke up with me twice to "see other people" and I took him back twice, without even demanding promises of change or at least a little bling.

His best friend got married in a small ceremony, mostly populated by family. So at the reception, when it was time to toss the bouquet, the fact that I caught the bouquet can be less attributed to my motor skills (ahem) and more to the fact that I was one of only four young single girls at the wedding. Likewise, when they threw the garter, Eric (who was 6'3" and played Ultimate Frisbee and thus had perfectly decent catching skills) stood on the dance floor with three other guys. The garter sailed directly towards him...and he let it literally bounce off him and hit the floor, where another friend graciously picked it up and then asked me to dance, while his girlfriend graciously encouraged it.

The punchline of this story? I dated this schmuck for another two years. I probably even gave him a hand job later that night. Yay for 19-year-old-girl self-esteem!

So! While it's honorable to take your part of the responsibility for the marriage, let me assure you: Andy had a responsibility, too. I knew at the time, and I certainly know now, looking back, that this wasn't how a relationship was supposed to be. I could have walked away at any time or at the very least stood up for myself. That was my responsibility, and it was Andy's as well.

Hey! Lookit! I found a moral!

[Sarah]

Julia,

Please forgive yourself. It is a medical fact that the human brain, particularly the centers of judgement, are not fully formed till we are at least 26--possibly later. It was not humanly possible for you to make great decisions at that age.

Also, it is perfectly natural to seek other company when you feel abandoned, regardless of how much you love that person.

I can't find the exact story I want, but here are two news articles about this: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/releases/2006/02/06.html

http://www.phschool.com/science/science_news/articles/teen_brains_trial.html

I read an article about this a few years ago and IMMEDIATELY forgave myself for everything I did the year I was 19.

I defied my parent's wishes and went to college a semester late and promptly moved in with my boyfriend (I had my parents move me into Karen's apartment, and the next day moved in with the boyfriend, per plan). Boyfriend was a drug addict (little did I know), and ended up getting hauled away in a white truck, wearing a straight jacket, around the same time I found out I was pregnant. Aborted it (don't flame me, there were SERIOUS medical reasons), bf raped me the week after, then I fell in love with his best friend and former roommate and missed all my finals.

That was my first semester of college. I changed colleges a year later and broke up with the best friend mentioned above to date someone almost exactly like the drug addict, only more of a sociopath. Broke up with him only to date his best friend and former roommate (see a pattern?). Who I married seven months after we started dating. We divorced five years later.

Whew!

So let yourself off the hook! You didn't know any better.

[Melissa]

Your early twenties are just the right time to make those kinds of mistakes. You are old enough to really do some damage, but too young to have gained any perspective whatsoever. Pulling that crap by late 20s? Worrisome. But 22? 22-year-olds should be locked in a basement for a few years for their own good.

[Denise]

Oh, sweetie. You were young. 'Nuff said.

I'm impressed that your youthful mistakes involved cheating on/leaving men rather than sitting there letting them cheat on/leave you. That's the story of my life...I met a boy in Latin class during my junior year of high school and for the next, oh, ten years I came running whenever he called and got dumped by him more times than I can even count.

If I could go back in time and meet my young self, I would slap her upside the head.

Luckily I wised up by my thirties.

[Jan]

Thank yous! I, yet another, have swum in them waters... but total dodge on the Halloween party, which is the more serious indicator of personality disorder/psychosis. Just kidding!
Seriously, what happened?

[Colleen]

Firstly, thank you for the closure.
I am deeply embarrassed by the years, oh, let's say 14 to 24 -ish. And I am intrigued by the notion that it was impossible (really?!) for me to have made good decisions at that point, as your commenters are saying. Mind you, that does feel like a bit of a cop-out - and yet! - How else can I explain how stupid I was for so long?! (Assuming we've ruled out the alien mind control that is...)

[Kathleen999]

17 through 25 for me. No marriages, but I was engaged briefly to a flaming gay guy who told me when I found out, "I sleep with men just for sex, but I only love you." I think later on I found out that he was ill (I suspect HIV) and I kind of doubt he is still with us. As one of my friends told me after we broke up, "Honey, EVERYONE has had him." Oy. Luckily I was not one of the everyone.

Within 3 years I was date-raped by a "friend" (I was a virgin) fell in love with a drunk who was attached but kept encouraging my infatuation with surreptitious calls and meetings, and finally found love with someone that I later realized was not that compatible with the life I wanted and was extremely immature. At 26 I found my husband and 7 years later we got married. Those chaotic years were exciting but also awful. I kept doing stupid things and falling in love with the wrong people. I once tried to fall in love with someone sane and stable and it was awful. Absolutely unendurable. I guess it was all necessary, but oh my lord, thank god it's over.

[Erinn]

I'm glad to hear that I wasn't the only one who really should have been locked away (far away) from the years 18 to 23ish...I spent far too much time pining over guys who wanted nothing to do with me....and ignoring the men who were actually good for something. Why is it like that? Thank goodness I have found a good one now...I'm another firm believer of wising up in your 30s!....

[Jennifer]

I am delurking with my story...

I got married at the age of 20 to a person who adored me. I liked him alright, and he did pretty much whatever I wanted, so it seemed like a good idea at the time.

When I was 23 I ended up hospitalized and unable to walk. I was diagnosed with MS. My ex stayed with me through all of this and I suddenly realized how much I utterly despised his spinelessness. I hated him.

So a year later, I left him. I was 24, on SSDI, in a powerchair and with a chronic debilitating disease, but I could not take one more second of being with my ex.

Six months later I met my husband. We got married 5 months after we met. I was 25, still on SSDI, Still in a powerchair... but I was finally happy.

Our son will be one year old in 10 days! Our life has been completely crazy and a total whirlwind. (We just celebrated our 2 year marriage anniversary in October.)

At least my relationship with my ex taught me what I needed in my life.

PS- our son's name is Julian. haha.

[Melody]

Oh where do I start? Got married at 20 to someone I didn't really love and that I'd only known for a few months because he asked me to. Never had someone ask me to marry them before, that must mean he really loves me, god I was stupid. He was a Marine and getting ready to deploy for the first Gulf War back in 1990. He came back after a few months and was abusive. Hurried up and tried to get things lined up so I could get out of the marriage and be on my own. The weekend before I was going to tell him I wanted out of the marriage I went out with a girlfriend to a bar and met another Marine (pattern anyone?). We were both smitten. My girlfriend told him while I was in the bathroom "You know she's married, right? Where do you expect this to go?" I managed to finally end the first marriage and me and the 2nd Marine have been together for almost 18 years. Let's hear it for trial run marriages and finding your 2nd husband in a bar, woo-hoo!

In between all that there were definitely bad choices with men (and their friends) and an almost college drop out and flirtation with law school. I'm hoping my twin daughters (now 6) make better choices although I will support them in their stupidity if needed.

Oh I just remembered how I told my mom I was married. We had eloped before he deployed and then I had graduated college. My mom was worried about me not having health insurance and I handed her the military health benefits manual and told her she didn't need to worry about it, I was covered. God, what was I thinking?

[Ellie]

Oh, my dear, I am sure that many of us have similar tales ... Yes, well, 16-21 were, um, eventful, for me in any case! Madly in love, wrong men, me making awful choices combined with men who absolutely should have known better ... And really sad things too, broken engagements and my baby who died (SIDs), so I ran away, to the other side of the world, where I grew up maybe a little (maybe). My twisty trail didn't lead me to my 'steve' but to my son, my baby who lived. And I do have to say that it was all worth it, the crazy choices and heartbreak, because of who I grew up to be and because of my son, whom I would not otherwise have; and I feel that we have to be gentle with ourselves, and forgiving.

[Leah]

In my teens/early twenties I would have LOVED to be like you. I saw those pretty, messed-up, heartbreaker girls and envied the shit out of them (as I lurked around the library eating candy and reading every book I had ever heard of and then some). The great thing about adulthood is it all shakes out, we all wise up about our respective issues, and we end up in more or less the same place.

[Katelyn]

These stories make me seriously laugh out loud.

I completely sympathize about the law school thing. I dropped out after my first year when I realized that the best thing about my entire year were lunch phone calls to my mom. The fact that I stayed in one city 2 1/2 hours away from my husband Monday through Friday afternoon didn't help either.

I guess I'm an old soul and have always been one. I can think of some silly high school (literally) breaking up and getting back togetherness, but that's it for my embarrassing tale of fickle teens/twenties. I married at 20 to my high school sweetheart who was/still is in the Air Force. We lived apart for a year so I could finish my bachelor's. We lived apart during the week for another year while I tried law school. We now have a 5 month old and I turn 25 in February. I guess I'll just have to settle for living vicariously through your (and everyone else's) stories.

[Fuzz]

I LOVED this. Loved it.

Seriously, I would read a book about your life.

And to add to embarrassing stories of marriage, I moved overseas to marry someone I met online. I had one picture of him and we got married 25 days after we met, it was on national Australian television, and two kids and six years later, we got divorced.

He literally makes my life miserable.

My kids are worth it, though.

But I lie and tell people I came to the US to backpack.

[Karen]

Thanks for providing the second half of that story! I was wondering if I had missed it.

I must have been a late bloomer because for me it was 23-28ish. I dated a guy who my friends referred to as Satan and it wasn't an affectionate term. We lived fairly far apart and I found out he was essentially living with someone else. And yet, I still talked to him and let him convince me to see him before he moved 500 miles away. I was a jacka**.

It was after he finally moved away that I met my "Steve" - 10 years and 4 kids later it's all good!

[Clarity]

You know, if nothing else this makes me feel better about MY early 20's which were every bit as stupid and only slightly less sordid. Nobody escapes unscathed, at least your scars are funny!

[Cobblestone]

Twice he stood aside as I made an @as out of myself and dated other men. Then I almost lost him, grew up in about 15 seconds one night and married him. Had a great 5 years and then he died. I was so very lucky his heart had that much forgiveness in it.

[JulieO]

I, too, LOVED this post. Somehow, it felt cathartic for me, and I don't even know you. Maybe it was the other poster's comments about our inability to make good decisions at that age.

And I'm with Denise - at least you are the one doing the heartbreaking. It sounds so much less pathetic than my story, which is the same story as most other posters about loving the wrong guy. He was GORGEOUS, he took my breath away, he was a DJ, he was a hockey player with a fantastic body, and he was so dumb. We saw each other off and on for seven years. Seven YEARS! And, get this: Once, I told him I loved him. He didn't say it back, left in the morning, and then didn't talk to me for four months. And then, when he did call again, I was so ecstatic to have him back in my life that I stopped seeing the super nice med student I had met and ran right back to him. See, I stopped dating other people whenever he was around, but he never stopped sleeping with, well, everyone. Oh god, how I hate thinking about my pathetic 20 year old self.

To add further credence to Sarah's comment about our decision-making ability, it was right about the time I turned 27 that it occurred to me how stupid I was acting, and I told him never to contact me again. Which of course made him want to commit, he said. Thankfully, I didn't believe him. When I moved I changed my number, and didn't talk to him again. A few months later, a guy from work, who was his exact opposite (super nice, not at all cool, kind of paunchy, and WICKED smart) asked me out. Ten years ago, and now we have three beautiful kids and a reasonably happy marriage. (Although, I do still find myself wondering what would have happened with that med student, who went on to become a successful surgeon, and is gorgeous.)

[NoseRingGirl]

My friend and I refer to the ages 22-25 as "that one time I was drunk."

Can we say that I'm heartily grateful that there was no facebook or flickr in the years 1995-2000?

[Jennifer]

Oh, I saw so much of myself in your story. Thanks for sharing so honestly with us!

I'm a member of this club too. I'm just so glad to have such good company! :) The short version of my story is that my early twenties were as much a reaction to my parents' divorce as anything: I dated a great guy in college, broke up with him just as my parents' divorce was finalized to "find myself", i.e., date a series of "bad boys" (and bad-for-me boys) with Issues, and girlfriends, occasionally. On one date with one of these not-so-suitable suitors, I met my ex-husband. He happened to be the best friend of the guy I was on a date with. And he was engaged. But we didn't let that stop us and two months after starting to date, we were engaged, respectable rock and all. (In hindsight, this might have been due in some large part to my ex-boyfriend from college getting married around this time.) We were "sensible" and had a long engagement, the big wedding, and moved immediately across country away from all of our family to start our blissful new life. Except it wasn't. We fought a lot, often violently. He cheated. I took him back. We got pregnant. We moved again. We had a baby girl. We moved back home. We split up. I grew up some, got my act more or less together, and met hubby #2, who resembles my college boyfriend so much more than my starter husband, thank goodness!

Possibly the best part of the whole story of my first marriage is that my ex-husband had a WICKED (and not in a good way) hockey-player-esque mullet when I met him. And yet, I married him anyway. Oy.

[Alexicographer]

Oh, my, thanks for sharing. I didn't have those 20s, actually mine more involved stupid stuff like thinking (feeling, I guess) I actually had to explain to someone else's satisfaction why I was breaking up with him as opposed to just saying, "It's not you, it's me," (which I have since learned to say) (though for the record it was totally him, not me) and/or heading off to hike the Appalachian Trail.

[Robin]

I... I just don't have the time to set down my hapless teens and twenties. But here I am -- 34 and widowed from the love of my life, -- secretly dating my professor (back in grad school!). Maybe there's something permanently wrong with my brain?

[kris (lower case)]

i get this feeling we all need to be locked up between tha ages of 18 - 24 to protect us from ourselves! it must be the age of bad decisions and mistakes... i guess that is all part of growing up and becoming who we were meant to be...

[-R-]

Julian is (was) gorgeous. That is all.

[T]

I loved this as well. The New Yorker doesn't know what it's missing.

26 years here, been positively longing for an abusive ex - hoping I grow out of this soon and find my "Steve".

Would love to hear more about how you and Steve met. Thanks for being so honest about your mistakes... only way we learn, right?

[Shawna]

If it makes you feel any better...

I loved my early-20s boyfriend. For the entire 3 years I was with him. Until I let that relationship overlap into my next boyfriend, who became my mid-20s boyfriend.

I loved him. I really did. Yet I cannot think of a time in my life when I was more utterly miserable. I loved him. I wanted to marry him. I cheated on him, BLATANTLY, somehow never once thinking that maybe that meant I shouldn't or wouldn't marry him.

He quite rightly dumped me via email while I was just starting a month-long tour of Europe. I dragged my miserable carcass through 8 countries, trying to persuade him to take me back via email and expensive long-distance calls. He did not.

(Though we are miraculously now sort-of friends and I still see his parents from time to time.)

I'm not entirely sure how I survived my mid-20s, actually. I am beyond lucky to have ended up with the man I met when I was 29 and married when I turned 30. I would not re-live my years between 20 and 27 for anything. Bleah. I was not the good person I was always trying to convince myself that I was.

You are not alone.

[Amy]

Started dating the hubs in college before breaking up with my boyfriend. Totally lied and said boyfriend and I had an "understanding". Which we did not, at all, in any way. Boyfriend came by my apartment for an unannounced visit, let himself in with his key, and was ...not pleased to see how things with the hubs were, um, progressing.

Worst break-up ever. Straight out of a movie. It seriously felt like someone else's life. And it's very hard to be dignified and try to get dressed at the same time.

I was mortified and convinced that the hubs would never ever want to see my lying cheating self again. But he (miraculously) did. And now we're married 11 years. But I still cringe when I think about that night.

[Manda]

The moral of the story is: Hey! Look! You got Steve! And three beautiful brilliant children!

It's the best I can come up with... Kind of a distraction from the story, I guess. The bottom line is that we all do ridiculously stupid and immature things in our early twenties. I can say this because I am now a wizened twenty-SIX year old. And, I might add, I am divorced, engaged, pregnant, and unwed. And I have a two-year-old that we adopted through foster care because my former husband was infertile. That's how I found your blog, actually. Anyway, point is, all our roads are broken. All our paths are winding. In the end? We end up where we're supposed to be. Sometimes, we just cover up some of the map of our lives so that others don't see just how lost we managed to get.

[Betsy]

I always love your posts; but this is one that will have me thinking. Thank you for being so honest and transparent about those years; but also please forgive yourself if you haven't already (I hope you have).

I look back at those years, 18 - 26 or so, and I am at times so profoundly embarrassed at things I said and did and how I treated people. It's so humiliating to ponder that a lot of times I just close my mind to it. If I had a way of going back and apologizing to the numbers of people I was a complete jacka-- to, it would take me a long time.

I'm so glad we grow up.

[Christine]

My twenties? I peed in a hallway once.

Other than that, I studied and took the GRE and filled out vet school applications and put off the boys until I was pretty sure I was on my way there.

And if I had to do it over again, I would have put off grad school for a few years and played it all completely differently. I would have liked to see Central America.

[Pam L]

My 20's involved art school in Philly (where I had never once been until the day I moved into the dorm), pot (lots of it), a small amount of other pharmaceuticals, working nights in cocktail lounges and then partying at the Jersey shore, dating an alcoholic man 20 years my senior and also someone younger than me (practically a boy) and finally meeting my soon to be husband, but moving to Colorado first. There are several things I would not do again, but don't bother to regret.

[twitter.com/marbenais]

Thank you for finishing the story!

And, yes, you NEED to write this into a book. Please?

And, oh my God, I am so grateful there was no Facebook when I was in high school. That would have been AWFUL.

[amanda]

Will need to go back and read the comments, but GOD. This just makes me want to hang out with you more... not in a "tell me all your dirty secrets" kind of way, but in a "ok, wait, that part there... that is FASCINATING ... and tell me more about the night you met Steve." (Incidentally, did meeting Steve feel any different? Were the sparks there greater than with Julian? And tell me what I need to know to actually enjoy a bloody mary. I can drink vodka straight, but can't drink a bloody mary.)

[Channa]

Actually as a loyal reader of the New Yorker ("I read it for the articles. Really!"), I can say that short stories in which characters behave in inexplicable ways from start to finish are quite popular there. In fact this story makes more sense than most stories in that magazine.
Really I think the story does have a moral. Don't go to law school. I firmly believe that is true. My husband did somehow survive it, but really just barely.
Thank you for sharing your story.

[geohde]

I like to think that I am the early twenties inverse of yourself. I think, actually I recall with more than a little shame at my lack of self worth, that I moped for about a decade over a series of utter losers who were never really worth the bother.

Also, I never got to see South America.

g

[Melanie]

Thank you for this. I'm 24, and my life has recently...taken a turn, I suppose. And I was sitting here wondering what in the HELL is going to happen next. Maybe there is hope that a Steve will turn up in the next bar. Because the current guy is... well, I love him, inexplicably, but I know he's horrifically bad for me.

Maybe my mistakes will lead me where I'm supposed to be.

[Hetty Fauxvert]

Um. Wow.

I have to say I have a strong desire to sit all 19-year-old women down and wave your story in front of them and say, "READ THIS!" Because while it's a great story and I chortled several times, it's not that uncommon. People in general are horrifically stupid until they hit their late 20's. There is a *reason* that men were not allowed to vote in ancient Athens until they were 25. (Not that Athens was perfect, as they had slavery and women were basically ignored, but I think they had the voting age thing right.)

FWIW, I also ran around like a loon in my early 20's, but because of my complete lack of social skills was only rarely able to get anything going with a cute guy. Since everyone I knew was in theater and this was the early 80's, this probably saved me from getting AIDS, so there is a bright side to being socially inept. My point, though, is that most everyone is completely barmy in their teens and 20's, or trying to be.

And final nonsequitur .... I sure wish you'd apply butt to chair and write that book we all want to read. :)

[victoria]

I have never had overlapping relationships. I usually hurt people in other ways.

[claire]

I love your writing.. I love that you don't leave out the less than perfect parts, but do it in a way that I'm not cringing for the other person. I love that I feel better that wonderful, lovely, good-writing types opt to search the basement alone rather than exit quickly and confidently!

I think we all have these stories. And I'm not sure what makes us who we are more -- the living through the mistakes or figuring out how to forgive ourselves and be comfortable remembering them! I'm great at getting through the mistakes, but then torture myself with the WHY WHY WHY!?!?!! for way too long.

At any rate, a hint about rotating photos.... there is a great free software called irfanview. Open a photo in it, hit 'r' for rotate right or L for rotate left.. until it upright. done. You can also resize photos really fast. Control R, type in number of pixels, done. Save a copy, and you're ready to upload. I think every photo on everyone of my blogs has been touched by irfanview.

Thanks for your amazing writing. It is a joy I look forward to very much.

[Lisa]

When I saw you in my reader I wished I had not already finished my wine (BTW, it is 11 PM here in Aus) - when I saw that it was THIS story, I opened a new bottle. OMG. Please someone from the New Yorker be reading! Thanks for an awesome post and a really really great coming of age story. FWIW, I made a TON on cringe-worthy decisions in my 20s ... whilst I was in the Peace Corps as a matter of fact (I continue to be amazed that those who knew me then still love me now) - and in the few years immediately following. Including coming *THIS* close to marrying someone who was um ... let's just say 'not suitable'. We did buy a house together. So, it took a bit to extricate from that. Anyway, my point - like many who commented before me - we were all pretty fucked up in our 20s.

[Anonymous]

This makes me feel so much better about my own disastrous decisions during that phase of my life--glad I wasn't the only one! I finished law school (I turned out to be a far, far better lawyer than law student--I hated it, too, but figured that I spent so much money on my first year that I actually needed to finish). But, I drank waaaay too much. Picture me, dressed inexplicably as the Queen of Spain in a giant hoopskirted costume, screaming "chow my box, bitch" at a competitor for a man's affections. . .while on my way out to the door to meet the OTHER guy I was seeing. . .who let me crash at his place despite my extreme state of intoxication, and dutifully loaned me clothes to walk home in, after threatening to make me walk home in costume.

I was dreadful for like a decade. And I'm ashamed enough that I'm not going to add my name!

[Nellig]

I reckon this is sheer Darwinian selection driving genetically hot property to grab all the high-quality mating opportunities available, while not missing out on less desirable mates who would be good providers and protectors. Nature red in tooth and claw. Teens and twentysomethings are powerless in its grip.

[Becky]

I didn't do anything too terribly stupid from about 20 onward but that was mostly due to fear and I wish I had been a bit more impulsive and daring so, there you have it- you apparently can't win either way. And, I've started noticing a trend that people who were sensible in their early 20s apparently (especially the men) completely lose it in their 30s.

At any rate, I just wanted to check that Andy is now happy? Maybe with the tennis girl?

[Melina]

Yes, but what you left out is that the last time you saw Andy, I think in the court house when your divorce was finalized, his parting words to you were "And I changed the name of the cat."

I delight in that on a regular basis and it makes me feel like hopefully Andy made it out okay.

[Leighann]

This post made me feel better about my own early 20s trangressions. Overlapping relationships, one night stands, emotional manipulation, lots of booze, and puking in a NYC hotel lobby. Not a pretty time. But at 36 I look back on it with more forgiveness than at 26.

[Julie]

To quote an earlier commenter - "I'm impressed that your youthful mistakes involved cheating on/leaving men rather than sitting there letting them cheat on/leave you. That's the story of my life..."

Same here. I was the "beck and call girl" (without the hooker connotation) for a totally unworthy guy all through college, then ran off to the Peace Corps too, and immediately got engaged to a local African. You should've heard my parents when I called to tell them I was going to marry a guy they'd never even heard of, much less met. We did get married a month after coming back to the States, and luckily managed to overcome our youthful stupidity together and are still married, but still.

Really? Julia and Julian? That never would've worked.

[babelbabe]

you have NO IDEA how much better this makes ME feel about my equally stupid, ill-thought-out early twenties. No. Idea. Thank you. Also, I love you with short hair. I think it's adorable. Also also? In those pics - you look like you're about 12. In a good way.