Allison's Private Journal

March 24, 2003
11:08PM

Dear Journal,

everyone knows that we’re going out. lol at least I don’t have to go around telling all my select friends. In directed study Mike comes over to me and he’s like “hey ms. josh lover!” OMG you just had to be there it was so funny. Wow, I love Mike, he makes me laugh so much. It was funny be-cause everyone was like “Oh really?” Josh told me Mr T said we were a good couple, and we both agree. I just have to let him know that I’m not someone he’s going to take advantage of. Just have to speak up. k going to bed now.

—–

This is seriously all I had to talk about this day. Just my classmate’s reactions to learning Josh and I were now “going out”. Fucking pathetic, Little Allison. THe only redeeming note is that I was ready to take a stand and let my new boyfriend know this is my hot body and I do what I want! In my last post, Little A got her first kiss and we touched on the blurry lines of sexual assault. While it was an exciting time, “dating” this boy was the beginning of my sex life which I argue, like many others’ have been, acquired a shaky foundation to grow on thanks to ill-informed, hormone-dominated teenage brains and skewed messages about priorities.

Here’s yet another problem with adolescent relationships: at least back in Burbsville, Massachusetts, in 2003, it was all about the status, the talk, the meaning that had little to do with the actual connection I felt with this boy. Well, it did have enough to do with the connection in this case (certainly NOT with the next boyfriend, who you will read about far too shortly). We were good friends and clearly were attracted to each other, although this guy was attracted to nearly everyone with tits in a 50-mile radius. But to be frank, becoming this guy’s girlfriend was more of a settling/thank-God-ANYONE-wants-me! move than an I-genuinely-love-and-respect-this-person-and-would-like-to-explore-life-together thing. That second option frankly wasn’t an option in my book, which is weird because my grandparents who I absolutely adore and practically raised me were together from 7th grade on and lived the most real, amazing relationship-centric life I’ve ever heard of.

I definitely idolized my parents courting story at the time, and for years after that; inversely, a huge mistake realizing in their divorce five years later that much of their time together, while paired with plenty of good times, was marred by hate, hurt and serious sadness between the two. Regardless, their getting-together story was beautiful to me. Long story short, mom married her best friend’s older brother. And as a story, it is beautiful. In reality, and retrospect, it just kind of makes you want to cry.

I loved all the romantic scenarios. So when it got down to it, I would either end up marrying my male BFFL, Mike, after years of crushing but mostly just genuine friendship and adoration (the closest I could get to my grandparents’ story); one of my best friends’ brothers, which initially could only be imagined as an older brother but that fact was challenged when I experienced a brief crush/fantasy about a younger bro even AFTER COLLEGE (the sickness is real); or my father’s roommate’s son Dana, who is seven years older than me, but who I had loved deeply for as long as I had known and who I just knew had the hots for me too but couldn’t do shit about it because he is an angel and I was only fourteen… then eighteen… then 21… now 25 and no, he has never asked me out (but you don’t know me if you think I’ve never asked him!). If none of these panned out, in Little Allison’s mind there were a thousand other romantic scenarios that would, including marrying my high school sweetheart. Unfortunately for my young romantical self, I was corrupted and frankly put my hands in too many baskets (mostly theoretically until October of 2009), so while I technically only had one high school sweetheart, in my mind I had two: my actual high school boyfriend and my best friend, Aaron, my platonic friend of choice, who I slowly became convinced was the real deal, The One. In reality, he was just one of several Ones, all of which never, and will never, be The One.

So what am I rambling about today? I guess the theme of this all is the trouble with reality, and the choices young women make based on a combination of fantasy and manipulation. Yuck. Honestly, why was Little A so desperate for attention from these guys? I can definitely recall a sense of increased social worth once this “dating” period began. It raised my stock that these boys wanted me to be their girlfriend. It’s also making me sick to think about it this way, which is fun right after my fruit binge this morning. But this stock isn’t real, and thankfully its importance faded after some time. I’d love to hear from readers–did you experience similar social pressures to be someone’s boyfriend or girlfriend? Please share in the comments! And thanks, as always, for reading. I’ll try to keep this up a bit better than I have for the last three years.