A Thousand Misses

For the first time since I’d moved to West Virginia, two dramatically different things began to happen. My apprehension towards the intentions of strangers began to dissolve and I made eye contact at the grocery store. Although accidental, furtive glances made way for smiles and a little less of my East-coast indifference. I also started applying for jobs in Huntington, reaching out to every contact at the University that might produce some kind of employment. While these contacts proved fruitless, I caught myself wanting friends, wanting employment, resolving (if not quite wanting) to create a life for myself here.

Although accepting and supportive of my boyfriend's Catholic views, the strict stance on cohabitation before vows erected itself like a wall between us and any future plans we had dreamed of. I pleaded and asserted on the phone from my air mattress in the basement. He denied, steadfastly resolute.

Following my declarations that "this was the one" and that I wanted a life and a family, Dad offered to pack me up and ship me off to a flat in New York. The offer seemed less and less appealing as reality dawned. I would struggle to pay rent on an overpriced shithole in the city hours from a boyfriend that would make absurd excuses to visit but never stay--lest his parents disapprove. I would not have the family or life that I wanted in New York.

The Catholics I'd dated had a nasty habit of not wanting to admit to their parents just how close we were and where they lay their heads at night. After our first night together with one of the more memorable mistakes I made, I watched as the boy I cared for sat on the edge of my bed pulling on his socks. He dressed himself hastily as I drew the covers around myself. Not wanting to show my rising panic, I posed a simple and obvious question as calmly as I could.

"Where are you going?", I asked.
"Confession."

While among the more ridiculous and cliched, his was not the only lesson.

There was the "You're a great girl, but I feel nothing for you" guy, whose arms bore railroad track burn marks from desperate acts and his Teretts that I had tried to understand.

There was the off-off again first love who called every few months just to hear the sound of my voice--the only girl he ever felt about in that way you hope someone will one day feel about you. He endeavored to deserve me until I was twenty when he loved me and moved to Maine in the morning. Our relationship was punctuated by silence while others I went on to have were filler between their breakups, my breakups, and hiccups generally faced by youth with seemingly endless choices.

There was the one who said I gave too much--much more of myself than anyone ever should give another person; the one who chose an end over continuation just because he could, and another who would have loved me given the chance or not. He brought me snow from upstate in a coffee cup for Christmas and hardly slept beside me on the couch for our closeness.

It was one near-hit for a thousand misses. The Catholic had been the most memorable. So really it had been my fault that when the second rosary was hung with care around my bedpost on the silver chain I'd procured for it and his parents instructed that while we spent every waking moment together, the sanctity of marital acts was respected--I should have known. There was no future for Tommy with a girl marred by divorce, a borderline parent, and an intellect free from religion.