Author's Note:
Hi everybody, sorry it's been so long, I've been on a vacation and I've been working on this in the mean time. I will now continue to work on Past Lives.
This story is about Jess's life, I hope you like it and if you do, please review!
Thanks!
Reflecting on my life I can now see what a mess it was and still is. I don't think there's anyone to blame, not even myself. People lied to me from the beginning of time, and even though I found somebody who was always honest and kind to me I never got my life completly back on track, it wasn't enough to change me. I was too far gone. This is my life, my story, it's about love, passion and loss.
I'll just start at the beginning, with the person who brought me into this rotten world. My mother, Liz Danes/Mariano and thousand other last names. She's the most unstable person in my life, she's the one who started the problems in some kind of way. At first things were fine, she was having a boyfriend of which I assumed was my father. His name was Kyle (I don't know his last name) and he was a very great guy. He had a lousy job, he picked up garbage every morning and during the day he was cleaning up the park. It wasn't much but he did his best for my mother and me.
My mother on the other hand didn't think it was good enough, she was positive she could find a better person, somebody who would make more money and she would become a millionaire. Well she found one of those and she knew things would last forever between them...or so she thought. She broke up with Kyle only to be with Jake (I guess I was at the age of 4) Jake was a middle aged guy and in the beginning I hated him, after all he was the reason my "dad" left. Jake had dark brown hair and he was a real New York bussiness man, you know the kind who walks to his work in his Nike sneakers and change them in the elevator of his office building. He had this beautiful apartment on the Upper Eastside and I visited him there twice,once with my mother and once right after my school was out. It was the first time I was afraid of somebody and it was the first time I started shutting people out.
It was just a simple afternoon that started like all others. I just had my very first day at school, kindergarden. I had this lovely teacher her name was Miss. Rose. She had long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, I think she was the first one I had a crush on. Everybody in kindergarden has a crush on their teacher right? Anyway, it was my first day and at my very first day my mother forgets to pick me up...who forgets to pick up their 4 year old at his first schoolday? Right that would be my mother. Miss Rose told me to wait inside and we had some lemonade with a chocolate cookie. When my mother still hadn't arrived after an hour or so Miss Rose decided to call her and so she did, she dialed my number but nobody picked up. I bravely told her I could walk to my mother's boyfriend apartment, it wasn't very far because he was paying my very exclusive and very expensive school. So she let me go, she let me walk to the Upper Eastside and then I arrived there, knocked on Jake's door. Nobody opened the door, it stayed closed. Not true, it didn't stay closed, I opened it. Kyle taught me some things about cracking locks and that was a time I could use that information. I entered his apartment and found him with another woman, I didn't understand what was happening until I saw Jake storming right at me. That's the last thing I rememberd, that's the last image I have of him.
When I opened my eyes I saw a nurse and I didn't understand what was happening. Not very later my mother came storming in, she was crying, and she didn't stopped hugging me. Later it seemed, Jake hit me so hard I fell with my head against his table and I went unconsious, something that caused me a concussion.
I never saw Miss Rose again after that first schoolday. My mother couldn't afford that school and so she put me in a cheap school where everything went wrong. At the age of 8 I first found my way into books, a place where I could hide and withdrawl myself from the rest of the world. The first book I read was On The Road by Jack Kerouac. I had a hard time reading it but I was still drawn to it no matter how much efford I had to make.I fell into a world of where I wanted to be. It was the only I didn't have to think about everything that was happening around me, my mother's new boyfriends. She cursed herself for letting Kyle go and when I told her she never should've let my dad go she got mad at me and yelled my father left at my birth. So that's when and how I got to know the truth about my father, his name is Jimmy Mariano and he left right after I was born. The fact that my father didn't want anything to do with me, hurt and it hurt bad. But I never showed, I never let anyone know I hated the fact my father left my mother all because of me, somebody who screw up big time every once in a while, someone who sometimes wished he wasn't born.
After that, when I knew my real father abandoned us, things became worse, I started to hang out with the wrong people, I started smoking and at the age of 13 I first shoplifted. It made me feel like a man, something to be proud of. Now, after everything that has happend, I see that I must have lost track years before that first experience with the authorities.
Yes the authorities, I was 13 and off course they caught me.
The seasons changed and so did my mothers boyfriends, there was another Kyle, Pete, TJ, Tim, Michael, Rob, Andy and the last one (that lasted for a whole month (!)) was Greg. Not one of them was qualified for my mother, Pete was the one who hit her, TJ didn't have a good job and Andy hit both my mother and me. Everybody that came along had something she could be embarresed about and if that wasn't the case he didn't treat me or my mother right, the way it should be at least. It was somewhere in October and my 14th birthday was approching, the only thing I liked in those times. The week before my birthday I hung out with my friends and they hooked me up with some girl, I can't remember her name, I think it was something like Jennifer. My friends were older and they all had sex before so when they hooked me up with her it was sort of an early birthday present, off course I had no clue what they were talking about and we became friends.
I told her about my books but she didn't understand why they were so interesting, they're only books... I told her about my mother and her boyfriends and that she did understand, her mother was the same kind of person, had a boyfriend every other weekend who abused and hit her mother as well as herself.
Later I found out my friends payed her to turn me into a man, and I've got to tell you, she did her job. My mother completly forgot my birthday and I went looking for her, we started making out and we had sex. Just meaningless, nothing was involved only our bodies. What a way to spent your 14th birthday right... I considered it a lesson, my first lesson, and I continued that way...I became like my mother only in male shape, I had a girl every other weekend and everytime I picked up one of those girls we had sex. Everything in my life became a routine, I got up in the morning (and since my mother was never home in the mornings I decided I could take things slow) around noon I went to school, I never payed any attention in class (I always read my books) and after school I hung out with my friends and picked up some other girls to have fun with.
Every once in a while I shoplifted or we tried to steal a car (something we never got away with) and sometimes we got into a fight. The last time I got into a fight was when I was about to turn 17. It was the worst fight I ever gotten myself in, I don't exactly remember how it started but we were hanging in the park and I was making out with one of my former girlfriends (Christie, I believe, was her name) Some guys were approching us and started to call us names, not that I cared about it, but one of my friends Jude started yelling back at them.
The rest is blurry to me, there is one thing that always stayed with me though, one of the guys called my mother a whore and that's when I threw the first punch. At some level he was right but I wasn't going to be called a whore's son. Then I woke up in jail and for the first time in my life I had to stay overnight. That's when my mom got a wake up call and sent me away to live with my uncle in the middle of nowhere in a God forsaken town. She grabbed the most importent things of my belongings and shipped me off. Somewhere between getting into the bus and getting out of the bus I turned 17 and for the first time in my life there was nobody here to congratulate me. My uncle picked me up from the busstation and a freaky town welcomed me, I didn't expect it but at first I felt like this would be some kind of new beginning, nobody knew me and nobody knew about my past.
Then I met this kind of weird girl, and strangely she was the most normal person around in that town, I picked up where I left of, I tried to impress her with my witty act but she didn't buy it and for the first time I met someone who was special, someone who later became my first real friend and the first person I loved, the only person I love. We started out as friends and when I went back to New York I started to realize I might like her more then I would dare to admit. She had a boyfriend, somebody I secretly respected and I thought wasn't such a bad person after all. I pretended to hate him, but the truth was that I envied him, he had her, the one person I couldn't get, the one person I considered special. She visited me in New York and she almost caught a glimpse of my past life.
In order to forget her after she left I visited Jennifer again, but nothing happend for a change. She told me that she was sick and tired of me coming crawling back to her whenever things weren't going my way and she was right. Everytime something happend I didn't agree with I came back to her. But she was the reason I went back to see if something would happen between Rory and me, after all she ditched school and everything only to see me, because I didn't say goodbye. It was the first risk I took, well it wasn't the first risk ever but it was the first one that wasn't illegal.
I was right, Jennifer was right, something did happen and for a moment I thought she liked me as well. That was the moment I knew I fell in love with her over the months in that creepy little town. She let me have a small peace of what I thought was heaven but too soon she realized her mistake and turned away from me. I fooled myself while my mind was playing tricks with me... she does like, she does want to be with me and yes there might be a possibility she liked me as much as I liked her. But when I came back to the diner I found out she had left for Washington for 3 months.
Everyday was a long and hard one, everyday was a battle of what I knew and what I didn't want to know. My uncle (who I respected more than my own mother) saw that something was bothering me but I never had the guts to tell him. I never dared to tell him I was struggling with my feelings for somebody who would never be mine. But what happend was something I didn't believe was wrong, something I can run away from or make it undone...in fact I didn't want to make it undone. How did I find such an amazing person, after all the things I've done? I was falling into the unknown but I suppose I was the only one falling, I never heard from her while she was in Washington and so I started to hook up with Shane (the kind of girl I hung out with in New York....just the fysical part) She didn't matter to me and I didn't matter to her.
I thought that when Rory returned from Washington, things would somehow go back to the way they were but for some reason she was giving me a hard time about Shane. We fought and we ignored but something inside of me was telling me that she didn't want it to be this way but there was nothing she did to prove me wrong.
The night of the Dance Marathon (some stupid event the town organized) arrived and there was no way in hell I would go there, to see her with her 'perfect' boyfriend being all happy and sappy together, but my "girlfriend" convinced me to go, something she would regret later. The night didn't go the way it was planned and after that night I realized she cared as much for me as I did for her. After a life of people walking away from me, she walked towards me and it scared me a bit.... okay a lot.
The night after the Dance Marathon, she let me enter her world, her heaven and I wasn't welcomed with open arms, not by her mother, granparents, het father...not even by Luke who was afraid I would hurt her in some way. I started doubting my own feelings and even though I knew that what I felt was real, I was afraid she would started doubting too. The couple of weeks that felt so right slowly started to fade away and my own insecurity started swallow me whole. She asked me several times during that week if everything was alright but how could I tell her I was afraid she would realize her mistake about letting me in. Not long after that week we got into a fight, I wanted to show her how much I loved her but she didn't want to, that was the point I figured she would finally come back to her senses but instead of letting her talk to me I decided it was time I met my real father and went to see him in California....the other side of the country far away from her so she couldn't blame me.
My whole life I've been blamed everything even when it wasn't my fault, and I took it, I could take it, it didn't matter if they hated me for the things I did but she was the only exception. I couldn't bare the thought of her hating me, so I left. I didn't get a great welcome in Venice Beach but at least there was somebody there to look after me, something only my uncle did. I picked up the life I left behind in New York with only one person in my mind. Nothing in my being understood what I was thinking the time I left her behind and I had to go back....so I did, I went back but she didn't want to have anything to do with me. I told her I loved her, the first time and the first person I spoke those words to. She never said it with so many words but I could see by the look in her eyes she wanted me to leave, so I did, I left again. I came to the realisation that for once in my life I told somebody the truth, truth I hated so much I wanted to run away from.
It's strange to hate something that bad when it's such a beautiful thing. I think the reason why I hated it is because I never thought I was worthy of love, I never got the feeling my mother or fathers loved me. They always hit me or yelled at me I was worth nothing, that I was just a useless piece of shit. The very real thought that somebody might start to love me in a way I've never been love frightend me so much I ran away from it. After long and endless conversations with a guy I met in Venice Beach (he was the first and only one I told the whole and complete story to. I think he was some kind of failed street musician) I knew I had to give her a chance to tell her side, to see what she thought of my actions. I had an idea but I had to know for sure.
So against my intuition I went back again, only to hurt her again and to let a part of myself die again. There she was standing with her former boyfriend in the hallway of the college she was attending, looking as beautiful as always. After standing in one of the corners of her dorm, I approched them, I told her I wanted to talk and she told Dean to leave. He fought her comment for a moment but after a while he decided to leave anyway and then all broke loose. Everything I wanted to tell her got lost in the corner of my mind, everything I rehearsed in the bus flew out the window. I wanted her to scream or whisper, as long as she said something, if she wanted me to stay I had to know why. It's not the words weren't there, they'd only fail my emotions. She yelled "No" several times but I didn't want to face the fact she meant it, then she said it so clear I understood she wasn't saying no because she didn't want to come with me but she said no because she stopped, or she never did, loving me. I'd rather say nothing than the same old lines, so I turned around and for the last time I walked away.
That was, what I considered the end. The end of me and her, the end of my only chance in life. The end of the oppertunity to make something of the chance I'd been given, the chance I trew away. It didn't matter anymore, it was all gone now, I blew it. Util that one special night in my life I thought everything was lost, that night everything changed and that night was the only reason I knew I had to make something of my life. t started as a quite normal lonely and quite night, the ones I'd been having since I left that crazy town. The world seemed to be spinning without me, I was somewhere left of centre and there wasn't any reason I felt like I needed to be in it.
I'm just not the sort of person who falls quickly in and out of love, in fact I had never loved some one in my life before. But to her I gave my affection right from the start. My thoughts are interupted by loud knocking and opening my door leave's me stunned.
Why did she came here when she knew I had troubles enough? I didn't get much of a chance to figure it out, her arms flew around my neck and the sweetness of her mouth burns on my lips. As quick as she kissed me, even quicker she left me longing for more, an unsatisfied desire.
"I want hate you so much but I can't, I can't stop loving you"That were the exact words before she kissed me again, closed the door and backed me across the room until we finally hit the opposite wall. It was like she wanted to hurt me by pressing me to the wall even harder then she already was and for some reason I couldn't find myself to stop her. Her grip on me weakend and I knew I had to take over control to keep her to me just a little bit longer. I could feel her struggeling and trying to get away and I know I should have let her leave cause it would make things so much easier now, but I didn't have the courage, the courage to fall back into the world she just pulled me out from. I layed her down without breaking any contact. Her hands met behind my neck and before I realised it her hands were slipping down my shirt. For the first time in my life I was frightened by the love that was in me, the love that was in her. I wasn't scared to be falling into unknown, I just let her take me there. But I felt it was alright, everything was going to be alright.
She closed her eyes and left me naked by her side, it feels like living in a dream, it felt like drifting away to a better place. But I stayed to watch her fade away.
It isn't until several days after that night that I let myself think about it. Think about how it was and how it must have been for her. I know it sounds kind of strange, but I had to think of some kind of explanation for her actions, it was so not like her. Maybe she had to find some kind of closure, I don't know and I never will know.
When I woke up the next morning she was heading towards the door and when I called her name, she turned around with tears streaming down her face speaking only the words "I'm sorry" and "I love you but this time it isn't enough" That's when everything began to turn into slow motion and when it went back to normal all I heard was a shutting door. It's kind of ironic, she closed the door, the door of our relationship. She was the one for me but i wasn't the one for her.
It took me a couple of months to realise that I want to make something out of my life, I got a job and I started to write. I've never seen her again, all I heard is that she got married with Dean (who would have guessed, those two were so 'perfect' for each other) but later I heard she was fighting a divorce (surprise) I have peace with the way things ended, I don't need another woman in my life, the memories of my time with her is all that I need to keep me going. I wander if she ever thinks of me or the time of our short but (in my eyes) amazing relationship. Maybe she doesn't want to think about it, maybe she has moved on already.
I can't say I haven't lived without the knowledge of love and lost. I had it both, I fell in love when I least expected it, I felt passion that everybody longs for and I lost it because of my own mistakes. She is –what I consider- my guardian angel, she saved me in more ways then I can think of or can imagine. She was the only one who was always honest to me even when it was harder for her to tell the truth then it was for me to hear it. I'm forever grateful and there's not a day in my life I try to use the things she –in a way- taught me.
I love her.