Final Draft

The Rise and Fall of Love: A Story of Revival

I feel I may be the last remaining person in the country that believes marriage is a sacred institution. I believe that love is the only reason two people should get married. When you make vows to another person those aren't just words, they are promises that made you've made to the person you love with all of your family and friends as witnesses. These vows mean something, you shouldn't say them if you don’t understand how much weight they carry. People like Kim Kardasian and Britney Spears with their notoriously short-lived, meaningless marriages are making it hard for people to take marriage seriously. Committing to spend the rest of your life with someone is a big deal. Living is the longest thing you’ll ever do so choose your life mate carefully. 

“There is no more lovely, friendly and charming relationship, communion or company than a good marriage”-Martin Luther

The Rise

I was four when I first met him. At least that’s my first memory of him; childhood amnesia makes it hard to know when events truly take place. Up until then I had accepted the fact that I didn't have a father. But I never really felt sorry for myself, it was all I had ever known and my mom acted as both parents anyway. My first memory of Tujuan is fuzzy and I don’t know exactly how the encounter went. I really didn't know that year later he would become my step-dad.

My mother had never introduced any boyfriend to me before this one is what I've been told. As a single mother she had to be careful who she let around her little pride & joy. The very fact that she was introducing Tujuan to her daughter meant that she was finally ready to get serious with someone again, which, for the women of our family, is no easy feat. Eventually Tujuan moved in with us. In a short while I had come to think of him as a father. More so than my actual father who, once I got older, I would see only on the weekends. But even then my dad was just some man who would pick me up on the weekends and spoil me with whatever I wanted in a desperate attempt to buy my affections back after the disappearing act he pulled for so many years. However, Tujuan was the real deal. He signed up for the good, the bad, and the ugly.

My mom worked a lot to support the two of us, determined to make it without anyone’s help. So it was her boyfriend that took care of me. He packed my lunches, helped me with homework and taught me how to ride a bike. I was young but I had so much trust in him and so did my mother. Toward the end of my first grade year my mom got a promotion. Back then we lived in Wilmington, Delaware where most of my family still resides. The promotion, however, was in Cleveland. Since school hadn't let out yet and her job wanted her to start as soon as possible she made a decision, a sacrifice. She moved to Ohio by herself to work and to find a home for us while I stayed in Delaware to finish out the term. Since the rest of the family lived in Wilmington and I still visited my dad in Philadelphia every weekend my mom didn't consider this a total risk, but it still was a leap of faith and a true testament to the strength of their relationship.

            Summer vacation finally came and Tujuan and I moved out to Ohio to join my mother. At some point in the beginning of winter after I’d started second grade Tujuan gathered us in the living room. He had dimmed the lights and lit some candles. He gave a speech about love and family that I don’t quite remember. I was young and naïve, looking back I should have seen what was going on when he got down on one knee but once he pulled out the tiny, ring-sized box I knew. And then he did something that surprised the both of us, he asked me for my permission to marry us! Now that I’m 21-years-old I understand that when you marry someone you marry all of them. Their kids, their past, their faults…but at the time I was only eight years old and clueless as to why he would ask me and also clueless as to how I was supposed to respond. I don’t remember the days prior to the proposal, maybe Tujuan had done something trivial to make me temporarily angry because I did already saw him as a father figure but when he asked me for my permission to marry my mother I wanted to say ‘no’. Maybe in all my eight-year-old infinite wisdom I foresaw what would one day happen and wanted to protect my mother from it. At any rate I knew how badly my mother wanted to marry him. I could feel it in her eyes while she awaited my response, so I said ‘yes’. Suspiciously enough they got married in February and by the end of the school year we were looking for a home with three bedrooms because my mom was pregnant. It wouldn't be until years down the road that I would do the math and realize that my mother had gotten pregnant out of wedlock…again.

The Fall

For the longest time everything was fine and normal. We were the picturesque little ‘nuclear’ family. Mom, dad, older sister and younger brother: the whole package. Don’t get me wrong, we were far from perfect or even Brady. But we did all the things normal families do. There were nice wholesome family moments and fights. My brother and I fought sometimes. Not often because of the nine year age gap but every once in a while he’d manage to tick me off. My mother and I definitely fought too. I was the self-proclaimed angst-ridden, hormonal adolescent and she was a mother. So naturally we butted hears during my junior high and high school years. And of course—like all couples do, even the strong ones—my parents fought. They would say that they don’t fight, they only have heated debates. But when a kid hears their parents yelling, ‘debate’ isn't the term to use. More like World War III. Nonetheless as I got older it became less scary and I began to interject my own thoughts and opinions on their arguments. Incidentally I always chose Tujuan’s side. Adolescence is a notoriously hard time for mother/daughter relationships and this did not help at all. I never consciously chose his side just to spite my mother like she liked to claim. Nor did I intentionally choose sides period. She saw me as sticking up for him and abandoning her. I simply thought I was trying to make her see his side of the argument to they’d stop fighting. Nevertheless my mom saw betrayal. Eventually my meddling would bite me in the ass and she would be proven right.

In 2009, my senior year, my parents had the most infamous fight of their relationship. Both my parents had been catching up with past flames. Tujuan talked to his ex-high school sweetheart, who was his first love, every few years just to see how life was going. Her name was Linda Homer who I would later cleverly nickname ‘Linda Homerwrecker’ (even in tough times I maintain a sense of humor). My mom had been talking to some old fling Eric. He had scored her tickets to Obama’s inauguration earlier that year and escorted her and another friend around Washington D.C. while she was there, that’s how they reconnected. After sometime Eric started hitting on my mom and that’s when she decided to cut ties. She also decided that it was time for Tujuan to cut ties from Linda too. Obviously Tujuan didn't agree and God forbid anyone disagrees with my mother. They broke out into the most intense yelling match I’d ever heard. A couple hours had gone by and the yelling ceased. I gathered up my courage and went to their bedroom to see how they were. At this point they were calmly debating the state of Tujuan’s friendship with Linda. In retrospect I shouldn't have put my nose where it didn't belong. Of course hindsight is 20/20 and I thought I was grown enough to fully grasp the gravity of their situation. The truth is I still have trouble grasping all of this. Anyway I, with my undeveloped frontal lobe at age 17, told my mother that it wasn't fair to ask Tujuan to give up Linda. It was the right thing for her to do, letting go of Eric because he disrespected her relationship with her husband, but Tujuan and Linda were strictly platonic. They hadn't seen each other since high school, she too was married with children and she posed no threat to my mom. I fought so hard on behalf of Tujuan and in the end my mother actually listened to me and backed off the idea. I felt so glad to have helped Tujuan because I felt I had fought for something right. I was proud of myself. But ultimately I was wrong.

The biggest piece of news around this time was the well-known Tiger Woods scandal. It was the hottest topic for months on all kinds of media from serious news channels to celebrity gossip rags. In January of 2010 the gossip was still going strong. My school was still on winter break and my mom had been working from home. I was in my room surfing the internet and stumbled on a joke that I found hilarious, “A lion would never cheat on his wife, but a Tiger Wood”. I ran down to the office to recite it to my mom. When I let her in on the joke I was laughing too hard to realize that she didn't react as well as I did. That’s when she told me that she’d gotten on the computer to check her e-mail and didn't realize that Tujuan had never signed out of his account. After a little digging my mom found an extensive e-mail exchange between my step-dad and little Ms. Homerwrecker detailing a meeting between the two and a kiss they shared.

The Fallout

At that moment my world was shattered. I was overcome by a flood of emotions, most of which I couldn't even identify. I felt betrayed because Tujuan cheated on my mom by kissing this woman who he met up with while he was supposed to be on a business trip. But he betrayed our whole family too. Actions speak louder than words. And too me his actions said that his entire family was worth the risk of losing them just to kiss his high school sweetheart. I felt angry because I had defended his against my mother. I had felt like I fought to the death on this matter and come out victorious, all the while ignorant of the fact that I was fighting on the wrong side. I felt sad that my mom was going through all of this. And then I felt like a jackass for not siding with her in the first place. Now she could say ‘I told you so’. I felt confused because I couldn't understand how someone could screw up so badly. I felt stupid for thinking nothing could ever go wrong in our perfect little family. I was seven other melancholy dwarves, but most of all I felt lost and I felt like I was losing my faith in love.

I have never been the typical American girl in high school whose number one goal was to find her one true love, settle down with him and live happily ever after. I've always wanted to go to college and find a job that I love and travel everywhere. I wanted to have adventures and live a full life and then, when the time was right, fall in love with a guy that would go on adventures with me too. I was, however, a typical girl in this regard. I always believed that true love was out there, waiting for you to be ready, waiting for the time to be right. Since the incident I've had a more cynical outlook.  I still believe in the sanctity of marriage but I remain on the fence about love. Since the disintegration of my parents’ marriage, the remaining love role models I looked to as proof that there was hope have all been debunked as myths. 

Photo credit to Etsy.com

Now I feel like I have no reference point. Lost, hopeless, helpless. I am as guarded as ever. I play things close to the vest because I never want to get hurt like my mom did. My friends and family tell me that I have to open up someday, to somebody. In the words of Johnny Cash “I keep a close watch on this heart of mine”. I even got a necklace depicting such attitudes. 




Hope

I find that I've built a wall between me and everyone else. I don’t let anyone in anymore. I make it impossible for any guy to get close. At the beginning of any budding relationship I instruct them not to fall in love with me, that I’ll only hurt them. This sounds presumptuous but to me it’s necessary. The more distant they are and the less they know, then the safer I am from harm. You’re parents are supposed to be a predictor of your own future. So forgive me if I’m wary of rushing into something that will end that way. Maybe one day I’ll get over it. Maybe one day I’ll learn to trust again. Maybe one day I’ll fall in love.

                                                     "Maybe" by Kelly Clarkson

Works Cited

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhWUHlEfY4s.

http://www.etsy.com/listing/109824032/johnny-cashi-keep-a-close-watch-on-this.

"I Walk the Line."  AZlyrics. n.p. Web. n.d.

The Characters. 2003. Devillier Donegan Enterprises. Web. 9 December 2012.