I have recently been thinking a lot about what I would consider my most embarrassing moment. This moment is something that often pops into my head from time to time. The whole incident makes me feel some sort of way, embarrassed, violated, sad, angry…
Story time:
I met B when I was in the 8th grade and I remember having such a crush on him. B was something, into music, kind, funny. We started dating in the 9th grade. He was my first real boyfriend and I was completely infatuated with him.
As our relationship grew and blossomed into teenage love we began spending all of our free time together, or at least all of the free time we could. I would ride the bus home from school with him so that we could spend our Friday evenings together watching movies, lying in bed and talking for hours on end. I thought he was it, we would live in our blissful world and get married one day.
Our relationship seemed so perfect; I always felt so safe and I knew that he loved me. Naturally, as we grew more comfortable with each other we began to explore sex. We were young and dumb but it was a very natural progression. I never felt pressured, used, or that he was taking advantage of me. I loved being with B.
Here is the moment that I continue to struggle with; my parents found out. My mom read a journal entry that I had tossed into the trash can. Honestly, it wouldn’t have mattered if I kept it in the journal, she was reading that too… as well as my Xanga. The next thing I knew she was confronting me and demanding a pregnancy test. My parents were livid with me and kept demanding that I tell them the truth about the entire thing. I wasn’t pregnant and had no desire to discuss my sex life with either of them. Here is the real kicker, they invited over B and his parents to discuss the entire matter and what needed to be done about it…. over pizza. I remember crying from the embarrassment and my mom touching my arm and trying to comfort me. Honestly, I wanted to punch her in the face. I was absolutely humiliated.
B and I didn’t last much longer. I was essentially forced to break up with him. I tried to pretend that we had broken up, but my mom found out that we were seen kissing in the school hallway. I was told that the relationship needed to end or I would be moving to Ohio to live with my nana. Sadly, the relationship really ended.
I never forgot how B made me feel. Safe and loved. I wish we had the opportunity to see where our relationship went without the interference or threats.
My high school life was never the same after my parents found out that I had sex. I was grounded from nearly everything and felt that they would look for reasons to ground me and keep me home. For nearly three years I felt like a prisoner in my home and hated being with my family.
It has been 17 years and when I think about how my parents handled finding out about my sex life I become so angry. Pretending to comfort me while I’m crying like you actually care about my feelings at all… but it wasn’t about me. Calling his parents over to discuss what his over pizza… the eating to shop me to Ohio or threatening to press charges on him…. They needed to make sure that they looked like good parents. There were so many ways that this could have been handled without humiliation, gaslighting, threats.
I wonder where we would be now if none of this happened.
Miss Mental State 