December 25, 2009

I am sitting on the couch, this book pressed against my thighs. I have never done anything like this before, this whole journaling thing, but my best friend Rebecca says that it will be good for me. She gave me this journal for Christmas and told me to write down everything.

“These are the years that you’re gonna want to remember,” She said with a little smile as she toyed with the bow on her own present that was sitting in her lap. Remembering was always a bit of an issue with me. There were times that she would tell me something and ask me about it that same day and I would not remember what she was talking about. It was frustrating.

I don’t have any disorder. It’s not that I can’t remember anything from my past or that I forgot things instantly like that fish did in that one movie. But if someone asked me to remember what I was doing last week on a certain day, I had to think about it. Ask me what I was doing a month ago, or a year ago and it would take me a while if I could remember it at all. I would have to ask for help.

“What were we doing that day?”

“Remember, that’s the day you fell in the hallway and knocked down the entire class like dominos?”

“Ohh, yeah. I remember that.”

See? If you give me a hint, I normally can get it. And that did actually happen to me, by the way. I was standing in the hallway and this jerky guy named Aaron Brightman came over and knocked my books out of my hand while I was standing at my locker. The books- these were those back breaking, hard back books- fell and hit my feet. I jerked back and lost my balance and fell into this girl, who fell into the guy beside her, who fell into another girl and so on until the majority of the seventh grade class was sprawled in the floor on top of one another.

But I digress. What was I talking about again? Right, the journal.

I ran my hand over the thick, hard bound journal and flipped the pages. That is one my favorite things about this journal: the pages. The pages’ lines are very thin and college ruled and the paper is a beige, yellowy color and speckled with flecks of various earthy colors so that it looks old. The paper was recycled according to the sticker on the back of the book. The journal is thick, too. It’s like a thousand pages or something. I had never seen anything like it before in any book store. It has a black ribbon attached to the binding that you could use as a book mark, and along with the journal, Becky gave me this thick fountain pen.

It was the nicest gift I had ever gotten.

“Wow, Becky… thanks,” I was in awe. She looked embarrassed, and she would not meet my eyes as she stood up from the couch and moved to sort through the remaining packages beneath our small Christmas tree.

She was right. I do want to remember what happened. I have reached one of the most important times in my life: my junior year of high school, and my first year of living on my own.

I moved out of my parents house after my freshman year. Now, I live mine and Becky’s mutual friend Jonathan in a small house at the end of a quiet street called Wilkin’s Hollow. All of the houses are small and old, and most of the residents are the same way. Jonathan’s grandmother used to live in this house, and after she died, she left it to him. Jonathan is a few years older than I am; he is in college doing some kind of pharmacy program. In a few years, he is going to be making some good money. The house has already been paid for, and he and I share the other expenses like internet for the desktop computer we share, electricity, water, etc. This year we got ourselves cable as a kind of joint Christmas present.

Did I mention that Jonathan’s grandmother was rich? She might have lived in this little rinky-dink house, but she had a lot of money. Jonathan got the house along with a big chunk of money which she had been saving up to help him pay for college classes. He was the only son of her only son, who had died of cancer when Jonathan was twelve. After that, Jonathan’s mother committed suicide, and his grandmother took over until she died last year. That money she saved coupled with Jonathan’s paycheck- he works on computers so he gets like ten bucks an hour- is how he pays for college and his half of the expenses.

I work at a library. I get minimum wage and work about fifteen hours a week. So how can I afford my half of the money? Well, at the end of my freshman year, my parents told me that they were getting a divorce. Now, I know that this has become common place in the world today, but it was kind of different with my parents. They were getting divorced not because they fought all the time and there was no abuse and no big, scandalous affair. No, they were getting divorced because Karen was bored.

Karen, my mother, wanted to travel and get a taste of some exotic cuisine, if you catch my drift. Christian, my dad, was a partner in a big law firm and could not travel for any extended period of time. Karen did not try to hide the fact that she wasn’t traveling just for the sake of traveling. She told Christian that she was tired of being at home all the time alone. Because even when Christian was there, he wasn’t, if that makes sense. Christian worked very, very late at the firm and when he finally did come home, he would go into his study and work until he was tired then go to bed. They never fought about it, and Karen was not angry with him, just bored of wandering around the house with nothing to do. She was a professional housewife and did not have a job herself. She was too lazy to hold a real job.

Now, before you jump down my throat about how being a housewife is a ‘real job,’ keep in mind that by this time I was 16 and we had a permanent house staff that kept the house clean and cooked all of the meals. So in her case, being a housewife consisted of her sitting around the house eating and watching various soaps.

Anyway, they had a very diplomatic discussion- without me, of course- and decided that divorce was the most logical thing to do. They told me about it when I got home after my last day of school. I can’t remember the exact way the conversation went, but it was something like this.

“We’re getting a divorce.”

“What?”

“Your mother is going to be traveling the world hooking up with foreign men, and I am going to be working all the time so neither of us really want a teenager around. Is there anywhere else you can go?”

“Well, Jonathan just inherited his grandmother’s house and he’s looking for a roommate…”

“Good stay with him.”

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t exactly like that, but that is basically what happened. My mom did not want some sixteen year old slowing her down while she traveled, and my dad didn’t want the distraction, and I was furious at the both of them after they had explained everything. So I divorced them, and once I got emancipated, moved in with Jonathan.

Every month dad sends me a check to pay my half of the bills. Not because he has to, but because I think he feels a little guilty. He throws in a little extra on major holidays and my birthday.

So that’s my story. Or at least, all I can say for now.

It’s still early, only about ten AM. Jonathan, Becky and I are heading to get breakfast at IHOP, it’s a tradition. I wrote this down while waiting for Jonathan to get out of the shower. He’s done now and jingling the keys in my ear, telling me to wrap it up so we can go. Becky is standing behind him, wearing this big smile on her face; I think she’s happy to see me writing in here already.

Things I got for Christmas this year:

1 hard back journal, black with recycled paper, 800 pages

1 fountain pen, black ink
Cable for TV

Package from Karen including:
1 deck of Scopa cards
1 black Venetian Carnivale mask
1 dark brown wood bead rosary
1 historic Roman dagger with complimentary Gladius sword letter opener

$50.00