Magazine Final - Personal Narrative

Final story
by Kristen Peters

November
Baby blue jersey cotton sheets are strewn across the floor along with a sitting chair tossed on its side. The cranberry hue of my peacoat peaks from underneath the pair of jeans I had been wearing ten minutes earlier, broken glass from a once-full-length mirror now litters the doorway and into the hall. And he’s holding, no, gripping me by my upper arms, shaking my half naked body ruthlessly against the bare mattress which now lays cockeyed on the bed frame.
I can feel the grinding of his fingertips against the bone in my arm. My face is soaking with sobs, snot and saliva. Then a wave of helplessness drapes over my body, a feeling stemming from my gut, spreading outwards to my fingertips, and my body goes limp, a defense mechanism for my mind so I can escape myself. This isn’t really happening.
“You,” he spits in my face, “are a stupid cunt.” He drops me on the bed, turns, and leaves the room.

May
I’m home in Bettendorf on a weekend visit from Iowa City to go to the St. Ambrose Wine Festival my stepmom invited me to when she found an extra ticket and remembered I had turned 21 the month before. I slip on the purple floor-length spring dress I had bought with the intention of wearing on the cruise my boyfriend and I planned to go on when he returned from Afghanistan. The dress, quietly beautiful with flowers in golds and blues, would have easily turned heads on the deck of an ocean liner.
Those plans changed three weeks earlier with a phone call.
“Don’t wait for me, Kristen. Experience your senior year,” Nate had said and, when he heard my muffled sobs, added, “I’m so sorry.”
But the break-up has now given my stepmom and her middle-aged girlfriends full reign and rights as matchmaker during the table-to-table wine waltz on this breezy mid-May day. After a failed attempt at introducing me to a striking blonde who I later learned was married to a past co-worker of mine and the not-so-failed attempt at hooking me up with a Chicago wine rep (he gave me his card), one woman pipes up:
“No matter,” she says. “Nick is in town with his girlfriend and buddy tonight. You can hang out with them.”

July
Nick’s features weren’t memorable. Maybe it was the wine I had been drinking all day but I later wouldn’t be able to tell him what my first impression was. I have no memory of what shirt he was wearing that night we met but a few pictures on my digital camera remind me of the black Kinnick Stadium polo. He did have on a god-awful Cubs hat, royal blue and flat billed, it seemed mismatched juxtaposed to his shoulder-length brown curls. I would learn that he rarely took it off.
He had asked for my phone number when his girlfriend dropped me off at my parents’ house with an easy, “We live in the same city, we should hang out.”
And so began weeks of texting that led to phone calls that led to invitations that led to beers at Iowa City’s Joe’s Place divulging in each others’ plans, dreams and secrets. Nick eventually broke up with his girlfriend and I surprised myself by caring. One night at Joe’s with Nick across from me and my roommate beside me, my phone vibrated with a text. “I want to take you out for dinner.”
Nick dreamed of becoming a farmer and a stay-at-home dad, but had no real plans on every marrying. He wanted to spend his twenties in the city but buy land for himself and for his family. He dropped out of college when depression overwhelmed him and moved to Seattle only to return a year later happier and with the fervor to rejoin the college community. Our iTunes libraries were nearly identical but we were constantly recommending new artists. He didn’t believe in God, but rather that everyone is some how intrinsically connected. He voted for Ron Paul but has shaken the hand of Barack Obama. We found out we had grown up on the same street when we were younger and today our siblings were dating. He loved Guinness and Frisbee. He was 6’2” to my 5’10” and my shoulder could fit comfortable under his arm. He was perfect.
“Being polite to my parents is important to me,” he said one night while we threw darts at Joe’s. “But don’t worry, you’ve been really awesome with them.”
“Being on time is important to me,” I countered.
“When I get angry I need to be by myself.”
“We need to remember we live our own lives, too.” With each dart we tossed, we wrote the instruction manual to our relationship.
“Do not lie to me. I can stand nearly anything but not lying.”
“I will fight for you to a fault.”
He turned to me and tapped his sternum. “It’s like everything I feel for you is stuck right here and I just can’t figure out the words to get it out.”

October
I needed to wear a long-sleeved zip-up over the yellow and black Football Gameday shirt my job requires on Saturdays to hide the bruises on my arms I had from that morning.
Nick and I had been fighting.
He had Google searched my name and an old Match.com profile popped up. Why on the fucking Earth would you have a profile when you had a boyfriend? My roommate and I had made it years earlier when we were snowed in and reruns of The Real World were painful to watch.
One of the cooks at the Wig and Pen, the restaurant where I worked, had tried to date me before Nick and I had met. I hadn’t been interested and let him down easily, but when his name would appear on my caller ID or if Nick had found out we were at the same bar with the same group of people, I’d suffer through the guilt lectures. He makes me uncomfortable, Kristen. How could you see him out if you know it makes me upset you two even work together?
Once on our way home from Petco he had asked why our relationship was different from any ones I had had before. His subsequent rapid-fire questioning made me nervous and while I was trying to contrast our last few months with people I had dated before I blurted out “Nate” instead of “Nick.” You’re a stupid bitch. You’re a stupid fucking bitch. Fuck. You. I’ve had enough. And with the last “stupid bitch” I slapped across the face. He dropped me off at my apartment and, with my cat food in the crook of my arm, he told me for the third time that it was over.
During a particularly bad fight at his apartment, I stepped outside to catch my breath and make a phone call. It was to a long-time friend and, coincidentally, an ex-boyfriend, someone who would undoubtedly take my side and give me the solace I was needed. I cried to the ex and all he could say was, “Kristen, I miss you.” Christ, this is not what I need, and I hung up. When Nick asked to whom I had made the call, I answered, “Danielle.”
The night before the bruises he had met the real Danielle, checked my phone for her number, realized, having done similar snooping over a month earlier, that it didn’t match the caller from before. After a slew of insults and ultimately given the cold shoulder, he slept contorted on the bed so he wouldn’t have to touch me.
The next morning I begged for forgiveness. He asked me to leave. I pleaded that he reconsider. He shoved me out the front door. I stood in his way so he would have to look me in the eye, he called me crazy. I admitted to him that he was right, that I was wrong, and that what I had done was stupid and I can’t account for it in any other way than that I’m an awful, awful person. When I tried to put my arms around him, he flung me from the bed and rolled over instead of watching me wither on the ground after landing on the corner of a safe. I reached my hand to my back and felt the warm stickiness of blood. I crawled back into bed next to him.

July
He’s lying in bed next to me. We’re staring at one another, our emotions a whirlwind between our two noses. We bask in that day’s goings on: the picnic with the Reisling that didn’t sit in the refrigerator long enough, laying head to head in the grass of the Pentacrest after a labored game of Frisbee, $1 cans of PBR we sipped at Deadwood while we watched the Cubs game. He tells me he has something to say.
“I, uh, I can’t find the words,” he says and his eyes bleed with excitement.
I love you, too! I do, I love you. I love you, I love you. I did a crossword today and the clue was “completely” and the answer was “all.” That is how much I love you, I think, but after a few minutes I instead say, “Have you found them yet?”
“Yeah, do you know what they are?”
“I do.”
“So I don’t need to say them?”
“You can.”
“I love you.”
“I love you, too.”

October
We walk from the RV, passing Kinnick stadium, towards the East side of Iowa City. Nick won’t touch me, let alone acknowledge my presence, despite having invited me to tailgate with family friends early that afternoon. He’s still angry about a fight we’ve had and, upset that he had put on such a fantastic act in front of friends, I refuse to raise the white flag.
“You have no right to be angry with me, not after you continuously told Janelle how happy you were that we were together.”
“I lied. I think you’re lying scum. At this stoplight I’m turning right to go to Brad’s and you’re going to go home.” He’s shouting now, despite the inundation of Hawkeye fans pouring out of the football stadium.
“You can’t leave me here by myself. I’m not walking across campus by myself on a Saturday night, who knows what could happen.” Maybe I’m exaggerating, but the sun is setting and the drunkards around me are intimidating.
Nick doesn’t say anything; instead he turns his beer upside down over my head, looks at me with drunken hatred and spits in my eye. “Fuck off.”
The next morning I would hold him while he sobbed into my arms about how terrible he had acted the night before. I would lead him to the bathroom, strip him down, and step him into the shower to clean the running snot from his face. I would tell him that it would all be okay, that I forgave him for what he did, that I would help him handle any demons he had. I reminded him that I had promised to be there through the good and the bad and that I wouldn’t give up now.
He looked at me while the water ran down his face and through his unkempt hair, “I don’t know how to be without you.”

August
Nick gets down onto one knee on Ohio Street in Chicago.
“Will you marry me, Kristen?”
But it’s one in the morning and we’ve successfully been drinking for 15 hours. The Cubs lost, I think, but I can’t be sure because we spent only enough time in Wrigley Field to use the restrooms.
And with that I wore gray string around my left ring finger.

November
The bruises were worse this time than they had ever been before. Coupled with the firm blow I had received Saturday night in the garage while our siblings weren’t watching and the bite he had given me when, through his drunkenness, simple grabs weren’t enough, I finally physically looked like the girl I had felt like for months.
It was a Monday morning and I pleaded with a friend that he leave class and come to my tiny apartment. When he saw my arms he whispered, “Oh my god” and hurried me down the stairs.
In the car, I told him that Nick had hacked into my two e-mail accounts and Facebook, that he had watched my fingers as I had typed passwords and memorized the strokes. That Nick had guessed—and failed—answers for the security questions to my University account and now my University of Iowa ID and password needed to be changed by an ITS employee. That he ludicrously suspected a flirting romance with a friend of mine and had e-mailed his girlfriend to point blame, if only to take as many people down with him as possible. I stretched and clasped my right hand, ensuring that no bones were broken from his grip.
We weren’t headed far and after he had parked, I walked into the building and greeted the woman behind the plate glass window.
“Iowa City Police Department, how can I help you?”
“I’d like—I want to—”
“She wants to file a police report,” my friend interjected.
That night my step-mom drove to Iowa City to play middleman in the possession swap. When she knocked on my door with a plastic bag filled with an old t-shirt, a solo sock, the inhaler we shared, and a Polaroid photo of me he had kept next to his bed, I crumbled to the floor in heaving sobs.
“He looks miserable,” she assured me.
For the next three days I slept very little, ate even less and didn’t step inside a classroom or the Wig and Pen. Even after that, my mornings became a struggle between the safety of my bed and the shower. My hands now always trembled, I consistently thought I cannot physically go through this day, and some days were spent between bouts of tears and of vomit. Nick had become a drug and I was going through withdrawal.
My friends ordered me pizza each night at work in hopes that I would start eating again. My mom hauled the family dog, the dog she bought when she divorced my dad, to Iowa City to ensure that I wouldn’t spend any time alone. Even my physician did her part by prescribing me some Xanax so my heart would stop racing before I wanted to fall asleep.
I spent time at the psychiatrist’s office and heard the older woman explain to me the psychology behind emotional, verbal and physical abuse and addictive relationships. She assured me that, because of the way Nick was able to control everything I felt and thought, it was normal that I felt at fault for the destruction of our relationship. She lent me books on how to handle hating, loving, fearing, and missing someone simultaneously and told me to come back next week.
Days after I had been able to coexist with society again without making myself a bumbling fool in public, I received a text message. It was from a phone number, not a name, that already looked incredibly foreign on my cell phone’s LCD screen. It was from Nick:
“Remember Chicago.”

December
I’m propped on the couch with a laptop finishing the make-up work I neglected all semester. There’s a Christmas tree erected on the side table and strings of lights line the windows in the living room. The air smells like French vanilla from the candle on the bookshelf. My dog’s ears perk when my cell phone rings.
“We’re here!” and I set my computer to the side, throw on my peacoat and run down the stairs to greet the car full of laughing girls. We’re on our way to a sushi restaurant to celebrate absolutely nothing. I’m finally experiencing senior year.

Remember

Remember picnics in the park. Remember my curling toes. Remember the pool. Remember the alley way. Remember the riesling. Remember the flu. Remember the Dexters and the Houses. Remember the little diner in Tipton. Remember our families. Remember the stars. Remember the showers. Remember the baby. Remember frisbee. Remember darts. Remember the daisies. Remember the window. Remember Men in Black. Remember the dog park. Remember Chicago.

PostSecret

I was the happiest in our relationship when you showed up in my bedroom at one in the morning after we had broken up.

Made me feel like you loved me as much as I loved you.

Click the "next blog" button at the top of this webpage and tell me why I forgot to have a baby and make this blog about it.

I wanna be sedated...

This way I can throw up and not care.
I can text him, tell him I want my things back, that I want to give him his things, that I don't want to do that awkward "It's in the mailbox" thing. We love each other and now we leave things on front steps? Anyway. I can do that without my heart racing or feeling rejected when he doesn't want to see me.
I can sleep without my mind wandering.
With my cat and my dog. I'm a big happy fucking family.

You'll be loved

The most common conversation today:
"Hey, you two! Cut it out. Now."
"Yeah, Terry, quit being so mean."
"Evan, she's talking to you."

It's nice to be away from Iowa City, although I still have papers to write that I forfeited to cry under my covers for a few days. I don't think about what's transpired, the arguments and police department visits, until nighttime anymore now. I choose to mourn over what I've lost because I was with him as opposed to mourning over him. It's still difficult, though, and it will be, I know. But I have all of the opportunity to travel to where ever I'd like whenever I'd like to. I can go to Europe next semester instead of waiting around Iowa City for someone who probably didn't care a whole lot to begin with. Mom's been the hardest on me. "Why doesn't he care, Mom?" "I don't know and I don't care and neither should you."

Last night, when Evan, Terry and I were getting into bed and Evan saw me tearing up, he soothingly said:
"Kristen, what's wrong? Are you sad? Do you miss the bruises he left on you? Is that it? Do you want me to hold you down and put some bruises on you, too? Will that make you feel better?"

I guess it is a little ridiculous. I picked up "Addictive Relationships" and "Emotional Abuse" pamphlets from the UI Counseling Center. I could relate with most of it to a T. Great. I've become a statistic. Betsy, whom I haven't talked to in nearly forever, made me feel a thousand times better without probably knowing it (the simplicity of reconnecting with an old best friend, refreshing.)

Where is myself, I seemed to have lost it.

And to think, the reason Mark loved me was because I was so goddamned independent and strong. I've turned into the shell of who I was six months ago.

My mom gave me a book, Fearless, and told me to let it make me feel better. I opened it up and it's full of John 5:21s and shit. Thanks, but no thanks. I'll work on my faith later.

To Do:
Write 19th Century paper
Write Arthurian Lit paper
Read Small World by David Lodge
Set up appointment with Study Abroad office
Interview for SL story


This is just my most recent purchase from this little boutique called Target.


I also go these awesomely trashy heels in the same trip. Makes you wonder what I'm doing at night.



I just want to go eat Honey Nut Cheerios or Special K with those surprisingly delicious dehydrated strawberries until my brain falls out.

Shall we try this again...

My life is full of ideas I begin and never follow through with. Blogging has no immunity to that. It's nearly seven months after I had written the previous post and nearly nothing and everything has changed in my life. I'm still journalism student at the University of Iowa awaiting my own impending doom of graduating, but I've made little to no plans for anything beyond that. And the people in my life, Jesus, they've changed dramatically. The reasons for keeping this blog have altered a bit, as well, but re-reading what I had written before and, well, I like those reasons too.

Let's take care of business, first, and then we'll get into the personal nitty-gritty of the roadkill that is my life (at the moment).

I'm graduating in six months with just as much of an idea about what I want to do with my life as I has seven months ago. I had plans in the middle and those didn't work out so well. I'll explain that in the "Roadkill" section. I would like to study abroad for a semester before I get kicked out of the perks of the UI, but I haven't talked to anyone of any sort of power on the matter yet. I plan to document my schooling/interning/traveling/job seeking using the blog as a tool to keep me accountable to follow through with the things that I want to do in life. I'll be honest though, I don't think I have any idea what that is. When people ask me "Kristen, what do you want to do with your life?" I say "I want to live in Chicago and write for a magazine, of course." But I don't really see myself living in Chicago for very long, despite it being the city I've been obsessing about since I was a little girl going on roadtrips with my mother to Michigan Ave. I don't know what I want to do with my life, but I know there's something out there and I have full faith I'll fall into the lap of something great, given I work hard toward some direction of sort. I can do it, I'm Kristen Peters and I can do anything.

That brings us to the other part of my life: My life. The last post in mid-April sets me in a relationship with Nate and with best friends Maggie and D and the likes. Well, I haven't talked to Maggie since and D is busy doing whatever it is that D does. I think she goes by Dee now, too, and I don't get it. Nate broke up with me two weeks later with the second phone call from Afghanistan. Some bullshit about wanting me to really experience my Senior year of college and how, although we got along great, we probably weren't too compatible and he frankly didn't want to marry me. Which is all candy canes and lollipops but I assume the real reason was something called Tara. Can't win them all. I held on for dear life, though, I don't think I let myself realize it was really over for a couple of weeks after that phone call and I didn't let myself breathe again for over a month. I heard I was heartbroken, but now I just can't see how.

Then I met Nick. And he was everything I was. We were so alike and just beginning this sentence makes my body go hot and I'm not sure if I'm fighting back tears or vomit. We fell in love fast, really fast. That was followed by plans to stick around Iowa City for another year to be with him while he finished up college and I could get my teaching certificate and have that to fall back on if the journalism industry really did continue to plummet. We were going to live together and we were happy. One drunken night in Chicago, he got down on one knee and proposed. I said "yes, yes, yes" but assumed he'd forget by morning. He didn't and I wore a string around my left ring-finger. We talked family and dogs and places we'd live, the wedding we'd have or the documents we signed. We had it all, no one was in love like we were.

But with the good came the awful. When we would fight he would get mean. Really mean. I was slowly allowing myself believe I was the "stupid cunt" he'd told me I was so many times before, that I was the idiot bitch not worth his time. He held me on a pedestal I couldn't reach and didn't want to. He wanted me to erase the people I'd loved in the past but I couldn't understand why. I loved them, they had made me who I was today, why should I have to erase them and throw away their pictures and delete them from my past? My memories don't live on in my head, I have a shitty memory, they live on in the pictures I have saved on my computer and lying around my room. I wasn't perfect, either, though. Nick needed his space when he got angry and I wanted to fix everything right then and there. I wanted to be around him so much so that I wouldn't leave his house when he would ask. When things got extreme, that's when he got physical. Twice now I've left place with bruises ringing my arms where he had grabbed me and thrown me around and with blood on my back where I hit the metal safe on the floor when he flung me around the room. I've watched him pull off mirrors from the ceiling and throw them across the room only to watch them shatter. He's looked at me with such hatred and convoluted his hands in front of my face as though he'd love to snap my neck.

It was bad, and we both knew we shouldn't have been together, but when the dust settled we were in love. We knew each other in and out and knew the right answer to "Will you hold me?" I wish with everything that things had been different, that we had been different people. I wanted Nick to be the father of my children, to be my future. We broke up last week after he had hacked into my email and emailed the girlfriend of a friend of mine. I'm not sure what he had said but it resulted in a text from Andrew telling me that "It would probably be the best for all parties if we didn't talk for a while. And I'd appreciate it if he didn't email her again." How embarrassing. I went to the police for the bruises (the worst of them yet) on my arms and for the hacking into my email. I regret doing that now, but I didn't know what else to do with how scared, angry and sad I was. Needless to say, he hates me immensely and I should hate him too, but I can't breathe without him. My days are a constant battle against tears and the wish that I'll come home one day and he'll be sitting in my bedroom saying "Now let's make this work." I know that day will never come. I know I'll get beyond this. Right now I know mornings are hard, nights are harder, but drives by myself are the hardest. It's scary to be alone to think. I ask my mom if she's ever seen me like this and she says "Oh honey, it's been worse."

I'm tired of feeling like this, I want to be alone, why won't you people just let me be alone?

Speaking of Andrew, we met at the Wig and Pen and he went on with his band to finish their tour. Somewhere along the line, we became fast friends and enjoyed seeing what else it was we had in common. There was nothing romantic, no flirting, just the reminder that there are people out there who are good. I don't have to settle for one who makes me feel so inferior. His girlfriend is a lucky girl. I don't think about him much, considering we're no longer speaking because I have an awful exboyfriend, but he was in my dream last night. It was the first time in my life I've known that I was dreaming during the entire thing. We were all (all includes some people who were around but whom I didn't know) hanging out in a city I didn't know, but he did, and I looked at him and I said, "You know, I'm really glad I get to hang out with you in my dreams." His faced turned red and he smiled, "Me too." Then we walked into a pet store.

My mom is giving me Lady for a while to hang out with me in Iowa City. She said one reason we got Lady 13 years ago was because of her divorce. She needed a reason to stay at home and needed someone to spend it with, she says Lady will help me learn to be by myself too. And I want to spend as much time with her as possible before the cancer takes her away for good.

She also gave me a book called "Fearless." I'm sure you can figure out what it's about but it's full of bible verses and and Godspeak and I don't know how I feel about that. I do know how I feel about that. I don't. I don't know that I believe in God let alone have a relationship with him. ("Nate," my mom said last night, "was calm because he was a Christian.")

I have a lot of fixing to do. I hope writing about it helps me along the way.

Introductions are due

I just recently turned 21, hope to graduate next May, am patiently awaiting the response for internships in Chicago (for no particular time), and, if I don't escape Iowa City soon, will quietly go insane. My name is Kristen and I'm a writer. Of nothing really; I can't write books (I'm too impatient) or spot news (my brain doesn't fare well with bore). I don't have many passions that I'm also knowledgeable enough about to express my opinion with any sort of weight, except, maybe, writing. But what's that? Metawriting. Metascript. I don't know, regardless, it's probably not very exciting. I work as a waitress at the Wig and Pen in town, I make good money and am learning how to use a curling iron. If I were to stay in Iowa City any longer than absolutely necessary, the Wig would be the reason. The only time I listen to country music, I'm in a jeep and I can't listen to any music before bed or while I'm doing homework. I catch myself counting how many siblings I have on my fingers (there's 6-ish) but I only have one brother. My parent's divorced when I was 8, I think, but I called it when I was 5 (I was, apparently, a very perceptive kid). I'm from Bettendorf, Iowa, but fib and tell strangers I'm from Davenport as, sorry, but Bettendorf embarrasses me and I don't like being pegged as a snob. Right now my cheeks are tight with dried tears and I should be writing a theatrical review about a play I saw yesterday (on Easter) but my mind feels like an oil spill.

I follow specialized blogs, blogs about politics or popular culture or the technology trends. The only "blog" I consistently read that's centered only around someone's life and daily trekings is my exboyfriend, and that's because I narcissistically try to peg when I'm being referenced, I even skip his lullings about how badly he wants a motorcycle (I told him not to sell his) or how lonely Pittsburgh is (I told him not to stay). But he's moving on and his entries are less and less about me and more and more about topics I only skim and, occasionally, his previous exgirlfriend who, unsurprisingly, isn't a topic I care much to follow very closely. But the point is I don't like reading about what people are doing today or what they did yesterday or, oh my god, how drunk they got last weekend. I don't really need to read other people's musings or complaints, I have my own. I don't follow, via text, who's sleeping with who and falling out of love with what, that's what my friends and Real World reruns are for. Or at least, if I weren't me, I wouldn't be reading this.

I'm starting this because I have a terrible memory. I can't very well remember high school and junior high is a sequence of hazy bits amongst some puberty-endunced embarrassing moments. I don't remember before I was eight, when my parents were still together, except, perhaps, the day my brother was born (I ate my mother's hospital-food watermelon) and the divorce talk (I was playing with my Barbies). I'm starting this blog because writing is the only thing I'm good at and myself is the only topic I know well enough to talk about. I'm writing a blog because perhaps one day I'm not impatient enough to write a book and I fairly certain my life will have enough anecdotes to pull from. I'm doing this because, no matter how boring my life may be, in fifty years, the time change will prove to be interesting enough, my grandchildren could pull it up (on their contact lenses, the new medium for web-browsing, I'm sure). I'm writing this so I can remember.

This, if all goes according to plan, will be an account of my life as it is today, but also my attempt to remember and catalog bits of my past that I'll forget soon enough. In no particular order, mind you. I'd like to introduce a couple of key players:

Me: I'm Kristen, I'm writing this, if you haven't figured that out by now please just X out of your browser.
Taylor: The roommate of a year and a half. We get along smashingly and I wouldn't trade her for another. We've known each other since sixth grade when she moved to Bettendorf from Des Moines and hated our elementary school. I hated her immediately. But we became friends and have been since. 15 years? Jesus Christ.
Nate: The boyfriend. We've been together for, I don't know, not very long, months maybe. He leaves for Afghanistan tomorrow. He's everything I'm not. He's as Rebublican as I am Democrat, as conservative as I am liberal, as American as I am... not. As of yesterday, he wants to buy a truck and go to law school. By the end of his tour that'll have changed numerously and hopefully my opinion trumps his and he gets a Jeep. Thank you, hunny. He's from Iowa City but lives in Colorado, when he gets home I'll have moved to Chicago, he'll eventually go to school of some sort on the East Coast so, frankly, we'll never be in the same time zone. But he's ridiculously handsome and sweet and painfully unfunny and cares about me and is tolerant with me. That's not something I'm used to. I'm falling for him hard and tomorrow will be painful.
Evan: The bestfriend. The best of the best friend. He's been there for me, he'll be here for me. He's not going anywhere and he gets me and laughs with me and, if I ever think I'm alone, I know I have him. I love him so much somtimes it hurts and I miss him more often than not. I only wish he was better about his cell phone. Evan, I only wish you were better about your cell phone.
Maggie: I have so many good things to say about Maggie but I'm angry with her right now so it'll just be forced at the moment. I'll wait. She's great. That I mean.
D: The smart one. Dorm friends and she's smart and we're both Journalists. She extremely funny and even more extremely sketchy. I suppose you take the good with the bad.
Ryan: Gourley. He makes up for D's sketchiness and has, through it all, maintained that he's reliable. I love him, I do, Ryan, I really do.
Dylan: No comment, he ruined my Easter.
Mark: The ex. He successfully cheated on me for all but two weeks of our 6 month to 2 year relationship. We rarely speak now unless I need help with my internet connection or to scold him for being an asshole.
Scotty: The ex, ex. We're now amicable but that took just under a year to fester. He was the first person I loved and I loved him unconditionally. Even through his over-bearing tendencies and his jealousy, through his sharp words and short fuse. But he loved me too and I wasn't about to leave him.
Eric: The... ex? A Chicago musician/actor who was just as into himself as he was into Greek dancers.