#9 HOW I MET MY HIGH SCHOOL SWEETHEART
The backstory to all my stories – memories of the South and the all-encompassing grip of first love
This post is a little longer but provides the backstory to many of the stories that follow. TL;DR: we met in high school and it was great until it wasn’t.
How I moved from Alapaha to Oviedo to Alapaha again when I was 16
I had a complicated end to my junior year of high school where I was living with a family from our amazing Methodist Church in Alapaha. We’ll call them Sherry and Mark and Sherry’s daughter, Kelly. My mother had left my stepfather and moved to Oviedo, Florida to be closer to her brothers again.
I was going to finish the school year, so I didn’t miss out on running track or my friends, living in Alapaha with this kind couple, and then I’d move to Florida in the summer to join my mother and baby sister, Hannah.
Sherry and Mark lived in one of the grandest houses in town. It was a massive, two-storey Georgian wooden house, painted pink. The whole house was magical, decorated like a magazine, filled to the brim with treasures. I was provided with the resplendent “rose” bedroom, richly furnished complete with a princess-four poster bed, and lots of windows to let in the light. Outside “my bedroom” was a sitting room with a television, which led to a shared family bathroom which Kelly and I used.
I remember spending lots of time chatting with Sherry in the massive kitchen. I thought she was just wonderful, full of wisdom. She was very invested in Kelly’s life and as I was living there, mine too.
She was much stricter than my mother had been but I didn’t mind. (Except that one time when I missed the beginning of the Friends finale because I was told I couldn’t watch because I hadn’t done my homework. And this was before streaming. It could be years before I could see that episode if ever. Sad face.) My mother had taken a softer approach of “I’ll trust you until you give me a reason not to” as a rebellion against her very strict upbringing.
Once I’d finished my junior year of high school that May, I moved to Oviedo and spent time swimming in our rented house’s pool with Hannah, seeing my three uncles who lived close by (loved that), and reading books. It’s a long story, which I won’t get into, but my mother’s cousin kindly bought the house for us to rent from him as a way to help my mother get back on her feet.
My mother, however, was struggling to settle; she’d had a good job in Georgia but she hadn’t found another. Perhaps out of options, perhaps out of loneliness, she decided to reconcile with my stepfather so we’d move back to Georgia, back to our old life. I don’t think I was thrilled but at least I’d get to finish my senior year in Georgia with familiar people.
Before moving back, however, I remember visiting the high school in Florida that I was to attend in my final year. The school was massive, with thousands of students, and it looked like a zoo (you know the Mean Girls’ cafeteria scene?). BHS had somewhere between 500 and 1,000 students in the whole school and I think around 200 of those were in my graduating class.
At this Oviedo school, students could wear whatever they wanted – I swear I saw people in crop tops, short shorts, and spaghetti strap tops and goodness knows what other “means of expression” – all things that my conservative school wouldn’t allow.
Why I was nervous about leaving Berrien High School and attending Oviedo High School
At BHS, it felt like each week, I’d get into trouble with the female assistant principal because skirts had to be “fingertip rule,” which means longer than your fingertips. She’d stop me in the hall and say, “Miss Frieman, put your arms by your side.” She always thought my skirts were far too short but I think I have long legs and maybe short arms because “fingertip rule” allowed me to wear short skirts most days – and I wasn’t even breaking the rules!
I imagined myself being an anonymous number in that big school. Who knew what would happen to my grades, where I’d go to uni after that, how I’d pay for uni, even? I was on track to gain the HOPE scholarship in Georgia but I’d lose it if I finished my senior year in Florida.
The HOPE scholarship is a non-income-based scholarship awarded to all students in Georgia with at least a 3.0 grade point average (on a 4.0 scale), paying all tuition and fees at some in-state schools. I graduated seventeenth in my class at BHS so I would easily qualify – and was also part of one of the most exciting honours for girls in senior year: being a calendar girl, where the top twelve girls in the year (academically) had their picture on the front page of the local newspaper.
Even though I wasn’t super popular at Berrien High School, most people knew me, and I had lots of friends. In some ways, I was excited to start fresh and be close to my uncles (whom I adored), but in other ways, I was anxious about how that would set up the next chapter of my life, especially given that I was now sixteen going on seventeen.
All that is to say, I had a mixed end of junior year and a random three-month summer living back in Florida, but I ended up attending my final year at BHS. I had started that school as a freshman and having four whole years there was the longest I’d spent in any school. (I’d attended two primary schools in England, two elementary schools in the US, and a different middle school.)
A snippet of what my time was like at Eighth Street Middle School in Tifton
In Tifton, the kids who grew up together stuck together like glue so I wasn’t entirely welcomed by everyone but I did have friends (some amazing people like Jennifer, Crystal, and the three Amandas, one who adored horses, the other who was a chirpy cheerleader, one who was half of twins, and a few others – and Amanda and Mary who lived close to me).
On a random side note, I remember being part of the morning news team in middle school. I wasn’t an anchor but I think I transitioned the clips on a switchboard (you know like in The Morning Show the person pulling the lever to switch to the next camera angle?) and it was run by two kids who were younger than me but very “professional” and bossy.
I remember dreaming of being an anchor and I think I got the chance to do the weather one day. In middle school, I also won two “academic” awards, one for Georgia History of all things – Mrs W was a great teacher who had us complete a genealogy project in eighth grade – and another for PE – where I also have fond memories of the coaches and Tae Bo class.
What I liked about BHS – and some funny not as great memories
I felt at home at BHS. I liked the people there. I loved the teachers, especially the English teachers, and my amazing role model art teacher. I wasn’t bullied or picked on (there were a couple of instances – one where I’d flirted with someone’s boyfriend and she’d very aggressively chased me down the walkway and told me to stay away – and one where one of the popular cheerleader girls left a stick of gum on my desk in homeroom to imply I had bad breath which made some of the other popular kids laugh) but I generally got on with my classmates.
Oh, there was also this incident where I ran for student council and another girl (who I’d attended a Baptist Church in Nashville with for a couple of years before we went to the amazing Methodist Church in Alapaha) was also running for school secretary and even though she was way more popular and would clearly win (and did win), she felt the need to tear down my campaign posters.
Okay, now to get into it…how I met my first love
But you’re here to read about how I met my first love.
I was seventeen when I was a senior in high school. Having a June birthday meant I wouldn’t turn eighteen until after I’d graduated in May. I was taking my second instalment of a Writer’s Workshop class that I enjoyed with one of my all-time favourite teachers, Coach H.
My high school sweetheart (HSS for short because that’ll be easier than typing those four words over and over) also took the class with me except he was only a sophomore. I vaguely knew of him because his super cool cousin with long red hair who everyone in school admired (who also played electric guitar in the high school marching band and was super smart and a good writer) was one of my friends. HSS played saxophone in the band but you don’t get attracted to someone for being in the high school band.
He was cute with brown flippy hair that he’d shake (kinda like a retriever) out of his face every now and then instead of getting it cut (no idea what this trend was and why) and he was on the high school boys’ soccer team. I’m getting She’s the Man vibes (cute film if you haven’t seen it). I guess he could have looked a little like Amanda Bynes’ character Viola’s brother, Sebastian if Sebastian had had dark brown hair.
He was super smart and very into physics (and loved Stephen Hawking, Richard Dawkins, and Albert Einstein) and introduced me to all sorts of philosophy and science concepts. He was left-handed. We both had messy rooms. (His family wouldn’t let us stay in a room together with the doors closed but at that age, we weren’t getting up to more than kissing and holding hands.)
I enjoyed reading, literature, going to the movies, and pop culture so opposites attracted. I was obsessed with Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings (and my obsessive, unhealthy crush on Orlando Bloom as Legolas).
I even found an email from 2006 where Jake (my guy bestie) had emailed about the casting of Luna Lovegood and if she “fit” our book vision. We were very serious about Harry Potter and the midnight premieres of the books and films.
How HSS and I transitioned from friends to going out
I don’t remember how exactly we started going out but I know we started hanging out together first. Sarah, Anna, and I must have invited he and his cousin to hang out with us at various places as an excuse for me to spend time with him as there are photos of us playing pool in a pub (or somewhere) in February 2005, dressing up in random feather boas in Walmart or Michaels, and then in March going to this really cool coffee shop we’d frequent in downtown Valdosta called Hildegards (they’d have live musicians on there and poetry readings and all sorts) and I was obsessed with chocolate soy milk (no idea why) and I think it was only $1 or $2 for a massive glass of it.
We weren’t dating then, but I know we were by the time I went with some political club (being one of very few Democrats at the school) to Washington D.C. arranged by one of the history teachers Mrs Mc.
I remember being very flattered when we as a group went to the underground cafeteria in the Capitol building and being hit on by some young handsome businessman (or political intern?) when I was getting lunch and I had to explain I was a high school senior. I was wearing a suit after all, so maybe it was an easy mistake!
HSS had begged his dad to take him to Washington D.C. so we could hang out together when there. They’d gotten a hotel room in the same hotel and I got in trouble with my hotel roommates and my teacher, Mrs Mc, for spending too much time on the phone with HSS.
Anyway, I have it written in my long-forgotten Hotmail account (where my email address had not just one but three underscores, which became rather cumbersome to describe to people – elaine underscore underscore underscore two-thousand – why have one underscore when you can have three I ask?) that our “anniversary” was the 10th of April, so we started going out “officially” in April 2005.
Falling in love at that age was magical in the way that first loves are magical. I can’t adequately capture the elation and the emotions I felt for him. After “dating” the two boys, First Kiss, and the Filipino, who weren’t that into me, it was wonderful to have feelings reciprocated. I loved him intensely.
He wrote a poem about our first kiss. I was on top of him, my hair cutain-ing over his face. For his birthday the following February, I’d made him a scrapbook of our (almost) first year together – which during one of our breakups he hurled at me. I actually still have it. I put hours of work into that thing!
Moving to Ray City, Georgia
At some point, my mother had decided her marriage was not going to work after all so she moved my baby sister, Hannah, and I to some apartments in Ray City, Georgia, which was closer to Valdosta and maybe closer to my high school but further away from our church family in Alapaha.
I’m sure that decision was influenced by HSS as my mum and his dad had been driving us back and forth for visits. Now, I lived around the corner from him. Neither of us could drive, but we could still walk to each other. I’m not sure how long the walk was, maybe a mile, maybe a little further, but it was across the main road to a dirt road alongside a cotton field and then you’d take a left down a tree-lined dirt road until you reached his driveway and took a left.
On another side note, I had this crush on this popular American football player guy in high school who was in my year, long before I went out with HSS, and I remember walking to his house from my house in Alapaha, miles down dirt roads (I think he’d walked to my house before) and we were awkwardly in his bedroom after he’d given me a tour of his house and we didn’t even kiss. I was too nervous. Makes me laugh to think of it now especially given how “confident” I became in uni when dating later.
HSS’s backstory
HSS lived in a beautiful wooden house with a big porch that stretched the length of it that his grandparents had built (literally built it with family) tucked in acres and acres of trees complete with a fishing pond. He lived with his grandparents, his father (an architect at an amazing firm), and his great-uncle. His grandfather was a prestigious member of the school board. They owned a blueberry farm, too, and they had a beautiful collie named Kinsey.
HSS had a complicated relationship with his mother. His mother and father had been high school sweethearts. His father’s father and mother had also been high school sweethearts. The family had a history of falling in love early and marrying that person! His mother, though, had maybe had a breakdown when her two children were small and had left them, disappeared, and that’s how he ended up living with his father, grandparents, and great-uncle in one house, also down the road from his uncle, aunt, and cousins.
His mother came back, though. She won a modest amount on the lottery and bought a place close by and tried to repair their relationship. His dad never fully got over the loss and even though he was a man with many wonderful qualities whom I admired, he never seemed to move on romantically.
Overall, HSS had a wonderful, close-knit family. They’d take me along to their vacations in the North Carolina mountains and various places and I have fond memories of those trips. I remember sneaking out for kisses as we were unequivocally not allowed to share a bed and holding hands in a field when watching fireflies one night. Sometimes they’d have us stay in separate cabins – we weren’t making babies on their watch.
Why young love shouldn’t feel like a prison
At some point in uni – thanks to the recommendation of this lovely girl in one of my theatre classes – I read the popular vampire book series that everyone has to have heard of called Twilight (I was very late to the reading party) despite doing my BA and MA in Literature. The books were actually a great concept with poor execution but who am I kidding? Stephanie Meyer finished writing a whole book which I never have (fingers crossed one day). She’s laughing to the bank and I’m just an editor who makes, oh, about one hundred and twenty million less than she does – I’d happily write the next Twilight given half a chance.
The book glorifies this super intense I-cannot-live-without-you kind of love but that kind of love is great for some if it doesn’t develop mentally abusive and toxic patterns – but for others, it feels like a suffocating birdcage (or plastic bag, zip-tied to the neck).
And whilst yes, young love can feel all-consuming it shouldn’t be. As if HSS and I didn’t spend enough time together – I mean after school and practically every waking minute of every weekend that clearly wasn’t enough – we both gave up our Spring sports that year so I didn’t run track my senior year and he didn’t play soccer but he still played in the marching band. I regret that and I’m sad I also took that from him too – well, I guess we both agreed at the time.
Our lives were so intertwined from my senior year in high school until I was almost a senior in undergrad (the on-and-off rollercoaster that it was) that the impact cannot fully be appreciated or captured. There are so many memories, some beautiful, some sad, some awful, of our time together that it can’t be adequately described.
We loved each other but when I started university, I should have broken up with him and the more he felt he was losing me the tighter he squeezed. But it was my first love, I didn’t know how to let go – or maybe I thought there was no one else as my Mother and I had fallen out, my English family were far away, and my uncles were scattered over the US by this point.
All I know is that we really were not right for each other or maybe if we’d been kinder and gentler with each other we might have been but I doubt it. We held each other back. We restricted each other’s freedom and exploration. Maybe we stayed for the good sex (which I’ll talk about in another post, losing my virginity to him at eighteen, almost nineteen) or the fact that he was well-endowed (which I later learned was not always a given).
The first year of our relationship was magical. It truly was. It was such a happy time when we were both flooded with dopamine.
But then the cracks started to show but did we call it quits? No, we kept the fractured pieces together for around six years with a few people in between. And he made a point of ruining the chances I had with the next people I tried to date – at least for a few years (also more on this later – MOTL – ROFL).
In the end, we were absolutely horrible to each other and those nicks and cuts added up over time to gaping wounds. I did not have the emotional maturity to handle these feelings so I felt angry and numb. I didn’t know how to make a clean break or move on. I kept him on a string, the push and pull, the false hope.
Thankfully, even though he quite literally never wants to see or speak to me again (he even went as far as to delete the FB profile that had years and years of pictures of us together), I hear through the grapevine that he finally got over me at least a decade ago (sadly, it took him a lot of years and why I’ll never understand because I truly was awful to him and, hey, I wasn’t all that great) and he’s happily married now (I think with a child) and a good career. And I truly am glad.
How this relationship shaped me
This relationship was one of the most formative and significant in my life. We grew up together, learned from each other, and, ultimately, grew apart but we had such a strong bond that neither of us wanted fully to break it off even when we’d both grown to the point where we wanted to explore other avenues and other people – like the time I slept with someone I worked with or the time I slept with one of my married professors.
This relationship would, perhaps, form my “fight or flight” response to settling down. I think in many ways I felt so caged, trapped, and consumed by this love that I simultaneously wanted someone to love me but also thought that love would feel the way it had with HSS. I spent time jumping from person to person (or some all at once – ahem, no not an orgy – my life isn’t that exciting) in efforts to be loved and rebuff love, and I especially didn’t date anyone I loved too much (i.e. super close guy friends who I never wanted to lose via romantic entanglements).
So, this relationship shaped me for the better (i.e. I lost my virginity to someone I loved and I had a good experience and learned how to have “good” sex – with him at least – I’m sure many of my later partners would disagree with my “dead fish” kinda killer moves) but also for the worst (i.e. I was afraid of settling, of being trapped again).
Plus, he’d remind me, “No one will love you the way I do.” Gotta love reminders like that! If You had been around in high school would I have called him a Joe?
HSS is difficult to write about because I have fond memories mixed in with awful ones. This relationship tested the person I wanted to be and brought out sides of myself that I’ll never be proud of, and this person with the not-so-great sides is one I’ve worked hard not to be for at least the last fifteen years of my life. Thankfully, she’s no longer part of me, but it took work!
Next up, that time I walked under the stars with a tall, handsome, Air Traffic Controller, who lived (tangentially) on my street.
Don’t forget to check out the other eight posts I’ve written, including the one on why I’m writing this newsletter/blog in the first place.
