• As a high school girl, I know that the world isn't perfect. Hell, I've known that before I even started highschool. I'm not talking about not getting what you want; I'm talking about not getting what you need. What I needed was a roof over my head and food in my stomach. At two points in my life, I had neither. I sat and listened to girls at lunch complaining about how there mother wouldn't allow them to go to the movies with some guy who juggled girls anyway.

    "Oh, Sarah, I'm sorry to hear that. It could be worse, though. For instance, you could be evicted today, like I'm supposed to be. Or, you can work 26 hours a week and balance three AP classes, Academic Decathlon, and tennis."

    I wasn't trying to out weigh her in emotional baggage. It wasn't a game or a challenge to prove to someone that there life wasn't all that bad --- it was merely an example of what there life could be. The things listed above were all of the things that I needed in my life; a house, an income, some nice things to throw onto my college resume, and tennis. Tennis might seem a little random, and I'm sure you're asking, "Uhm...No one needs to play a sport," But when you're me and tennis can pay for a tuition, it becomes a big priority.

    Sleeping became over rated. Wake up at seven when my boyfriend dragged me out of bed. Go to school for six hours. Go to tennis for roughly two hours. Go to work for atleast four hours. Weekends usually a half-hour to an hour more. If there wasn't tennis that day, I would cuddle with Ryan and do homework. Sometimes until two in the morning, on days that I worked.

    I thought that my life would proceed like this until the end of high school, or until my mother got her act together and was able to keep a job.

    Wrong.

    My boyfriend is a bit of a geek; well...Not a bit. Really badly. He programs things. Writes line after line of text containing words like, "wlan" or, "0wan" and a parade of slashes, interloping these "words" that I've never heard before. He had a lot of friends on the internet. Not so much in the real world, but he prefered it that way. On day in October, a friend of his messaged me on facebook.

    "::poke::" is what he said. And for whatever reason, this intrigued me.

    This specific friend of his was a friend that he had talked to me about many times before. He was the kind of guy who juggled women, the kind of guy who broke up with a girl and then had sex with his sister. He was the kind of guy who could have two girlfriends who know about eachother at the exact same time, and both of them would be totally cool with it. He was a foreigner from Russia, and he had graduated college. He had applied for his masters when he began to talk to me. He ran his own business, and flew model airplanes. He made roughly 300k a year and paid for his sister's college and his parents morgage. He was one hell of a character. For whatever reason, he talked to me.

    Days would turn to weeks, weeks to months, etc. You know how this story goes. I eventually fall in love with him and leave my boyfriend for him. This Dmitry fellow was worth everything I had to offer, even if that wasn't much.

    But I screwed up along the way.

    We seperated recently. Spent long hours on the phone crying over him to him. Heard him taking apart and repair planes. Listened to him scream at me and he screamed back.



    Do you know that feeling where it feels like you're drowning? Where the entire world just keeps adding that extra pound to your already sagging load. Where every day you're supposed to wake up knowing that the slate is clean and it's a good day to start again, but instead you wake up with a pain in your chest and in your stomach. That a heart hurts so badly that you wake up literally sick of yourself and him, and you take off X ammount of days from school to try and repair what he couldn't.

    "I'm a fixer," he said to me many times. "I fix problems that other people cannot. I have yet to run into a problem that I could not fix."

    Well, you certainly couldn't fix our relationship, could you?

    I talk to him every day after school. I get home and lay in bed, shut my eyes and call him. He picks up at work (he is never actually 'working') and he talks to me for all of five minutes. I have no idea why high school girls are so difficult. I was purposefully undressing the wound and packing salt into it every time I pressed the green dial button. At the same time, I was happy to hear him not yelling and not being so upset or sarcastic. I wanted to make him happy. He wanted space; not just from me, but everyone.

    Every day before I hang up with him, I tell him that I love him. Sometimes in english, sometimes in my petty excuse for Russian. Sometimess there is a pause that I break and he says goodbye. Other times, he sighs and says that he loves me too. Eitherway, I end up crying.

    The former just reminds me that this never could have world out. We had plans together. I was supposed to meet his parents, we were supposed to travel the world. The latter includes the sigh. I don't know what that sigh means. I don't know if it means, "sorry that I'm lying to you again, I love you," or, "It hurts to say it, but I love you," or, "I'm sorry things worked out this way, I love you," or something completely beyond my realm of thinking.

    Every day I feel myself drown when I hang up that phone. Sometimes I wish that I would just drown; other times, I wish that I had the strength to pull myself out of the water.