Jacob: Part One

I am sure you can already tell that this one is going to be a doozy. Yes, this is part one of my romance with Jacob. The painfully ironic thing is that there really was no good reason for anything to exist beyond part one, but that is beside the point.

So after David and I broke up, I spent the rest of my seventh grade year floating around and continuing to live vicariously through my friend Kristen and her boyfriend. There was a lot going on in my life and I was happy to be blissfully ignorant of the troubles that came with having a boyfriend in middle school, that is, until Jacob came along.

In eighth grade you are in this constant struggle with society. To quote lines from one of my favorite musicals A Chorus Line, you are “Too young to take over, too old to ignore.” It was painful. You were the oldest in the middle school but the high schoolers were still these intellectual and social giants who were able to tear away the thin veil of confidence you were becoming so proud to have.

So being typical Abby, it only makes sense that I would want to further complicate this in between stage by getting a boyfriend.

I knew almost nothing about Jacob. He lived close to me, was on my bus route and played trombone in the band with me. So when he asked me to be his girlfriend through one of his friends I was surprised and a little confused, but that did not stop me from saying yes.

I am going to be totally honest here, it was a pretty awkward relationship and that is saying something considering everything in middle school is awkward. We never really talked to one another and we basically avoided each other in school. We did sit together on the bus, a big deal back then for kids of thirteen and fourteen. Relationships in middle school are really just a status thing. If you have a boyfriend, you are infinitely more awesome than all of the other “peasants” who are boyfriendless.

The relationship lasted eight days. No, you didn't misread that. Eight days. Just a little over a week of awkward bliss. Oh, it gets better too. The way he broke up with me makes even the most heartless people cringe. I remember it like it was yesterday, probably because it was my first moment of public humiliation and things like it just never happened in real life.

We were all sitting in study hall diligently working on our homework. Jacob was sitting to the left of me and so were his two best friends Melissa and Liesl. It is funny looking back on all of it years later. Those girls would come to be known, to me at least, as the group who pretended to be your friend one moment and then go to taking pictures of your ass the next. (And yes, that happened too. Last day of senior year too. Cemented my dislike for those girls. Just shows how low some people will stoop to get a cheap laugh. Just for the record, I did notice and gave Melissa a very snarky, “What the hell are you doing Melissa?” She stopped immediately after some nervous laughter.)

Anyway, we were all sitting there being quiet and polite doing what we were supposed to do. I looked over at Jacob and I see him holding up a sign. It reads, “I am breaking up with you.” He is looking at me and smiling and so are the two girls. So naturally, I assume it is a joke so I quietly giggle and smile back at him. Then he stops smiling. I get serious all of the sudden.

“Wait, seriously?” I whisper to him.

“Yes,” he says with a straight face at first that breaks into a smile.

Melissa and Liesl are laughing in the background.

I am devastated. I try to hold myself together but the tears come flooding out and roll down my face and I am trapped in the classroom with no escape from the humiliation. I am somehow able to make it to the end of the period and I run out of the classroom and to the bus where I quietly sob the entire way home.

I explain it all to my mother that night. She cannot believe it but she tells me that he obviously was not worth my time and that I should cheer up.

The situation only gets worse when I hear that Melissa actually paid and dared Jacob to ask me out and then break up with me, something that I still cannot believe happened to this day. I never did anything to the girl. I mean, we barely talked and we never interacted so what caused her to be so mean I’ll never know.

Kristen and Annie were nothing but supportive again. They made me a card and a bag of post break-up goodies that made me remember that I had people who loved me.

Not to come off as dramatic or anything, but I think this was my first heartbreak and it sucked. There would be others, four to date. But this was the first real one. My first feeling of being rejected by someone who I thought had picked me, out of everyone else, to spend time with. So the cruelty of the break-up and the false premises on what the relationship was started on hurt me. It hurt me really badly, but it was nothing that I would let keep me down.

There was awkwardness, three years of awkwardness to be exact. I would hide whenever he came on the bus, but I would also always be secretly hoping that he would see me. This was when I learned the importance of looking your best after a messy break-up. How you wanted the guy to see what he was letting go of or missing out on. So I think in a twisted sort of way, the cruelty of the break-up made me more confident instead of tearing me down, like I am sure those two girls hoped it would. I was proud to be able to stand on my own two feet after that, look them in the eye and say “I am not broken because of you, I just got stronger.”