Who Am I? Part Two The Empire Strikes Back

Note: I am in no way condoning or recommending the usage of drugs to anyone reading my blog. I am merely sharing my personal stories and experiences.

Before I continue with Part Two of this story, I wanted to address that I will not be using the actual names of the people in my stories. Instead, I will use the names of various characters from my favorite movies and television shows. We shall see where that takes us. Who knows, it might be fun. There is some heavy stuff here. I would like to mix it up some.

Let us pick up where we left off. I was now sixteen years old and a junior in high school. There were a lot of changes going on. All the teenage hormones were doing precisely what they were there to do: cause massive chaos from within. That in itself can be a lot for a teenager to contend with. I, however, had other life-changing things going on to accompany that already slippery slope. I was now dealing with a completely different family dynamic than I had ever known. While my sister and I were in the hospital, our therapist thought it would be an excellent idea for the two of us to confront our family on everything they had exposed us to in a single therapy session. That was not the slightest bit intimidating or traumatizing for the both of us.

Our relationships with most of our family members came to a complete halt after that. As it turns out, no one was fond of us airing out the family's dirty little secrets. Oddly enough, I do believe. My mother would have kept those relationships going had she felt as if she had any bit of control over what was unraveling in front of her, which happened to be her entire world. Remember, this life, these dysfunctional patterns were all my mother ever knew. They made sense to her. I am sure our therapist somehow managed to convince her that it was probably a not-so-great idea to have my sister and me around any of them anymore, and so we no longer were. This created a massive shift in all of our lives. I am not entirely sure we knew how to proceed forward. But we took a step forward anyway.

Up until this point, I had never thought of myself as attractive. I had the worst self-esteem. My family members were always verbally tearing me down. Also, I was not the girl boys tended to have crushes on. I was the one they hung out with. I played Star Wars and video games with them. I was the one they talked to about the girls they were crushing on. I was one of them. I had always been the chubby girl with thick, puffy hair and a gap between her front teeth. Someone was always giving me a hard time. I contended with some pretty “Mean Girls” behavior growing up. Sixteen was the year when all of that would change.

I lost a lot of weight while I was in the hospital. My doctor put me on medication for my OCD. This medication caused me to have little to no appetite for the first couple of months I began taking it. Puberty decided to do its thing and helped a girl out. All the little awkward pre-teen features I thought had been plaguing me had morphed into something more aesthetically pleasing to me and apparently others. My Roseanne Roseannadanna hair grew into long, dark, curly brown ringlets. Which was now happily becoming a trend. It was 1989. Jami Gertz was sort of the new “It Girl” for teens. The timing on that one was magical.

I had read enough “Seventeen” magazines, watched enough John Hughes movies, and watched enough MTV to begin creating my aesthetic. That would forever change and evolve. I am a Libra. We are all about the aesthetics. It is a genuine part of who we are, which is why so many Libras are artists. We not only love beauty. We love creating it. It brings a sense of harmony and balance to our worlds. Libras intensely crave balance. Then, there was the fact that I was simply a teenager. I put a hefty amount of value on a lot of meaningless shit, as so many of us do at that age.

I had gone through this whole metamorphosis behind closed doors, tucked away in that hospital. Nobody from school knew where I had been, with the exception of my teachers. I would return to my high school as the new and improved Francisca. That sounds so cheesy, but the feeling was real. It was my senior year. I was committed to a goal that had absolutely nothing to do with academics. I was not going to be made fun of, bullied, or beat up ever again. I was going to get invited to all the cool parties. I would have lots of friends and get asked out on dates all the time. And just like that, my prayers were answered.

Now, let's flashback for a quick moment. Remember where we left off in part one of this blog. There was a guy. One day, a very tall, blonde, blue-eyed, gorgeous seventeen-year-old entered the hospital where I was passing the time. His name was Jake Ryan. That is so not true, but that is, however, what we will be calling him. He really was my Jake Ryan. In a somewhat more disheartening and realistic version of “Sixteen Candles.” He was my ideal, for sure, for all the right and wrong reasons. By now, I hope to have created a picture and window into what my mind was being fed and how that could and did play a huge role in my overall development from a child into my teenage years. This picture will be necessary as the story continues.

Jake’s parents had admitted him into the hospital because he was basically rebelling against them. He had a problematic relationship with his father. He was getting into fights at school. He also dabbled in drinking and smoking. Which, in my eyes, made him edgy and super cool. Plus, I thought he was pretty dreamy. He did, however, have a girlfriend at the time. We became friends. The two of us spent about a month in the hospital together. We were both eventually discharged and returned to our lives. That was awaiting us on the outside.

One day, I received an unexpected phone call from him. He had broken up with his girlfriend and wanted to ask me out on a date. The date did not really lead up to anything. I was a virgin. He was looking for someone willing to part with that. We did, however, slowly morph our way into a friendship. We hung out together with mutual friends. He took me to a party where I took my very first drink of alcohol. I also became utterly intoxicated. The box wine was not kind to me that evening. I spent the entire night vomiting. Any time I tried to lie still, the room decided it was going to do the complete opposite of that and spin around me profusely. Now, after all that, you would have thought I would have been o.k with not repeating that. Instead, I reflected on the experience and came to an understanding that even though the hangover sucked. I did like how uninhibited it made me feel. My final assessment: The hangover was worth it to me.

One evening, a friend and I met up with Jake and a bunch of other friends at a party. It was May. Summer was about to begin. We were all outside. It was one of those perfect California evenings. Jake and my friends thought it was time I took my California summer fun experiences to another level. Was I about to cross over to the dark side? You may feel free to decipher that one for yourselves as the story continues. I was definitely afraid of trying marijuana for the first time. I had watched firsthand the effects that drugs had on my family members. I had watched one too many back-to-school-specials. I also watched “Less Than Zero,” which I find to be a very underrated film. (I'm just saying)

That first hit forever changed my world as I knew it. Oddly, I believe “Magic Carpet Ride” by Steppenwolf was playing in the background. There is a fun little fact. Lol.

To Be Continued..