For a Boy…

“You’re the kind of girl who is going to spend her whole life doing anything for a boy. This just proves it. And it isn’t selfless, it’s sickening,” someone I considered a life-long friend, as life long as you can have at 15 I suppose, told me as rumors about how chaste I was (or well, wasn’t) swirled around our small town high school. It broke my heart. How dare she say that. I’d show her all right. I wasn’t to be pitied. I was in control.

My worth wasn’t determined by some boy. And yet…

For a boy I gave something away I could never give back. It was awkward and clumsy, not like any movie I had ever seen, and certainly more transactional than romantic. For a boy I did something I felt equal parts ready and not ready to do; that boy went to college, leaving several years of our history behind seemingly without a care and for that boy my young reputation was ruined and my young heart, broken.

For a boy I drove up and down I-40 any time I was free. I built a life of what ifs and could bes in my head and begged him to make them a reality. For a boy, I turned down job offers in big cities and on boats, because he “didn’t like the idea of me having a career like that.” For that boy I missed out on my career, a career I had worked and trained literally my whole entire life for; just threw it away until out of hurt and spite, I bought a one-way ticket to Manhattan where I met another boy, who over the course of a year, I broke because I constantly compared him to the boy I wished he was, the boy I left back home.

For a boy I decided maybe Knoxville wasn’t so bad and maybe New York was too much. For a boy I decided I’d go back to his place even though I hardly knew him. For that boy I became a mother, too quickly, too unplanned…to his baby boy. That boy and I were too different; a couple made into a couple by circumstances beyond our control; circumstances we didn’t want at the time, but that we were in all the same. I left that boy and took our baby boy. A single mother at 23. Damaged. Sad. Unlovable, he told me.

For a boy I decided I should settle down even if my heart wasn’t entirely in it. He was kind and good. He loved the unlovable parts of me. I wasn’t damaged in his eyes; I could probably grow into truly, deeply loving him. That boy gave me his last name and another baby boy; but I wasn’t kind to him. And I didn’t grow love. I grew angry and cold and refused to work on myself and my marriage. That boy and I are great friends now, but when he left we weren’t. I was confused. Marriage was supposed to make me whole, and yet, as a single mother of two baby boys now, I’d never felt more empty.

For a boy I became someone else. A highlight reel of what a perfect woman should be; the most fun version of myself so I thought. For a boy I went to parties and tailgates and condoned behavior better suited for teenagers, not two adults. For a boy, I clung once again to the picture in my head of what we could be and when the picture continued to slip further and further away, I begged my doctor to medicate me into numbness. For that boy I became a robot, stuck permanently with one foot in the life of my kids and another in the life of Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. When that boy moved out I told my babies we’d all be happy again. I guess I was actually telling that to myself.

For a boy I relinquished control and let him tell me who I was, while tearing down the parts of me I had tried to rebuild. So desperate for love and affection, I endured a life that never seemed quite right, but I rationalized it away. I had a third baby boy and became small and sad and tired and nothing like the example of a woman I wanted my baby boys, two of them now not so much babies, to see.

For a boy I decided to try one more time. For a boy I ignored advice that it was too soon to move on. For a boy I trusted and I gave. For that boy I was made into “the other woman;” bait unknowingly dangled in front of his estranged wife until she wanted him again and tried to reconcile their separation. For that boy I was a fool in every sense of the word.

That boy finally broke me. Well, truth be told I was near my breaking point long before he ever entered the picture. He was the push though that made me sick of the patterns I was repeating and for the first time, I wanted a change; not of partner, but a change within me. I finally understood the weight of all the boys before. Misery after misery, disappointment after disappointment, failure after failure. No, these boys weren’t great choices to begin with, but in my choosing them, I was choosing to subconsciously devalue myself. I was choosing to settle for less than I deserved. More so, I was providing a horrible example of how to exist in relationships for my own children, my three boys.

So, for three boys I took a hard look at the woman in the mirror. And over time, I built myself back up. For three boys I grew a business and started an entirely new life. For three boys I decided that a life without adult male companionship was a fine (albeit sometimes lonely) trade for a life with just them, on our terms, with our own rules. For three boys I became stronger than I ever imagined myself being — stronger than I ever have been, and I’ve worked harder than I ever dreamed I’d have to. For three boys I try as hard as I can to listen to the voice inside me validating my choices — my own mind — and not the fleeting external validation of others which I craved for so long.

For a red headed boy I listen endlessly about soccer and Fortnite. I make countless trips to the library as he burns through book after book. For this boy I agree to eat dinner at the Mexican place down the street instead of the one right by our house because he prefers their cheese dip. For this boy, at times more peer than child, I am so thankful.

For a boy in glasses I watch YouTube videos of animals and dinosaurs for what seems like centuries. I share my bed nearly every night and search for his blanket at least five times a day. For this boy I give extra attention and snuggles and pray for wisdom on parenting a strong-willed child. For this boy I am tested daily, but love him fiercely.

For a chubby curly haired boy I am constantly running after, being touched, carrying somewhere. I sing songs and give baths and am convinced he will be the cause of my untimely end, fully living up to his middle name, Wilder. For this boy I am in a permanent state of wonder watching him discover the world day by day and so thankful after years of trying he was my rainbow baby result.

For three boys I have become fearless and terrified, put together and messy, but laser focused on being their mom before anything else. I am still flawed. I am still searching for all the pieces of myself, and I’ll admit sometimes in the wrong places, but for these boys, the only ones who have ever deserved all of me, I will give it freely. For these boys I have found my life’s blood. My mission. My love that is boundless and unconditional.

It’s funny looking back at that conversation with my one-time friend. In the right context, oh what a life you can have doing anything for a boy. Or in my case, three.