[ 03-06-05 ] [ 8:04 a.m.]
[ Keeping my promises ]

I made a promise, so as best I can, I'm going to keep it.

The hard part about keeping a promise like this, though, is that it involves bringing to light something that happened in my past, that I really wish hadn't happened.

The story of my car accident needs no fancy decoration; it doesn't need to be built up as though it were a piece of Pulitzer-winning drama. It can simply be told, and after it's all said and done, you can feel more than welcome to laugh your heads off at me.

I was up in Appleton over my lunch break on Friday, February 13, 2004, with my friends Chris and Tyler. We went to Funset Boulevard to DDR for a bit before going back to school. Pre-crash, I was completely blind to the fact that a car is not a toy, and can't be treated as such. So, me being me, not to mention having been goaded into it a bit, I decided to do donuts in a very small parking lot.

I hit a patch of ice, couldn't stop the car, and crashed headfirst into a parked semi.

I was a complete idiot. I can admit it. I was also completely sobered, for the first time in my life. I wasn't aware at that time that anything like that could have ever happened. I thought I was invincible, like a lot of teenagers to sit behind the wheel of a car. However, I had to learn the hard way that a car is not a plaything.

It could have been much, much worse than it was. Nobody died, though all three of us came scarily close - especially Chris, who was sitting in the passenger side and owes his life to his reflexes. If he hadn't been able to duck as fast as he had... I don't want to think about what my life would be like. I probably wouldn't be able to look myself in the mirror, that's for damn sure.

We were lucky. But still, I paid dearly for a valuable lesson I rather I had learned in a fender-bender.

Of course, maybe you can't learn a lesson like that in a fender-bender. A lot of people who drive nowadays don't really understand how rough a car accident is. After it's over, you still relive it all the time - especially if it was your fault. Some days, sitting behind the wheel of my car, I get flashbacks to sitting in that same seat with the windshield shattered all over me and Chris and suddenly not being able to breathe then the only thing I was capable of thinking was how I had to get to my mom...

If you can learn what I have learned about being reckless without having to experience a crash like that, you should thank your lucky stars. If you can learn that lesson without even getting in a crash, you're probably a good deal more mature than I was at 17 and I dearly hope you never get into a car accident ever.

At any rate. That's half of the promise fulfilled. The other half is an explanation of my relationship with Carol.

This is going to take some serious thought.

My relationship with Carol is kind of like a lot of friends-to-lovers relationships. We've been friends since the fourth grade. In elementary school, we weren't best friends - we both had other friends and at times we spent our lives getting on each other's nerves. I was a bit more popular than she was, but not the most popular in our group - and we both sucked up so bad to our so-called leader of the time, Angela Hewitt, who I haven't seen since junior year of high school. In middle school and freshman year of high school, we weren't very close either - my best friend in those four years was Lizzy Gassner, and I was the closest to a popular, giggly girl who wanted boys and loved clothes and makeup that I have ever been. Carol has never really taken that road - over those four years, Carol was a devoted Christian (now an athiest) and a nerd, and a dork, and I wasn't very nice to her because I was under the illusion that I was "popular." (To stick up for myself, though - in 9th grade, I was popular. I was the center of all my friends, and I had a boyfriend I adored. And to boot, I was gorgeous. I was a size 6 and weighed 130 pounds. And it was all because of my scoliosis surgery.)

At any rate, Carol didn't become my best friend for good until sometime sophomore year. I was beginning to gain weight back, and though I was still dating the same boyfriend, Matt, my relationship with him was going down the tubes in a hurry. At some point toward the end of sophomore year, Carol and I got addicted to slash and started role playing. I'm not going to go into a terrible amount of detail, but suffice it to say that it promptly brought us closer in a sexual way than I had ever been to another girl. We didn't have to be having sex - just talking about it was enough.

So then, life progressed - we were best friends for junior year and life, as it always does in your junior year of high school, got harder. Then summer rolled around. Over that year, I'd gained two best friends in addition to Carol - Dawn in fall 2002, and Liz in spring 2003 - and though it has nothing to do with the Carol and Heather Story, the four of us became "the Quatro" in winter 2004-2005. Anyway, it was August when I found out about the one thing I was never supposed to find out - Carol was in love with me.

She told Liz because she needed to tell someone. She probably would have gone crazy otherwise. (Knowing Carol, that's plausible.) We went to the mall one night for a Lillix concert, but instead of going to the concert, we parked the car in the parking lot and laid in the back seat together. And that was that - she loved me, I told her that I loved her, and we were together.

Of course, nothing is that easy. While Carol's opinion hasn't changed since that night in August, mine has changed quite a bit. I was not ready for an emotional commitment to another woman back then. My senior year was a very difficult time for both of us, with a lot of getting back together and then me dumping her for a guy. She had to deal with me dating Josh Hux in the fall, my constant boy-hunting and obsession with Chris in the winter, and my starry-eyed hope that Matt and I would get back together in the spring. I hurt her more than I even fully comprehend, and yet she never changed. Never. If you could read some of her private diary entries from back in those days, you would begin to understand just how much of a bitch I was.

It was the summer after graduation that Carol and I got together for good. I still fight my problems with wanting a boyfriend, and of course there is difficulty in maintaining a relationship over the distance between Philadelphia and Marquette, Michigan. Couple that with both of our mothers knowing/dealing, and the fact that neither of us will likely ever tell our fathers, and you can see how our relationship is fairly difficult. I don't know what the future will bring, but I would have to be a fool to think that Carol and I will stay together forever, as things rarely happen like that.

Whatever it's worth, though, I do love her. And, unlike my obsession with men, it isn't about having someone to cuddle with. It's about someone who gets me, someone who understands, and someone who's been there nearly all of my life.

It's difficult to explain. I don't pretend that I even completely understand our relationship. Some things are better when you don't try to generalize them, anyway.

I love her, she loves me, and for now, that's all I want or need.

At any rate, that's the best I can do as far as keeping my promises. I just hope that brings to light parts of my life that confuse not only my readers, but me as well.

[ ]

[ last ] [ next ]