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Lauren V.
Midlothian, Virginia USA
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I was born in Huntington, New York and I was huge. There is no way in hell that my mother could have even THOUGHT about having a natural birth, because my head would probably have exploded out of her, ripping her body to shreds; Just kidding, It would have been uber painful though. It was Flag day, June 14th for those of you who are less patriotic, 1985 when I was pulled from my mothers womb and into this cruel world.I weighed in at 10 pounds, had a huge amount of black hair and the puffiest bright red cheeks that you'd ever see. When My mom saw me for the first time she told my grandmother that I was ugly and that I looked like an American Indian baby,my grandmother promptly raised her voice and told my mom that if she EVER said that about me ever again they would have it out;she obviously thought the opposite. At the time of my birth my dad was eating a sandwich at a kosher deli called Phil's, he was so Freaked out when he got the news that my mom was about to have me, that he got right up from the table and ran out of the deli without paying for his meal. Typical. The Anxiety in my life...well I was born with it, I was not an easy baby. I was scared of everything, cried constantly and had some serious issues with night terrors. I hid behind my parents every chance I got and I always had a plethora of excuses up my sleeve to get out of playing with other kids my age. It wasn't that I didn't like people, because at home I was A HAM, it was just that I was EXTREMELY shy and didn't know what to say or how I was supposed to react to things. I started remembering when I was two; my first memory is of being in the hospital where my Grandmother was sick and dying. I was sitting with my aunt on a bench seat next to a window while my mom was with her dying mother and I was looking at the Christmas lights. I remember seeing an orange Christmas light and thinking to myself about how it reminded me of orange juice: profound eh? . Anyways, I also remember spilling orange juice all over a white table, but that could just be something I made up. I only met two of my grandparents, My moms mom who died of lung cancer when I was two and a half, and my Dad's dad who was sick with parkinsons disease before I was born and died when I was 13. I wish I had gotten to know my grandpa better, but he lived in Florida and he was already pretty advanced in his sickness by the time I actually wanted to have conversations with him. When I was little though, my Grandpa loved me so much, and he used to buy me things and pick me up and he loved hugging me. At his funeral, he was buried in a pine box and there were only 6 of us there, Me, my mom and dad, my brother and my aunt and her partner Lyndsay. My Grandpa lived a long life, but I still regret not finding out the things that I could have by spending quality time with him before he passed. I'm going really out of order here, anyway. When I was little, my dad used to tell me these jokes that we called "beard jokes", see he always had a big beard and he used to make up adventures that he and his beard would go on that always ended funny. My favorite beard jokes were 1.) the one where he was making a sandwich in the kitchen and as he was putting the mayo on the bread his beard slipped in and he accidentally slathered the mayo on his beard. He put the lunch meat and cheese ect on the sandwich and as he went to take a bite, OWWWW he bit his own beard!!!!. My second favorite story is when he was riding his bike and his beard accidentally got in the spokes and made him tumble to the ground but he ended up ok in the end. These jokes were told in effort to entertain me while my mom took care of business for the chocolate shop that we owned, in saying that, obviously, my parents owned a chocolate shop in ronconkama(bad spelling error), Ny . That was cool while it lasted but in the end would get us royally screwed over. I had a LOT of imaginary friends when I was a kid, and I'm not talking one or 4 or 10 , I'm talking like a pack of 20 imaginary people/cartoon characters/stick figures that used to follow me around. My best imaginary friend was a yellow stick figure names spready, she had a triangular head with three little squiggly hairs sticking up out of it and she got her name from a "spreadable edible" butter comercial. Oh from the mouths of babes. So spready was my best friend and she rode on the top of the car when ever we went anywhere, one time when I was 3 and a half my parents told me we were going on a road trip to florida and that spready couldn't come. I was so distraught, but they told me that the reason she couldn't come was that she had to visit her grandparents in florida, and that she was taking the train; fair enough. So it turned out that this trip to Florida was so that we could board a disney cruise ship that would take us to disney world and the bahamas. I was excited , and so happy to see Mickey and Donald and Goofy ect, until the night of the elevator incident. My family likes to eat, so when we heard there was a midnight buffet we were all over it (not to mention my mom was like 5 months prego at the time). To get to this buffet we had to get on an elevator, no biggie right? yeah....no, so we get in the elevator and there is Donald duck! omg!!! I am so elated and smiley and I'm like "Hey donald I love you!!!!" well Donald was an asshole and instead of being nice to me he took off his character head to reveal that he was an african american midget wearing donald ducks pants. I was SO fucking scared that I screamed at the top of my lungs and RAN like a bat out of hell as soon as the elevator doors opened. Keep in mind this happened at the beginning of our trip and uhhhhhh pretty much fucked up the rest of the week long vacation. From that point on I made my parents do elevator checks which I'm sure annoyed the shit out of them and I also developed an unusual fear of midgets. God damn you Donald duck, just couldn't keep your fucking head on in the elevator. I made that trip a living hell, I refused to go in the water when we got to the Bahamas due to a fear of alligators, was SO deathly scared of disney land after my parents took me on "toads wild ride" that I screamed and threw a tantrum when they tried to take me on the "it's a small world ride", and wouldn't let them drag me onto a glass bottom boat. I was a brat. Spready never came back to me after that trip, so I imagine that she's probably sunning her yellow buttery stick body on some nude beach in florida as I type this very story. My brother was born a month after I turned 4 and I was supposed to be in charge of picking out his middle name. This didn't work out so well because I fought long and hard for his middle name to be Donatello (after the awesome ninja turtle) but my parents digressed and pretended that I picked out the name Johnathon. Whatever. My brother was huge too and my mom told me that they were going to have to open her up to get him out, and then so her belly back up once they were done.The night that she was packing to go to the hospital for her C section I walked into her room and told her not to forget her sewing kit. I love that story. When they brought my brother Matthew home from the hospital and into our long island ranch style abode, I was not having it. I told them to take him back because I didn't like him, but I guess that wasn't a good enough reason because he stayed. He climbed on everything and started walking at a freakishly early age. After a while I really liked him and used to call him "hospital head" for reasons that no one , not even myself, understand. He was so f'ing cute, and he had a bit of a speech problem. He couldn't say his s's or d's which resulted in soda being referred to as "doda" and good being reduced to the word" goom" yeah so that was fun. Anyway Matty was a cute little guy and he wanted to do everything I did, but I was a bitch and I wanted to be the only when in the shot when my parents took video. When i was 6 and my brother was almost 2 , we moved to Midlothian, Va. We moved because my dad's band ( my dad spent most of his life as a professional blues drummer) pretty much all picked up and moved to Virginia. The day before we moved, I sat across the street with my other friend lauren and threw crab apples at the moving truck. My parents let me pick out the colors of the carpet and the walls in my room, what a huge mistake, I chose pink, bubble gum pink for both my walls AND my carpet. At six this was heaven sent, but at 16 this was my very own version of pepto bismal hell. I started first grade at a literally just opened elementary school that I could walk to from my house in less than 3 minutes. It was cute, and I met my best friend Jessica price in my first grade class. We were best friends for a really really really long time, but now I think she is getting married to her boyfriend and we haven't spoken in about 2 years. I miss her. Anyway first grade was cool excpet for one day when I got in trouble because I was telling the boy i had a crush on about the badges on my brownie uniform, and the other time when this boy named johnnie stuck a safety pin into my leg and asked me if it hurt. In second grade I went on a field trip with my class to monticello, and it was cold out. I broke my arm on that field trip because I was trying to roll on a log with my feet and it was wet( not that I would have succeeded even if it wasn't wet). That was traumatic because just two weeks before my dad broke his leg while rollerskating at the rollerskating rink with me on one of our "daddy daughter days". After seeing both my dad and I in casts , one of our neighbors affectionately nicknamed us the "klutz family from hell", it was hilarious. When I had a broken arm all of my friends wanted a broken arm too, I remember that one day, about 2 weeks after I broke my arm one of my friends showed up at my door and she was proudly displaying her broken wrist in a glow in the dark cast. I think she broke it on purpose. In third grade I met my best friend in the whole world, her name is Marta and she was the new girl. She was sitting on the balance beam and I was playing four square, I saw her sitting there alone and went to ask her her name. She told me Her name was Marta and I said she could play with me, wevebeen best friends ever since. Marta is first generation American, and just barely. Her parents are from Poland and she is an only child and her dad looked like Trent Reznor for a while we were in high school. We had a club with two of our other best friends Jessica and Monika, we called ourselves the red hot cherrys and we collected stickers. Hot, right?. When we were 10 jessica asked us if we smelled anything and when we said no she told us that we should cause she got her period "by that tree over there". yeah she was kind of a liar. A lot of other stuff happened that year but this is getting really really really long. Ok so in fifth grade Marta moved to a different school and I had the same teacher that I had in second grade and it was weird. That was the year that my anxiety so good bad that I stopped being able to get out of bed, eat , talk, swallow, and sleep. I spent at least a week in my bed drinking water out of a big red cup, because I was so nervous that if i started to try and walk to school I would gag in the street before I got there. It was horrendous. During that time I also had a huge problem with cream cheese, I couldn't stand the smell of it ( who knew that cream cheese had a smell). Middle school was a horrendously awkward and embarrassing time for me. I was so incredibly insecure, and I was going through puberty slower and much weirder than everyone else. In sixth grade I wore a jean jumper to school everyday for like 2 months, obviously I changed my shirt and my shoes and my underwear and my socks, but I was attached to that stupid jumper. I was endlessly made fun of for it. My Best friend at my school was monica, a diff one than elem school and she was nice to me for a year. In eighth grade I was part of the "freaks" group and we had a close knit circle of friends who wore fishnets/doc martens/plaid/black eyeliner/big jeans/and chains. I fit this mold perfectly. people dated in the group, Monica and This tall boy jeff most specifacly and after they broke up jeff was my best friend. After eighth grade all of my friends mysteriously stopped talking to me and it sucked really bad. High school was scary and I hated it, but I hated it with donovan who swooped me up under his wing in spanish class one day. we were both goth'ish and he signed my converse shoe and then we were "together". This was a secret though and he took my virginity without asking one night when his mom let me sleep over(wtf was her problem We were 14, why the fuck did she let me sleep over). I didn't know what to do so i stayed with him secretly and let him abuse me sexually and verbally for a long time. He had a crazy lesbian sister named raven and his mom was insane.I spent most of my time over there and I slept over a lot. We spent most of high school in the same bed and as much as things were bad, I loved him and we had some times where everything was perfect. One night we went on a walk in a thunderstorm and he told me it was perfect. I asked him "what is perfect?" and he said "this and you",the FIRST time I had ever felt pretty in my whole entire life. I was 16. fuck. one day at school I was waiting for him to come give me my morning hug and instead he told me to go fuck myself and to stay out of his life. I died inside and this boy that i secretly had a crush on let my cry on his shoulder. it was the last time I would ever really ride in his car. That was the last time I loved someone for a long time. In the middle of my juniour year, Matt, ross, cat, bobby,amanda, jeremy, jessica and a few other people took me under thier wings. I loved them in a friend way and they thought I was cool because I wrote a lot of poetry and I was thoughtful. score.I smoked a lot of pot wit ross and bobby, and tried to drive drunk into a tree when I got denied from college because I couldnt pass math in H.s That was the year that I met Katie, who is one of my VERY dear friends till this day and I love her. We did EVERYTHING together for a full year and we discovered and wrote zines together and it fucking rocked. We each put out our first zine senior year, I called mine "blush" and she called hers "chimera", it was awesome.I liked matt but he dated everyone except me. I liked ross and he really dated everyone, except me. Cat was my girl, and I loved being with them. We did too many things , I can't even list them. I'll leave the memories in my head. After High school graduation, I moved in with ross. WHAT A MISTAKE!!!!!! we moved into an apartment not too far from each of our houses and somehow they approved us, no idea how. things were fine for the first month, it was cute, playing house and all and we lived right next to our friends terry and steve who also got an apartment in the same complex. Something happened though and the fighting started and it was bad news.a friend who was a bit older ended up moving into our place...his name was brett and he was a motorcycle dude who worked at fridays with ross. he moved in i had crush he dated one of my best friends...sucky. our apartment became a drug den and I did way too many drugs, sold way too many drugs, and pretended to go to school so that my parents would give me an 800 dollar check. fucked up. I ended up moving out for reasons I will not list and that was the end of that. THANK GOD. I then decided that I would be moving to Burlington Vermont, I should mention also that I had a SEVERE obsession with the band phish and I still kind of do. love them. anyway, I decided I would move there, and that no one was stopping me. I tried to get into a college up there, and after visiting the city and talking with an advisor ect they told me I would 99 percent get in. I got the letter a few months later, I did not get in . assholes. I still moved there anyway, into a brick apartment with a girl named theresa who was much too weird ,small, and preppy for my tastes. She worked at the gap and watched an INSANE amount of tv, especially the oc. She said she didn't want any drugs in our house and I said fine, but I still kept them there and smoked regulary by myself in my room. When I moved to Burlington, I didn't know a single human there, I was by myself my parents were 15 hours away, I had the flu and it was like 103 degrees and we didnt have air conditioning. I was also going through a HORRENDous BREAKup with my boyfriend at the time , over the phone. awesome. This is the point where I started my awesome battle with a serious eating disorder. It started because I decided that I was going to lose weight so that guys would like me. This plan was working, I started the atkins diet , woo yay! well one thing led to another and I was excersizing for three hours a day and eating an apple every other day. disgusting. I became OBSESSED with the scale and I wanted to weigh 88 pounds, that was my goal weight. I didn't tell anyone, I just got thinner. I also got my nose peirced, got back together with my boyfriend ben, lost more weight, ate less food, became obsessed with hula hooping, kissed a lot of boys, slept with some boys and started looking sickly. When I say sickly I don't mean too thin because that will never happen, but I turned a grayish color, my hair was breaking and my nails were fragile. gross. I went home for thanksgiving and everyone was soooo thrilled with my huge weightloss and new found style, that they were actually feeding my disease without knowing it. Not their faults. Also I don't think the boys really cared about my weight because we were always drunk beyond comprehension anyway. My boyfriend relapsed and started using herion again while in England, and he ignored me for 6 months. asshole. My roommate moved out, I got to live by myself for a month, yay more time for me to excersize and not eat! sweet. I got a new roommate named mercedes during this time. She was seemingly cool, but turned out to be a superficial idiot with an even more annoying meatheaded boyfriend who listened to the band raq religiously and stayed at our house all the time without paying any rent or helping clean.awesome. She had once dated this guy from the band raq, and I guess became close friends with them, so she used to have all of her raq friends over all the time. One of those raq friends was a girl named sarah who would have a detrimental effect on my life. Sarah and I were inseperable, much like me and katie were at one time. She hated the house she was living in because she said that her roommates didn't really like her, so she used to sleep at my house all the time. One day I decided I really didnt like my roommate, and she decided a long time ago she didnt like hers, so we thought it would be smart to get a place together. At first, this was a good idea, we were instant best friends, but sarah was a really pushy personality. when we told mercedes that we were planning on moving in together...and not including her, she seemed..ok with it, but suddenly decided that she too would be moving out. I felt bad, and in reality, I probably really should have stayed in that apartment with her, because what was to come was NOTHING compared to that. Sarah and I tried to find a place and unfortunatly the only thing we could find and get accepted to was a place in the "ghetto " of burlington that was REALLY shitty quality and a 20 minute walk to town. We were down to the wire though, and it seemed like the only option, so we signed the lease. Boy was tTHAT a bad decision, the first few months were hot and gross because our box (apartment) only had 2 windows in the front of it and was pretty much trapping heat. When we moved in they ALSO forgot to put screens on our windows so we were endlessly attacked by the misquitos that lived in the puddles in the driveway while we slept. It was horrendous, but my roommate and I were as close as ever and things seemed to be going ok. All of a sudden though, something happened, I suddenly realized what a controlling skanky manipulator this roommate was and even though I knew, I still played along. During this time that we were living together she got jelous every time i brought a guy home (which mostly was just when my long distance boyfriend would come stay for a week at a time) . I worked at a bookstore during this time, and relied on public transportation to get me to and fro, and sometimes sarah would pick me up too.everything was fine until I freaked out in december of that year, thought I was dying and flew home for a month and a half.I needed that. When I came back to vermont (reluctantly) my best friend there, andy came to pick me up from the airport. I remember how much I didnt want to come back but I had to. When I got back, one of my best friends/ex lovers, ben and his friend were comming to stay with us all the way from Michigan. I told sarah in advance that I would REALLY appreciate it if she did not sleep with him, because it was one of the only things that would maybe be able to keep me grounded after being so fucked up in the head. She agreed and it was the only time I thought maybe that I could really belive her. I also talked to ben and he agreed and promised and blah blah blah.fuck both of them. One night I came out of my room to use the bathroom and they were hooking up in the middle of the living room on his air mattress. Fuck them. This was the end for me, I was so angry at sarah and even more angry at ben, they were both whores. I HATE BEING LIED TO. do not promise me something with your heart and mouth that you know your vagina or penis can not promise. just don't, ok?. so from then on I decided not to talk to sarah (unless of course it was to call her a giant whore and a dirty cunt bitch , which I did). things happened in this time, but I don't want to talk about them. Our lease was up that may, and in between the time of the cuntwhore incident and my parents coming to take me back to virginia in the giant explorer, I had quit my job/school/being social/being healthy/believing in myself. I have not mentioned my VERY close and amazing friends sarah(not cuntwhore) d and her boyfriend dan. These are the people that kept me grounded while in VT and eventually they were the last people I would see in vermont. They helped me clean my apartment when I was moving out and they stayed to watch me glide away in the back of a giant explorer containing all of my shit. they are wonderful people and I miss them dearly. Also I have not mentioned bobby, BOBBY is my best friend in va and he is probably the most tolerant awesome preson on te earth. He never gets mad at me and has been consistent for about 8 years now. I love him. He's going to be in the john adams special on Hbo in march, but anyway he rocks. so I moved back into my parents house in Virginia, this was not really a bad thing ,honestly it was a blessing. I got hooked up with a great well paying job processing mortgage loans which I am still doing til this day. I also met my boyfriend of six months now how I secretly am in love with but we neither of us have said it to each other outl loud. I will do this on his birthday. anyway, that is my life story as accuratly as I could write it in 24 hours. I left out a lot of stuff, but what can you do.I am alive, this is my life
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