Teenage First Love and How My Mother Destroyed It

In chronological order.

At home in Nova Scotia, I’d counted down the days until September 10, 1974, when my boyfriend from Virginia would arrive.

We’d been writing to each other for a year. Since we met the previous summer. Picking raspberries and blackberries along the roadside. Swimming in the ocean, holding hands and kissing whenever we could.

All I wanted was Will’s kisses and his hands on my body.

He planned to be at my house at seven, after a family outing with his grandparents.

I couldn’t stop thinking about what Will must be thinking. I worried he hated me for what my father did.

He couldn’t possibly still love a girl whose father had treated him so badly. I felt so ashamed.

My Mother hid my letter from Will, and I feared she’d do it again.

Every morning before leaving for school, I reminded Dorothy to try and get to the mail before my mother.

After school, I checked in with Dorothy before going off to my building. Every day when there was no letter, I sunk deeper into despair.

Receiving no letter from my boyfriend Will forced me to go on with my life as best I could.

At lunchtime in school, we went downtown to eat. Mostly to The Dew Drop Inn, a smaller place on Main Street with red and white checkered tablecloths underneath a clear vinyl covering. Containers of ketchup, sugar, vinegar, salt, and pepper are on the tables.

We liked to switch the tops on the salt and pepper shakers, and mix it up by putting sugar in the salt and salt in the sugar.

Everything had been going as well as could be expected until I came home from school one afternoon and my mother announced, “I’ve made you an appointment to go see Dr. Bennett on Saturday.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To get checked out.”

“Checked out for what?” I asked, confused. “I’m fine.”

“You’ve been throwing up a lot lately and…”

“It’s nothing,” I cut her off. “I had the flu.”

“After what happened here in September.”

Needing more than cigarettes, and crying, and writing poetry, I asked my best friend, Debbie, if she knew how to get high.

“Gravol,” she said.

“What?”

“Gravol,” she repeated, “You know, for motion sickness. You get it at the drugstore. It’s cheap. Easy to buy.”

“Wanna do it?”

In November, I sat in class not feeling well. Something felt stuck in my throat. Something like a fish bone. But it couldn’t be a fish bone. I never ate fish for that very reason.

I continually coughed to try and clear whatever was stuck in my throat, but I could get no relief.

Other times, it felt like an elastic band was wound tight around my neck. I didn’t understand what was happening to me. I’d never experienced anything like it before. Something was horribly wrong.

Every day, I became more anxious, convinced my boyfriend Will was happy in England and had forgotten all about me in Nova Scotia.

In my bedroom, in the increasingly dark evenings I cried, my anxiety mounted. I was convinced a disaster was coming.

BARBARA CARTER is a visual artist and writer with a focus on healing from childhood trauma, alcohol addiction, and living her best authentic life.

She likes to take walks, read, watch TV dramas, and practice Qi-gong, and work on her memoir series BARBARA By The BAY. https://www.barbaracarterartist.com