Page 42 of Baby Girl

“Love you too, Teddy.”

Walking out to my bike, I wondered about Teddy and Heather; how and if that might work out. Although Kelli had mentioned Heather several times, and suggested that we all get together, we had never done so. I wondered if there was a reason for that.

I got my phone out of my pocket, and sent Kelli a text.

Baby Girl: I’m headed home. Text me when you get a minute. Met Heather today at Twin Peaks.

If there was a reason for her not having Heather meet me, this would give her time to think about it.

I placed the phone back into my pocket and got on my bike. It felt different riding it without Kelli.

Lonely.

KELLI. Since I was a little girl, I have kept souvenirs as some form of proof or confirmation of things that have happened in my life that I felt were unbelievable at the time. I always wanted proof that the event itself had happened. It was a way for me later to look at a material object as a reminder of the event that I associated with the object itself.

When I was about six, we went to California to the ocean on vacation. I picked up shells from the beach, and made sure that the ones that I had chosen to keep were the most perfect ones that I could find. When we got home, I placed the shells in a box, and kept the box in the closet in my bedroom. Whenever I thought about the ocean, and our trip, I would wonder if it really happened. The more time that had passed since the trip, the more difficult I found it to believe. I would sit and try to remember the scenery, where we went, and what we had done.

As soon as I pulled the box from my closet, and removed the shells, I remembered each shell, and where I had obtained it. I remembered picking each one up, and how I had decided which ones, of all of the shells, to keep.

This same pattern of obtaining some form of souvenir from a memorable event continued throughout my life. Boys in middle school would give me a note telling me they liked me, and if I wanted to remember it, I would keep the note, and place it in my box. If I got a birthday card from my father on a birthday that I wanted to remember, I would place the card in the box. Over the years, the box ended up with of some form of souvenir from almost each year of my life.

Today, I still have that box, and I still add objects to it as time passes, and unbelievable events happen in my life. If the event is one that is unbelievable, and I want it to be memorable, I save an object I would associate with the event. Something that would jog my memory many years in the future. This box of souvenirs allows me to look back at my life with vivid memories. Memories that will remain undeniable. Memories that cannot be questioned by me or anyone else. Memories with proof.

As we grow older we change. Our lives change. Patterns of living, what we deem to be important, and sometimes our beliefs even change. I imagine, with me, this collecting of souvenirs from my life will never change. When something is or seems to be too good to be true, I want proof of the fact that it ever existed.

As a child, I made up memories of my mother. My mother left when I was one year old. I had no memories of my mother, because I had no mother. I was raised by my father, and my mother, to me, never existed.

Yet.

When I was in early grades in school, kindergarten, first grade – roughly that age, I made up memories in my head of things that had happened when I was younger. Memories that included my mother. My mother that never existed. I told myself the stories long enough, and repeated them in my mind enough, that I began to believe them.

I believe the collecting of souvenirs was a way for me to know that the memory was real. That this memory was not like my memories of my mother, fabricated false hope. We, as people, are no more than a mentally advanced animal. Naturally we take whatever steps we have to that will support our survival. Feeling loved is a large part of what we, as humans, need to survive.

We yearn to be loved. The perfect love. Women dream of being swept off of our feet by the knight in shining armor - off to a castle in the distance - to live a life happily ever after. We wait, and we make decisions, and we live with the decisions we make. Sometimes those decisions prove to be good ones, and sometimes they prove to be poor ones. Inevitably, decisions that we make when we are young, regarding relationships, prove to be bad decisions.

No one meets the person that they are going to marry when they are 14 years old. Yet, when we are 14, we are certain that the boy we fell in love with in school is the person that we are incapable of living a life without. We are in a relationship with that person until we are 15, and we break up. Our heart is broken, and three months later, we have another boyfriend. One that we cannot live without. One that is perfect. The one.

Survival.

When a woman gets pregnant, she commits to be in a relationship. Generally, women find someone to marry when they are completed with college. Or high school. When the time has come that she looks around her and sees that things are stable or still in her life. From what I have seen, this has nothing to do with stability in a relationship, but a perceived stability in her life. The still, stale, stable life causes her to look around for stability in a relationship, and she attaches herself to the first person that comes along and makes her feel as if she is being loved.

And, in time, she learns. She isn’t being loved. She wasn’t being loved. She was being used. Used for sex. Used for sex by a man that also settled. He settled for a woman that provided him with what he wanted at that particular point in time in his life. In time, he too will look around him and wonder.

What am I doing here? Is this where I belong?

And whether he leaves physically or he leaves mentally, he will leave. I have seen it happen to friends, family, and school mates. Men stray, they wander, they cheat. Mentally, emotionally, or physically, it will happen. And, in time, it will progress from whatever it is into a physical separation of some sort.

My girlfriend’s husbands or boyfriends have lunch with other women. They text other women. They will meet another woman for a coffee or a drink after work, and call it business. They develop a relationship, of some sort, with another woman. In time, because of the repetitive exposure, the woman becomes interested in the man. And, because she is in a relationship not at all unlike the relationship that the man is in, she begins to believe that the guy she is having lunch with loves her. He feels for her. And those feelings are different, he actually loves her.

And she agrees.

And they cheat. Because a man is after a new sexual adventure, and the woman is seeking the perfect love.

They are trying to survive.

They divorce.

And now, they are in a relationship. A relationship destined to lose. Because it wasn’t meant to be. It was two people doing what they had done before. Settling. A man settling for a new sexual adventure, and a woman settling for what she believed to be love. I believe that those two components are what most relationships start out with. A man on a new sexual adventure, and a woman believing she is in love. What makes the relationship work, or what makes it last, is when two people settle. When they throw their respective hands in the air and say, I am done. I am done looking. I am done trying to find something new. I am done making changes.