Untypically in Love: Life Before Matt

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Read the full story, chapter by chapter here.

Some names and events have been changed to protect the identity of certain individuals.

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Chapter One
Life Before Matt 

Being LDS, it would be nice to say that my husband and I met when we were in our twenties. He had just come home from a mission and I was doing very well at a singles ward where I was the Relief Society president. We met at a Church dance, had our first date on a hay ride, courted for a few months when he then proposed to me on temple grounds. In our engagement pictures we wore matching denim. We were married a few weeks later and everything has been sunshine, rainbows and baskets full of kittens ever since.

Course, it wasn't much like that.

In fact, it wasn't at all like that. I mean, we did eventually get married . . . and well . . . that's the only resemblance.

For instance, I was never the Relief Society President.

Truth is, we met young. I was fourteen years old and enjoying what I thought would be a horrible year of High School. I moved to New Mexico the summer before my Freshman year - from California no less - leaving behind friends who would go on to forget all about me. I spent the summer inside watching Days of Our Lives with my Grandmother while my aunt and uncle (who we lived with) were off in Chicago visiting friends and family there. When the end of August rolled around, I dreaded the first day of school. I had lived with my aunt for almost five years now, and because of moving had gone through three schools already. Three first days, and each of them began the exact same way: she forgot something.

High School would be no different. What she forgot this time was my shot record, which to this day we believe remains buried somewhere in the California house we left behind. So instead of making friends in my first class on my first day of High School, I was rushed down to a clinic where an old blue haired nurse smiled at me and stabbed me in the arm. My aunt Paula then rushed me back up to school where they stamped "Accepted" on my forehead and ushered me off to class.

Because it took so long for me to get in, I was introduced in the middle of my second period class, and everyone was staring. I was big for my age, not so much fat as top heavy and curvacious, and my red face and red hair stuck out a little bit. At my California schools, white was the minority so I was oddly used to sticking out like a sore thumb, but here was different. The multitude of mixed races were mixed even further and separated into cliques depending on outfit of choice. Cheerleaders in one corner, preppy kids in another, the jocks hovering somewhere near their matching Barbie counterparts, and somewhere between a cocktail of rockers, stoners and skaters were the general misfits. I was sat down between them all at a small table with three other teenagers, one of whom would become my best friend.

Our teacher, Mr. Wood-Fookar (real name), put us into pairs and it was he that looked across our table and said, "Jia meet your new partner, Megaera." I looked across the table and was astonished by the beauty of the girl in front of me. She had gorgeous long brown hair and olive skin. But this was High School, which meant that because she was pretty, she was also a snob. Boy was I wrong. Halfway through the middle of learning about the types of clouds we would be discussing this semester, she leaned across the table and smirked. "Dude," She whispered. "This assignment is bullshit, wanna bail?"

It would be the first of many bailed classes and assignments. Megaera was a powerhouse. She walked with confidence that I could only dream of, and when she spoke people listened. When she moved boys followed. We were best friends and closer than sisters.

We were so close in fact that at a concert downtown in Albuquerque, her boyfriend at the time - Dan - picked a fight with me in the parking lot, determined that she was more in love with me than she was him. It was hilarious as I poked his deflating ego. The two of us squared off in front of the club as his friends tried to hold him back while Megaera begged me not to kick him in his junk.

The scene in the parking lot with Dan wasn't long lived. Their relationship ended because she had moved on to new horizons. I in the meantime had gone through a few boyfriends of my own. I had never had a real boyfriend before, just small time crushes, but I felt that High School was my launching pad into a new life where maturity involved relationships and romance.

I was fourteen and stupid.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into.

Chapter Two >>>