Untypically in Love: Separation Anxiety

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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 Thirteen
Separation Anxiety

"Where are you going!?" I screamed at my aunt Debbie as I spun around in the passenger seat of her truck. 4:35 in the morning. The sky of Salt Lake City was black and despite it being the end of May, there was a chill in the air.

"We're running late." She said as she shifted into third gear, turning down a different route on our way to work at the bakery commissary. 

"But the post office!" I shrieked. "It's back there. If my letter to Matt doesn't get sent out today it'll take just that much longer for him to be able to write me back."

"Haven't you ever heard that absence makes the heart grow stronger?" She rolled her eyes at me.

"And what if absence makes the heart forget!?" I'll admit now, lack of sleep, ten hour work days and waking up at four every morning was making the melodrama that much more high pitched.

"You're fifteen years old." 

"Thank you, I can count." I sobbed, yawned, and then sobbed again.

The work at the bakery wasn't so bad. Debbie managed the commissary in the business so we never needed to be around customers. Our biggest problem was if the owners of the company ever came down, taking over our work stations to make sad attempts at catering. Meanwhile we still had to produce the same amount of food with half as much workspace and three times as many distractions.

The work was long. The work was hard. But the work was good. It kept my mind off of Matt. Off of missing him so much and worrying that he was somehow waking up from this momentary lapse in judgment. I would come home and he would look at me and say, "Jia who?"

But work kept me distracted. 

For the most part.

"This song is so like me and Matt," I sighed as I began singing along to the radio. 

"They write songs about stealing your best friends girl?" One of my co-workers laughed. I had told the story of our destined romance more than a few times. 

One second of not looking what you're doing in a bakery will have the knuckle of your thumb cut off in less than a second. 

"You're bleeding!" Someone yelled.

"Son of a  . . ." I growled and rushed to the bathroom to rinse my new wound. Over the summer I would receive over five different cuts on my hands. That same knuckle would heal and get cut off three weeks later. I got industrial concentrated soap in my eyes, slipped on a piece of lettuce, and dropped a giant metal crate, carrying over one hundred pounds of cooked turkey on my shin.

It wasn't going to take a swimming pool to kill me.

At the end of the work day, Debbie and I would drag our feet home to her condo where my Grandma was waiting for us. We'd sit on the couch, throw in a VHS tape of Dirty Dancing, and watch it, quoting word for word until the credits rolled. And then we'd rewind and do the same thing again.

This was our Monday thru Friday.

By the end of the summer, Grandma had hidden the Dirty Dancing tape beneath a couch cushion, and then refused to leave her seat when we went on a search and rescue.

Eventually we found it and the process would start all over again.

"Me? I'm scared of everything. I'm scared of what I saw, I'm scared of what I did, of who I am, and most of all I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you." Debbie and I quoted the movie, saying the lines along with the actors.

"That's how I feel about Matt," I sighed.

"I know. You say it every time we watch it," Debbie yawned.

"Nobody puts Baby in a corner." Patrick Swayze oozed.

"Matt calls me baby," I said under my breathe.

"Why don't you go check the mail again. I think I heard something." Debbie said, more than likely eager to get me to shut up.

"Okay!" I jumped from my seat on the floor, darting up the stairs to the mailbox where indeed, long love letters written on yellow notebook paper were waiting for me. So many pages, the envelopes needed to be taped shut.

"What a whore!" I shouted as I threw down several of the pages.

"Matt's a whore?" Debbie looked up with a smirk.

"No, his ex-girlfriends! Apparently at least three of the little sluts have called him in the last week. One begged him to meet her somewhere saying that she'd," I picked up the letter, reading it aloud. "Make him forget all about Jia." My flesh was on fire. And not in the usual good way that Matt's letters made me feel.

"And he told you?"

"Of course he told me," I was angry, but not with Matt. "He told her," I looked back down at the letter. "That no one could make him forget about me." I swooned, tears filled my eyes. "I need to get another phone card." I sighed lightly and began looking for the remainder of that weeks paycheck which had mostly been spent on new clothes, snack food, and of course, stamps.

The weekends were spent with my older sister at her house. It was a nice change of pace. She had a new baby to play with, and internet access. I could email Matt! It was so much more convenient. She also didn't mind me talking about him one bit.

"This coffee tastes funny," I said looking down at my morning cup. "What kind is it?"

"Pero," She said. "It's fancy." She added with a smirk.

Pero I would later come to find out was something nicknamed 'Mormon Coffee'. Not real coffee. Just tastes like it. Or actually, it doesn't taste like it much at all. But my sister was still Mormon.

"Hey, I'm having some friends from Church come over. They're coming to teach me some things, you can hang out if you want to." She added.

"Sure," I shrugged. I could sit in the other room and write Matt a letter until her friends left.

When the missionaries showed up at the door, they politely introduced themselves, making a point to shake my hand and say how neat it was to meet me. They were nice enough. But they didn't give me much space to write my boyfriend.

My sister sat at the table with the Elders, who were talking about some guy named Joseph Smith. I knew the name from when I attended elementary school in Salt Lake. Whether you were LDS or not, growing up in Utah involved Mormon history because it was Utah history. Aside from the name though, I knew very little.

"Do you know much about the Church, Jessica?" One of them asked me. 

"It's Jia, actually," I corrected him. Only my family still called me Jessica. "And yeah I guess I know a little. My boyfriends a Mormon." I thought for a minute. "My ex too."

"Really? How exciting." They said with what seemed to be genuine enthusiasm. "What have they told you about the Church?"

"Well apparently we're not supposed to date." I said bitterly.

Over the course of the following hour, they taught me things I'd never known before but always wondered. The truth was, Josh and Matt didn't talk about Church. Or at least, they didn't mention anything I felt was Church related. They both had strong influences from family. They were both kind and good people. I never knew this had anything to do with beliefs.

And beliefs were important to me.

The past several years when I wasn't thinking about boyfriends, I was thinking about God. Or whatever that meant. When my aunt Kathy died, I began practicing what she taught me, which was essentially witchcraft. It was not only rebellious, but popular among my friends. But it never fit.

I still believed there was a God.

Most of my family tried to help me find my own religious path. My father's side of the family was full of Baptists. Debbie was a reborn Christian and I had other aunts and uncles, cousins who were Catholic, Christian and those who proclaimed to be "spiritual", but not religious.

I never accepted much, especially when pushed. But I had questions. And finally, I was getting answers.

Summer was ending, and the last letter I sent to Matt before packing my bags to return home ended with, "I want to be with you forever. Someone I met here told me that you'd know more about this."

Chapter Fourteen>>>