Sixteen, Secrets & Sex

I was just a child.

Bonnie Doon Composite High. Where I attended night school.

The doorbell rang. This was my moment. It was my turn to make an entrance that would leave a lasting impression. February 2nd, 2008 arrived and the stakes were high. Counting on me to look, act and speak the part was my future. 

Our class had decided upon ‘Ordinary People’ by Judith Guest for our 30-1 English book report. I had a classroom to call my own, a teacher that was not my mother and classmates to devour late night snacks with. On Tuesday and Thursday nights, I became a public school student again. With each assignment, the craving to achieve scholar excellence reached satisfaction with every ‘A’ grade I received. 

I didn’t go looking for him. Afterall, he wasn’t my childhood sweetheart. However, he had been there all along. I had spent many hours of my childhood playing with him. His dad taught me how to shoot a gun and his mom taught me to keep the butter crumb free. When summer came around, I’d sleep over at his house for a week at a time. He built bike ramps and we jumped them. We went for long walks and I watched him ride horses. We set the table and ate supper together. I watched as he got himself into trouble and bore witness to the hand of discipline coming down upon him. He was a cowboy and his sister, my best friend. 

As each young person (aged 16+) arrived at the door, they were greeted with a lei. My closest girlfriends alongside my mom and I transformed the main floor of my childhood home into a pink Hawaiian paradise. As a child raised in a religious cult where the segregation of boys and girls is mandatory beginning at the age of five, reaching the age when integration begins again was an answered prayer for many. It was also the age of spousal ‘search and find.’ The age to reach was sixteen and at this Hawaiian paradise, we were celebrating my sixteenth birthday and the arrival of my potential suitors. 

As one does at their sixteenth birthday, I made the kitchen my home base. I was the freshest meat at the supermarket of ‘Ripe & Ready to be Your Wife.’ Mom did say, “The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.” The boys were raised to find themselves a ‘godly girl,’ one who cooks, cleans and who would be a wonderful mother. (Aka, be their mother.) Standing by the stove, I periodically checked the lasagna, showing off my culinary talents to the young suitors, assuring them that I wouldn’t infect them with salmonella. After supper, I walked around gathering their plates, allowing the boys to remain seated, granting them the opportunity to look on as my girlfriends and I tidied up the kitchen. This was a far cry from my secret future in university that I was working tirelessly at but this one, it was of greater plausibility. 

After my celebratory showcase of domestic abilities came to an end, my best friend and I went upstairs to my sister's bedroom. There, while sitting crossed legged on the pillowy white bedding atop the oak sleigh bed, and with a ring of my pink Motorola Razr, the trajectory of my future altered.

Term one of night school was a roaring success. Maintaining marks above 90%, I was everything Mom knew I was and everything I knew I could be. Those hallowed halls of learning called me back for a second term while my best friend’s brother was calling me on my Motorola Razr. Now my first serious boyfriend, the cult, the rule was, ‘one does not ‘date for fun,’ one ‘courts for marriage.’ 

Doomsday dangled in close proximity. Looming with continuous dread, the thought of being raptured before marriage consumed me. I began to wrestle with the choice I had to make. Do I serve the purpose of god and follow the highest calling of a ‘godly woman’ or do I choose the way of a sinner, which would lead to an eternal damnation in hell? My parents would either have to leave the cult to support me or kick me out of their home to continue in the way of the lord. I was a child. A decision in which either choice would cause familial destruction was not appropriate for a child.

And what about sex? It was sacred and to be saved for marriage. It was the unholy and unspoken event we grew up desiring in fear. I prayed fervently for Jesus to linger doomsday just a little bit longer to give me the opportunity to experience sex, that was until my boyfriend walked through the same night school doors as me. 

I was distracted. ‘A’s’ weren't important anymore, keeping his attention was. Handing in completed assignments became a thing of the past as I began skipping classes to be with him. Mom would drop me off at school and he would drive himself, arriving in his grey Toyota truck. We’d have planned the details of the evening events earlier in the day. Skipping class, I’d hop into the cab of his Toyota and he would drive us to a semi empty parking lot where I would lie down on the short cab bench and engage in sexual penetration. It was not love making. I am sure to this day that I did not experience a single orgasm from it. I had no understanding of the intricate workings of my body and it is a miracle I did not conceive. Unfortunately, with cult naivety, in fulfilling this desire with a boy, I felt needed, accepted and chosen.

Wrong door.

God chose me and I was now chosen by a son of god for his own. This was it, I was fulfilling the god given purpose that had been laid out for me since I was born. Achievement unlocked! I completed night school, wrote diplomas and with vigor, I slammed the door shut to the future that was the secret between Mom and I.

Eight months later, he shut the door that I opened just for him. 

Sixteen years later, at thirty-two, a single mother of five with no degree or letters behind my name, and struggling with my new reality, my mom drops what may always be the most substantial truth bomb in my life. “Bre, Dad and I had made the decision to open the door to leaving the cult for you to pursue your educational dream. We simply never told you.”  

Sixteen years later, at thirty-two, a single mother of five with no degree or letters behind my name, I have opened the door to my first career job interview.

My twitter post celebrating my job interview.

Sweet sixteen indeed.