by Kelsey Coletta
August
My parents hold me tight before they say goodbye, and I promise them I'm okay. There are announcements overhead, updates about flights that I can't pay attention to. There's a universe bustling around me, but all I can do is focus on trying not to cry.
I've sent off the suitcase that's half my size, packed to the brim with more than I probably need. My fingertips are turning white, but I can't loosen my grip on the backpack. I'm fine; I'll be fine; this is nothing more than a flight. It's so much more than a flight.
My mom kisses me on the cheek. They'll call when I get there; have a good flight.
I wait until there's a wall between me and them before I allow myself to cry because I'm sixteen years old and have been set free in the world. I find a seat to rest in and I swallow the tears, trying to remind myself of the adventure that awaits me. I'm about to leave Small-town, USA for a city in South America and The Best Year of My Life. After months of applications and interviews and anxiety, I was accepted to an exchange program in Chile, an entire year of adventure awaits.
I can’t wait to meet my new family.
September
My host brother is a face in a photograph, faded and distant and cold until he's in front of me. Tanned skin, crooked smile, chubby hands half shoved into his pant pockets. I'm grateful to see him, the only Chilean I've met who speaks my language. I'm so tired of stumbling over words.
His eyes meet mine and he smiles.
My stomach is tying itself in knots and he hands me a glass of alcohol. A forced smile and awkward thank you before I drink my medicine. I tell him I can’t understand anything and he laughs my words away. A smile, a wink, he's watching my lips as I speak. I've missed English so much that I'm desperate to bury myself in it, wrap the words around me and refuse to wake up. He wants to know how old I am and then he tells me that I'm not like the other girls.
My sixteen years are no match for his twenty-three, and I want so badly for him to be like the brother he's meant to be, but when I speak the words, I'm met with a cold silence.
He hisses that he's not my brother and never will be and I don't know what I've done wrong.
We wait for friends I can’t remember the names of and I try to find the Southern Cross in the night sky. I toss my head back and sloppily explain how someone showed it to me once, but alcohol has blurred my memory. My words are slurring; I can hear them as I speak. I want to be better, try to reign myself in, but there's a hand on my hip, and I can feel the warmth of breath on my ear. A laugh. A gentle push away.
I decide it never happened.
October
I can't understand my classmates or my teachers or the papers I've started to collect in my desk. I listen to music in Spanish each day, searching for new words to translate and absorb. I want so badly to do everything right– to learn the language, go to school, make friends, have a family.
Every day I remind myself that a weekend is a weekend and he's so far away that none of it even matters anymore. He was drunk. I was drunk. We were drunk. Grown men make mistakes and that's all I ever was, and I just have to try to be better.
While he's back at university, I am back at high school and a boy named Cristian is sneaking me a smile. Maybe my next kiss won't make me hate myself.
November
He comes home before the holidays and whispers that he missed me. We watch TV together sometimes. He doesn’t like to leave me alone. This song is about us, he tells me and I catch a glimpse of the music video on the TV screen. Words about love and salvation, finding the only person who can save you and somehow he's decided that's exactly who he is. It's romantic, I tell myself.
I want to vomit when I wonder what he's trying to say.
Wonderwall, he coos.
I find myself wondering if I can build a wall between us, to keep his hands away.
His smile makes my stomach turn.
December
It's almost Christmas and I wake up with hands on my skin. I smile and think that's enough but soon my skin is bare and exposed and nothing makes sense. I’m not ready. I’m just a girl.
He promises I'm a woman.
A black hole forms in my stomach and swallows me whole when he leaves me there, pulling sheets up to my chin. The moment I wanted to save forever is torn from my hands; I didn't know I wasn't holding it tight enough. A deep breath in and maybe I can be okay if
I love him, I love him, I love him.
January
My new family and I toast the new year, hands holding glasses of champagne high, air filled with laughter and jokes and hopes for what's yet to come. We watch fireworks above the ocean, cracking and breaking and dissipating while waves break below. His hand finds mine, grips my fingers tight. He sneaks me a smile and I can't help but give him one in return because a new year is upon us and for once, things feel right.
Everyone is tired but we've only just begun. Kisses goodnight. We'll see you in the morning. He takes my hand and leads me down the beach to meet a friend I can't remember the name of. I can only think of the way his skin feels against mine. I want to stop and look up at the moon, ask the universe why I've been gifted this moment but he keeps pulling me forward and my feet are too heavy for me to stop.
I can't help but giggle as my palms land on the sand. I know that somehow I've had too much to drink and I can't recall how much time has passed since we've been on our own. I want to find solace and stability in his eyes but instead I'm met with anger because I'm drunk and sloppy, such a stupid, stupid girl. We make it home just before 3 am and I tuck myself under the covers, shoulders painfully exposed and begging for comfort. He probably hates me. I want so badly to love him.
February
There's a trip organized for all the exchange students and I join my new friends on a bus in the mountains. My ears are overwhelmed by laughter in English and something feels like home. A giggle bubbles up from the pit of my belly and I realize I've forgotten how that feels.
The Canadian tells me about her boyfriend, septum pierced and bedroom cluttered, but she likes the way he smells. I smile when she asks if I have a boyfriend too.
I clear my throat and imagine every moment in the darkness disappearing with my breath and I smile as I lie and say that
there's a boy in my class I like.
March
I press my cheek gently against his chest and listen to his heart beat with each rise and fall of his belly. He's wrapped strands of my hair around his finger. He's humming softly, a tune I can't quite recognize but am sure I've heard before. He all but coos the name he's given me,
Kelsey blue
My eyes meet his and I smile. I think I've found my home in him. The softness of my name drifting from his tongue, the gentle kisses he delivers in the dark, the way his hands feel like they were created to fit in mine.
Te amo, he whispers and I look away. I don't know why, since I long to see the words dance across his face. My cheeks feel warm before I turn to him once again.
Te amo también, I promise and his lips find their way to mine.
I hope I’ve told him the truth.
April
The house feels empty without him and I start to wonder if the ache in my belly means I miss him. Perhaps it's residual disgust, a shameful sense of doing something wrong. It doesn't make sense, the way I tell him I love him and hate myself with each word.
Maybe love is disgust, I don't know. I try to remember what love looks like. Gentle kisses and soft words. I've watched my parents live in love my whole life. Why does it feel so foreign, so different? How can I not know how it feels?
May
He sends me a card for my birthday, apologizing for being so far away. He's left to finish his thesis and the bus ride is too long. I asked for permission to visit him once, receiving an emphatic absolutely not from my parents in the United States. I can't understand why they won't let me explore.
He's my host brother, I promise. Nothing more. Nothing more. nothing more. He calls me later, before cake and candles and the alcohol my host parents pretend not to see. He says we should take a trip soon. Just six hours by bus and a few days in Santiago. Just us, he whispers.
Just us.
He promises he'll be home soon. He misses me so much.
June
He takes me to Santiago just after my birthday. I’m seventeen and pretending that my year abroad isn’t about to end. He holds my hand as we navigate the streets, jumping over puddles, kissing away the rain.
I love him, I’ve decided. I drink away the nights that haunt my dreams and laugh at his jokes and run my fingers through his hair. I love him and because I said it, it’s true.
I don’t want to leave you and my head settles into his shoulder, riding the metro as we inch closer to midnight. A kiss on the forehead and my body feels warm. I can’t tell if it’s love or alcohol or both and so I close my eyes and wonder if a moment can last forever.
After
I return home at the end of June, the girl I could have been left in a city by the sea. I’m haunted by a silhouette in the darkness of my bedroom, shaken awake in the middle of the night by cold sweat and imagined tears. I love him and so his ghost isn’t meant to haunt me, but it does. I want it to make sense.
I wonder how many people had a first love like mine. A first love that hurt and left a dull ache that never seemed to lessen, never mind leave. A first love that tore apart any semblance of normalcy, tore apart the person I had been and could have been and never could be. A first love that created me and destroyed me and left chaos in its wake. A first love that hurt and traumatized and exploited and
I don’t know if I loved him.
I want to, I will myself to, I have to because it might erase the crime that he committed. Maybe our love wasn’t uncommon, maybe I could pretend he wasn’t a monster, pretend I agreed, forget what he did. Maybe others have lived it and moved on and maybe I can too. Maybe it was an accident, maybe it was a mistake. Maybe I can forgive him.
Maybe I loved him.
I want to have loved him.
But I didn’t.