Missing Pieces of My Forever-Heart Read Free Page A

loneliness totally petrified my brain?
     
    Hey baby, (I wrote in a text to my younger daughter)
    Your mama’s up way too early and was thinking of you.  Hope your lit professor liked that paper you did on Shakespeare’s themes.  You need help with anything else?  I did good in college too! Call me later. Luv, Mom
     
    This is what I’ll do.  I’ll connect with my daughters today.  They are what matters.  They are my life. They are my heart and soul.  Not anyone or anything else.  That’s how I’ve survived the worst.  That’s how I will continue to survive.
     
    Maybe I’ll go for a long run to clear my head and find ME again amid all the crazy chatter from my past that is flooding my brain.  I HAVE TO STOP THINKING ABOUT IT!

Chapter 10
     
    30 years ago - Summer From Hell
     
    The summer from hell did not fly by. It dragged unmercifully.  I cleaned rooms at a local hotel our neighbor owned (You’ll have a great time!) and worked with a very old Polish woman with no front teeth.  
     
    “It’s your turn to wacuum,” Lena would tell me in every room.  I lugged the heavy vacuum around, carried piles of smelly laundry up and down stairs, scrubbed other people’s dirty vacation rooms and cried about Jame every night.
     
    Maddie got way too many letters from me at her sleep-away camp.  All of them wrinkled from my tears and filled with my pain.
     
    Maddie,
    I’m dying.  I’m dying in this horrible town with these horrible people and my horrible job.  Can you pretend you’re sick and come home sometime soon?  I need you here! I’m dying.
    Love. Me
     
    But Maddie didn’t come home and save me.  I made it through those dark summer days all by my miserable, lonesome self.
     
    The only bright spot on the horizon was going back to school.  It couldn’t come fast enough.
     
    September 4 th finally came and I jumped on that bus so fast taking me back to my beloved OLOS and tenth grade.  I was a sophomore- that’s sort of like an upperclassman but not really.  At least I wasn’t a scaredy cat freshman anymore.
     
    I was more mature.  I had all summer to grow up and change my pain and sadness from Jame’s break-up into a raging I’ll-get-even-with-him attitude.
     
    THIS WAS GOING TO BE THE YEAR I WOULD SHOW JAME PATTERSON THAT HE WAS DIRT.
     
    My tenth grade was my wild-girl year.  I still hung out with Maddie, but now I was the leader with the crazy ideas and she followed me around.  I threw myself at the junior boys telling them, “No, I broke up with Jame in June so I could have a fun summer!” And they believed me.
     
    I dated four different junior boys that year, drank beer and vodka and rum for the first time (and many times after), tried smoking some pot, sneaked cigarettes, and let one of those boys feel me up.  I didn’t care what kind of reputation I was getting.  I didn’t need Jame in my life.  I had all these new boyfriends and all the fun I wanted.

Chapter 11
     
    Usually running intervals sears my lungs, wears out my legs and depletes every ounce of energy in my body.  Ten minutes slow warm-up, followed by 30 seconds of all out sprinting, then 90 seconds slow jog to recover. Then do it again. Ten of these intervals is way too much but I pushed myself to the brink. 
     
    I felt insane and couldn’t find my Zen zone. My stomach was so churned up that I rushed over to the side of the boardwalk and puked over the railing onto the beach.
     
    I slogged through the sand to the ocean’s edge. 
     
    “Why, why, why, God? I finally felt on an even keel. Haven’t I been through enough? WHY DID YOU SEND JAME BACK INTO MY LIFE AND WHY DID YOU MAKE ME SO STUPID ABOUT HIM?”
     
    Blaming God seemed an easy way out. I needed to pour my anguish somewhere and God always seemed to be able to handle it.
     
    But now I needed to get my life back under control.  I could go visit my cousin in Florida and stay a few months until Jame left again. Or maybe this was the time to