Brad’s room was dark and cozy, like a cave, with its stained cherry walls that sloped like an attic. It served as a respite away from the hostile eyes of high school with its heavy air of deprecating disdain. Brad’s room was an escape from the everyday pains of life. He was the neon band aid that covered the daily scratches that would wear away the rocks of her soul like water on stones. At 14 years old, she didn’t have the capacity to ponder deeper on this. Her pain was immense and the relief the boy provided was impossible to ignore. Her old mind couldn’t remember if she actually enjoyed the sex, or if the tenderness of two bodies blending was conveniently mistaken for a warm hug in an inhospitable world. Laying down on his bed as he entered her, she stared up at the Motley Crue’s album cover, with the guy in black leather lace-up pants shot from his navel down to his upper thigh. When it was over, he would Smoke a joint and listen to this album, as each sad, angsty song fused from one into the next. Lost and moody as it spun towards the end of the album, the needle beginning to jump on the vinyl. Sadness enveloped like smoke from a bonfire that would follow her everywhere she went, burning her retinas. Only a short time later, she would stare up at the water-stained acoustic tiles of another ceiling, when her mom took her to the gray brick building on Computer drive off of Six forks Road. The lady who greeted her handed her a gown, but really it was just a piece of blue paper that tied in the back. She was allowed to keep on her bra and shirt, a yellow Burt's surf shop tee that he had given her at the beach last summer on a warm evening when the sand was starting to feel cool to the feet. She slept in it and made it hers like all girls do with their boyfriends t-shirts. She sat in a row of chairs along with the other girls until it was her turn to go into the little room with the shade drawn over the window that looked out over the gray pavement of the parking lot. The steel bed was covered with a sterile blue plastic cushion and rigid, unyielding paper pulled down over the top that made a crinkling sound as she moved. Her feet sat cradled in the cold metal stirrups as she lay on her back and stared up at the ceiling tiles, old and brown with years and water damage. She heard a voice telling her to relax as the long tube was inserted into her cervix. She felt it expand as it went it, and with it, the wave of cramps and the urge to vomit, and couldn’t help but notice that the same feelings of emptiness were present as any other time she found herself on her back. It would all be over soon and there would be no more of the crippling nausea. On the way home, they would pull into the drive-through burger king. Her mom ordered all of the comfort food for her. A double cheeseburger with ketchup, a large fry and a banana milkshake. She would sleep the rest of the day. Brad eventually moved on to someone else, and she had a string of different ones, each promising comfort and love but always filling her with a feeling of transience. And more of these procedures that promised relief from the consequences of a pregnant body and a life with a baby. She learned at a young age that her body was a form of currency to use with boys to get the attention she ached for, even if it was the wrong kind. Years later, her fiancé at the time, Rhett, would bring home all of the left-over liquor when the bar he owned would close. The booze was kept above the black glossy refrigerator in a cabinet that she had to stand on a stool to reach. The assortment, he said, was crap that no-one would ever drink. Cheap Scotch and Ouzo. They had been living together in that loft apartment overlooking the lake for almost a year by the time she finished the last bottle and had the last abortion. Please don’t misunderstand. The abortions were not birth control, but moments from drunken evenings when they couldn’t fathom how the sponge or diaphragm could possibly fail, and she could not wrap her mind around the life she would have given to a child. The only moment she was capable of living in was the one of the present, and beyond that was nothing. She knew he wasn’t for her during the one of her rare lucid moments as she sat on the back porch staring out at the water on a mild, beginning of fall afternoon, just as summer was yielding, and a cool breeze was in the air. She had just come home from an abortion, and had not had time to begin the daily drinking. The air was crisp, and so were her thoughts, for once. This was where this journey for love had found her? Empty and alone and more than a little broken. She had no way of knowing at the time how unconditional love would eventually heal her, from the the maturity and growth of an expanding heart that is capable of love as a gift to be given rather than received. It would be ten years later when she would experience agape love, through the birth of her only child, her daughter. She had so much to overcome first, and that would come many sober years later.