Prom night still shines in my memory like a glossy promise.
We’re both smiling, baby-faced and adorable. For one night, it felt like everything I’d hoped for in high school had finally lined up: the slow dance, my awkward jokes actually landing, our names scribbled together in my journal. I remember thinking maybe this time I wouldn’t have to brace for the inevitable letdown.
But after that night, things got hazy. I can’t pinpoint when it shifted, but the dates slowed, the texts shortened, and the relationship evaporated in the sun-bleach of late spring. I was left picking through scraps of memory, searching for the frame where it all went sideways. What lingered was the quiet that followed. Questions moved in, setting up house where an explanation should have been.
He wasn’t new to the whole first-time arena, but I was. That mattered in ways I couldn’t articulate then. There was a naïve hope that sharing a few milestones meant sharing the aftermath.
Then that summer, I became someone else’s first. I warned boy #2—fresh breakup, fragile ego, no long-term guarantees. He waved off every caution, certain he could outrun gravity.
I recognized that certainty. I’d worn it to prom.
We’d both agreed the high school romance was a fling, like training wheels before college. What boy #1 and I didn’t spell out was how long a fling should last, or who calls time. So when he started drifting, I clung harder, convinced extra enthusiasm could plug a leak. Spoiler: it can’t. Over-enthusiasm is not caulk.
I expected the high school break up—just not so early. What gnawed at me wasn’t the breakup itself; it was the blank where a reason should have been. The same feeling hits when a friendship wilts for no clear cause. I believed answers were tickets back to sanity: Tell me what happened so I can file it away.
Writing this memoir forced a quieter truth: nobody owes me the tidy narrative I crave. I can ask; they can decline. The space between those facts is mine to live in.
Even when I did get an answer, sometimes it only made things weirder. One ex called me a demon sent to drag him to hell. (You think you want closure until you’re handed the kind that comes with its own Book of Revelation.) Still, I kept rooting for a big reveal. Most of the time, what you get is silence, or something so strange you wish you’d never asked.
With the summertime boy, roles reversed. I’d handed him full disclosure at the start, but that didn’t mean much when the end came. Someone has to end it. I couldn’t give boy #2 a satisfying answer to the “why” any more than my prom date could give one to me. Understanding both sides doesn’t make the ending any tidier.
What I’d Tell Younger Me (Who Would Ignore It):
- You’re allowed to want clarity; you’re not entitled to it.
- Silence isn’t always cruelty—it’s sometimes awkward mercy.
- If you need every goodbye stamped “All Good,” you’ll stay at the counter forever.
Left unanswered, a question becomes a doorway instead of a dead end. I’ve stepped through enough of them now to see the real pattern—how I mostly just latched on to whoever wanted me, and how much it stung when they stopped. Regardless of the reason. That’s knowledge I wouldn’t have chased if every ex had sat me down for an exit interview.
Not every chapter comes with a closing sentence, and maybe the story is stronger for it.
inspo: mostly memoir musings while working through these blasted high school chapters // slow-dance nostalgia, breakup blanks, overthinking every detail, as per usual // fleeting firsts and summertime flings // memoir puzzles, the ache for answers // sometimes you get silence, sometimes you get called a demon // reading my high school journal, cringing at my bad poetry & “love” notes // wishing I could go back in time to give myself some much needed advice (that I wouldn’t have listened to) // Bo Burnham’s Lower Your Expectations
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Kenzie, Not only are you an excellent writer, you are wise beyond your years. I learn from you every time I read a post. The father/daughter relationship is so complex under the best circumstances, but my intuition tells me that you were deeply loved, its just that some people don’t have the ability to express it, mostly because of their unresolved demons (which I am aware of myself) I didn’t know your dad, but I do know your Mom, and my money is on you hitting it out of the park with your first novel!
Thank you for reading. I appreciate your lovely comment, and your support. I don’t consider myself wise, truly, just someone who’s been lucky these past couple years to have the chance to reflect on my life. Most people don’t get that chance, or at least not so early in life and at such a deep-dive level. I think if more of us could do this work, there’d be more nuggets (nuggets of knowledge vs. wisdom) to go around!
This is so beautiful, McKenzie. So deep and insightful. A situation, to which we can all relate – and yet, you frame it so perfectly. Thank you.
By the way: this line: “You’re allowed to want clarity; you’re not entitled to it.” – it applies to literally EVERYTHING. Would make a great meditation point.
I also love the poem. Question: is it written recently or in the past?
Thank you for sharing your gifts – and your memories – with us.
Thank you, Ms Darlene! It’s a bit of both. The poem you can read easily (one on top) is basically a heavily revised version of the one written in my journal. (Well, the original is actually written on a piece of notebook paper that I stapled into my journal.) That’s what I used as the background for the new version of the poem, which has the same bones but was fixed up recently (while working on my latest ch; it helped get me in my teenybopper headspace)—but you can see hints of the OG version peeking around the corners. It’s just so bad that I couldn’t bear sharing it as it was!