In the past, I have not been very careful with whom I place my trust in. Life had always seemed so innocent to me, or maybe I was just too naive to face reality. I had never really faced facts for what they were, instead, I just pushed them away and lived within my own world. But, all of that changed during the summer of my Sophomore year.

It all began the year before, in the Spring time; The cold, dead-periods of the previous nuclear-winter began blending with the crisp, warm periods of the coming spring: The sun began to shine, the snow began to melt, and rich greens and blues soon returned to their rightful places. The week before, my mom had told me she had planned to take me on a cruise to Mexico over Spring Break, but, for one reason or another, I wasn’t excited as other kids would have been. The way I rationalized it, I would have preferred to go with my friends, rather than my mom and her boyfriend. I had only been on one cruise that I could remember, and it was extremely fun, but I just wasn’t as hyped up for this one.
On the day of the departure, I dredged my feet and bags through the massive vessel and threw them casually on my side of the room. I had to sleep on the couch, while my mom and her boyfriend got the bed. I could feel the enormous engines below the deck start up, I could feel the ground beneath me start to shift. After hours of walking around the sun-scorched upper-deck with my mom, I began to feel the eerie bobby-ness of the boat; I never got motion-sickness like my mother did, and I found it kind of relaxing, even. After a day or two it began to fade, just like the shoreline of Miami behind us.
For the first three days of the seven-week cruise, I wandered off on my own through the massive halls of the ship, and getting off to do various activities with my parents as necessary, such as taking a jeep tour of Acapulco or in Honduras for zip-lining. But one morning I was sitting in the elevator, waiting to go the downstairs level to get food, and someone pressed the stop button on the second floor, and the door opens. An attractive girl, short and slender in stature, with her hair in a ponytail.
“Hey, you look lonely, would you like to join us?” she bubbled, in a chipper tone. Without even thinking, “Sure” I nodded. She turned around a skipped gracefully to the front of the group that was waiting outside the elevator doors. I noticed none of them were wearing shoes, which I thought was weird.
I drifted to the back - being an unknown entity was my specialty. A young guy walked alongside me for a moment, glancing at me briefly.
“Hey you look familiar” he murmured. I turned my head to see who this stranger was, but as I saw his face, I realized that I saw this same guy on the jeep tour in Acapulco. “Did you go on that dumb jeep tour?” I imposed. He nodded and we mumbled to ourselves how attractive the skipping girl was. We exchanged agreements on various subjects,  “Hey dude, what’s your name?” I remarked. He told me his name and for my own reasons, we will just call him Hanson, to protect their identities. I replied with my own name, and we became good friends over the cruise. I acquainted myself with the others, and soon, I was surrounded by friends; Hanson, Jason, Harley, Jaron, and the skipping girl,  Jordan.
For reasons unknown, reasons I still don’t understand to this day, Jordan had taken particular interest in me: We would often spend time together, ask each other questions about ourselves. Once we got attached to each other, we managed to muster up the nerve to ask where we were from, “I’m from Michigan.” Jordan declared, “So am I.” I said, sheepishly. By the look on her face, I could tell she thought I was lying, “You’re so full of cr*p.” She boasted, with a grin across her face, “No, I’m not even lying. What part of Michigan?” “Metro-Detroit area. What about you?” she claimed, “I live about an hour out from Detroit.” I told her. Her face lit up and she wrapped me up in a tight-embrace. A feeling I would learn to enjoy.
Over the rest of the cruise, we spent a lot of time together - One night she was sunburned so bad that she became sick, and I promised to stay with her until her parents came to get her. The next morning, she was so grateful, almost too grateful, because it wasn’t that big of a deal to me. She ran up behind me when I was going to meet her and gave an extremely tight hug. I stopped in my tracks as everyone moved on without me, not even noticing that I had been taken away from the group. We stood there like that for hours it felt like. She didn’t want to let go, and the dreadful thought crossed my mind. There’s only one more day left on this cruise, what if you never see her again? I wrapped her closer to my body.
The last night of the cruise there was a massive party in the teen-lounge area of the ship with music and dancing and food. Our group hung out in the back corning, watching all the girls in tight dresses move around on the dance floor. I waited patiently for Jordan to arrive so we could dance a little bit. I had never slow danced before, but I thought to myself; You’ve seen dozens of movies of people slow dancing. How hard could it be?
When she finally arrived, she pulled me up off the ground by my hand and dragged me to the dance floor. She swung her long but pale arms around my neck, and I wrapped mine around her surprisingly higher-up waist. For the first time, I could see how beautiful her eyes were, in the moonlight they were like warm pools of amber. They were distracting me so much, that I didn’t hear a single thing she said. She leaned in close to my face, close enough I could feel her heart beating next to mine. She whispered so close to my ear that I could feel her hot breath on the side of my face, “I really like you”
After a few hours of dancing and complaining, the 5 of us; Jordan, Hanson, Jason, Jaron & I decided to leave and wander around the top deck of the ship.
It was a crisp. but cool night and the stars were sparkling brightly in the inky black sky. We laughed and ate food, all of it was free considering the cruise itself was expensive as h*ll. We went up to the “Adults Only” section of the deck and had a massive pillow fight, for some reason. All of us, exhausted, had decided to go our separate ways, we all said our respective goodbyes to one another. I decided to walk Jordan to her room, and ask for her phone number. I gave her one last hug, and I smiled, but before I could prepare myself, she kissed me briefly before skipping off to her room. The rest of the night was bubbly, intoxicative blur of happiness.
The next morning was dreary - everyone was inhabited by the feeling of loss and the inevitable, long, painful trip home. Even the ship groaned with reluctance. We eventually made it home - days, weeks, months passed. I would text Jordan everyday. We figured out that we lived about an hour away from each other, and debated on whether we should date or not. We came to the conclusion that we were stupid teenagers and were willing to do anything. So we gave it a try: I would go to her house every weekend to visit her, and we would wind up passing the time by watching movies, playing soccer, going shopping, and other various dates. Everything was perfect, and we developed a strong connection, unbreakable, it seemed to us.
Then one week, she told me she would be going on a cruise, one of many her parents had planned to go on. I had no doubt she would be safe, so I wished her a good time and to relax. The week of her return was anything but exciting; she would hardly bother to read my texts, or wouldn’t even bother to talk to me at all. So I decided to wait until she messaged me first one day. Day turned into weeks, and I finally called her to ask what her problem was.,“I have something to tell you. Promise me you won’t be upset” My stomach dropped, and dread inhabited me, “Sure. I won’t be, I promise.”
She ranted on about how she got drunk on this cruise, and hung out with some guys, but then she started choking up, and whispered, “I fell in love with someone else” I could feel my eyes widen, just like how I could feel my world shattering around me, “What?” I asked, pretending not to hear. I could hear her sobbing, but I wasn’t listening, I was too focused on the world fading to black before me. I sat there for hours, listening to her try to justify it, debating whether or not this was just a bad dream, but I gave up and pretended to forgive her so I could be alone in my room. I just wanted be alone; my thoughts and I.
The next morning, I dragged myself out of bed, it felt like I hadn’t slept in weeks. I sat in the shower, I could hear angry voices, shouting harsh words Maybe you weren’t good enough for her! Maybe you’re not good enough for anybody! I was in it for so long, I realized I missed my bus. I rushed out the door into the crisp, winter air, still putting my shoes on.
On my way to school, I passed a forest, one I remembered as a child. I walked down the shattered path, down to the beach, where a massive lake resided. I sat on the concrete bench, staring out over the frozen wasteland. Not doing anything; not texting, not sleeping, not doing homework, just sitting there, staring. I must have sat there for hours because by the time I got to school, it was already over. My friends asked me to hang out, I used my judgement to decide that I won’t tell them what happened. After all, it happens to people all the time right? Besides, who would want to hear my problems anyway? So I deceived all my friends into thinking I was fine, and that there was nothing to worry about. Two months went by and I decided it was time to break it off with Jordan, a decision I was reluctant to make.
My life hasn’t been the same since that night; I can count the amount of people I trust on one hand.  I get thoughts trapped in my head, all racing around, jumping to irrational conclusions. Sometimes I would stay up until 4 or 5 in the morning, just sitting and thinking, turning me into an insomniac.  I started hiding my problems from the people I care about, just because I refused to be an object of pity. Everything that was once clear turned grey, and I lost all interest in everything that used to make me happy.