"No one else who would take me"

[mollyringle]

 Today, on a whim, I leafed through some of my high school journals. And this bit kicked me in the gut. I was writing about my boyfriend:

"I even began talking to him about breaking up. Needless to say, this upset him so much that I was knocked back into my senses. Especially the way he pointed out that there was no one else who would take me."

Oh 15-year-old Molly. I want to go back and hug you and tell you he is SO WRONG and that that was, furthermore, a horrible, false, cruel thing for him to say, and also, whether or not a new person will immediately "take you" upon a breakup with someone is not important. I know it seemed important at the time, especially given how shy and picked-on you were in middle school (a scant few years earlier), but you matter whether or not you're dating someone.

I even can be generous enough to say, from reading more of these entries, that I feel sorry for my (really honestly not very good) ex-boyfriend too, because it's clear from what I wrote that his parents and grandparents were cold and strict with him, and that he was super insecure.

Anyway! We don't have to worry about 15-year-old me too much, because, as amply described in said journals, I promptly set out to test his theory by flirting with at least a dozen other people over my remaining years of high school and finding quite easily that YEAH, many were interested. So there.

But seriously. Don't throw harmful shit like this at teenagers' minds, people. They're soft and still forming. It leaves marks.