Personal Narrative: Burnout

When someone says addict the first words that come to mind aren’t usually the kindest. Junkie. Loser. Burnout. In my case, though, for almost a year there was only one word that was synonymous with addict for me. Boyfriend. Freshman year is supposed to be for taking the first step into adulthood. I started out high school and resolved to do this by becoming friends with a bunch of upperclassmen. I added tons of people from Ross on Facebook which inevitably led me to Zack. I remember really liking him so I messaged him only to find out he had a girlfriend at the time. To my surprise, he talked to me anyways and after a few weeks they broke up because she didn’t like him having friends besides her. Now the person that I thought was the greatest guy ever was single and I made it my mission to date him. As a naive fourteen year old, I didn’t see how
Her date arrived on time and we waited in the lobby of the movie theater for Zack to show up. The movie was starting so they went inside to find a seat and I stayed in the lobby to wait. Zack got there 15 minutes late with a cream soda and no apology. We went to sit down and he offered me a drink which I declined because cream soda is disgusting. He kept pushing until I finally took a drink. I became wrapped up in the plot of Divergent with Zack to my left, completely absorbed in his phone, and Lydia to my right, completely absorbed in her date’s face. I somehow made it through the movie without walking out since I didn’t want to leave Lydia there alone with two guys we didn’t know that well. Her mom came to pick us up and we went back to my house. As soon as I got through the door, I texted Zack and told him I didn’t want to see him again and went to go take a shower to wash off the nauseating feeling I had after being around him. Despite all of that, he managed to manipulate me into continuing to talk to