Bonnie Changed Everything.
During fall break, my junior year, I met Bonnie: a freshman with an attitude-and-a-half. No one else was on campus during break, so we hung out together and drank ourselves silly. We laughed and hooted and hollered and ruled the very empty school. We yelled down the echoing hallways, screaming with freedom, getting to know each other with every bold new move.
Bonnie was everything I wasn’t: loud, confident, brash, calm, wild and cool. Oh my, Bonnie was cool. Nothing phased her. She could stand in the eye of the hurricane with her arms outstretched, laughing at the wind, her long black hair electric around her. Bonnie was everything I wanted to be.
After fall break, I didn’t want to hang out with anyone else.
Bonnie challenged everything I’d ever believed. She took great pride in never being embarrassed or afraid, so I decided to be unafraid, too. To Bonnie, my naivety wasn’t cute; it was stifling. She ignored my god-given tendencies and taught me how to be strong.
Or so I thought.
My entire life, I’d tried to follow the rules: parents’ rules, Bible’s rules, school’s rules, society’s rules. Bonnie broke all of them.
I followed her lead and broke them all, too.
Bonnie validated all the mistakes I’d made and showed me that they weren’t anywhere near as bad as I’d believed. Candy for breakfast? Yeah! Leftover pizza off the floor? Sure! Drinking every day? Why not! Skipping class to sleep? WhatEVER! Premarital sex? Of course! Impromptu road trip? Anytime! Concerts instead of exams? Absolutely!
Bonnie was against authority – all authority – and wild beyond my wildest imagination. She bounced checks to buy chocolate malts. She drove drunk. She chose – and tossed aside – every man in her wake. She slept through entire weeks of class. She swore like a sailor. Bonnie was my idol.
While I technically lived with a roommate down the hall, I spent most nights sleeping on the floor in Bonnie’s single room. She lived directly across the hall from the water fountain, which was exceptionally important in the mornings. And I didn’t want to miss spending a single a moment with her.
I started to evolve. I went from trying so hard to be good … and failing … to purposefully going off the rails. At the time, I decided I was becoming tough, rugged, smart and strong. But really, I was finally letting go of my self-imposed restrictions, allowing myself to do whatever felt good in the moment.
I had no idea that this choice was the first step toward the end of everything I’d ever known.
With Bonnie, I felt spectacularly liberated. For the first time in my life, I had a friend who didn’t worry about who I was; she just modeled who I wanted to be. She lived her life and I followed along, believing every word she said about every subject, fascinated by the many things I didn’t know about the world.
Best of all, and most essentially, Bonnie drank exactly like I did.