Names have been changed.

Chino was my first addiction. We started going out when I was 14 and he was 16, and within two weeks, I couldn’t go anywhere without him. When I wasn’t with him, I’d feel anxious, my nerves shaking. When I was with him, I was euphoric. Chino was my only happiness at that point in my life, and I had never felt so beautiful. His adoration buried all my insecurities.

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I didn’t realize at the time how much Chino was an escape from my abusive adoptive mother. Everything about me bothered her, and if she didn’t scold me for it, she hit me. She’d started calling me a slut when I was 12. I hated every minute of living with her, so every chance I could, I’d go off to see Chino. I had to lie about my whereabouts, because if I told her I was going to see my boyfriend, she wouldn’t have let me go.

Just like with any addiction, my desire to be with Chino started cutting into the rest of my life. It started with leaving my fencing classes early. Then I stopped hanging out with some of my friends. Chino and I were with each other every possible minute of every day—before school, at lunchtime, in between classes, and after school. When Chino wasn’t in school, I’d mope around longing for him.

Happiness Taken Away

Chino and I lost our virginity to each other after a half-day of school that February. We’d only been going out for five months, but we were in love. It had been my idea to do it in the first place. I had never been intimate with anybody but Chino, so everything was new to me.

I felt nothing but happiness. Although I was only 14, I felt it was the right time and the right person. Losing my virginity was nice, even fairy-tale-like, not like the messed-up first-sex stories I was hearing from the rest of my girlfriends. What Chino and I shared was beautiful.

But a year later, Chino broke up with me abruptly. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but Chino had grown possessive and wasn’t fond of all the attention I received from men in the street. He started telling me to wear things that drew less attention to me. He finally broke up with me for dancing with other guys at a party.

I wandered desolately through the school hallways, waiting by his locker. I’d catch his glance, but he only rolled his eyes at me. I tried to get him back by constantly calling him, e-mailing him, trying to talk to him in school, but he ignored me.

I had never been more lonely in my life. I didn’t know what to do. My sanctuary from the insanity at home had been him. If I was feeling upset or unhappy, I’d go to him and everything would be better. I longed so much to have that love back, and I was lost without it. I started looking for love in other guys.

Substitutes

It started with Lee, a boy I was good friends with who was in Chino’s class. We had recently started talking and hanging out more. I was just sharing my problems with him at first, but then our friendship turned intimate. We discovered we had strong feelings for each other, even though he had a girlfriend.

One day we were at his house watching a movie. The tension between us was so intense, it was obvious we were going to have sex, and then we did. We really liked each other but we knew we had to keep our tryst secret.

Walking home, I felt different from the modest, wholesome girl I had always been. I didn’t care about the fact that Lee had a girlfriend, or that I was friends with her. It felt thrilling to do something so brazen and against my character.

image by Amanda Garcia

I also liked that I got back at Chino by sleeping with someone else. I was trying to move on from him. I still loved Chino, but after he left me, I also hated him.

Lee gave me the attention I wanted, and told me that he liked me and wanted to be with me. I thought he could be my next boyfriend. And that’s all I wanted, someone to love me. So every chance I got to see Lee, I would. We met up three blocks away from school so no one would see us leave together.

But after a month or so, Lee told me he would never leave his girlfriend. I realized he was just playing me, and I became completely depressed. I’d go home and sleep the entire afternoon. Then I’d be up the entire night crying and go to school looking haggard.

And there I was again in the lunchroom, now looking at two guys I’d slept with who didn’t want me.

Unhealthy Obsession

Then Chino and I started to have sex again. He would come to my house, have sex with me and we’d lie in bed and tell each other how much we loved and missed each other.

I lived for these days, when it seemed like we were normal again, as if we were picking up from where we’d left off. I honestly believed we were.

But the day after was always a different story. He would always find something about me to bother him, and leave me again. When Chino was ignoring me, I’d sleep with Lee to get the attention I really wanted from Chino.

I grew obsessed. I’d send Chino pages-long e-mails, call him 20 times a day, threaten to hurt myself if he didn’t talk to me. Meanwhile, I was sleeping with not only Chino and Lee, but also with a third boy named Luna. I thought I could find love with him, too. But one day I was shopping with a friend, and she pointed out a woman with a newborn baby and said, “That’s Luna’s kid.”

I rushed out of the store in a trance, thinking how love had failed me, again, and that I’d been lied to, again. I felt that no matter how I tried to fill the hole in me with love, there was always something there to pull my happiness away.

I didn’t tell Chino that I had slept with Lee and others because I knew he would have hated me. To make up for the love I wasn’t getting, I cultivated a new sense of self that reveled in having so many suitors. I joked with my friends that I was this ruthless player, and men were just pawns to me.

I’d say 80 percent of that was true, and the other 20 percent was a desperate want to be loved. Being a player made me feel dominant and gave me a sense of control that sometimes made up for my loneliness.

Breaking the Cycle

Unfortunately the pattern didn’t end with Chino, Lee, and Luna. Even after I finally broke free of Chino, I continued to seek loving relationships with men who did me wrong.

image by Amanda Garcia

The dictionary.com definition of addiction is “the state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.” I did feel traumatized when Chino broke up with me. I didn’t think I could live without his love.

When I lost Chino, I longed to have that feeling of love back. And if I couldn’t get love, I tried at least to find intimacy. The kind of love I wanted involved commitment, but the intimacy I got was mostly about sexual desire. I was under the misconception that because these men desired me on both an emotional and a physical level, things would naturally work out. But that never happened.

During our brutal on-again-off-again phase, I had a sort of breakdown that was triggered by a phone call from Chino canceling our plans. Right after I got off the phone with him, my throat closed up, and my hands started shaking. I’d had an anxiety attack before, but this was worse. My mind went blank, and pain filled my chest, and then my stomach. I let out a wail and fell to the ground in a ball, wailing, crying, and shaking.

Hooked on What?

My dad ran into the room, got onto his knees and scooped me into his arms, crying as he rocked me back and forth. (By this point, I’d moved out of my adoptive mother’s home and was living with my father.) My body was limp, and I cried more than I ever had in my life. And even after that, I kept pursuing that harmful, twisted relationship with Chino for another year and a half.

For a long time I waited for Chino to acknowledge what he’d done to me and apologize. When he did, I jumped at the chance to be with him, ecstatic until he switched up on me, like he always did. He’d say he liked the innocent girl I had been more than the teenager I’d become, and he disapproved of my wearing revealing clothes.

Whenever I stopped pursuing him in attempts to find my own strength, Chino would come out of nowhere, telling me he loved me, that he was sorry, and that we should be together. He called me, and I came.

After two years of the back-and-forth, I finally did break the cycle, but it took a lot of self-reflection and time. I had to get to a point of utter disgust with myself, that point where the addict realizes she’s sick of living a life where everything revolves around the addiction. I’d cry myself to sleep, asking, “Why doesn’t he love me?” I was only 16, and I was struggling with self-mutilation, eating disorders, depression, and binge drinking—and sleeping with multiple guys.

At first I thought of it as a sex addiction. And then I realized I didn’t even enjoy sex as much as I thought I did. I just associated it with the highest form of love, and therefore pursued it with these men who I thought I could fill my emptiness.

So then what was I addicted to? And what was I missing in my life that made me so vulnerable and unstable? For the last three years, I’ve asked myself these questions, trying to understand why I felt so lost without someone.

I think it’s the need to be loved. I guess any psychologist would say I lacked love in my adoptive home, and therefore looked for it in significant others. I know a big part of that is true, and when my first real love was taken from me, I didn’t know how to live without that feeling.

A Better Me

But after the mess with Chino and the others, I was sick of what I was. I wanted to be a good person, not the girl who slept with other girls’ boyfriends. There is a code of ethics that one can abide by, and I choose not to be that sneaky, self-destructive girl I was before. I didn’t want to hurt people or lie anymore.

I used to think that if I gave these guys all of me, I’d get all of them in return. Sex was a big part of my first love, so it’s what I associated with love. I now know that love comes in all forms. It can be sharing the deepest parts of yourself with someone or listening to and taking on someone’s troubles. It can be with family and friends, not just boyfriends.

I’ve done a lot of self-destructive things, and I’ve worried that I’m not loveable. But changing my behaviors and seeing my progress helps me gain self-respect. I look back on those years of bad relationships, confrontations with guys’ girlfriends, baby mama drama, and the guilt of hurting people, and I think I was being false, not true to myself. I made myself think those things were OK.

Now I know they’re not. I still make a lot of mistakes, but I no longer do things I’m not proud of. That includes not letting anyone else control me. If I start tripping over a boy, I remind myself that he’d be lucky to have me.