Izabella Tovar: A Brief History of Me

Don't mind the watermark, I couldn't find the original

Cassidy and I remained friends all throughout elementary and middle school. It wasn’t until high school that we began drifting apart. We attended Juan Diego Catholic High School. In high school I was on the drill team, and Cassidy wasn’t. This was the main reason we drifted apart. High school was such a big change from middle school. We didn’t have very many classes together, and I spent most of my time with my teammates. We had drill practice every morning from 6-7:30 am. We had to be at the school around 5:45 am. Then we had about 15-20 minutes after practice to get ready for school, which began promptly at 8 am. In the summertime we had practice almost every morning from 6-9 am. It was exhausting, but I loved it. I loved the girls on my team, and I loved my coaches. I felt like they were my family. (Spoiler Alert: I would later learn that they were not.) Being on the drill team meant that I became friends with a lot of older girls. I have always been mature for my age and have gotten along better with people that are older, so I was friends with mostly juniors and seniors even though I was only a freshman. And that’s how I met Jairo (pronounced Hi-row).

Homecoming dress

I drifted away from all of my middle school friends during my freshman year, which was really hard. I wasn’t even asked to homecoming that year. I was friends with some juniors and seniors though so I went to homecoming with a friend of mine, Leo (junior). Homecoming was September 26, 2009. That was the night I met Jairo. When we went to dinner before homecoming I went with one of my drill teammates, Carina (senior). Also there was Jairo (even though he didn’t go to the dance) and Jairo’s cousin with her date. I was instantly attracted to Jairo and he flirted with me throughout dinner. But Jairo didn’t go to the dance (or the school at the time). So I only hung out with my friend Carina. It honestly wasn’t even like Leo was my homecoming date. He didn’t formally ask me, he didn’t buy me a corsage, he didn’t pay for my dinner, and we didn’t get pictures taken at the dance. But I didn’t mind, I had a ton of fun hanging out with other friends. It was an awesome night but I couldn’t stop thinking about Jairo. The trouble was, I had no way of getting his number. No one from my homecoming group would give it to me because they felt bad for Leo since he and Jairo were friends. Even though I never had any type of feelings for Leo. He was only ever a friend and I made that very clear.

Anyways I ended up asking my friend McKaylee’s (junior) boyfriend Nicky (senior) to help me get Jairo’s number. So I was technically the one who pursued Jairo. Well as soon as we started talking, we never stopped. We texted all the time and talked on the phone until two in the morning, even when I had to be up at 5 am for drill practice. Jairo was a junior and I was a freshman. He was 16 the first time we met and he turned 17 the next month. I was 14 when we met. In October of 2009 Jairo started going to Juan Diego. We started hanging out more and we were practically inseparable. I remember looking forward to seeing him in the hallways between classes. Sometimes we would talk in the hallways after school for close to an hour while my mom waited to pick me up. We both had little brothers in third grade at the time so we would walk over to the elementary school together to pick them up. I still remember our first kiss was by the elementary school doors after we picked up our brothers and were saying goodbye. It was so unexpected, Jairo just leaned over and kissed me and then he smiled at me and walked away. I felt like I was walking on a cloud after that. I had the biggest crush on him and knowing he felt the same way about me made me feel so good. After that kiss we didn’t kiss again for awhile, we just kept talking and hanging out for about a month.

Then on December 4, 2009 Jairo asked me to be his girlfriend. We had gone on a date to see a movie and when the movie was over he turned to me and said: “will you be my girlfriend?” It was so unexpected but of course I said yes. I was head over heels for this boy. Jairo was definitely the bad boy type. That’s why I was attracted to him. He was older, he could drive, he was cool. I felt cool being around him. Well being teenagers and thinking we were invincible we didn’t make the best choices after that. About a month after we officially started dating I ended up losing my virginity to Jairo. (Looking back I regret this decision a lot, I wish we would have waited.) It was the third time that we had sex that I ended up getting pregnant. I got pregnant on January 3, 2010. We were using a cheap condom and it ended up breaking. I was so worried I would get pregnant. I told my mom the same day and she was devastated. She was so disappointed in me. But she went and bought me the morning after pill. I took the pill within 12 hours of having sex. Then the next day my mom took me to Planned Parenthood where I took a pregnancy test (that was negative) and began birth control pills. I also got a blood pregnancy test done on January 13, 2010 and that came back negative. So we thought we were in the clear.

After that one time Jairo and I were very careful. I never missed a birth control pill and we still used condoms. In fact we hardly had sex at all after the scare. I had heard so many girls say that they had unprotected sex for months, even years with their boyfriends and they never got pregnant. Some of these same girls swore by the morning after pill. They had taken it once or twice when they had a scare and they never got pregnant. So I hoped that since it was just one time and I took the morning after pill, I wouldn’t get pregnant. But I did. It literally took one time having unprotected sex and I got pregnant. I was shocked that the morning after pill didn’t work. But let me tell you why it didn’t. (This is what my doctor told me.) The pill works by not allowing your ovaries to release an egg. This way even if there are sperm in your uterus, an egg will not be released therefore it cannot be fertilized. Well the pill can’t do anything if the egg has already dropped. It just so happened that my egg had already dropped by the time I took the pill. So it was already too late.