Ex-Men Tuesday: My High School Sweetheart...

I hadn't planned on writing about Mitch because I had talked about him in a couple of other posts but Jake and I were talking about him this past week-end and I decided then he would be the one. Mitch Whitten.....were do I begin? Well, let's start with how we met. Mitch and I went to the same church (Lakeview Baptist Church in Vermilion). He had been going there he whole life. I started going in the 6th grade with my friend Stephanie. Her mom would come and pick me up every Sunday morning. I LOVED going to church. I was in the youth group and basically we all sat in the same place, together, in the sanctuary, each week. When I was in the 8th grade my friends started to notice Mitch. He was much older and very funny. VERY FUNNY. He would sit in front of us and we would look at his butt and rate how it looked in the pants he was wearing each week. He wasn't the only butt we looked at... I know it sounds so awful but really in 8th grade it was very innocent. We were being goofy more than anything. Several of my friends had crushes on him. During my first week of high school Mitch wrote ME a note on the back of a tithe envelope during church and handed it to me. I still have it in a scrapbook I made in High School....this is what it said.

"Delilah, Hey babe, what's up? Not a whole lot here! I was wondering if you'd like to go out or something sometime. I wasn't going to ask cause I didn't know if your parents would let you go out with an 18 year old. But I figured I'd try anyway! Well see you later W/B tonight. Love, Mitch"

I was 14. I was barely 14. My friends Meredith and Debbie convinced me he was joking around. They both had crushes on him, too. I decided not to write him back and just ignore it. Things are a little fuzzy after that...I don't actually remember how we ended up going out. I think I ran into him at the Vermilion Festival of the Fish a.k.a. The Fish Festival. That is in June. I had just turned 15. He was well on his way to 19. He asked me to go to a graduation party that was for this girl from our church. I lied to my parents and told them Mitch was 17 and would be turning 18 in October. He had failed a grade somewhere along the line so he was going to be a senior and I was going to be a sophomore. It didn't seem that bad. My parents discussed it and decided to let me go. So he came to pick me up in his blue 69 Chevelle with the racing stripes down the middle. I don't remember a lot about the date except. We were in the car for approximately 2 minutes when he popped a cassette in the tape deck. "I want your sex" was on the tape. I swear to this day, he had it planned. Parents take note...DO NOT LET YOUR DAUGHTERS DATE OLDER BOYS. THEY DATE YOUNGER GIRLS FOR A REASON! I don't even think we kissed for like a month. Like I said some details are fuzzy. A couple of weeks after Mitch and I decided we were "going together" I went on vacation. When I got back this anonymous girl called me on the phone and said she had sex with my boyfriend. I ended up figuring out who it was and I thanked her for the info but never believed her. Maybe I did and just didn't care. Pretty much my sophomore, junior and senior years were all about Mitch. I didn't really get involved in sports (I did run track my sophomore year), I didn't go to school dances (why would I? My boyfriend was too old to get in), I only hung out with the kids from my friends from church because they all knew Mitch. When I'd go on family vacations I would spend my time writing 10 page letters to Mitch (wouldn't you like to see those on a web-site some day?) He lied to me everyday and cheated on me tons of times. The summer before me senior year I was riding in his Ranger. I looked down on the seat and found this 2 foot long hair. He told me some big long story but in the end he had been messing around with this girl he lived across the street from. She was very trashy. We broke up and I felt like my heart had been ripped out and stomped on. I cried and cried for two weeks or so. Then he sent me flowers and wrote me a letter. Oh, and he painted the graffiti wall in Vermilion. It was this wall anyone could paint messages on. People would paint huge birthday signs and stuff like that. He wrote "Delilah, I love you, I need you, I want you, I can't live with out you!" Gag gag gag. I fell for it. When I started my senior year our relationship was rocky to say the least. I was starting to really resent Mitch but I couldn't let go. I told him I wanted to date other people. I went out with Matt Gratton (one of the same guys who sent me roses when I was dating Jake). I remember being at Burger King (where everyone hung out) when Mitch and Matt got into a fight over me. I was so embarrassed that I cried and went home. I didn't talk to either of them for a while.
By February I was really just done with Mitch. I was sick of his lies and he was on a series fast track to nowhere. I was making plans to go to college. He was very against it. This one day he was trying to get me to lie to my parents and say I was staying the night with this girl (I barely knew her, my mom worked with her, and Mitch was friends with her boyfriend) so, he we could stay the night together. I said no. He kept pushing me. We had plans to go see the Doors movie. It was opening night. He decided he didn't want to go because he was pouting. I told him if he didn't go he wouldn't have a girlfriend the next day. I meant it. He was shocked when he called the next day and I told him I was done. That was our last break up. Nothing like breaking up with your long term boyfriend a month and half before your senior prom! He pretty much left me alone for a while. I made him give me back every note, card, letter or anything I had ever written him. He gave me a bag of all the stuff. I gave it to Stephanie for safe keeping. We agreed in one year (to the date) we would have a sleep over and read all the mushy stuff I wrote. We did it. While we were going through the letters I found two notes from other girls. Two girls he had "been" with, if you know what I mean. Two girls I didn't know about before. What a jerk!!! At some point I dated this guy he was friends with...Mitch was so upset he moved to Colorado. It just so happened some guy he knew had moved there and was home visiting his folks. He asked Mitch he wanted to go and Mitch said he had to get away. We kept in touch for many years. I made the mistake of letting him kiss me once. He wrote me a three page letter about how he couldn't wait to come back to Ohio so he could spend the night with me. Apparently he forgot why we broke up in the first place. So I didn't talk to him for another couple of years. Then, he was supposed to come to my sister's wedding in 97. We had talked and it was all planned out. I called him to see when he'd be flying in and his father (who is a preacher, by the way) answered the phone. He wasn't very friendly (never really was) and told me Mitch was getting married. He decided to marry his room-mate. A girl I had spoken with in the past that had told me Mitch still loved me and carried pics of me in his wallet. He called me a couple of years later. Married. A father to a little red-headed girl. He told me had a dream about me. We were married in the dream. That was the last time we talked. As far as I know, he still lives in Colorado. Occasionally someone will tell me they ran into him in Vermilion. He must still visit. So that is that. Mitch in a nutshell.

Have a good one.