I actually got along with most people pretty easily. I have always liked meeting new people and learning about other people, other cultures, etc. Even kids who were nasty to me at school, if I saw them in public when they weren't with a group of friends, most of them were nice to me. It was just that I wasn't popular, and when you are in front of your friends, you have to look cool, and being nice to the unpopular girl is not "cool". My brother's friends were all from different places and they didn't know me, so it was easy to get along with them. They weren't worried about reputations or image or anything.
The only reason I stayed with the boyfriend so long was to show my mother that she didn't get to call the shots in my life. She had tried to tell me I wasn't allowed to date, and that I didn't have a choice about what religion I was because she had already chosen for me, and that she had not given me permission to be engaged so I was not getting married. I didn't WANT to be engaged to him...he never even asked me, just decided we were because HE wanted to marry me. But I felt cornered...both people were telling me what I was going to do and not giving me a vote, but I could put off things like wedding plans, and I didn't ever have to sign for a marriage license. So the more pressing issue was my mom, and I couldn't end the engagement without my mom thinking it was because she told me to. So I HAD to go against her to establish my autonomy, and that, unfortunately, meant going along with the engagement for a while until I could figure out a way out of it. I wish I had been more brave....I didn't want to hurt his feelings. The whole thing started with him telling me he didn't think my boyfriend deserved me, and that I could do better. I was completely in love with my boyfriend and rather in denial about the fact that he obviously didn't feel as strongly about me. So I simply said "Who is better than Bryan??" and he said "You could have me." And the whole problem with that is that I in no way felt he was better than Bryan. But SAYING that to him when he was obviously convinced that he was superior would have crushed him. I remember saying "I'm flattered", and I THOUGHT I had also added a "but..." after that, explaining that I loved Bryan and was looking forward to us finally living in the same town when we got to college so we could actually see each other and go on dates, but somehow he heard "I'm flattered" as "Yes, please" and didn't hear anything I may have said after that. And now I no longer remember if I said that before or after he said I could have him. He obviously thought I was agreeing with him that he was better, and he assumed that it meant I was breaking up with Bryan to be with him. And then later, he did the same thing with engagement, where he never asked me, just said he promised a ring someday, and that he hoped I'd be his wife. I didn't actually say ANYTHING to that because I remembered the "flattered" conversation and didn't want to repeat the mistake again. I couldn't think of a response that wouldn't either get his hopes up or absolutely devastate him. So I just remained silent and figured if he ever did come with a ring, I could say no. I didn't believe that day would ever come....we had only been dating for like 2 months at that point...much too soon at 18 to be thinking about marriage. I thought he'd figure out that we weren't a match and the proposal would never come. I never could have forseen that he considered that as the proposal and my silence as a "yes". And that's how I ended up engaged for 4 years to a guy I never even wanted to date. Because I was a coward and didn't know how to stand up for myself and say "No, this isn't what I want" because I wanted everyone to like me, so I just went along with things. I have raised E from the time she was LITTLE to be bricks over the head clear with boys. I've told her all her life that "Boys don't do subtle". You have to be super clear and not leave anything to interpretation. And she still ended up having a boy in high school that still thinks they were dating even though he never asked her out and she had said more than once that she didn't want a relationship because she was too busy with school and such to have time for dating. Her friend had told her that the guy liked her and was planning to ask her out, so she said it a few times when they were just talking at school. And eventually he got mad that she wasn't spending enough time with him, and she found out years later from a mutual friend that the guy totally thought they were a couple. The mutual friend asked E if the two had been dating and she said no, they were just friends, and the friend said "Oh...he swore you were his girlfriend."
Can you say "delusional"?
Wow....there's no way my mom wouldn't have had a ton of rules for me if I'd lived with her even at 23! She told me when I was a senior in high school that she was going to move to Laramie so I could live with her while I was in college. I told her that she could move to Laramie, but I wasn't going to live with her. I told her I wanted to live in the dorms so I could keep up with all the campus activities and such, but really it was because I knew if I lived with my mom, I'd have the same rules I had since junior high, and I figured it would be really embarassing to tell my friends in COLLEGE "Sorry, I can't go to the movies with you. My curfew is dark." I wanted to live in the dorms so I could actually LIVE and not have a curfew, or restrictions on where I was allowed to go and with whom. And even with my mom 200 miles away, she still tried to make rules for me and whenever she visited, she'd go through my checkbook, my mail, listen to my phone messages while I was out of the room. I did NOT want to live with her anymore.
High school is just kind of....ugh. I guess no one gets through completely unscathed without some friend issues or relationship issues. I had one friend who had moved to town our sophomore year. She was placed in foster care there when she got pregnant at 15. Being a small town and very cliquey, it was kind of hard to break into established friend groups, and being pregnant was a way of ensuring that you were a pariah. But, being a pariah myself and also believing in the golden rule, I tried to be the person I would have wanted as a friend if it were me. She had some mental health issues, looking back. She told a lot of "Stories" and it was pretty obvious that they were lies...like, she told me she fell out of a 3rd story window at 2 and instinctively knew to tuck her head, so she wasn't injured at all. She told me that she had competed in ice skating since she was a toddler, because I had gone skating with my brother on the weekend and complained about the really OLD skates that had lost any ankle support they had ever had. (They had been my mom's when she was young....she grew up in the 50s) She told me that her grandfather was a mechanic and had taught her everything he knew about cars, but when I reminded her to "change the air from winter to summer air" she said completely seriously that she wouldn't forget....it only takes a switch of the button. She told me that she had played Sandy in her junior high's production of Grease in Rock Springs, which is WAY bigger than the town I lived in. THere were a LOT of talented singers there, and this girl could not carry a tune in a bushel basket....there is NO way she played Sandy unless it was the dog from Annie, for which she wouldn't need to sing. But anyway, I was the only person who was nice to her until she made friends with some freshmen....we were seniors by that point. But she had told me in the Summer that she wanted to learn to be more like me. That I was tactful and kind and patient, and she wanted to work on those qualities. She wanted to spend more time with me....so she joined every extra-curricular I was in. Except, she didn't just join...she decided she needed to be BETTER than me at all of them. So then she was ticked off when I got the part of Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, and she got a non-singing part. She had told me she was going to be Eliza, because it was time someone else got the lead. She ran for student council, just because I had been class secretary every year. She didn't get elected and was ticked that I kept my position. She joined speech and debate and demanded that she be president of our team, even though it was her 1st year and my 4th, and got mad that I was winning trophies and she was placing at the bottom of her event. She offered to tally points to send in to the National Forensic League and then just never sent them in. I would have double rubied. (It's one of the highest distinctions they have. You get points based on your results in each round, making semis and finals, etc. So every time you place 1st in a round, you get so many points. I had sapphire and emerald I think? and then there's ruby, and double ruby) Then there was a speech contest run by American Legion, and it was an 8 Minute prepared speech and then a 3 minute impromptu about one of the amendments of the constitution....probably from the bill of rights, but I don't remember. I had won the VFW speech contest the year before, so I sort of just revamped my speech from that, turning it from "My committment to America" to "My committment to the Constitution". I had to make it longer, because VFW was only 5 minutes. So I rewrote it. This girl told me she wasn't going to prepare a speech at all. She was going to BS for 8 minutes and she was going to beat me anyway, and then everyone would see she was a better speaker than me. I told her quite nicely "Good for you. Good luck." and then I won and she refused to shake my hand and she walked out of the room without thanking the judges or shaking their hands and slammed the door. The judges all had this shocked look...they had no idea what had just happened...they just saw me put my hand out, and they saw her push past me and slam the door. The other 2 guys in the contest congratulated me, shook the judges' hands...no one knew why she was so upset. So we ended up not being friends anymore. She just got more and more angry every time I achieved something and she didn't. She was SO good at things like crocheting and knitting, sewing, etc...if she had joined 4H or FHA instead of speech and debate and theater, she could have really done well. But she was more focused on beating me than she was on finding something she loved and was good at. I saw her once when I was home for a break and she acted like she was so happy to see me, like she HADN'T tried to orchestrate my downfall our entire senior year. Maybe she really didn't remember. But my senior year was HARD....being lonely because all my friends were gone or had started hanging out with other people, and then this girl being a total witch, my boyfriend wasn't writing to me anymore and I didn't know if he just wanted to break up with me or if he just wasn't a good letter writer...I think I was probably more than a little messed up that year.
has me leaning towards ulcerative colitis but we'll see what the pro has to say.
weren't open yet and I just wanted to wait until the weather is reliably warmer. We rebooked for the first week of May. The cherry trees are supposed to peak this weekend and the hotels are just $$$. I got to go the past two years, anyway.
