These many years working in the horse industry have been... challenging... exciting... rewarding... and sometimes disheartening.
I’ve thrown myself into my work for many years at this point to try my best to “make it.” I can happily say that I FINALLLLY feel like I’m in the right place for me job wise. THANK GOD!!! It only took 7 years, 9 different jobs, and countless moves... and that is only after having started working in the horse industry. This is a TOUGH business to get into unless you have at least some financial backing to help you get through the first few years. Because I didn’t have that and I have done everything for myself I never got the opportunity of being a working student or really be strictly a trainer because I have not been in a financial position to do so. The first few years it was really discouraging because as much as I so loved working around the horses I desperately wanted to be riding more and doing that for a living. But, we all need to make the best of the situation the universe throws our way. So, that’s exactly what I’ve done. I’ve managed to catch rides when and where I’ve been able to and have worked my ass off, sometimes while getting paid next to nothing. Now I can say that I’m making enough money where I actually feel like I might be able to start a savings account (WHAT A CONCEPT!?!!). I might ACTUALLY be able to get health insurance... ya know, things that adults do... haha
I think that because I’m finally starting to feel more secure in my financial stability and job security and such I’ve starting really throwing myself into wanting to find a relationship... I want to have someone who I can share in my successes, failures, happy and sad times. Now, save for the last probably year and half, I never cared a ton about finding a relationship. I have been on dating sites since I moved to Florida in 2011 just to see what was out there... but never took it super seriously. Until about 2 years ago when I came back down to Florida, having been away for almost 2 years, I decided for whatever reason that I really really wanted to try to find someone to be with. Let me tell you... it has been one of the MOST grueling processes I’ve ever dealt with. The amount of shit people you meet online is truly unbelievable... trust me... half of my friends can’t believe the stories I tell them from my online dating adventures. I’ve been told that I need to write a book about all of them. I think the other part of the reason why I’ve been so adamant about trying to find a relationship is because I see a lot of my very close friends getting married, or at the very least having solid long term relationships. Maybe its envy... maybe its a little jealousy... either way its been a really solid motivator for me... show me something I want that I don’t have and I will try my hardest to get it. This may be where I’m going wrong.
I’ve always been a believer that the universe works in mysterious ways but things happen for a reason. People come in and out of our lives because they are meant to be there. And now I’m finally at a point where I’m going to let the universe do its thing when it comes to me finding love. I’m done searching for it. I literally CAN’T physically do it anymore. It’s been an exhausting, emotional, and draining process to constantly be on the hunt for love.
In the last two years I’ve actually dated a few different guys. All of those experiences have taught me more about what I’m looking for exactly. Now... some people have told me that my standards are too high and that’s why I can’t “hold down a man.” I think that is complete and udder bullshit. We all deserve THE BEST. The best can mean very different things to everyone, but we deserve what we believe is the best. Nothing less.
I’m going to share a couple dating experiences I’ve had in the last couple years (leaving out names) to give examples of the things I’ve been dealing with. And maybe some people can relate.
First real meaningful “relationship” (if you can really call it that) I had when I came back down to Florida was with this guy who lived relatively close... the first time I met him we had a good time. He wasn’t the most attractive guy, but wasn’t terrible. But he made me laugh... was playful... fun. We went out a bunch of times... almost a full month before we got intimate at all. During that month we had SO much fun. We had one little hiccup in that time period where he had been talking to another girl before he and I started seeing each other and he lied to me about going to see her and I found out about it by seeing pictures of them on facebook... well needless to say I got pissed... yelled at him... gave him hell for it. Now guys... PSA for you: if you’re going to mess around on a chick (NOT RECOMMENDED) at least be smart enough to not have pictures of you and said other chick on fucking facebook!!! how stupid can you be?!?!
Anyway, I chose to keep seeing him. I always felt good about myself around him. I had no reason to not feel that way... he was very touchy feely in public which is not usually what I’m into, but went with it for the most part. Things seemed to go well until we started being intimate... which seemed odd to me... well maybe another month or so went by... we had a good time... or so I thought. I can’t remember how it got brought up, but at one point I was supposed to be going to spend the night at his place and had left my place and he called and said it wouldn’t be a good night.. I was confused... and somehow he had decided that he was a little unsure of things or something... and then he said something along the lines of being uncomfortable with my weight, but “maybe we could start going to the gym together to work on it.” Now... I’m not some skinny chick and never have been... but at that point I was actually in relatively good shape AND not only that... if this had been an issue don’t you think he would’ve known that from the beginning?? WELLLLL needless to say I lost my shit on him. HOW DARE HE?!?! I was not some problem for him to fix. I never in my life would ask someone to change for me so why did anyone have the right, after only a couple months mind you, to ask me to change for them. If you can’t like me for me then fuck off.
Now he came into my life again on and off after that a couple times over the next few months... none of which were good experiences... but I ended up finding out that he had been cheating on me the whole time... should’ve known after the first time he lied right?? I had given him the benefit of the doubt that first time... well maybe I shouldn’t have... lesson #1. Did I learn?? of course not.
Second guy... started talking to him a lot... but then every time I asked him to hang out he was conveniently unavailable. It seemed odd because he seemed really into me. Well... he then told me that he still lived with his ex girlfriend... that she had cheated on him but they were still living together because of a lease situation... ok fine.. goodbye.. get your shit figured out and then we can hang out. Needless to say he never got his shit figured out... but got back with the ex. BUT! still, to this day, contacts me... *rolls eyes* annoying....
Third guy.... literally the nicest guy I’ve met online ever. Had the most going for him. Suuuuuper hard worker. To the tune of barely able to hang out because he was always busy. I was understanding though because I also was ALWAYS busy working... so we made time like twice maybe three times in the first two months of talking. He was terrible though about texting or replying back to any messages. Now I don’t know if that’s because he just wasn’t that interested or if he legitimately was insanely busy... but it just seemed odd.... and suuper annoying. Hey guys! here’s another PSA for you: when a girl texts you and you don’t reply back at least within the same day it’s really fucking annoying. It literally takes two seconds to send a text... even if its just to say you’re busy and will get back to them later... SAY SOMETHING!
So anyway... after him not responding and us not really having time to hang out and him seeming to make up excuses of him traveling a lot or whatever it just seemed odd... so I stopped talking to him for a couple months... and then one drunk night (shocker) I texted him. He was really sweet and apologetic for what had happened before and told me he was definitely still interested in seeing me if I wanted to. So we hung out a few more times... again... super sporadically... but it was better than before. However... I had known the guy for like more than half a year at this point and he still hadn’t even tried to kiss me yet... just seemed odd.... anyway. I had to go away for the summer... but one of the last times we saw each other before I was leaving he finally kissed me... and I will always remember that night because it was literally one of the most perfect first kisses I’ve ever had... so it was sad that I was leaving, but kept in touch with him and when I came back briefly at the end of summer we planned to hang out. Getting together with him when I was back though seemed to be difficult.. he again kept coming up with reasons why it wasn’t going to work. Finally we locked down a night to hang out... well I ended up spending the night with him and had a great time with him... or so I thought. I was optimistic about it. Well... after about three to four days he stopped responding to me. again. at that point I was done. it was unfortunate because he was one I really had hope for and really liked... but oh well... on to the next right??
Meanwhile... while I was in North Carolina for the summer I was also still online trying to see what was around up there because my friend who I had been staying with had convinced me that guys up there were different and better.. blah blah blah.. what I will say is guys are certainly less interested in just hooking up typically up there but there are definitely still the few that need to be weeded out. Anyway... I met this guy... who I wasn’t really sure about at first... we started talking and seemed to click right away... and then he told me that he did some shady things... had guns (which may not seem like such a big deal to some, BUT having not grown up around guns its just not something I’m super comfortable with)... and just some things that normally I wouldn’t really be into. BUT keeping an open mind I kept talking to him. Now, normally I NEVER let guys call me baby, babe, hun, or any other stupid pet name... this guy called me babe and it seemed normal and not uncomfortable at all... which was odd to me... So anyway. We met up at a sushi place and then went and hung out at his place. He had a good job at the time and regardless of the other shit he seemed like a really genuine guy. So we continued hanging out and I did tell him that I traveled a lot for work and whatnot...and I wasn’t looking to jump into anything and he seemed to feel the same way, but said that he was ok with distance because it’d make him happier to see me when he actually got to... blah blah blah... saying all the right things. I wasn’t expecting things to move as quickly as they did with him, but again... tried to just go with it and be open minded. I felt more comfortable around him than I had around anyone in...i don’t even know how long...
So we continued to hang out and then I had to go to Kentucky for a couple weeks. He gave me his sweatshirt and was all “i’ll miss you” so needless to say... at that point, I was pretty smitten. Well... I’m in kentucky for a few days and hadn’t heard much from him. When I finally did, he called me and told me he’s not ready for a relationship and how he was still in love with his ex and really messed up from that relationship. I told him that I still wanted to see him and see where things went if he wanted that. He seemed ok with it as long as we weren’t serious. At the same time I was still talking to guy #3 that I was REALLY interested in. So as much as I wanted to see where things went with this guy I was ok with not making things super serious right away.
Well... when I got back from Kentucky everything went kind of downhill... he ended up getting laid off... and turns out he had a reaallll serious drinking problem, which turned worse when he lost his job.... the shady things he was doing got a bit shadier.... and it just seemed like a terrible situation. And then there’s me... well maybe he’ll snap out of... this is just a slew of bad turns. I sometimes think that I’m just an idiot. The other part of me was trying to be the nice person and trying to be there for him and wanting to help him. I’ve been told that I might be a “fixer.” I don’t know if I am or not... but I do know that I enjoy helping people.
So anyway, I did a lot of traveling but always came back and would spend a lot of time with him. I probably spent more nights with him than I did where I lived. I also had a situation come up with my living situation and he was super nice and told me I could stay with him if I needed to, however, I wasn’t sure I was ok with that mostly because there had been a few incidents that had made me uncomfortable so living together was not necessarily something I wanted to do. I wanted to have a place of my own just in case I needed or wanted to leave.
It was very confusing to me because he had told me many times how much his parents would like me... he’d introduced me to a bunch of his friends... he would do cutesy things like dance around the house with me.. sing to me... just cute things that, ya know, couples do. He never wanted me to pay for anything. He even told me he loved me multiple times... which most of the time I tried to ignore it.... wasn’t sure if it was the booze talking or actually him, and I certainly wasn’t there yet. He still was constantly telling me how bad he was for me and that I shouldn’t like him, but at the same point would tell me how he wanted me to come over. Talk about head games...
Well then I went up north for almost three weeks at the end of October. He called me multiple times and told me how much he missed me and wished I was there. I went back to see him on my way back through to Florida and decided I needed to be very up front and ask him if he wanted to do this for real or not because I was going to Florida for months and would need to know that we’d be in consistent communication and that there would be effort on both sides to see each other. Well, after all of that, he told me he would never be ok with doing long distance... even though that’s not what he said to me to begin with... but that he didn’t want anything to change between us. Ok... well you can’t have it both ways. When I left, I left his sweatshirt and didn’t really think I’d ever hear from him again. Well... I heard from him that night and he told me he was going into a rehab program, which I told him was a great idea, but he wouldn’t be able to talk to me for awhile. I told him I understood and would support him any way I could.
After a few weeks of being in Florida and having not heard from him, I had just gotten back from my cruise and he called me... I was shocked because I didn’t think I’d hear from him at all for the next couple months. Apparently the program was shit and it was a shithole to stay there. So he made the decision to move to his godmother’s house. Away from NC. I thought that would be a great opportunity for him to get out of the habits and to start fresh. I was sad about it because it meant I wouldn’t get to spend as much time with him next summer when I head back to NC, but he definitely needed to do something good for his life and I was in no position to say anything different. He had talked about it with me a little prior to then that it might be a possibility but he hadn’t ever finalized anything. So over the next few weeks I heard from him sporadically... which I knew he was busy getting shit together and organized. Well before christmas I heard from him a couple times after he had moved and told me how much he missed me and wished I could go visit and whatever. The crazy thing was that I was SERIOUSLY considering going to visit him up there. So then that last thing I heard from him was after I had texted him Merry Christmas... and he said the same back. After that I had texted him a few times and didn’t hear anything back.. I was working NYE so I tried to call him before I went out and he didn’t answer. I left him a nice message, and then went to work. I came home the next morning and was browsing facebook before going to sleep and what did I find?? A bunch of pictures of him with this chick... and then later that day they were in a relationship. I felt broken. I’ve never felt like that before. Ever. There were so many different emotions. I was SOO sad... and SOOOOOOO angry.... and so confused. I just spent the last 5+ months with this guy who had been telling me that he loved me but couldn’t be in a relationship because he wasn’t over his ex and it wouldn’t be fair to me and then all of a sudden after ignoring me for two weeks he’s in a relationship?? Just thinking about it even now makes me furious. Needless to say... I might have lost my shit on him via text, which may not have been smart... but whatever... don’t messed with a girl scorned hah. We ended our heated discussion with him telling me he still cared a lot about me and still wanted to be friends. I just couldn’t. So I unfriended him on facebook and did my best to forget about him...
So I had been talking to a couple guys online since I’d been back in Florida since he had told me that he couldn’t do long distance. Right before Christmas I started talking to guy #5... he lived about an hour away from where I am so I already knew that was going to be kind of a stretch trying to get together. But he seemed to want to make it work out so I was up for whatever... again... trying to be open to possibilities.
One of my “things” that is kind of a deal breaker for me is a dude with bad teeth... I don’t know why its SUCH a big deal for me... but it is. So the first time I met this dude that’s probably the first thing I noticed. I wasn’t really that into him... he seemed very serious, but he was very nice. Texted every day. Responded in a pretty timely fashion. Was willing to drive all the way here to meet me. Paid. Worked with animals and was very passionate about what he did. So as much as I didn’t like the teeth situation I chose to look past that. We went out a handful of times.. held hands at the movies... never kissed... but he seemed to want to take things at a respectable pace. Which I was fine with. He seemed like a pretty stand up guy.
Well about two weeks ago, he had told me that he had some big financial issue come up but didn’t go into details. I didn’t really expect him to since we’d only been seeing each other a couple weeks. But so I offered to drive up there and do things that didn’t cost money... he would either bail, or just come up with reasons why he didn’t want it to happen. It just seemed odd. But I told myself that he was just dealing with shit and it would pass. After a few times of him bailing though with no notice I started getting pissy about it. He knew my schedule and when I was available and just didn’t even try. SO the other day he had finally said we would do something after he was done with work. I was pleasantly surprised. The day came and I had texted him and just asked him to let me know the game plan of when and where to meet. Nothing. And here’s the thing... he has an iphone so it goes through as imessage... and he had his read receipts on so I could tell when he read my messages. But this morning they weren’t even going through as imessages... they were going through as normal texts. I thought that was odd, but we also had some CRAZY storms the night before so I didn’t know if he just had lost service or something.. idk... I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt. So I sent him a facebook message hoping maybe he’d see that. Well as you probably know on messenger you can see when people see the messages... well it said he’d seen my messages and was not responding... I got so mad... and basically told him I was done at that point. Well at about 8pm that night I got a message from his fb saying “he’s not ignoring you, he’s in jail”
pretty sure that was my exact reaction in message from also... so turns out he was in jail... The person I was talking to was his girlfriend...yep, you heard that right! His girlfriend... who he’s apparently been with since 2014. Just kill me, right? Well just wait, it gets better... can you imagine? Well apparently she was also talking to another girl who he’d also been seeing...who then also messaged me... It was really just a shit show. So the gf wouldn’t tell me what he was in jail for... so my friend and I started doing some googling. Found out it was for an out of county warrant... which could be for anything right? could be small... and then we saw that his bond was for 10k!! That is not some small offense.... So all that happens. I wanted to give him a chance to explain himself for some reason... part of me just wanted to give him more shit and to tell him off instead of just not talking to him anymore and giving him that satisfaction. Again... don’t messed with a woman scorned... haha
So I sent him a text asking him if he wanted to explain himself or if his girlfriend had told me all I needed to know. He didn’t respond until later the next day...saying he didn’t have a girlfriend and wasn’t seeing anyone else... to which I replied, “what about *other girl’s name*? heard from her last night too... you aren’t seeing her either right??” he said he was... fucking dirtbag... and then told me to leave him alone. I told him to have fun playing mind games with all these girls but I wouldn’t be part of it anymore... and then he said “bye...stop messing with my life”
HOW DARE YOU!?!?!? ME messing with YOUR life?!?!?! OH HELLLLLLLLL NAHH.
So I basically said that to him in maybe a few more words... and was done with him.
With all of these things I’ve decided to swear off online dating... and potentially dating in general for awhile.. I’m pretty over men at this point. I just feel like I’ve had some really terrible luck... And those were only the ones that I met multiple times.... don’t even get me started on the in betweens that I met once or never met at all... The point is ONLINE DATING BLOWS!!!!!!
I’ve decide that I’m going to focus on myself right now. I’m getting a gym membership. I’m focusing hard on working. I want to make my place here more homey. I need to figure out my car situation. I need to find a place to live for the summer in NC. SOOO that is what I’m going to do.
I went today to my acupuncturist who, as soon as she saw me could tell I wasn’t right... she immediately asked if I was stressed and said she could tell I was carrying it all in my shoulders... she’s amazing btw. haha. So she reset me a little bit today and just helped me refocus.
I plan to focus on all the positive in my life. Its so easy to get caught up in the negative. I am going to try hard to recognize at least 10 things per day that I am grateful for. I’m going to start writing again, be it on here or in my actual journal. I used to journal ALLLLL the time and I haven’t in SOOO long. I’ve lost sight of that. I would also really like to have music back in my life. Like real music... I want to sing again.... I want to spend more time listening to music and doing productive things rather than sitting around watching movies or binge watching netflix. Its so easy to do those things. Now that I’m happy in my job and everything I have time to start challenging myself again. :)
anyway. Thank you for reading. I know it was long and personal.