I just told a friend the other day my current love life dilemma, which involves 4 different people, some from my past, but who have all contributed to why I consider my love life all fucked up. To keep them all straight, I had decided to give them all nicknames to help my friends associate who they are to me. Throughout this blog, I hope to detail each one and name their defining characteristics and actions that led to me being who I am today. Maybe Ill find some common traits that I can flag. I also hope to relate to many of you, as the events of my love life are certainly no strangers to the rest of the world. I should tell you about me first though because I’m pretty cool.
I’m not from around here and I know you don’t know where around here is but it’s not important. What’s important to note is that my family and friends are my everything, leading to loyalty being my greatest asset and weakness, all in the same. My parents got divorced when I was 12. Shitty thing #1 to happen to me. But I must preface...my parents are two of the most amazing people I have met. My dad is the hardest working man I know with a heart of gold and that takes pride in telling people that I am “my father’s daughter”. My mom is the strongest woman I know, never needing anything or anyone and who taught me to be independent, but also gentle and forgiving. My older brother was away at college when this went down and my younger sister was too young to really understand the dynamics. Yes, I am the middle child and I’m not sure we’re as fucked up because of that as people like to blame, but it can present problems some don’t have to deal with. In hindsight, my parents should have sat us (at least my sister and I) down together, all 4 of us, and explained that “Mom and Dad wouldn’t be together anymore, but we we’re still a family”. Not at all how it went for me. I was laying on my couch in our basement watching TV and my mom came downstairs and sat on the edge of the couch. Didn’t ask me to sit up, mute the TV, etc...I can’t remember her exact words, but the message was that her and my dad didn’t love each other anymore and they were getting a divorce. In classic Younger Me fashion, I just said okay without making any eye contact and went back to watching TV and my mom went back upstairs. Knowing myself now, that’s how I deal with conflict until I can fully process it. It was sometime after that that my dad came downstairs and sat in the same spot as my mom and asked how I was doing. I shrugged my shoulders (I wasn’t one for words at this age, I often shrugged my shoulders when asked a question like I couldn’t be bothered) and my dad started crying. He’s always been an emotional guy, so I wasn’t surprised. I started crying too because I was starting to process what is happening and my dad reached down and hugged me. Again, I couldn’t be bothered to sit up and hug him, but I just laid there and cried. They seemed like happy, normal parents, but I’ve certainly learned as I’ve gotten older that things are not what they seem on the outside.
So I trudge through junior high with this event lingering, while also dealing with being a young teen, being overweight, having mental health issues that my parents tried every answer in the book to heal, being made fun of consistently by people I still have not forgiven to this day (remember how loyal I am? That means I have a hard time forgiving) and not facing this event head on. Next thing I knew, my dad’s stuff was all gone and I found the divorce papers on the stove one day after school when no one was home. I’m nosy, so I obviously flipped through them and seeing my name accompanied by all those legal terms made me very uncomfortable. Balance that with having to be the middle man between your two parents because you’re the only child that can and God forbid they actually speak to each other, bouncing between apartments with my dad, and simply growing up. But life goes on...
I enter high school in the fall of 2003, still overweight, still struggling with mental health and my overall image, but learning to go my own way. I’m an above-average basketball player, but am not accepted as a “friend” to the older girls on the team. They made fun of me a lot which was shitty. I recognize that now as someone who worked in a high school for 4 years and who is now in Higher Education. I don’t know if they were jealous or didn’t think I belonged there or thought I was weird....but they were not accepting of me on their team. I learned to be reserved and quiet, but still grind and get the work done, but I didn’t want to cause any ruckus among anyone, ever.
I grew close with a young man I high school who I spent a lot of time with. I’ll introduce him in a later post (Thong Guy), but we made great memories and he eventually was my first kiss. Oh did I mention he had a girlfriend all throughout high school, but told me he wanted to be with me? Yes, I was a sucker.
I went to a local community college to play basketball and had a great experience there. I partied a lot, but met forever friends and won a shit ton of basketball games. That is also where I met the guy who will be referred to as Mush.
I then decide to go to a four year college to continue my basketball career and that’s where my love life spikes. I met who I thought was my forever. Her name will be The Ex. Yes, her name. We were head over heels, having the best time. Little did I realize that she was gong to grind me down to become my least-favorite version of Me I’ve ever been.
Fast forward about 3-4 years and The Ex is gone, but her remnants are not. I begin graduate school and become an assistant coach for the basketball team I played for. I eventually get a job and continue coaching, but want to live my life in a very different way. See, at this point, I was still a virgin at 25 years old and I was sick of it. I felt like I was missing out on such a fun part of my life waiting for “the one” that I couldn’t fully feel like I was thriving. So onto Tinder I go, I meet “The Condition” and I bang him after knowing and hooking up with him for 6 months. He became my “first”, which I swear he cares more about to this day than I do.
Then comes The Druggie, 5AM Tinder, lots more of “The Condition”, Micropenis, Bumble Dad, and Marshall Buttstuff III. My “number” isn’t large, but man, do I have good stories. Those posts will be forthcoming when I feel like diving into the depths of my soul again.
