The End and The Beginning

I’m back y’all!!….and look at me I didn’t run away, delete everything, and pretend like God didn’t tell me to do this whole blog thing lol. We’re growing and glowing, baby!

I’ve been talking to Shane about this next blog post. He knows that I’m talking about a very touchy subject, and I wanted to be sure I was doing it in a respectful way. I’m very careful not to disrespect my husband while talking about this. It’s only going to get deeper and uglier as we go, though. And thankfully he knows that. He’s given me the okay to just tell it as it was and while I’m grateful for that because that means I can walk out this task God has given me…I secretly was hoping he would tell me to shut it all down lol. Even then, I wouldn’t. If God tells me to do something I will do it. No matter what it is. No matter the cost. I’m thankful I have a husband who understands that and is the exact same way.

The first couple of blog posts I didn’t let Shane read. I felt like they were super vulnerable and while he knew the majority of what I wrote, He didn’t know details.

And the details are super embarrassing.

Nobody wants people to know the bad things people say about them, or the very vulnerable situations one has been through. Sometimes even I myself have to pretend that this is a journal and forget that I have thousands of people reading this. It helps to write this out as if I were writing in my journal or writing a letter to God. I think that’s why it’s everywhere. If this were all put together, without any hiccups, retracts, or weirdly phrased phrases…no one would believe this is written by me lol.

So I try to tell it in story form while also talking through my feelings on the subject. Whether their current feelings or feelings I remember feeling back then.

My feelings aren’t always right, but they’re honest. Someone could say “you could’ve reacted to that a different way.” Or “you shouldn’t feel that way about said person.” And that might be true, but I’m not writing this to make it seem as if I’m all perfect and all forgiving and so graceful. .I just described God, not me I don’t always do things the way I should do them. I don’t always react the way I should react. I wish I could tell you that I always get it right, but that would be an outright lie.

I get it wrong. A lot.

The truth is, I’m messy. We know this. My feelings are always everywhere. I cry at the drop of a hat. Tears are present during every emotion I feel…sad, happy, angry, joyful…shoot even when I’m at peace, I cry lol. I think it’s because I went so many years not feeling anything, not being able to cry. I think the tears I should’ve cried are just catching up with me lol. I don’t mind it, though. I’m just happy to FEEL something.

Along with crying at the drop of a hat.. I also still can’t process my emotions sometimes. I struggle living in my own brain. I’m open to a fault.

I give everyone the arrows they need to hurt me with.

I’ll be the first one to say something that I know will be used against me, but if I feel it needs said, I’ll say it anyway.

See. I’m a mess.

I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a coward and I’m not prideful. I don’t have a lick of pride in me and I think that’s how I can remain so authentic and transparent on our YouTube channel. If I had any pride in me I wouldn’t say half the things I say LOL.

So. Back to high school we go!

Back to the boyfriend I was talking about in the last blog post.

After being apart for a little bit, we started gravitating towards one another again. I remember coming back to school the next semester with turquoise hair. At this point I was WILD. The ONLY thing I didn’t do was drugs. I still had some sort of moral standard in me, because I wouldn’t touch any of it. I like to think it was morals, but it could’ve just been the fact that I knew from experience that drugs were not fun. They might look fun at first. They might even be fun at first. But I saw what it did to people. Once the crowd was gone, once the party was over…you were left with yourself. And that’s when your demons would come out to play. I watched it completely destroy my dad’s life… I was not about to go there. I remember thinking “I don’t care to go out, but I refuse to go out that way.”

At one point I really wanted to “go out”. I wasn’t sure if I would go to heaven and I remember being concerned about that, but I really just wanted to take a trip on a rocket ship and get the heck outta here. Back then I thought if reincarnation was true that I might come back as a gerbil. If you don’t take care of a gerbil, it dies. In my little mind I really thought of stuff like that. I really remember thinking “the gerbil has it good”. I remember oddly being jealous of the gerbil for its quick escape.

That’s DARK and I don’t wish that thought process on ANYONE. Especially a little 16 year old. That’s still considered a baby to me now.

So I came back that semester with my blue hair and began talking with the boyfriend (or ex boyfriend) again. I remember sitting at a lunch table and him coming up to the table and sitting beside me. I swear the entire table got silent. Someone had the nerve to quietly ask him if we were back together and he shook his head no. We had every intention on getting back together though, and we both knew that. We had created a trauma bond and both of us were so messed up that neither one of us was going to walk away from it. As we were getting closer again, I began pulling away AGAIN

. One day I was sitting at my desk in math and heard someone behind me say “oh my gosh! Look!”

I turned around in my seat as everybody was making their way to the window to look out of it and there was an ambulance in front of the school. The paramedics were rolling someone into the ambulance. I didn’t get a good look at them, but the person in front of me turned around and said “uh Merina…it’s ***”

My heart sank. So many thoughts ran through my mind. I knew he had it REALLY bad at home. He was adopted and they were really cruel to him. I didn’t know if he had done something to get hurt on purpose or if it was an accident. I had NO idea what could’ve happened. I just remember hyperventilating and telling myself to calm down, because I legitimately couldn’t see straight.

I somehow made it to the next class (I don’t even remember the bell ringing and walking to the other building”. I shared that class with his ex girlfriend (and my ex friend) that I spoke about in the last blog post. She stopped me and said “I HEARD. Was it him?”

All I did was shake my head yes because I had four or five people around my desk wanting answers that I didn’t have. “What happened?” “I heard he overdosed.” “I heard he was already pronounced dead.”

“Someone said it was Merina’s fault. He did it to himself because of her.”

If my heart wasn’t stopped by then it was stopped now. I knew right then what was about to happen. I’m good at reading the room and telling the future lol. It didn’t matter what REALLY happened…people were already making up their mind about it being my fault.

I quickly became the villain.

And he was my victim.

I’ll break in and say this much…

I did’nt truly know what happened that day until I was in my 20s and he told me. I went so long thinking it was my fault. I carried some guilt, man. I didn’t know if he was dead or alive. It was always in the back of my mind. I thought about it even being in my 20s and being a full blown adult. When I saw him again as an adult and he told me that it wasn’t my fault, I felt such a release inside of me. I had really convinced myself whatever happened to him was because of me. I was convinced it was my fault.

Watching him being rolled into the back of an ambulance was the last time I saw or heard from him as a teenager.

Just like that this person who had been a huge part of my life for awhile, was gone. And I had no answers.

It wasn’t long before I was practically being shunned by the friend group. I remember the principal calling me into his office and I got pulled to the side on the way there and threatened. I went on to the principals office where I was questioned about the boy. His “mom” had accused me of some stuff and they were going to get the police involved. I was innocent so I didn’t worry about the accusations, but I knew why she was doing what she was doing. She hated me. The boyfriend and I had got into trouble several times for PDA and even suspended once….so she was not a fan lol understandably so.

While leaving the office I heard someone say a sly comment about me being a “wh*re and ruining someone’s life”

It didn’t surprise me, but it hurt. He had a notebook that passed throughout his friend group because they didn’t have a lot of classes together. They kept up with one another by writing entries in that notebook. It’s super smart actually. Sort of like an exclusive forum on notebook paper. Sometimes one of his friends would see me in the hall and give me the notebook to give to him when I saw him…so I passed it back and forth a lot. One day he left drivers ed early and I was left with the notebook and bored. Drivers ed was not my favorite. (Fun fact the drivers ed teacher made both he and I kiss in front of the whole class when he found out we were dating….is that not weird? I feel like that would get somebody in trouble these days lol it should’ve got somebody in trouble back then, too)

I read through the notebook while sitting there bored in drivers ed. I read an insert from him talking about how it bothered him that people made fun of my weight. That he didn’t like people being mean to me.

I never told him I read that.

I remember the little comments made in that book from his friends, though. So the sly comment while leaving the principals office didn’t come as a surprise.

It all happened exactly as I thought it would.

Every day it got worse. I would leave school, go home, and experience pure hell at home, too.

There was no peace in that home. I come to hate my nanny’s husband…no, loathe is a better word. Out of respect for nanny, I’ll omit the details, but it was pure hell.

Not only was I dealing with those feelings, I began being abused again.

I’m telling y’all I had an invisible sign on my back that said “abuse me, please” or something. IT FOLLOWED ME EVERYWHERE.

I thought getting off of that hill would stop it when we moved.

But I guess there are more cruel people in the world than just on that hill. I was abused and blackmailed constantly. It was evil and I had no one to talk to about it. I had become friends with one of nanny’s husbands sons, but I still wouldn’t open up about certain things to him. I didn’t open up to anybody at this point. Everything I said seemed to be used against me and the person I did open up to had disappeared off the face of the planet so I just kept it all in.

I didn’t move on for awhile. I mean I flirted here and there, and had little flings, but I wasn’t seriously interested in anybody. Eventually things got so bad at school that nanny suggested pulling me out and putting me in a Christian private school, and I jumped at the idea.

Boom. That was it. That whole era of my life was over. No more football games together, no more lunch dates, no more notes back and forth, no on again off agains, no good-bye…it was gone. That fast. I get sick writing it like that, it makes him sound more significant to me than he actually was, but this is super important to note, because I feel it plays a major part in the future. See. I still get that mean mentality when speaking about him. I don’t mean to and I’m trying to do better about it.

Life was the worst it had been ever.

And overnight EVERYTHING changed.

I was on sitting beside my nanny’s step son ( I have to keep calling him that because I’m not sure what he is to me lol nanny raised me so step brother? But she’s not biologically my mother so step uncle? WHO KNOWS lol)

That’s besides the point anyway, but I was sitting beside him while he was on MySpace. We were going through his friends on there and then their friends and all of a sudden I saw someone that caught my eye.

I cannot explain the feeling I felt when I saw his picture. It wasn’t solely attraction, it was something else. It was such a strong feeling that I literally memorized his name and said it over and over again in my head so I wouldn’t forget it while I ran to my phone and opened up MySpace. I hunted down the step sons friend, went to their friends list and I found exactly who I was looking for.

Shane Reynolds. Right there. In the flesh on screen. With his 6 pack on show for the world to see and his shirt in his mouth LOL

I’ve never hit send friend request so fast in my life.