Trading in my Sorrows

So I ended the last blog post, talking about the moment I entered into the highlight of my life. I feel like everything before this time period was dark or even in the good moments, tainted. I can honestly say, that without being dramatic, I was honestly happy for the first time in my seventeen years of existence. Shane responded to my friend request on MySpace as fast as lightning. By the time I had refreshed to the home page, my friend request was already accepted. I made a game plan in my head that I was going to do what I always did—play hard to get.

But he made that so hard.

I’m convinced that 99% of the boyfriends I had or the guys that liked me was due to how I knew how to play hard to get and how good I was playing it. I learned at a young age that guys like a chase and they like what they cannot have. Even though most could’ve had me, I pretended like they couldn’t. I’m sure a lot of people on the outside wondered how I got some of the guys I had. I’m sure they probably thought “Wow I’m sure she is good at conversation!” or “She has a great personality.” But neither of those things could be further from the truth. Nobody knew if I had a good personality or if I was good at conversation because I never showed them my personality…and my conversation skills were just me being a mirror. I know how to read people, and I knew how to read them back then, too. I could gauge the type of person I was talking to and I could in a sense mirror them.

That being said I wasn’t good at neither of those things.

People saw who I wanted them to see. They didn’t KNOW me. They didn’t TALK to me. They knew who they wanted to know, and they talked to who I felt they wanted to talk to after I got a good “read” on them.

That didn’t work on Shane.

As soon as I saw he had accepted my friend request…I went to go look at more of his pictures lol. I was coming up with a “game plan” as I scrolled through them and wondering how I was going to initiate conversation without looking desperate. I didn’t want to be the first one to like a picture, but I also didn’t want this to be a “he accepted my friend request and we never actually spoke to each other” sort of thing.

However, he didn’t even give me time to hardly think about all of that because before I knew it I had begin to get the notifications that he had already started liking my pictures…then BAM! He messaged me first lol. I remember thinking….he’s a 45 year old man in a basement somewhere because that was TOO easy lol. So I actually went back through his pictures and found pictures of him with other people. I saw where those people were tagged in the post and I went to their profiles to make sure they were actual people and to my surprise…they were lol!

In his first message to me he said “Hey thanks for the request! If you want to text me sometime here’s my number!”

He fell into my lap lol.

I played it cool and wrote him back “I don’t text guys first…here’s MY number” but on the inside I was already SMITTEN lol.

He texted me right away.

Now…the awful part about this situation was I had already been “dating” someone. After the whole last year and the chaos that whole situation caused…I just wanted to move on. I didn’t want to be swooning over a guy I didn’t even know was dead or alive. Selfishly, I just wanted to forget about him and the time I spent dating him, so I was talking to EVERYONE. I was dating around a lot. I was going in between people. I still had no sense of loyalty, I saw no value within myself, and I was honestly cruel. I could use a lot of things that had happened in my life up until this point as an excuse, but I won’t. I hold myself accountable, because many people have went through the things I have went through and they didn’t pull the stuff I did. They didn’t disregard human beings feelings. They didn’t become the hurt people that hurts people.

During the short period between Shane and my last relationship…I really became that hurt person who hurts people.

And boy did I hurt people.

Shane was so respectful that I felt bad about the idea of tagging him along. I didn’t want him to be another victim of me and my issues (boy, I wish married Merina had thought that way, I can’t tell you why I didn’t because I really don’t know)

So I did something for the first time, something I had never done before…. I friend zoned him. And he kind of friend zoned himself, too lol. The chemistry was there…we texted all of the time, but neither of us crossed the line. We talked 24/7 and I began developing some serious feelings for him. Feelings that began changing my whole mindset about men. I knew I had to break it off with the other guy because it wasn’t right to string him along when I finally knew what —or who— I wanted and it wasn’t him. I wanted Shane.

And there were so many reasons I wanted Shane but one of the biggest was I quickly recognized that he was making me a better person already. I liked the way becoming a better person felt.

So I broke if off with the other guy (who did not take it well at all)…

He was a “frat boy”. He was full of himself and some would say he had every right to be. He was considered extremely attractive, so I heard anyway lol. Any time I had mentioned I was dating him I would always get the bug eyed look from people like…HIM? Or anytime he would post on my page or write something about me on his I would have people call me up and be like HOW. WHAT IS YOUR SECRET. My brother knew him and I still saw the shocked look on his face when he told me at school this guy finally told him we were dating. He thought I was so cool because I was dating this guy.

So I guess I understand why he was so cocky, but I didn’t like it. Cocky has never been my thing, it’s always been a turn off for me.

I ended it with him in a cowardly way. I called him up (cause I refused to do it in person), real quick said “hey, it’s over”, and hung up. I declined his calls for the rest of the night. This guy was a narcissist in the making. I know because I was one. A narcissist knows another narcissist and two narcissists together will never work out.

Because of that it was doomed from the start. I didn’t see a future with him anyway. I was merely passing time.

Shane and I began talking on the phone and texting. We would talk for 8 straight hours. I lived for the moment he would call me and I was devastated when I couldn’t talk to him.

It took THREE months for us to finally meet. I put it off for so long and came up with every excuse I could come up with. I just knew the minute he saw me in person he was going to drop me. In my mind I was able to secure all of these other guys with my “play hard to get card”…and I hadn’t played that on Shane…so I didn’t really know how I was keeping him and because I didn’t know how I was keeping him, I was terrified of losing him.

Finally, we agreed to meet up. I took my step-uncle-brother with me as a witness in case I got kidnapped lol (I wasn’t the brightest, but I wanted a witness there just in case lol) and we met up at the mall.

I was standing in the granny panty aisle in belk when I saw him walking towards me.

Literally the definition of tall, dark, and handsome. I mean everything I had ever found attractive in anybody rolled up into one 6 foot 2 person walking straight towards me.

I didn’t know what to do so I did the first thing that popped up into my brain lol the minute he made it to me, I stole his beanie.

As he was laughing and kind of fixing his hair, I saw in his eyes something different. It sounds mystical or like something from a movie, but I promise you, PINKY promise you, that the look in his eye right then and there told me he was never leaving me.

It was a God thing, because someone like me doesn’t end up with someone like him. I’ll be the first one to say he’s too good for me. And he’s always been too good for me.

I don’t know why God chose me for him, but I know exactly why He chose him for me.

Shane loves telling this story and I may have him tell it on the channel one day. He always laughs when we remember that first day we met each other. Our first kiss was in Kohls and SPARKS FLEW. I had never in my life felt the way I did in that moment and it was the HONEST TO GOD first time a man ever came near me or was intimate with me and I didn’t flinch or cringe. Everything went blurry and when I opened my eyes he was looking at me and time stopped. We both said “where. Are. We.” At the same exact time and over the intercom a lady said “thank you for shopping at Kohl’s”

LOL

I hope that on my death bed my mind plays that memory over and over again.

I think if I ever got Alzheimer’s or something, that you would be able to bring me back to earth for even just a few minutes if you recounted that story to me. My brain may try to forget that one, but my heart could never let that happen.

It was all up hill from there. For the summer anyway.