The Dating Game

Somehow, I keep attracting the weirdo's.. the psycho's.. the crazies who don't know when to quit. I wonder if there's a sign above my head that only brings these types of people to me, a sign that simultaneously repels the normal people?

Seriously. You may think I'm exaggerating, dear reader. I'm not. Let's work through the timeline here & some of the details..

First, let's go back 11 years. That would make me 14, and just ending 9th grade (spring of '98). Enter my first boyfriend, Clint.

Yes, I was 14, and he was 21. He was first my brother's friend, and that's how we met. Nothing ever physical really happened, even though we dated a little more than a year off & on. And looking back now, I'm sure he had other chicks his age while we dated. Which, (you know what?) was fine...

...Because in tenth grade, (fall of '98)while we were dating, a boy named Danny moved to the area. One of the baddest boys our school had ever seen.. and a guy that to, at least last summer, we share immense passion off & on for one another. (As will become evident through this entry, if I am to be at all honest.) Within forty-five minutes of meeting him, we became much more acquainted with one another than Clint and I did over the whole off-on thing. No, we didn't do THAT.. but we did kiss in-depth all the way home on the bus, and then we did some more of that a bit after we arrived back to our neighborhood. Danny was the first guy I'd ever kissed that way, and the first guy I was ever really interested in.. We dated for a week, and then he broke it off, (most likely because I wouldn't do the sex thing..)but we stayed friends.

Fast forward to Feb of '99.. Clint & I were off again.. and lo' and behold, he came home from a weekend away, shamefaced. (This is where I should mention that he lived in a rental property with my brother that my mother & former stepfather owned.) Come to find out, he stayed that weekend with an old high school classmate of his. A few weeks after that, turns out that he found out that he had gotten her pregnant during said weekend. That marked the end of our dating, although not the end of seeing each other almost daily. (Joy, right?) Because, instead of moving out on their own, he moved her in with him! Which, as you could imagine, was a bit of a slap in the face..

I, however, being a sweet girl then, tried being nice to her & befriended her.. although she annoyed the CRAP out of me.. They finally moved to North Carolina together at the tail end of the summer.

In Dec. of '99, I went & stayed the night at my 2nd sis's, Hannah's, place.. in the same town as Danny lived. Him and I snuck away to a barn on the edge of town, and had our second ever make out session.. I don't really feel the need for THAT many details, just the fact that he was a great kisser for a tenth grader is sufficient.

Moving on, I don't remember how I had met him and how we started dating.. but I had my second boyfriend during most of 11th grade..Jeremiah. He ended up dumping me when he met another chic in winter of '01. No, we never had sex.. and yes, she came up pregnant just a few months after we broke up. Hmm... the beginnings of a pattern, emerging?

After that, I didn't date again for the rest of high school. I graduated in '02, and started working at Wal-Mart in October of that year. Not more than a couple weeks after I started there, an unloader and I hit it off VERY well. Steve & I naturally took our breaks together, flirted back & forth, and discussed certain scenes of 8 Mile(which had just came out that year,) at length. I remember when he came up to me when I was looking at the schedule board, and uttered the only 'real' date invitation that I've ever gotten- "Um, yeah, I've never really done this before.. but I was wondering if you wanted to come over for dinner and a movie sometime soon?"

(Now, that I'm looking back on it, and know what kind of guy he is today.. I'm sure it wasn't the first time he ever did the date invitation...!) And if you were curious, I wore my long denim skirt, with canvas heels, and a hippie top. He made a wonderful spaghetti dinner, & we played Super Mario Brothers, where I kicked his ass!

We ended up dating for about, I wanna say four or five months..? Maybe six.. not much longer than that. Many a make-out session, hanging out & Nintendo-filled evening occurred. He ended up dumping me for the chick that worked in fabrics & crafts.. once again, I think it's because I wasn't to the point that I was ready to do anything more than make out & she was. She was also a drifter, a modern day hippie who eventually moved back to San Fransisco. She was the first chick that I found attractive in more than just a 'friend' way. But, I didn't really realize that at the time.

Now, flash your mind back to the past 'assets' of Wal-Mart.. do you remember when most of them had a eat-in little fast food thing called the Radio Grill? That's where I met my ex-fiance'. He wasn't the type that I usually went for... but maybe that's why I went for him. We would talk back and forth when I would get my food during my breaks, and chat online many times every week... (I just remembered something that I had forgotten until now. In the beginning, I was not interested in Jay like that AT ALL. It was his brother Josh that I was totally digging. Josh was cute, funny & unfortunately into another chick.) So, somehow, Jay and I ended up dating, engaged and I tried to break it off with him a year & a half later, in the summer of '05. Seriously, I don't know how it all progressed that far. He gave me a promise ring after a month & tried to give me an engagement ring after four months. I made him wait on that for awhile before finally accepting it. That was when I found out he wanted me to become a barefoot & constantly pregnant preacher's wife who wouldn't have a say in any of the decisions that would be made. And that was going to start with the wedding, when he wouldn't let me me choose red & white for the colors, because 'red wasn't a proper wedding color'. Instead, he choose yellow..

When I did try to end things with him, he really was having none of it.. He would sit on the hilltop behind my house, watching me come & go.. accusing me of seeing other guys, (which I wasn't,) and bug me incessantly at work.

I ended up back in touch with Steve that June-July, and we went camping with a large group of people at a organized festival that was in the area that August. That was an amazing weekend.. Jay tried to 'keep a hold of me' until September, when I finally decided to leave the state for a week to get away from everything and figure out how I was going to get rid of him. (I went & stayed with Steve in Nebraska..)Easier said than done, however. He followed us all the way over there, (a four & half hour drive,). Then he proceeded to drive all around Lincoln, NE looking for signs of me. When he couldn't find anything after seven hours, he drove back home. That's not all. He then proceeded to hack into my email account to get Steve's email address, then got into his email account to get his phone number, calling over and over...

Staying with Steve is when I met his best friend, Chad.. who was also with him on the camping trip. Steve ended up working almost EVERY day that I was there, even though he had originally had the entire week off. It worked out, however, because Chad and I spent almost every day together that week, morning to night, and some nights to mornings.. The following month, Steve ended up moving back to Iowa, and the month after that, Chad followed as well. We ended up dating for two years, and the only reason we separated was because he had to move back to Nebraska due to unforeseen circumstances.. we finally broke it off in the middle of the summer of '07.

In 2008, I started talking with a guy that worked in the dairy department, and we hung out more and more regularly on breaks and outside of work. Tall, dark, handsome, athletic.. a sight for sore eyes. We ended up having many an 'occasion' together.. I would've been quite content with that arrangement, considering that I was done having relationships for the time being.. except our desires of what came out of the physical aspect didn't match. He wanted a certain act regularly, and I wasn't for it. So, it kinda fizzled out slowly, as the days grew shorter and the leaves left the trees.

During that season's holiday card addressing, I felt the urge to look up an old friend and send him a card saying hi and hoping all was well. I had known Toby since I was very little, but had lost touch with him for a few years. The card did end up making it right to his mailbox, and we started hanging out and getting reaqcainted. We started dating Januray 6th of last year, and went until Christmas Eve, when everything came to a head. I'm not quite ready to go into it all yet, but beginning in the summer, things had started becoming turmoilous. On a side note, Danny came back into the picture a few times over the summer.. on the sly. Doesn't really make me look very good, does it..? :(

However, little did I know, that the new year was going to bring a LOT of changes, new experiences, and new, wonderful people into my life- including Dustin & Crystal..