young love [part 1]

okay, i know.
this would've been a great series for valentine's day, or at least february, right? 

well, i was having a baby. and also i didn't have the idea back then, i had it now.

i thought it'd be fun to take a little walk down memory lane and write out our "love story",
all the way from the very beginning!

i will be leaving some parts out, much to the disappointment of my readers
who will probably be hoping for every juicy detail and complete transparency.
but since my entire family and my husband's entire family reads this blog
[and plenty of other people i probably don't even know about]
i want to be sensitive and respectful and wise about what i write here.
since it's my space, i get to do that.
i just want it to be a fun little series of stories.

i say all of that above, to remind you that no story is perfect, no relationship is a fairy tale, 
and no marriage is a walk in the park. mine certainly has not been. and that's normal. 
this is just a fun little way for me to reminisce... and i hope you enjoy it for what it is :)

also, names of some people might be changed to protect the "innocent"

so... here we go :)

i had always been a good girl.

never wanted to break the rules, never wanted to create ripples or cause problems.

a loyal friend, a responsible daughter, the one they could all rely on. 

i was steady and predictable.

i was also painfully shy and felt super awkward in most social settings.

especially parties. dance parties. soooo awkward.

my freshman year, even though i wasn't supposed to "date", i did have a few boyfriends. 

i know, i know, i was rebellious! i don't think we ever hung out alone though, 

that must have been the criteria my parents set up- always doing things in groups?

the first boy didn't last very long.
we were both pretty quiet, so the conversation was pretty dull,

and to be honest, i think i only dated him because he was a sophomore,
the quarterback, the class clown, sort of hung out with the rebel crowd,
and most importantly i found out through my best friend that he liked me. 

what that does to your 14-year-old-shy-girl ego is something indescribable, right?

we went to winter banquet together, after which i promptly started planning my exit strategy. 

[don't judge, but i needed to secure the date to the banquet before breaking up with him. otherwise i'd risk not going!]

which was: don't pick up the phone all of Christmas break 

and then act like nothing happened once school gets back in session! ha!

the first day back to school we walked to math class
and decided, very matter-of-factly, very amicably, that we should break up.
no tears, no heartbreak. it was over. and i was happy. i think he was, too.

i moved on *very quickly* to liking a boy that was a junior. [we'll call him "justin"]

well, let me be honest, i liked him the year before but i was still in junior high and that would've been too awkward for him, being a sophomore, to date someone still in 8th grade. 

[our junior high & high school were on the same campus. small christian school]

only problem was that justin still had a girlfriend.

and this is where my shy-girl, always-do-the-right-thing reputation, really went out the window.

i started calling him. on the night his girlfriend had bible study.

seriously, i know. how could i? 

looking back, i totally agree with you. that was scandalous and unforgivable.
i was even friends with her!?! [a sincere sorry to you, "M", if you read my blog!]

none-the-less, i called him and we would talk at school and eventually he broke up with her

and we started hanging out a few weeks later.

and i am laughing at myself because very quickly into that little relationship, 

i thought knew i was going to marry him.

i don't really know what it was- that he was older?
that he pursued me with such intention?
that he admitted he had had a crush on me ever since he found out i had a crush on him,
but i was still in junior high so it would have been awkward?

not really sure, but i was head-over-heels smitten with justin.

this was around the same time that the whole "i kissed dating goodbye" craze started.

now, please don't hear me wrong. i'm not saying that book is bad,

and i'm not saying there's anything wrong with courtship.

but when you're 15 and your boyfriend [whom you believe you're supposed to marry] breaks up with you out of the clear blue sky after returning from christian summer camp in august?

well, you're devastated. and you hate "i kissed dating goodbye".

so, that was it. my life was over. 

justin "kissed-dating-goodbye" and i would never recover.
[oh wait... that is, until he started dating someone else the very next month. which is neither here nor there.]

i decided, in mature sophomore fashion, that i wasn't going to date anyone sophomore year.

i would just have fun, hang out with my friends, and avoid boys like the plague.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  [click here for part 2] . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .