i was sitting in a class today when i suddenly turned into a blubbering idiot. a couple years ago, there was an incident in our small town with a shootout in a school board meeting. i remember hearing about it. it was a pretty big deal for this tiny area. but i’m also not much for partaking of news – i don’t need extra gloom and doom in my life – so i didn’t really follow the story much. i never knew the details and i never knew that there was video of the whole affair. well they showed that video in this class today. and then the instructor spent a long time discussing how nobody can imagine what it’s like to be in such a dangerous situation and how it all happens so quickly and blah, blah blah… and the tears that i had been fighting during all of this started pouring.
what. a. freaking. pansy. moron.
i was there with a friend and some of her friends and heaven only knows what they, and the countless strangers, must have thought of me.
it’s just that… it’s been years since i’ve thought about the robbery. i mean, i’ve talked about it occurring… but i haven’t really gone back there in a very, very, very long time. seeing this real life drama unfold and then hearing the guy go on and on about what it’s like… i was right back there with my face pushed into the nasty hotel lobby carpet and the gun repeatedly cracking me over the head. i was choking on the pepper spray and feeling my eyes go up in flames from it. i was cutting up my wrists trying to get the zip ties loose. i was… helpless.
it was a completely unexpected reaction to this class. and it made me seriously question my motivations. and it made me look like a complete lunatic to my friend. i guess i’ll never be as over that moment of my life as i was.
when we were down here last, some random events led me to discover that an ex of mine goes to my sissy’s church. i was amused by the happenstance of it and pretty much forgot about it. this morning, we went to church with my sissy and immediately ran into him as he is now working as a volunteer in the church. it wasn’t awkward like some chance meetings… i haven’t seen him in about a decade and it was just like yesterday. it was nice to catch up and meet his lovely wife. i wish i could have met his little girls as well but they were already in the youth service. i was very happy to see him all grown up and an active member of a great church. neither one of us walked with God in our youth and it’s just amazing to me how life molds us. he was my first love and, despite the bad times we went through (very few but very bad), i feel nothing but love for him now. i knew when he proposed to me in middle school and gave me his grandmother’s ring that we would never grow up to get married – he always wanted to be a cop and i knew even then that i wasn’t made out of military/cop-wife material – but it is wonderful to know that we both ended up on the right roads for our lives. i have a fabulous husband who is my best friend and shares amazing experiences with me. he has a wife who is also a cop so they share a greater understanding than i could have ever given him. it’s nice when God shows you that “what might have been” doesn’t hold a candle to what you have.
does anyone remember teenage years filled with angst and drama? times when you just knew that your life was crumbling around you but all the adults around you would say that it was nothing and you were just a teenager and it was all just silly, childhood insecurity? and then, as much as you swore they were wrong, deep down it felt a little better to be reminded that things would be better when you grew up? but what they never actually told you is that the angst and insecurity and drama doesn’t go away as you grow up? it’s still there… the stakes are just a lot higher? the repercussions and consequences go deeper? and you just keep wishing that you would grow out of it already?
yeh, me neither…
you know how everyone looks back at their high-school/teenage years and says “i sure wouldn’t want to do that again”?
not me. looking back, i really think seventeen was my favorite year. other than the almost dying part, of course. i was reckless and self-destructive but i was free. my future was literally opening up before me and the paths i could take were infinite and of my own choosing. i was responsible for myself and nothing else. i was strong and confident and went after whatever i wanted. i wielded power and had fun doing it. sure, there was heartache but it never lasted long because possibility was around every corner.
and really, the drama… i’ve come to learn that the drama doesn’t go away as we get older… the stakes just get higher.
i learned that year how to hurt others the way i had been hurt and i learned that i didn’t want to be that hurtful. i learned that the past can always come back to haunt you. i learned that others cared about me as much as i cared about them. i learned that forgiveness goes both ways. i learned that i could rewrite my future at any time.
back then, i had the world figured out. i was going to do great things. i knew no fear. i believed in love and happiness.
i’m a very different person today from who i was then or who i thought i would be. most days, i know that i’m a better person. some days, i really wish i could be me again.
ron has been on my mind this week. hubby and i have been talking about him a lot. today is three years since his passing. i still can’t believe how much a coworker’s death could affect my life… like we had been bff’s or something. he is the reason that we are living at the beach and having so much fun. every time i see a center console boat, i renew my pledge to not put things off. shame on him for taking life for granted; for thinking that he could hold out for a better time on the things he really wanted. who are we to say when time is right? so, i’m feeling a bit melancholy today. but i’m also going to go to the bridge run tonight and instead of feeling badly about how slow i am, i’m going to be thankful for having another day to be out there pushing myself and having such great companionship doing it.
*UPDATE* i just spoke with coworker and good friend, bl, who said that his doctors have declared him to be in remission. to celebrate, he is tackling his “bucket list.” earlier this month he swam with dolphins in the bahamas and in a couple months his kids are taking him skydiving. go him living life to the fullest!
if you’ve been around here long, you know that i’m insanely nostalgic and spend way too much time thinking about people from the past. like a scary crazy person. i’ve always been like that. going all the way back to kindergarten when i would wonder what happened to the kids from that horrid Christian pre-school or from the nursery of my parents’ presbyterian bowling league. it’s just who i am. i’m a freak.
last night, i had a dream about one of my sweetest memories with an ex. we were very young (i know… i’ve been with hubby since i was eighteen so all of my relationships were very young but we’re talking middle school here) and our relationship was tumultuous at best, but i sure liked that boy. his was the very first rose i kept. valentines day of 1995 (before i came to despise v-day). if i were to go open my box of flowers right now, i could still pick out that rose (actually, i could tell you who they all came from). of course, i ruined things and we drifted apart. i saw him once or twice at the start of high school and felt terrible about how much i still liked him.
a few years later, i got a call from him out of the blue. i was elated and we started seeing each other again. it lasted just a few weeks and then he disappeared. dropped off the map. i had lost him again and i wondered if it was his way of getting revenge for our younger, stupider days. a year later, i heard through a friend that he had called another friend of ours from japan. i was heartbroken. we had hurt each other plenty throughout our awkward history but i was truly heartbroken. luckily, i had just started dating hubby and was going through a low point thanks to the robbery so i didn’t have time to dwell on it.
it’s all in the past. we’re both grown and married. he has a beautiful little girl. my only relationship with him today is via a social networking site that neither of us much logs into. and i always knew we would never end up together because i couldn’t be a military wife. i have utmost respect for our military but i just know who i am and i am not strong enough to be a military wife. i worry way too much over rediculous stuff as it is.
wow, this has turned into a long, nattering trip down memory lane, eh?
i have no regrets. i am extremely happy with my hubby and our life. this isn’t about regrets. it’s about remembering a simpler time. a time before getting jaded and cynical. a time when sitting together and holding hands in a planetarium on a seventh grade field trip was the absolute height of romance. and a whole life of possibilities was rolled out ahead as we leaned our heads together to look up at the pseudo-stars. and the butterflies in the stomach. those were the days…
i had a strange dream last night about an ex (get your mind out of the gutter!). it was very much unlike my usual ex dreams in that usually when i dream about an ex, i am always conscious of the fact that i am married to hubby. always. but in last night’s dream, i was actually with my most recent ex (is eleven years ago recent?) and i had run into my first-love-ex and everything between us just came rushing back. i broke up with recent-ex so that 1st-luv-ex and i could have another try. when we met back up so i could tell him i had ended things, he had his grandmother’s ring and proposed to me. there was more to it but it was all emotions and not at all something i could describe. really, the whole dream was extremely emotional and, for some reason, i woke up feeling very disturbed by it.
i’m always proud when someone from the past finds my website and makes contact. apparently, someone from my dad’s past was looking for him, found my site, and was able to find him and get in touch. i think he said it was his God-daughter or something. how nice to bring folks together just by keeping a little home on the interwebs.
mental note: do not plan to visit dad and brudder in the same day. i was already sleepy when i left my dad’s this afternoon so the hour and fifteen minute drive across central florida to see my brother was a bad call. it was an exhausting day, although i did have great visits with both family members. last night i had dinner with an old friend i haven’t seen in a couple years. funny thing about her is that we met playing softball for one season when we were nine years old, we never went to the same schools, and yet we’re still friends all these years later. isn’t that nice? tomorrow i’ll be spending most of the day with jenny and hopefully purchase my moh dress.
i miss my hubby so much already. i got up at 0400 to take him to the airport this morning. that was painful, especially after not being able to sleep much last night. i want him back and am very bummed that he’s going to be gone for two weeks straight. the weekend was spent mostly spending all the time i could with him. my dad and his wife came over saturday for grilling and swimming but that was the only visiting that went on outside my sissy’s family. yesterday we went to church with them and then made a day of shopping and movie. one of my bro-n-law’s relatives told him that iron man would be good for the kids so we went to see that yesterday. the previews were bad enough but it was probably twenty minutes into the not-kid-friendly movie when they left the theatre. my hubby and i stayed to watch it while they exchanged their ticket for a more appropriate movie. it was a good movie… for adults. i am appalled that his relative thought it was one for the kids. he also checked a movie review website for kids (i don’t recall which one) that made it sound like it wasn’t bad. i really couldn’t believe all of the little kids that were watching it with parents that didn’t seem to care what they were being exposed to. my parents never restricted what we watched. i watched cujo when i was four, child’s play when i was eight. i remember seeing s3xu@l situations in movies before i was in gradeschool. and i think it was all extremely inappropriate for me to have been exposed to so early. i remember twisting my teddy bear up and stabbing it with a pencil before bed every night to make sure that chucky was not in there. not a positive behavior for a kid. i’m not saying that iron man was that bad but it did have several moments that were not suitable for chilluns. /tangent. have i mentioned i miss my hubby?
we packed a lot into this weekend. saturday morning, the men folks had a man-project going on. once they were to a point where i could steal my man, we went to my dad’s for a visit and Christmas exchange. we had a great visit and dinner with them and then we left to meet up with jenny and some of her friends. they were at a little greek restaurant around the corner from her new place so we stopped there to meet up with them. we were there a few minutes when a guy came up behind me and put his arm around me and said, “i knew it was you when you walked through the door.” folks, this was very, very exciting for me. i know that i’m a weirdo and all but i have been confounded over the fact that i grew up and went to school and worked in orlando and have NEVER run into anyone i know since i’ve left. this was a guy that i worked with almost TWELVE years ago! he remembered and recognized me from when i was fifteen years old. i was amazed and so pleased. it really made my weekend. i’m probably revealing my crazy here, but the part that really excited me was not so much running into someone from my past, but that someone that i knew for a matter of months over a decade ago would bother to remember me. i’ve alluded to it in past rants that a good portion of my thoughts are thinking about people in my past and wondering how they are and who they are now. perhaps it’s kind of creepy but it’s what i do. and i often wonder whether i’ve ever made a big enough impact on people’s lives that maybe they would think of me once in a while. so for a guy to remember me by name after twelve years – well, it made me happy. and no, there is no chance that he only remembered me because of some romantic complication as he was several years older than me and batting for the other team so nothing like that existed between us. /tangent. so when we got to the restaurant, jenny and friends were finishing up and waiting for their checks so we weren’t there long before heading back to her place. we got there and played scattergories for several hours and ended up getting back home around 0100. sunday morning, i slept in a bit while my man got up early to continue the man project started the day before. they finished early in the afternoon and we headed out to see my brother. we stopped along the way to get an oversized birthday cookie for him since i doubt i’ll see him on his birthday wednesday. we got there and sang happy birthday to him and gave them their Christmas present and watched some football and chatted for a couple hours. we then headed to katie’s for a couple hours before heading back. this morning, my hubby left me for a business trip. he’ll be gone for four days. i’m taking advantage of being husbandless by making arrangements to help jenny with being a bride. it should be a good time.