No longer acting out of hurt

Today was the set up and the rehearsal for the wedding. Wow. A lot happened today that I did not expect to happen and some I did. First I got lost trying to find the venue. (Okay I totally expected that to happen). When I got there most of the groomsmen and the groom were there setting up. I was nervous being with the groomsmen at first because I had a history with some of them. One I had only met once and seemed nice, another I dated for three years and he was now with another woman who was pregnant with his child, another used to harass me in high school and the best man & I used to fight with each other so often we used to have to be separated because we had been known to curse at and light the other on fire on several occasions. And those were just my problems with them, they of course had similar issues with each other. But we had all promised the groom we would be good. I was amazed with the level of maturity seven years and a mutual love for the groom brought.

There were greetings of friendship and laughter like we were all good friends. There was no mistrust. The best man didn’t flinch when I had a lighter next to him. Just as one groomsman was totally comfortable standing next to the other who had stabbed him while he used a box cutter. After an hour or two there were no hard feelings, everything negative thing we had ever said or done to each other in the past was forgotten by the person who was hurt. By the same time we had finished working today. We all noticed everyone who had been hurt at one point or another be pulled to the side by the person who hurt them.

At one point, the bride was having a bride moment where we weren’t doing things right. Those things happen but we were tired and needed a break. The guy who harassed me and made my life miserable in high school pulled me outside. We went behind a shed on the venue. I had no idea what he could possibly want from me considering today was the first time we had actually said anything civilized to each other in the who time we knew each other. He actually apologized. He told me he didn’t actually remember saying or doing the things to me that everyone else remembers him doing but he said he honestly knows it sounded like the guy he was back then. He said he was really sorry he acted like that back then and that he is not that person anymore.

Why did we act like that in high school? Why did he say and do those things in high school? He tried to look tough by doing those things. I, in turn, was not going to let myself look weak by letting that kid back then see he hurt me so I was mean too. All it did was spread violence, aggression and both of us trying to look meaner and angrier then we really were. Everyone else’s conversations ended very similarly today. I just can’t help but wonder just how many fights start for no reason like that? How many kids decide to do things they don’t want to do just because they are acting out of hurt feelings and aggression?

Making friends and collecting favors

When I was in high school I had friends in lots of different cliques and social groups. My friend, Bruce and I watched people we knew like our class president and the captain of the cheerleading squad have friends everywhere and how people liked to help them and be there for them because they were/are nice people.

Bruce and I did something similar. When I was getting harassed by one of his idiot friends and I was more than ready to flatten his friend like a pancake he asked me to wait a bit. By the next day, his friend had stopped. Turned out, it helped to have that particular connection. We started to use these connections of people we knew in different social groups to our advantages. If we knew someone was getting picked on we tried to put a stop to it. (If the person bullying was a friend of ours, then it was easy, sometimes we had to go through our friends to get it to stop). This system became very effective and we met a lot of new people that way and collected a lot of favors from people.

After a few years and my working really hard to mellow out my temper, I decided (privately of course) to just forget about most of the favors I was owed. But with the upcoming wedding of two of my closest friends there have been some last minute glitches. I’ve been fighting myself really hard not to go wheeling and dealing quite like I did in high school. Most of the things I am working on now are last minute things that the couple forgot in the state they currently live in or was not able to find yet. For the most part I am offering some payment in return for whatever I am asking for helping me to get or find. It is just really fun to get to use my Corp. Klinger skills again, I missed them. I like using my powers of persuasion to make people happy. I just have to make sure to keep it in check and only get what people really need and to make the deal that is as close to fair for everyone every time as I can get.

What I learned from the laugh

Why is all that important? Why does that story of Ward saying that and Dave letting that laugh out matter to me? Because when Dave let that little laugh out, it showed that he believed all those ridiculous stories I had told for the last four years. That was cool. I admit some of those stories, I would not believe if I was not there myself. No matter who I play with or who is looking at the cards, every single time, there is a handful of cards that get picked out every time that everyone asks about unless that were actually present for that event.

Again why does this matter? Because have you ever noticed that after a while you remember things but even your memories of the events seem to mellow out. My friend, TJ, has told people the story of how I crashed his prom so many times it’s lost its outrageousness. Don’t get me wrong T, I’m not saying stop. I’m just as proud of it today as I was then and I still love having been at your prom very much. I love the story every time you tell it. It also makes me smile that it meant enough to you that you tell it to people. It’s just my mom found an old pack of pictures from when we always carried a disposable camera with us everywhere we went and they surprised me.

We used to go through disposable cameras like water. It was before every teen had a cellphone, let alone a cell that could take pictures! We always had the camera and my video camera.

For those of you who were there it was the day TJ borrowed Matt’s baseball hat, and my beloved trench coat and walked around impersonating Silent Bob. (And we used someone’s eye liner for the beard.) For those of you who were not there I am sure you are figuring it out. I remembered this day. I knew this story pretty well. It was the other things going on in the pictures. The subplot of the pictures that I truly found amazing. I knew we were trouble makers but really! There was just pure ridiculousness going on behind this masquerade in December.

My mom and dad were both still sitting in the room with me as I looked at these pictures. I found myself pulling the pictures close. (Like there isn’t a statute of limitations on this stuff!) As I looked at these pictures the first time in most likely a decade, which were 99% of me and TJ, I realized I didn’t know the two kids in the pictures anymore.

At least that’s how I felt the first time I looked through them anyway. The first time I looked at them I thought I didn’t recognize either of us. I didn’t recognize the kids who were loitering in a Mickey D’s for the past few hours. The real life stoner was smoking a cigarette and impersonating one of the most famous stoners after Cheetch and Chong. The girl in pictures had short hair. She had lost her hair after she had cut it off in a fit of rage which she was prone to having at the time because that girl had a nasty temper. At first glance those are the things I noticed about them. I saw their faults at first.

But for some reason I couldn’t put those pictures down. I just kept looking at them and looking at them. When I looked at the pictures the other friends in the photos I saw seeing the same things, I was seeing the negative aspects of them.

I showed them to my boyfriend. I don’t know why, he wasn’t a member of the group. Since our group was together for years he asked how I knew these pictures were ten years old. And was even about to pin point them to the exact month. I showed him little things like garland in the background at the mall and my hair length. But when I realized they were taken in December of 2004, I looked at the photo that had the guy who is getting married on the 27^th in it. This picture was taken six months before he met the women who was going to be his wife.

He wasn’t going to meet her for another six months. Then they would spend nine years together and continue on after that in marriage. I still had the picture, but more importantly, I still had the friendship.

Not so scared

The best thing happened this morning! My fears about seeing old friends at the wedding have begun to completely melt away. I stopped at Michael’s to get new woodless graphite. [Last week like an idiot who’s never used it before I wasn’t being careful getting out of my car and I dropped the whole container of my graphite and the lid was off, they shattered.] I walked into the pencil aisle and there were two people stocking it. I did a double take when I saw the guy because I didn’t realize at first that I knew him. He recognized me too. He smiled really big and pulled me in for a hug. We talked for a few minutes and he helped me find my graphite. The fact that we were both smiling and excited to see each other made me feel better. He brought up the wedding first and I’m so happy he is going to be there too. My fears have melted away now. I know the groom had been being really supportive before and telling me not to worry but somehow seeing I had nothing to worry about made me feel better.

Not Always A Downer

I was rereading the blog posts I have written so far and I noticed something. My entire blog is a horrible depressing downer!! That's sad because that is not who I am. I am serious when I have to be but the vision God set for me is to work with children. Working with children means being optimistic and enthusiastic is a requite for the job. I just really wanted to explain what really pushed me towards the vision at hand.

Death has been an old friend in my live for as long as I can remember and I have never been scared of him. I may not fear him taking me but I don't take it to kindly when he takes someone I care about. He's also the easiest way to explain how I feel about these things because I have felt his presence so many times.

Most of the time when people die, especially young people, we who are left behind feel helpless and lost. [I remember once when a friend's car was hit by an oncoming vehicle and it was the other driver fault. She was a recent graduate from high school with her whole life going for her.] We feel so out of control and lost. We tend to zone out a lot and drift off into space which essentially is just wondering around our minds and heart without purpose. [When she died people where shocked. Teens didn't know how to handle what they were feeling. It was mid August but they all found themselves flocking to the same place, a place of safety predictability. This place was giving them a sort of familial comfort. They flocked to the Catholic high school they had attended with her.]

These teens were emotionally lost and scared. One of their own had died. They did now understand the why, all they knew was that they were being pulled to the school. Do you understand the why? They were hurting, they were in an intense amount of spiritual and emotional pain. It was a Catholic school so they had theology everyday inside those walls. Everyday they were taught of Jesus's love for them and for Laura [their fallen friend]. Whether they realized it or not something had happened and instead of taking a destructive approach and abusing themselves or choosing to turn their backs on the world they had a need to be closer to the God who created them. They didn't want to be alone then, they wanted to be as close to God as they could, since they went to school 5 days a week and church only 1 day a week that made school the place to reach him.

That is my vision. That is what I hope to achieve. I don't care if people remember exaclty why they feel this drawing feeling to Christ and the church but I want them to have that feeling, especially in times where they are lost and wondering. All I am hoping for is that when they feel that way they begin to feel this feeling, this desire for God pulling them there to help them seek refuge in those times. I believe if we start by teaching the children of God's unending love and compassion for them at an early age its possible to make a significant impact in theier lifes. They then have a better chance of not turning to a desturtive path and if they do they know that God will except they back with open arms.

Laura and her brother William circa 2002

Shaping a Vision

I used to complain that my world was small. I complained about this when my high school sweetheart’s new fiancée started college at the same school I was attending. I complained about this when the boy in college I had a crush on was friends with a guy from his last school that I had a restraining order against. Small words just happen sometimes.

I had a good friend named Nikki growing up. We drifted a bit apart in middle school but we had the same freshman lunch in high school. I remember her introducing me to a cute boy in that lunch who was on her afternoon bus. He became one of my best friends for the next few years.

Nikki died two years ago this month. She was only two days older than me so she would only be 26 years old and her son is three years old now. She died of a drug overdose. I remember Nikki doing drugs for years before that. I was friends with her partner too. He and another friend of ours, shared a locker in high school.

Nikki’s wake was hard because of him. Sure it was hard to see her like that. And her mom and her little brother who was taller than me now that we were “grown up” but it was her partner. He didn’t hug me, he collapsed on me. Suddenly I was holding TJ up. I could hear him crying and through the tears he was trying to tell me how he had tried so hard to help here and keep her clean and away from those people. He told me how much he loved her. I had never had a doubt that he loved her and I still don’t doubt it. He was blaming himself for her actions and that was so sad. He was suffering and just in so much pain. It was obvious that he had cleaned up his act since high school and had been trying to be the best partner and father he could. It felt like he was hanging on to me for an eternity. Her family, TJ and their baby did not deserve this pain.

What went wrong? What happened? Maybe there was nothing TJ could do. Maybe by the time she and TJ found each other it was already too late for her. Maybe in Nikki’s case it was a matter of something needing to reach her at more fundamental of an age. We can’t really be certain. But we can know we can try again with a new generation, right?

The Casting of My Vision

My last post was about friends. Friends that I had what felt like a lifetime ago but were very vital in shaping who I am today. These guys were my brothers. I still hold them in my heart as my brothers. But there was a darkness attached to it as well.

As much as we loved each other and showed a fierce loyalty to each other there was also loyalty based on the things we did. We had a tendency (a decade ago) to break rules. The rules we broke were for the most, part small rules. They were rules like no photography or videotaping on mall property. We did a lot of things on mall property that we were not supposed to. In fact there is a list of roughly thirty things that cannot be done on our mall’s property and we have broken every rule at least once.

But we did other things too. These guys are only part of three deciding moments that made me chose to follow God in the way I have. Most of the years I was with them I let the smoking and the drinking just happen around me and I did nothing to stop it. I was scared. I liked my friends and I didn’t want to lose them by being a “goody two shoes” besides, I wasn’t perfect either.

That last year I hung out with them I joined in full force. I was a freshman in college and my sister kept jokingly telling me that college was the place to do those things. If I was going to do them in college I wanted to do them with the friends I trusted more than anyone.

One friend got out of the group and found God 2 yrs. before I left. He was big into drugs before he found God. His vision became helping teens out of the drug life he had and keeping others from ever getting there. I liked his vision a lot and I really wanted to support him. I still do. I feel my vision connects with that but that is not my vision. His vision is abortive, I want mine to be more preventative.

The Past Dies Hard

Do you ever get scared when you have to go back in time a little bit? I don’t mean literally go back in time, I’m not mad. I am just not the same person I was a decade ago. At the end of the month I am officiating a wedding. I’m super excited about that. I’ve known the groom for about eleven years and I met the bride nine years last month. They are just two of the coolest people anyone would ever want to meet so I’m so honored and stoked they asked me.


It’s everybody else I’m scared off. I know every groomsman in the wedding party. They are all part of the group we used to hang out in when I was in high school. I loved these boys like my brothers, they meant the world to me.
When my high school sweetheart, Matt and I broke up we both started to make some dumb choses. Both he and I turned kind of slutty for a while. Somehow I got caught up dating a guy who was really verbally and emotionally abusive to me years before and was being kind of terrible this time too. I actually broke it off with him every day for a week but he just kept pretending it didn’t happen. So I started going on with my life while he had not. This was a bad choice. My friends were mad at me and instead of repairing the problem I ran away.


I didn’t try to make contact with them again for a long time. It was really hard too. There was even a rumor going around that I got some of them fired from their jobs. I would never have done that. I loved them. And the ones who were fired, they were the ones who helped me through my break up with Matt. As far as I am still concerned, they saved my life, I would have failed out of college. Three years with the same person being such a core in my life, I was spiraling out. I didn’t really know what parts of my life were me and what parts were Matt, but they helped me.
So the part about this wedding that I’m most scared of is seeing these people who have not spoken to me since 2007. I know a lot of lies and drama was spread around after I left. I’m scared of being completely ignored by people I once used to see as my brothers.


Besides the bride and groom there is only one other person from that old group who talks to me and even though I was holding a secret for him as the time, I know they already are excited to get to see him. I’m afraid of being all alone at this wedding reception. It was so hard for me to adjust to life without them 7 years ago. I’m afraid of repeating that pain. Does that make sense?