| It's crazy what changes you see in yourself sometimes. I haven't visited this blog in well over a year and coming back to it, I see great changes in myself. I have to say, that althought I lost my mom and thought my life was ruined because of it, I have done quite well in the last year. Thanks to the inheritance I received, I was able to buy a brand new 2007 VW Rabbit. I got it towards the end of March last year and I've already put 15k miles on it! I drive mad miles sometimes... but I love it so much. It's my little Panzer. I have a loving boyfriend named Joey with whom I share a two-BR townhouse in Miamisburg next to the Dayton Mall. I would have never met him had my mom not passed away. It's such a crazy coincidence.. When my mom died March of 2006, I was only a week into spring quarter at Wright State. I decided to go ahead a drop the rest of the quarter and move back home with my dad. Living down there, I took leave from Skyline, called my old boss at King's Island, and got my job back as a caricature artist for a couple months. Working there again, I was able to rekindle a couple of friendships and make some new ones. One of those friendships was with my old buddy Jon Young. He was living in a house in Clifton with a couple of other people, and invited me to a 'welcome-home' and birthday party for two of his roommates, one of which was Joel Chandler. It was the most depressing summer of my life, but I wanted to be social, so I went to the party and brought the hooka that Amanda gave me (she was recently pregnant and found no use to have a smoking device with a child on the way). I came in and was introduced to this guy named Joey (who was invited by his best friend Joel Chandler), who I thought was taken at the time because he was standing with his arm around a girl named Betty (who I found out much later is kind-of a whore.. and no, they have never slept together). I didn't think anything of it because I was not at the party to flirt or let it be known that I was emotionally available. I mingled.. drank a couple beers.. smoked a couple pots.. and set-up my hooka in a circle of chairs outside where I had been spending the majority of my evening. I happened to start talking to Joey and we got along very naturally. We ended up sitting outside across from each other for a couple hours, smoking the hooka, shootin' the shit, and listening to music. At one point, some terrible tunes came out over the stereo and we both wanted it changed to something a little less mentally abrasive for the moment. CCR was our paired choice and we continued talking. I didn't even think that night that I would later be living with this guy, nor did I think I would ever see him again. But I felt a natural comfort with talking to him, and a few days later, developed a small crush. I thought about how easy it was to talk with him and how unusual it was that I felt absolutely no pressure to be anyone else but myself around him. I kept my little crush on the back burner for a couple weeks and finally built up the guts to ask Jon at work if his friend Joey was single. "Why, you want me to give him your number?" NO! no, just wondering. A week later, I found myself telling Jon to give him my number. A couple weeks later, I was out to dinner with my dad at O'Charlies and my phone rang. It was Joey! We coordinated a meetup that night in the Kohls parking lot on Tylersville and we began our first date driving around West Chester and talking about everything under the sun. He told me later that when he was given my number, he thought it was some other girl he had met at the same party, but she apparently sucked, and he was very glad it was my number. How sweet! So we've been together for almost two years now, and I love him more than anything. He has changed my life and continues to make me happy every day. Since meeting Joey, I've gained a new family and his great group of friends. I've learned a lot about myself through compromise and negotiation, and I think I've helped Joey learn some things about himself as well. I'm not nearly as stubborn as I used to be and I've taken on a new approach to life. I'm also more independent than I've ever been in a relationship, and I think it's really important to maintain independence, especially within a coupled relationship. I learned a lot from my relationship with Jim, really more on how NOT to act. All the things I listed that didn't occur with Jim, now occur on a regular basis with Joey. I don't attribute that to the fact that Joey does and Jim didn't, rather, I didn't allow Jim to do what he wanted. I always gave him crap for dumb little things that I wouldn't even mention to Joey. My whole perspective has changed, and I attribute that to my mom's death. I am a better person because my mom died. I was forced to look at myself and make some changes. I think about the 'what-ifs' all the time too.. where would I be living? who would I be dating? would I be dating at all? would I be working at WHIO? would I still have my Talon? would I have gotten Nermal or Heffer? where would I be in my college career? what would my relationship be like with my dad? with Sam? with Adam? my Aunts? would I be into video games? so many questions left unanswered... and I don't care. All I care about is that I'm alive, loved, and happy. Peace and vitality |
