Re: Tell me your life story.
Holy fucking hell this is an enormous wall of text. Fuck it though, you asked for a life story... spoiler'd for ease I guess.
Edit: Oh man Choof, I'm glad you're enjoying life again... not once in my emotional turmoil have I ever felt the desire to attempt suicide, cut myself, etc., so I can't imagine how elated you must feel now.
Holy fucking hell this is an enormous wall of text. Fuck it though, you asked for a life story... spoiler'd for ease I guess.
1992-2001: Grew up in a small town of ~250 people called Wymark. It was great until my parents divorced, and then it was a very bizarre, almost isolated feeling because it felt like I was the only person who didn't have married parents (and in a fairly religious area, this was pretty much true). I also got glasses in grade 3, and I was one of only two students in my grade to have glasses, so I was incredibly distraught because I thought I would eventually go blind. I got over it.
2001-2002: Moved to the slightly larger city of Swift Current (where I was born, and where all my immediate family lived at the time), into a townhouse. Soon after, my sister (technically half-sister) left in the middle of the night to go live with my dad because she was sick of my mother's rules. Not long after that, she left his house in the middle of the night to go live with my maternal grandparents because she was sick of his religious nuttiness and rules. I made a few new friends.
2002-2007: Moved to a townhouse in Regina because my mother was sick of single-parenthood small-city life (where everybody knows everybody, and everybody talks). She escaped to single-parenthood large-city life, which was, perhaps, better. I was sick of having to make new friends everywhere I went, though I managed. In grades 5 and 6 I was bullied pretty hard for ridiculous reasons, and it's amazing just how useless some teachers can be in these situations. I had no backbone whatsoever. Also, in 2005, my father got remarried to a perceptibly enormous cunt, and I had some horrendous camping trips with them where she would take away my Stephen King novels (such as It) because they included homosexual characters and some characters called each other n*ggers and she was as much of a religious nutbag as my father so these evils of the world were to be banished from their household. I normally spent my summers half-and-half (and every second weekend during the year I went to see my father, which was always a 2-hour trip from Regina to Swift Current, over 3 if I went by bus in the winter), but that summer I said fuck it and returned home early. From that point, I stopped going to see my father every second weekend. There were periods of time where I wouldn't see him for a few months to half a year, and return trips were never fun anyway. Ugh.
2007-2009: My mother and I moved from the townhouse to an actual house because she was sick of constantly throwing her money out of the window due to monthly rent. I continued to excel in high school, though I was fairly timid until I got my first job at McD's in 2008. I worked there for 4.5 years (somewhat of a break in-between for various reasons), but about a year into that job, after working some tough weekend graveyard shifts in a scary D/T with many drunks, I finally established my self-confidence, gained an ability to talk back (if you can call that an ability), and started growing that sought-after backbone of mine.
Later in 2008 or in early 2009, I met probably the girl of my dreams. She went to a different high school, but she was gorgeous, had the sharpest wit of anyone I have ever met, was incredibly book- and street-smart, had a stellar vocabulary, lived in a shitty household, genuinely ignored me in our first few encounters (these were always larger group get-togethers at that time), had some serious anxiety and self-esteem issues, and always had something to say. I truly thought that I never had a chance with her, and she was already dating someone, but I was fine with all of that, because she was a blast to be around. I eventually ended up with her number because I was texting her with someone else's cell phone and we were calling each other immensely creative names, until we finally exchanged numbers so that I didn't have to do this vicariously through someone else. These epic matches continued, we ended up sharing a lot of information about our past and current situations, and then she eventually broke up with her then-boyfriend because he was more interested in gaming than her, even with her in the room. I still never expected anything to happen, but we did grow closer and closer.
This was throughout grade 11, which was, for some reason, a horrendous year for me. I continued to do well in school, but I felt like I was suffocating emotionally. My mother was seeing a guy who she had blatantly caught cheating on her (yet she continued to see him, because he "filled that need" or whatever the fuck it was she saw in him), which did nothing to help me with my already fucked up views on relationships, especially after watching my parents' marriage crumble and then steadily losing a father figure to a woman who I still perceived to be an insufferable cunt. I had another close friend dealing with relationship issues, and somehow I was able to talk him through it, despite having literally no experience on the matter (or at least it felt like I talked him through it). McDonald's was also getting incredibly stressful, because I only had my partial backbone by then (this is how I describe my slow ascent to gaining self-confidence), and there weren't many supportive people there at the time. Finally, I was doing poorly in the physics class I was taking in high school (for me, "poorly" ended up being an 87 in the class, so you can see my penchant for perfection right there), but the fact that I didn't understand basically anything made me feel very lost. Hence, the emotional asphyxiation.
That summer, right after school finished, I was still feeling the incredible stress from work (perceptibly greater than what it really was, I'm sure). Canada Day came along, and I ended up going to Wascana Park late at night with a bunch of friends (including that aforementioned girl), and she was nestled basically in my lap as we watched the fireworks on that cool night. My friend also got attacked by a Canada goose that night because I don't think it was expecting a bunch of people to be sitting near the water. That was funny.
I didn't have my licence yet so she drove me home, and when we got back to my house, my mother was staying over at her new boyfriend's house (soon-to-be fiancé). As a result, we sat outside for a while, and just talked... and then as we said goodnight, in a swirl of thought and non-thought on both of our parts, we simultaneously moved in and shared a kiss. I recall not having a single coherent thought at that time... it literally felt like a daze of swelling emotion and utter confusion, and every time I think of that moment, my eyes start welling up... because it felt so perfect and so right.
Unfortunately, however, that euphoric feeling of having somebody supposedly want to like me, and maybe even want to love me, did not last. Going along with everything I've already mentioned, it should be clear that relationships scare me because of the possible end result: emotional trauma. I saw this with my parents' divorce, my father's remarriage, my mother's fuck-up of a boyfriend (she tried to justify it, saying he'd change, etc.), and even because my sister moved out. I haven't mentioned this yet, but when my sister ultimately moved in with my mother's parents, my mother refused to talk to them for the longest time. She's a stubborn woman, though I can at least understand her anger toward them because they took my sister in without putting up much resistance in the "oh you should really consider living with your mother" sense. If they said anything like that, I can imagine it was half-heartedly.
So, now, following the sensation of two mouths embracing in a way that felt like love, I felt even more trapped. The expectation placed upon me to succeed in school was gone (for the summer, anyway), but now I felt like there was a certain expectation to make a move toward a relationship, even though I was very apprehensive because of these past events in my life. I wish I could say that there was a happy ending to this part of the story, and I suppose in some minor, twisted way there is... so instead, I'll wish that I could say it was an ending that gave me that euphoric feeling I still long for again.
We shared a few more intimate moments that July. One night, we were in her car outside my house for approximately four hours (my mother was at her fiancé's house now), and we were talking for a long time as I had my hand up her shirt. Funny enough, we had been opening and closing the car doors for various humidity related reasons, and a cop eventually pulled up and wondered what was going on because the neighbours had seen this car parked ominously in the neighbourhood for the past while and the lights kept going on and off. We claimed that we were just talking, and it was true... there was no, as they say, particularly funny business.
Another night, we had a whipped cream extravaganza throughout my house, spraying it on each other and licking it off, wrestling, etc. It was strange. She stayed the night, and all we did was make out in my bed... again, because I was overly apprehensive about going any further. I did sleep well that night, perhaps because I had somebody to put my arm around. She smelled divine, even through the remnants of whipped cream.
From that point, though, I felt awkward. We weren't truly dating (it wasn't Facebook-official!!), but she had inherently professed her willingness to go further. Even now, I'm still baffled by the things we would say to each other, especially through text messages. They were overly ambiguous, yet almost crystal clear. It's difficult to explain, but that's how it was. That's probably why I remained so apprehensive.
Then, after one particularly horrendous day at work, it was as if someone had dropped a brick off of the Empire State Building onto a poor camel waiting below, and I was that camel... I went home, and in an almost blacked-out fit of fury wrote a really nasty email to her, nitpicking the stupidest, most insignificant quirks of hers and telling her that she was, essentially, a horribly bitchy cunt. I remember absolutely zero of what I said, and deleted that email from its existence in my mailbox almost immediately. From that point, though, our friendship was over. I hadn't burned those bridges so much as vaporized them instantaneously, and it's my single biggest regret of my entire life. There was very little rhyme or reason for what I did, and I know I did nothing to help her anxiety issues regarding relationships (she had gone on at length about how the men she had previously dated would essentially string her along, promise to never hurt her emotionally, and then ultimately do just that). What did I do? I essentially strung her along, promised that I would never be like those guys, and then virtually slapped her in the face with that email. I heard from one of our mutual friends that even months later she would still talk about something enjoyable the two of us had done, and then break down in tears. I was devastated approximately 24 hours after sending that email, and having such things recounted to me sure as fuck didn't help. I've never wanted to turn back time so fucking much in my life.
2009-now: At the end of that summer, we moved across the city to a different house, as my newly engaged mother and soon-to-be stepfather each wanted to move out of their houses so we could combine households while having something of a fresh start. I got my licence just before school started, and grade 12 was an amazing year for me. I participated in most extracurricular activities, had many incredible friends, had my best school year ever (nailed all the big awards at the graduation ceremony wahoo), and then sometime that spring I received a text from "some number" that I immediately recognized as that girl I had so viciously abandoned, even though it had been 8 or 9 months since I had deleted that number from my phone. She was informing me that her grandfather had been recently diagnosed with cancer and that she had nobody in whom she could truly confide. She had close friends, yes, but somehow I had been that much closer. She wanted to meet me after school, and I was very curious, because even though I had been so nicely distracted by a hectic grade 12 year, she had always been lingering at the back of my mind, and I always wondered how she was doing. We met in a Denny's parking lot in the pouring rain, and she sat in the passenger seat of my vehicle. Saying hello to her was a weird, almost hollow experience, because we hadn't seen or spoken to each other in so long ever since she had responded to my email with a cruel rebuttal of her own.
She was never one to shed tears around other people, but telling me about what her grandfather had been going through sure destroyed her. All I could do was sit in silence, in the driver's seat, fidgeting nervously as I listened. I wanted to reach out to her, but that would've been awkward; I wanted to apologize for everything that I had done, but that seemed highly out of place in that moment; I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but that could've been an outright lie given the circumstances. Instead I felt like I was staring at her from outside a display case, and she was the rare, fragile artifact from within. It wasn't a good feeling, for me and I'm sure for her as well.
She let it all out though, and I did end up hugging her to make her feel better. The last thing she asked me before she stepped back into the rain, and I'm sure my heart probably ceased to work for several seconds, was "Are we okay?" My response was simply an affirmation. We are now excellent friends again, her grandfather has recovered nicely, and by leaps and bounds she has become the most admirable person in my life due to all the shit she has put up with since her childhood and how she has dealt with it all. This is the happy ending part. The euphoric ending would be if we could go back to that summer of 2009 and I could do it right. I'm sure that will never happen, and I can only partially accept that.
Aside from that aspect of my life, in July of 2010, after grade 12, I went on a trip to Greece which included a cruise around the Aegean sea (and a day-long stop in Turkey), I went on to kick some serious ass in university, and now I'm going into my fourth year in a Math Honours program. I'll be taking my first semester in Moscow, as I applied for this Math in Moscow program and its associated scholarship and was one of two lucky recipients of that $9000 award. It'll be the first time that I've ever lived away from family for longer than about two weeks, and I'm both excited and nervous. Not much else incredibly exciting has happened to me since 2010, except that I've inherently forgiven my stepmother for how she acted toward me in the past, and I truly enjoy visiting my father whenever I get a free moment away from studying and being a university badass. He's not as much of a religious nutbag as he used to be (which is good, because I abhor religion primarily for the ridiculous beliefs that people have as a result toward things like abortion, homosexuality, etc.), and I find that I can talk to him a lot better than I can talk with my over-exaggerating, hastily concluding, drama-seeking conspiracy theorist of a mother. I also have fantastic university friends with whom I enjoy being fanatical about mathematics. I still have relationship issues out the ass, and I haven't been as emotionally close to anyone as in that summer of 2009, but one thing is for certain: I still love life.
tl;dr: When it comes to relationships, I'm emotionally fucked up, and I've fucked up other people. I'm also going to Russia this fall. Holla! (and fuck you for taking the tl;dr route heehee)
2001-2002: Moved to the slightly larger city of Swift Current (where I was born, and where all my immediate family lived at the time), into a townhouse. Soon after, my sister (technically half-sister) left in the middle of the night to go live with my dad because she was sick of my mother's rules. Not long after that, she left his house in the middle of the night to go live with my maternal grandparents because she was sick of his religious nuttiness and rules. I made a few new friends.
2002-2007: Moved to a townhouse in Regina because my mother was sick of single-parenthood small-city life (where everybody knows everybody, and everybody talks). She escaped to single-parenthood large-city life, which was, perhaps, better. I was sick of having to make new friends everywhere I went, though I managed. In grades 5 and 6 I was bullied pretty hard for ridiculous reasons, and it's amazing just how useless some teachers can be in these situations. I had no backbone whatsoever. Also, in 2005, my father got remarried to a perceptibly enormous cunt, and I had some horrendous camping trips with them where she would take away my Stephen King novels (such as It) because they included homosexual characters and some characters called each other n*ggers and she was as much of a religious nutbag as my father so these evils of the world were to be banished from their household. I normally spent my summers half-and-half (and every second weekend during the year I went to see my father, which was always a 2-hour trip from Regina to Swift Current, over 3 if I went by bus in the winter), but that summer I said fuck it and returned home early. From that point, I stopped going to see my father every second weekend. There were periods of time where I wouldn't see him for a few months to half a year, and return trips were never fun anyway. Ugh.
2007-2009: My mother and I moved from the townhouse to an actual house because she was sick of constantly throwing her money out of the window due to monthly rent. I continued to excel in high school, though I was fairly timid until I got my first job at McD's in 2008. I worked there for 4.5 years (somewhat of a break in-between for various reasons), but about a year into that job, after working some tough weekend graveyard shifts in a scary D/T with many drunks, I finally established my self-confidence, gained an ability to talk back (if you can call that an ability), and started growing that sought-after backbone of mine.
Later in 2008 or in early 2009, I met probably the girl of my dreams. She went to a different high school, but she was gorgeous, had the sharpest wit of anyone I have ever met, was incredibly book- and street-smart, had a stellar vocabulary, lived in a shitty household, genuinely ignored me in our first few encounters (these were always larger group get-togethers at that time), had some serious anxiety and self-esteem issues, and always had something to say. I truly thought that I never had a chance with her, and she was already dating someone, but I was fine with all of that, because she was a blast to be around. I eventually ended up with her number because I was texting her with someone else's cell phone and we were calling each other immensely creative names, until we finally exchanged numbers so that I didn't have to do this vicariously through someone else. These epic matches continued, we ended up sharing a lot of information about our past and current situations, and then she eventually broke up with her then-boyfriend because he was more interested in gaming than her, even with her in the room. I still never expected anything to happen, but we did grow closer and closer.
This was throughout grade 11, which was, for some reason, a horrendous year for me. I continued to do well in school, but I felt like I was suffocating emotionally. My mother was seeing a guy who she had blatantly caught cheating on her (yet she continued to see him, because he "filled that need" or whatever the fuck it was she saw in him), which did nothing to help me with my already fucked up views on relationships, especially after watching my parents' marriage crumble and then steadily losing a father figure to a woman who I still perceived to be an insufferable cunt. I had another close friend dealing with relationship issues, and somehow I was able to talk him through it, despite having literally no experience on the matter (or at least it felt like I talked him through it). McDonald's was also getting incredibly stressful, because I only had my partial backbone by then (this is how I describe my slow ascent to gaining self-confidence), and there weren't many supportive people there at the time. Finally, I was doing poorly in the physics class I was taking in high school (for me, "poorly" ended up being an 87 in the class, so you can see my penchant for perfection right there), but the fact that I didn't understand basically anything made me feel very lost. Hence, the emotional asphyxiation.
That summer, right after school finished, I was still feeling the incredible stress from work (perceptibly greater than what it really was, I'm sure). Canada Day came along, and I ended up going to Wascana Park late at night with a bunch of friends (including that aforementioned girl), and she was nestled basically in my lap as we watched the fireworks on that cool night. My friend also got attacked by a Canada goose that night because I don't think it was expecting a bunch of people to be sitting near the water. That was funny.
I didn't have my licence yet so she drove me home, and when we got back to my house, my mother was staying over at her new boyfriend's house (soon-to-be fiancé). As a result, we sat outside for a while, and just talked... and then as we said goodnight, in a swirl of thought and non-thought on both of our parts, we simultaneously moved in and shared a kiss. I recall not having a single coherent thought at that time... it literally felt like a daze of swelling emotion and utter confusion, and every time I think of that moment, my eyes start welling up... because it felt so perfect and so right.
Unfortunately, however, that euphoric feeling of having somebody supposedly want to like me, and maybe even want to love me, did not last. Going along with everything I've already mentioned, it should be clear that relationships scare me because of the possible end result: emotional trauma. I saw this with my parents' divorce, my father's remarriage, my mother's fuck-up of a boyfriend (she tried to justify it, saying he'd change, etc.), and even because my sister moved out. I haven't mentioned this yet, but when my sister ultimately moved in with my mother's parents, my mother refused to talk to them for the longest time. She's a stubborn woman, though I can at least understand her anger toward them because they took my sister in without putting up much resistance in the "oh you should really consider living with your mother" sense. If they said anything like that, I can imagine it was half-heartedly.
So, now, following the sensation of two mouths embracing in a way that felt like love, I felt even more trapped. The expectation placed upon me to succeed in school was gone (for the summer, anyway), but now I felt like there was a certain expectation to make a move toward a relationship, even though I was very apprehensive because of these past events in my life. I wish I could say that there was a happy ending to this part of the story, and I suppose in some minor, twisted way there is... so instead, I'll wish that I could say it was an ending that gave me that euphoric feeling I still long for again.
We shared a few more intimate moments that July. One night, we were in her car outside my house for approximately four hours (my mother was at her fiancé's house now), and we were talking for a long time as I had my hand up her shirt. Funny enough, we had been opening and closing the car doors for various humidity related reasons, and a cop eventually pulled up and wondered what was going on because the neighbours had seen this car parked ominously in the neighbourhood for the past while and the lights kept going on and off. We claimed that we were just talking, and it was true... there was no, as they say, particularly funny business.
Another night, we had a whipped cream extravaganza throughout my house, spraying it on each other and licking it off, wrestling, etc. It was strange. She stayed the night, and all we did was make out in my bed... again, because I was overly apprehensive about going any further. I did sleep well that night, perhaps because I had somebody to put my arm around. She smelled divine, even through the remnants of whipped cream.
From that point, though, I felt awkward. We weren't truly dating (it wasn't Facebook-official!!), but she had inherently professed her willingness to go further. Even now, I'm still baffled by the things we would say to each other, especially through text messages. They were overly ambiguous, yet almost crystal clear. It's difficult to explain, but that's how it was. That's probably why I remained so apprehensive.
Then, after one particularly horrendous day at work, it was as if someone had dropped a brick off of the Empire State Building onto a poor camel waiting below, and I was that camel... I went home, and in an almost blacked-out fit of fury wrote a really nasty email to her, nitpicking the stupidest, most insignificant quirks of hers and telling her that she was, essentially, a horribly bitchy cunt. I remember absolutely zero of what I said, and deleted that email from its existence in my mailbox almost immediately. From that point, though, our friendship was over. I hadn't burned those bridges so much as vaporized them instantaneously, and it's my single biggest regret of my entire life. There was very little rhyme or reason for what I did, and I know I did nothing to help her anxiety issues regarding relationships (she had gone on at length about how the men she had previously dated would essentially string her along, promise to never hurt her emotionally, and then ultimately do just that). What did I do? I essentially strung her along, promised that I would never be like those guys, and then virtually slapped her in the face with that email. I heard from one of our mutual friends that even months later she would still talk about something enjoyable the two of us had done, and then break down in tears. I was devastated approximately 24 hours after sending that email, and having such things recounted to me sure as fuck didn't help. I've never wanted to turn back time so fucking much in my life.
2009-now: At the end of that summer, we moved across the city to a different house, as my newly engaged mother and soon-to-be stepfather each wanted to move out of their houses so we could combine households while having something of a fresh start. I got my licence just before school started, and grade 12 was an amazing year for me. I participated in most extracurricular activities, had many incredible friends, had my best school year ever (nailed all the big awards at the graduation ceremony wahoo), and then sometime that spring I received a text from "some number" that I immediately recognized as that girl I had so viciously abandoned, even though it had been 8 or 9 months since I had deleted that number from my phone. She was informing me that her grandfather had been recently diagnosed with cancer and that she had nobody in whom she could truly confide. She had close friends, yes, but somehow I had been that much closer. She wanted to meet me after school, and I was very curious, because even though I had been so nicely distracted by a hectic grade 12 year, she had always been lingering at the back of my mind, and I always wondered how she was doing. We met in a Denny's parking lot in the pouring rain, and she sat in the passenger seat of my vehicle. Saying hello to her was a weird, almost hollow experience, because we hadn't seen or spoken to each other in so long ever since she had responded to my email with a cruel rebuttal of her own.
She was never one to shed tears around other people, but telling me about what her grandfather had been going through sure destroyed her. All I could do was sit in silence, in the driver's seat, fidgeting nervously as I listened. I wanted to reach out to her, but that would've been awkward; I wanted to apologize for everything that I had done, but that seemed highly out of place in that moment; I wanted to tell her that everything would be okay, but that could've been an outright lie given the circumstances. Instead I felt like I was staring at her from outside a display case, and she was the rare, fragile artifact from within. It wasn't a good feeling, for me and I'm sure for her as well.
She let it all out though, and I did end up hugging her to make her feel better. The last thing she asked me before she stepped back into the rain, and I'm sure my heart probably ceased to work for several seconds, was "Are we okay?" My response was simply an affirmation. We are now excellent friends again, her grandfather has recovered nicely, and by leaps and bounds she has become the most admirable person in my life due to all the shit she has put up with since her childhood and how she has dealt with it all. This is the happy ending part. The euphoric ending would be if we could go back to that summer of 2009 and I could do it right. I'm sure that will never happen, and I can only partially accept that.
Aside from that aspect of my life, in July of 2010, after grade 12, I went on a trip to Greece which included a cruise around the Aegean sea (and a day-long stop in Turkey), I went on to kick some serious ass in university, and now I'm going into my fourth year in a Math Honours program. I'll be taking my first semester in Moscow, as I applied for this Math in Moscow program and its associated scholarship and was one of two lucky recipients of that $9000 award. It'll be the first time that I've ever lived away from family for longer than about two weeks, and I'm both excited and nervous. Not much else incredibly exciting has happened to me since 2010, except that I've inherently forgiven my stepmother for how she acted toward me in the past, and I truly enjoy visiting my father whenever I get a free moment away from studying and being a university badass. He's not as much of a religious nutbag as he used to be (which is good, because I abhor religion primarily for the ridiculous beliefs that people have as a result toward things like abortion, homosexuality, etc.), and I find that I can talk to him a lot better than I can talk with my over-exaggerating, hastily concluding, drama-seeking conspiracy theorist of a mother. I also have fantastic university friends with whom I enjoy being fanatical about mathematics. I still have relationship issues out the ass, and I haven't been as emotionally close to anyone as in that summer of 2009, but one thing is for certain: I still love life.
tl;dr: When it comes to relationships, I'm emotionally fucked up, and I've fucked up other people. I'm also going to Russia this fall. Holla! (and fuck you for taking the tl;dr route heehee)
Edit: Oh man Choof, I'm glad you're enjoying life again... not once in my emotional turmoil have I ever felt the desire to attempt suicide, cut myself, etc., so I can't imagine how elated you must feel now.
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