You Again

I recently watched this horribly written movie starring Kristen Bell. It could have been a hilarious movie, but instead it was one train wreck after the other. Its about a girl that was tormented by Odette Annable's character in high school and then this girl pops back up later in life and pretends not to know Kristen Bell. This movie sucked. The only thing it did for me was make me reflect back on how different i am now from the person i am in high school.

This is what i don't understand about people, everyone can reflect and recognize their own journey, but they have a hard time understanding someone Else's.
I feel like high school is just a game of survival. Everyone falls into a groove that helps them survive the day. My first 2 years of high school i was lucky enough to survive on my good qualities. I got to rely on the fact that i was ignorantly happy about what was going on in the world. I only knew my immediate surroundings and at the time that was good enough for me. I had incredible friends that made it easy to be my silly self. I always wanted to be in the middle of the fun and there was plenty to be in the middle of.

Unfortunately my junior year is when i had to change the way i acted just to survive. My great friends from the year before were gone, and the ones i had left- well that's a really long story that i don't actually know the reasons behind, but in the end all i knew was that i was alone and they made it their mission to make me feel as small as possible and even attempt to get me kicked out of the one place i felt at home: the theatre. That's when i realized that if had a sharp tongue before they did i had the upper hand. I didn't like it, in fact i even made a girl cry because of the things i said, and i ran into the bathroom and cried my eyes out.

I had to put up this front like i really didn't care what anyone said about me, but of course i did. I acted like the bitch they wanted me to be, and i still don't know why. If i had just stayed the self i was the year before i might have been able to keep someone on my side, but it was just me alone. I knew it was happening, and yet i didn't even try to do anything about it. I think i made a lot of mistakes when i was younger- who doesn't ya know- but i decided to beat myself up about it. I decided that i deserved what was being thrown at me, and let it keep happening and even adding to it with my own behavior.

Luckily, this circumstance is what brought me closer to the Choir community and if found some really great people that helped me feel like my old self again. Over the summer from junior to senior year i fell in love, met incredible people, and started to feel the anger and hurt melt away and self confidence start to creep back in. Then, senior year started out great. I was on top of the world, until a 'mean girl' if you will returned from my past.

She had moved away a few years ago but now she was back, and it wasn't long before she was starting trouble right there in my safe haven of choir. I was not completely innocent either, as soon as i started to feel like my perfect world was going to come crashing down i reverted back to my old ways of surviving. I foolishly thought i had to protect what was mine, and i did not act any better than she did. This is when i was at my skinniest- i lost so much sleep and every time i would try to eat my stomach would hurt so badly that all i could do was sit and cry. I hated the situation i was in, i hated even more that i helped myself get there when i thought i had made so much progress getting back to me.

It wasn't until the end of my senior year when i realized that everything i knew was going to be gone in a matter of weeks that something inside me clicked: Who fucking cares?! These girls that spent all their time attacking me online- that was all they had, and my reactions were only going to keep it going. I deleted my account and focused on soaking up every last minute i had in the things that were making me happy before they would be over.

I heard from everyone (because of course this was a public situation) that my deleting only made them try harder and i cant explain how hard it was not to go read it, and it was even harder because i could imagine what they were writing and i couldn't stop myself from thinking how i would get back at them, but i didn't.. for once i was able to keep myself from making a mistake that i was used to making over and over. It was even harder when the relationship i had had (and caused a lot of this drama) ended. It was easily one of the hardest things i had ever gone through in my life up to that point- and staying off the Internet talking about it was just as hard- i had all these feelings that i couldn't communicate and the shame that my 'mean girls' were right in the end- that we wouldn't last.

Then, a bright spot came into my life. A gift from God. I met my now husband, Kevin. He was there for me during one of the hardest times in my life, and he didn't judge me when i would get upset about my ex, he would stay and hold me while i cried. I should probably explain something- i am friends with every single ex I've ever had. So of course i still tried to hold a friendship with the most recent one, because we were so important to each other from ages 13 to 18... how can you just not care about someone? We tried to be friends but we are just so different, and there was so much hurt there, that a friendship didn't work out. We kept trying though, and every time it blew up in my face i would be heart broken all over again, and Kevin understood.

Over my 6 year relationship with my husband, he somehow showed me that it was ok to be myself again. I said in our vows, that from the minute i met him i started to become a better person. He says i was just able to be me, and i guess he is right. He is the only person on this earth that knows every single detail, every side, every emotion that I've ever had- and he has always stayed. I know that people say you need to love yourself before you can love someone else. I have to say that is probably true, but i like to do things my own way and this is no exception. I had to see that the real me is actually lovable before i was able to embrace it. I had to make sure that someone wouldn't run first, and Kevin is the only one who never made me feel bad for anything, he thinks all my quirks are cute even.

I can say that now, at 25 i am exactly the person i want to be. That is why its hard when i re-connect with someone from my past. I kind of cut myself off from everyone i knew back when i was trying to survive and failing at being the person i wanted to be. I worry that when someone sees me in my home town, they will stay away from me on purpose and not see me. I worry that people i had grudges or problems in the past wont believe me when i say I'm over it. (because lets face it- anyone who holds a grudge almost 10 years later has a freakin problem!) I'm sad that some people aren't able to move past the person i was before, and i suppose i deserve that.

If i could tell those people anything, it would be... I'm sorry. I'm sorry if i ever made you feel bad, or upset, because i do know what it feels like on the other end, and i did it anyway. I wish i could show people how different i am, how i can be, and everything i still want to be in the future. On the other had, i still wish i could get a few apologies from the people that really hurt me when i was young, but i do know that is never going to happen and i was able to move on. I am proud to say that I've never been happier in my entire life, that i am proud of who i have become, and a lot of that credit goes to finding my other half.

I think its ok to loose you self a little bit, you learn that way. Its the people who can't admit when they've done something wrong, or the people that don't see the problem that truly worry me in this world. A little self discovery goes a long way.

Happily Ever After... Oh, there isn't a script for this part of life? Shoot...

Something not a whole lot of people know about me is that i write- all the time. I am currently in the middle of writing two different books, and for some reason i can never finish one, i am constantly bouncing back between the two. I think the problem is that i need a place to get out all the other stuff swirling around in my head out so that i can focus on my other stories. My pen name is Cheyenne Kira, and i thought it was appropriate to carry that name over to my blog as well.

I decided to start this blog because i find myself wondering what other people in our situation are like. I know that we are not the only couple out there that choose to do things the "responsible" way. All i mean by that, is the way that everyone else wanted us to.

My husband, Kevin and i actually met way back in Kindergarten. We joke a lot that if we had known then that we were looking at the future love of our lives, we probably would have spent more time getting to know each other. Instead i went on to date many different guys, and he became a bit of a make out whore. After we graduated high school, we still hadn't figured it out. I was at the end of a tumultuous relationship, and he was basking in the glory of all the diff rent girls that visited the local Safeway just to get a peek of him and his surfer hair cut.

After i finally decided to end my relationship, i was in need of a cuddle buddy. I wasn't as in need as Mila or Justin, but i definitely wanted someone to look at me and make me feel cute. Kevin was willingly that guy, and loves to remind me how he was only supposed to be a rebound and somehow i got hooked. We then dated for over 4 years before he asked me to marry him. I was ready about 2 years in, but he wasn't quite there yet. He wanted to wait until we knew what we were doing in our lives, until we had a solid plan. Finally, we were drunk one night and i somehow convinced him that the perfect time to propose was never going to happen, we would always have something happening and none of it would perfectly fall into place.

We were only engaged for 11 months, i couldn't even wait an entire year to marry my prince charming. We had a wonderful wedding- well it would have been if it had gone according to plan. A sunset wedding on the sandy beach, but freakin mother nature had different plans and we were forced indoors. Although everything that could go wrong did, it was still one of the funnest nights of my life.

I thought we had finished our contribution to society, but it turns out the world had different plans. Now that we're married everyone wants to know whats happening next. The way thing are "supposed" to go, rarely happen that way. So far we have been on the track that everyone has wanted for us. We lived together for 2 years before we got engaged, we had the big wedding, and now everyone is waiting for us to complete the cycle: a house and a baby.

This is where Gulianna Ransic said it best "I Do, Now What?" See there are a few hitches to this happily ever after business. We live in California, and if you know absolutely nothing about real estate in CA, even then you know its almost impossible to buy a house in CA. Who has time to save up money for a down payment with rent, utilities, student loans, one of us still in college, 2 full time jobs, pets and oh yea- time for your husband and you to enjoy each other? Our plan now is to move home when my husband graduates next June. We are very lucky to have both sets of parents who would be happy to have us, but the open ended question of which place to go depends on the next part of happily ever after....

Babies... I'm sure i will have many things to write on this topic but for now i will just say that its complicated. When is the right time to start trying when we know that in less than a year we will be moving home, and what about work? I am on the fast track to success, so where the hell does a baby fit into that? Another hitch in our story is my PCOS. There are many things you can do for PCOS, but the honest truth is that it makes it harder for us to conceive. It will take us longer than most couples, but we are ok with that, because we are still trying to figure out when we are emotionally ready for this.

Even though i have many questions, concerns, and worries i hope to find other people who understand where we come from. There are far too many people out there claiming to know it all, pretending life is perfect when there are a lot of things yet to be discovered. I guess what I'm saying is, welcome to my discovery journey i hope its a nice ride we can take together.