How my life went downhill,

I guess there’s not really a how in why it all started but more of a who. There’s a when too. Grade 7, well atlas that’s when I first really felt it…but I guess it happened with a decision made a little bit before that. I had this amazing best friend that I literally did everything with. We spent so much time together and I loved her dearly. But it was her sister who had some troubles at the school I went to. So they decided to pull both girls out of our school after my friend finished grade 6. Of course I was devastated but I thought it would be okay because I liked the other kids in my class and I thought they liked me pretty well too. I still did everything with that girl throughout the summer and when I started school again in grade 7, I thought everything would be fine, but it wasn’t. Everyone else already had their friends groups, and although I felt like I had a few friends, I didn’t have a best friend and I didn’t get invited to people’s houses. I hang out with the whole group of girls but I still felt all alone. I felt separate from everyone else. This was also the time when school started to become real and not everyone could pull good grades anymore. But I never had any trouble in school and I was still getting ‘A’s in everything. But somehow that only separated me more from everyone else. I started getting called names like “Einstein’s daughter” and “alien” which I guess could be considered compliments in a way but those words did hurt. Not because they were necessarily mean words but because they made me feel left out from everyone else. 

Also through this time I started to realize that I was kinda chubby compared to the other girls. That was not just a ‘oh I feel fat’ kind of thing, I actually was chubby. All through the good years I had been a skinny kid and I was short compared to everyone else so everyone always told me I was small, so I felt small even when I started gaining weight in grade 6. I guess that’s sort of a blessing that I didn’t feel fat till a little later in my life. But self image really started to come into play in grade 7. And I was a determined girl, I didn’t not want to stay looking the way I did. So I cut junk food out of my diet, I started to eat really healthy and go for runs. It was probably a combination of growing taller and the healthy food and exercise but I started to thin out a lot. And I started to feel just a little bit happier. 

The good old days,

Okay so I’m only 16 but life definitely hasn’t always been easy. There was a period of time that I can look back on that seemed pretty fabulous. After the departure of my beautiful sister, Mary, when I was in grade three, I lived a pretty splendid life. I can’t say I really remember every moment of these good three years. But I had nothing to worry about, I took dance class, I was a smart student, I had a great best friend. I loved reading and writing and I could be myself. Looking back at pictures of myself from those years I cringe. My clothing choices were insane. I couldn’t be a normal kid and a sweater and jeans, no I to wear colourful vests and crazy hair bows. At one point I even died part of my hair electric green. I liked being loud and different. I didn’t want to fit in with everyone else. I didn’t need to impress anybody, especially not any boys. Now saying that I still had an interest in boys. I guess my crush switched back and forth between Toby and Will through most of elementary school. Nothing ever really happened with them because we were only like 10. 

The funniest occurrence happened when I was in grade 5. A new boy arrived at our school that year. He was short and annoying and nothing I would ever like in a boy. But for some reason he had a huge crush on me. Some much so that when he bought a ring pop one time he said it was me and pretended to make out with it. Or this other time he was running down the hall, around a corner, and ran into me. He bit he tongue so hard that he bit right through it and had to get stitches. But the story he told everyone was that we were making out and his tongue got caught in my braces. And we were 10 years old!! He horrified me. But not only did he have an obsession with me he also was the cockiest kid I ever met. He claimed to be amazing at every sport. He played soccer and was being scouted, he had a black belt in karate, and he played travel hockey. Of course none of us believed him. And at one point I got so fed up with all his bragging that I wanted to put him to the test. It was in the winter time and our school had an ice rink made in the back by the playground. Our class was going for a skate and I asked the boy if he wanted to race down the ice. Of course he played travel hockey so it couldn’t be hard for him to be me on my little figure skates right? Wrong. Within the first two seconds of skating he slipped and fell on his face, and I won. After being cheered for by all the grade 5s, the boy had to come up to me and say it wasn’t a fair race because his skates weren’t sharp and that we should really re-do it. But at that point in my head, I had already won.

 From grade 3-6 I have the greatest memories but then it all went crashing down.

When I first fell for my first love,

Falling in love with someone isn’t an instant feeling. So I guessed if someone asked me if I believe in love at first sight, I would say no. Of course you can think some one is beautiful or attractive when you meet them but I don’t believe you instantly fall in love. In fact it takes time and work. And I do truly love certain people, and I didn’t always know that.

I didn’t fall for my first love when I first met them. In fact I don’t even remember really registering who they were when I first met them. They were also in that grade two class. So I guess I met them on that first day of school September of 2007. Maybe one day that will be something someone says at our wedding. 

I’m kidding, but I really did meet them in grade two. Of course my little heart only had eyes for blue-eyed Toby. It wasn’t till grade three when I had my second crush. 

His name will be Jack. The Jack to my Rose, because he was kinda her first love right? But then she lived the rest of her life without him and ended up marrying someone else?

Anyways that’s not the point.

And it say the first time i FELL for my first love is kinda wrong too because I don’t really remember when I first fell in love with them. Falling in love is like the line from The Fault in Our Stars : “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.”

But I remember when I he became my second crush. It was grade three, I sort of knew how school and friends and boys went. I was 8 turning 9 and my class was set up differently. Due to the fact that we had so many kids in our class, our class was split into one split class shared with have the grade 2’s and one full class. I was in the split class because I was ‘smart’ and could ‘work well on my own’. Because of our class splitting there were only 3 boys my age in my class. One was Toby, one was Jack, and one was a boy we will call Will. 

Why did I stop having a crush on Toby? I’m not really sure, I guess I was an 8 year old who wasn’t planning on dating anyone anytime soon and I liked adventure and meeting different boys. A real social butterfly 😂

Anyways this particular boy had an obsession with pokemons. Why? I don’t even know. Why did people ever like those things in the first place. So my 8 year old mine thought it was funny to steal his pokemon ball things and hide them in my backpack at recess. I did it continually, and he always knew it was me, but I still did it anyways. HAHA flirting in 2009, the good old days. 

New siblings,

Before I said how I was the middle child, with one older brother and one younger brother. Well one day in grade two I got a new sibling. No my mom didn’t have a new baby. I actually got an amazing older sister. Her name is Mary. She is a year older than me and had been my friend for a few years before my mom took an interest in her life. Things with Mary’s mom weren’t in the best situation and her dad wasn’t around anymore. I don’t really think her background story matters so much because when she was living with me, she was a part of our family too.

We used to do everything together, I mean she was living with us, kinda like we were her foster home. She was amazing, she was so kind and funny and she was an amazing singer. I loved her so much! We did argue constantly about things, just like sisters do. She was using my favourite Barbie, or we didn’t want to play the same game.

We’ve had amazing times together and although not certain memories stick out in my life, it was a great time in my life. I had this inspirational girl in my life that meant so much to me. My best friend lived in the same house as me. But things weren’t always great, she did live in my house, which meant I had to learn how to share. My toys, and space, those weren’t hard to share. It was hard sharing my mom. It sounds selfish and mean, but I got jealous of when my mom spent more time with Mary and when Mary was crying, she would comfort Mary. At one point I thought that my mom cared more about Mary than about me because Mary had more issues in her life. I wanted to yell at my mom that I needed her more than Mary did. But one time my mom talked to me and finally I got it. I was always going to be my mom’s daughter, no matter what and she loved me unconditionally but she also loved Mary. And in the end, I was okay with that.

Mary didn’t live with me forever, she moved 6 hours away and lived with a different family. I’m not really sure why that ended up happening. I was too young for my parents to tell me, and I still haven’t really asked. It actually really sucks but I’m so thankful for the time we spent together. I learned a lot during those two years. True friendship, laughter, love, sacrifice and what family really meant. Because a family isn’t always who were born to, but who accepts you the way you are, loves you unconditionally, and will never give up on you. 

New words,

I’m proud to say at this point in my life, I have a large vocabulary that I only hope expands with time. So if we subtract 8 years from my life, to when I was 8 years old, that is 8 years of learning many new words to add to my vocabulary. 

I also unfortunately have to see that many of the words in my vocabulary are not appropriate words, or there is no kind way to use certain words.

When I was homeschooled and lived at home with just my family, I didn’t really learn what certain things meant. The same way I had not been educated in the means of liking a boy. I lived in a little bubble and when I started real school, my bubble popped. One of the first words I ever misused was 'hot'.

It’s funny to look back on that now, because I probably use the word hot everyday now. Like when I tell my friends Justin Bieber or Harry Styles is hot. But in my 8 year old mind, who had been homeschooled for the majority of my education I thought the word hot was only the opposite of cold. Of course I knew what being handsome or beautiful was but because I had never liked a boy before I didn’t see it the same way. Being beautiful was more based on who the person really was then what they looked like physically.

Quick side note in my story, shouldn’t we view beauty the way my 8 year old self did? Society has warped our view of people. That physical is more important than emotional or spiritual. What we look like is more important than our actions. Did Mother Theresa look like a Victoria Secret model? Probably not but that doesn’t change the way we view her because of all the amazing change she brought to the world. Just a little thought.

Anyways, what I was saying was how I learned the second meaning of the word hot. When I was 8 my main definition was the google definition:

hot 

/hät/

adjective

1.having a high degree of heat or a high temperature.

But my classmates quickly taught me the Urban Dictionary definition. (Although the way I learned wasn’t quite what I would have picked)

hot 

1.someone thats EXTREMEMLY good looking but not like cute, more like sexy. when they walk by u turn ure head and wish u had a pause button or something.

(also thank you becky for that extremely hilarious definition😂)

So anyways, it was a typical day in grade two and I thought that most things were going well, I had made some friends that were girls and a boy liked me. Which I guess was a big deal in grade two. It must have been near the end of the school year, during warm weather when this happened. Recess had just finished and we were all coming back inside, taking off our shoes and getting ready to go back into class for the last half of the day. Toby was running around the classroom with one of his best friends, his name will be Fred. Toby and Fred were sweating and when they stopped running, they stood in front of me. I simply asked Toby “Are you hot?” because he had so much sweat dripping off of him.

I knew instantly I had said something wrong because the whole class went quiet and looked at me. Then Fred kind of gasped, “You basically just asked him out!” he said.

Yet I was still so confused. What had I even said? And I hardly even understood what it meant to take someone ‘out’. Since I was kind of smart, and some kids proceeded to tell me that hot actually meant ‘cute’ or whatever. But I was still super embarrassed. Not only had I called someone hot in front of everyone, it was the boy that I liked.

Looking back, that is the stupidest thing ever. Everyone at school calls each other hot now. But we were in grade two and I guess that’s just how it was. For the next few years that’s kinda how it went. How I discovered what ‘balls’ meant in a male sense and how I learned words like sexy.

I’m not going to deny, I still learn some unpleasant words every day but I thank Google for being there for me instead of having to embarrass myself in front of my classmates. 

Like who the frick cares if I wanted to play with balls (in the sense of bouncy balls) and I got laughed at by all the boys. But I guess that’s just how we learn sometimes.

The death of my 7 year old self,

All my life leading up to grade two, I hung out with boys. Yes I had a few friends that were girls, but I spent most time with my brothers, and their friends. For the most part growing up my best friend was a boy and I liked hanging out with them more then girls. I understood them better.

The girls in grade two were so complicated. They fighted over things that weren’t worth fighting over. They talked about boys, and finally  I had a boy to talk about. But I soon discovered that all the girls liked Toby, and I decided not to tell the other girls who I liked. It was my secret.

One day at recess, I was hanging out with a boy named Cole and we were just talking. I didn’t want to hang out with the girls, and I don’t remember why he wasn’t hanging out with the boys. Cole asked me the biggest question anybody could ask in grade two. In fact everyone asks still today when I’m 16. Like honestly does it really matter who someone likes? What if they like more than one person or nobody? 

But anyways Cole asked me who I liked. And for some reason, I thought, he’s a boy he won’t care and I also wanted to be accepted by him because I wanted to be his friend. So I told him I liked Toby. And what did he do right after that? Cole proceeded to run over to the group of boys and tell all of them that I liked Toby. Coincidentally, that day Toby was away and so he wasn’t there to hear Cole tell all the boys I liked him. But I was horrified, I knew too well that the next day when Toby came back all the boys would tell him.

I went home that night so upset. I remembered crying myself to sleep. I lay in bed thinking about how I could convince my parents to change schools, so I would never have to go back to school. I wanted to die. It was the worst day of my life. 

The next day I woke up. I did not want to go to school, but I could not tell my parents what was wrong. Maybe the boys wouldn’t tell Toby… But that was not the case. The boys did tell Toby, but I found out, that Toby liked me too.

-The Girl Next Door <3

My first crush,

It was a typical day of grade two. I had just finished my morning classes and it was time for lunch break. My friend, let’s call her Beth, had a broken leg, which meant she didn’t have to go play outside for recess. Every day she would choose two friends to stay inside with her. This particular day, I was one of her choices. I can’t say I quite remember what we were doing that particular day but we decided to do something really secretive. Beth asked me, who I had a crush on. I didn’t even know what that really meant, why would I like a boy? They were my friends, did she mean like my mom and dad who were married? Beth told me we had to go to the desk of the boy we liked and kiss the top of the desk. I let her go first. She kissed the top of the desk of a boy, he can be called Toby. He’s so cute, Beth told me. Then it was my turn, so I thought of all the boys in my grade two class. Who was cute? I picked a boy named John. I went and found his desk and kissed the top. I guess I made the wrong choice though, because Beth’s face was scrunched together when I looked up. You like John? She asked me, but he’s so gross and he always picks his nose. 

How was I supposed to know who to pick? I hardly had been in the class for a month, I hardly knew all the boy’s names, and I had never liked anyone before. 

It wasn’t till weeks later as I sat in carpet time, I realized what being cute meant, Toby was cute. He had these blue eyes, floppy hair, and a little chip in one tooth when he smiled. He always made me laugh. And then I knew what Beth meant about having a crush. I had a crush on Toby.

-The Girl Next Door <3