reflecting on the past

This is really long, and probably not very entertaining. But I just need to get this all out of my head. Hopefully it will stop driving me crazy. Last night I just kept thinking about the past. And wondering if I had done something different if things would be different now. It is gonna make me even crazier than I am. I like the way things are now. I love my boyfriend, I have a good relationship with my parents for the first time ever, I have tons of friends that care about me and miss me. Things can't get much better than this.

Here goes nothing. I hope you don't slip into acoma while reading this. It is so long, over two pages in Microsoft Word.

Yesterday while I was in the shower, that "Take a Bow" song by Madonna came on the radio. I am torn between liking the song and hating it. It is a good song, but it was the first song on the radio after my cousin Jessi, told my best friend Robbie that I would go out with him. So every time I hear that song it reminds me of that crazy day.

I am just going to start at the beginning of the story. It will take a while and you will probably hate me by the end. But if I don't the whole thing won't make as much since.

I met Robbie when I was seven, he lived in the trailer house down at the end of the block. Our parents knew each other and I guess they knew that when we did meet we would be instant best friends.

There weren't all that many kids in the neighborhood. The house to the right of ours had two boys, but they were a little older than us, so the only fun they had with us was teasing us and tying dead snakes to our tricycles. An older lady lived in the house to the left of ours. Next to her house is the house that Josh and Hailey lived in. I was at Josh’s house when I met Robbie. And right across the street was were the only other girl in the neighborhood beside Jenn and I lived. She was my best friend forever, after she finished 6th grade they moved to Washington.

Back to Robbie…for the most part we were inseparable. I was always at his house or he was over at mine. I don’t think my parents let him come in the house very often, now that I think about it, but we always wanted to play outside anyways. It was more fun than playing with Barbie inside the house.

We were always hanging out after school and on the weekends. Then I went into 7th grade and there was volleyball practice after school, and games on the weekends. So we didn’t have as much time to hang out.

The next year when he came to the junior high, he had football practice then basketball, so there was even less time to spend together.

Then I went to High School. They had a foreign exchange student living with them that year. Jacob was from Denmark; he was so cute and so nice. He was one of my friends from french class. We started hanging out and he got the crazy idea that I had a crush on him. One of the other girls in the class had a crush on him and she was trying to get me to play matchmaker for her, because him and I had become such good friends. Any way, he told Robbie that he thought that Robbie should go out with me.

At Christmas time, Jenn’s school put on a program thing, Robbie’s little brother was in it, so the night that we went was the same night Robbie’s family went. It was pretty boring, and I hadn’t been in my grade school in ages, so Robbie and I were just roaming around the building. Went out and played on the playground, were just acting like little kids again.

We were getting ready to go back and watch the end of the Christmas Program and all of a sudden he tells me what Jacob told him. I thought he was just joking so I didn’t give him an answer.

After Christmas, my Uncle took Jessi, Erica, Jenn and I swimming. Robbie and his little brother were there. I spent a little time with my Uncle, he had just moved back from Denver, Colorado, so we sat in the hot tub and talked. He asked if I had a boyfriend. I told him I didn’t want one.

Jessi convinced me to go talk to Robbie with her, because she had a crush on him. We get in the swimming pool and go over to talk to them. He tells his little brother to go play with his friends and says “So?” to me. I was totally confused so I said, “So what?” “You know that question that I asked you.” By the time I have figured out what question he is talking about, because it was never really put into question form, Jessi has told him yes for me. Which confused me because she liked him.

So Robbie and I are dating…he was holding onto me like I was going to swim away from him or something. We were watching my cousins and uncle go off the diving board and he started kissing my neck. My uncle saw that and I felt like such a jackass or slut, because 30 minutes earlier I had told him that I didn’t want a boyfriend, and now some boy is standing behind me with his arms wrapped around me, kissing the back of my neck.

After swimming was over, Robbie wanted me to walk home with him. It was cold and snowing outside and I had wet hair. I told him my dad was already there to pick us up so I couldn’t. The first song that came on the radio when I got into the car was “Take a Bow” so that is the song that always makes me think of Robbie.

The next day my sister stayed home from school sick. I got home from school and we were watching Nickelodeon, it was Jenn’s favorite channel back then, Disney wasn’t part of cable back then. Somebody knocks on the front door, who else could it have been…there was Robbie standing on the front porch. Even though we weren’t supposed to have anyone in the house if one of our parents weren’t home I let him come in and we all watched Doug.

When I heard my mom out on the porch I made Robbie run back to my bedroom and hide in on of the corners so she wouldn’t see him. She came back to her bedroom and I took the screen out of my window and told Robbie he had to jump out the window.

When she came out of her room I was standing in the doorway so she couldn’t see him sitting in the window. I should have just followed her out to the living room, because she came back to talk to me and he still hadn’t jumped (I think he was waiting for a kiss goodbye or something) so she saw him.

Shit hit the fan…she made him go out the front door, called his parent’s and asked if they knew where he was and told them that she just caught him trying to sneak out my window. I am sure he got his but chewed for that one, when he got home. Then my dad got called and we got our butts chewed. My dad took away the CD player that I got for Christmas and they took away all the money that my little sister had been saving to buy herself a new mountain bike. I felt so bad that she got in trouble too.

I didn’t talk to Robbie for over a year, except for the time that he called the house that March. My dad answered the phone, and because he was standing right there listening to my side of the conversation I was so mean to Robbie. He called to ask why I had called and told his parent’s that I was breaking up with him, before he had even gotten home after my mom chased him out of the house.

I told him that my mom had called his house but I hadn’t and that was about all I said to him.

I didn’t talk to him again until the summer after my sophomore year in h.s. It was a good thing that I started rebuilding our friendship. By the winter of my junior year, I needed someone to pretend was my boyfriend.

A couple years before all of this happened, I think I was still in Junior High when they moved onto the block, this lady and her two boys and her boyfriend/husband (I was never quiet sure if they were married or not) if you have been reading my diary for very long, you read the entry last winter about Charlie kissing me.

Any who when I was a junior in h.s. Charlie decided that he wanted to go out with me. I think he was in seventh grade then. I was just a couple years older than him. I freaked out, and ran straight to the swimming pool, actually I rode Jennifer’s bike, until I ran into her (before I made it to the swimming pool) and she yelled at me. I showed her and Hailey the note that Charlie had thrown onto the porch after he came and talked to me that afternoon. They pointed out that I was supposed to meet Charlie at the junior high basketball court, which is right next to the swimming pool, to go to the swimming pool I would have cut across the basketball court. This time I went the long way and walked through the alley and around to the front doors instead of the side doors that everyone uses.

I had to talk to Jessi, she would know what to do. (It made sense to me at the time) Jessi had no idea what to say, but Sarah was with her and she said we would go get ice cream later and figure something out. So after dinner that night Sarah called and we walked down to Dairyland and got shakes. While we were walking home, she was like you are friends with Robbie right? Her brilliant idea was for me to ask Robbie to pretend he was my boyfriend so that I wouldn’t have to go out with Charlie.

So I stopped at Robbie’s house, talked to him for a bit and showed him the note (I still had it in my coat pocket) and he agreed. Then he called his mom out and told her all about it. After she saw the note she agreed that it was a good idea but she was worried about what his girlfriend would say. (He hadn’t told his mom that him and Allison had broke up earlier that week) His mom went back in the house and Robbie and I began our pretend relationship. There sure was a lot of real kissing for a pretend relationship.

He started dating other people and I became the girl that went over to his house every once in a while to make it look believable. (At least to Charlie) We watched movies and made out. I felt really bad about it because I was friends with most of his girlfriends that year. It was never more than kissing after he started seeing other girls, but I still felt like a home wrecker, even though they weren’t like married or living together.

Now he is married and has a baby. I hope they are happy and they didn’t just get married because they had a kid.

So that was a long boring story. Sorry but I just needed to do it for me.