my apologies! my computer broke for a day there, but hopefully soon i'll have a new one! hopefully, you're having a good weekend! haha, and i'm not gonna lie, after i published the first story, even though that stuff was years ago, i still felt v. exposed, you know? but at the persistance of a few friends, i'm posting another. for now anyway. let the group therapy continue!

now i go to a very large church with a very small youth group. which should be good but has posed a number of problems in the past (present and future). i'm not sure if it happened inevitably, or if there were some girls who made sure that our youth group plays out like an episode of gossip girl. there was crazy gossip, drama and girl fights. but for the most part, it's not like that any more.

now that i'm thinking about it, most of my romantic-type issues are a result of bad timing. there's this one guy, who will henceforth be known as thatcher, because that's the coolest name i can think of. and this guy is pretty freaking cool. even in grade three, i was checking him out across the room at sunday school. taking in this perfect blue eyes and expertly coiffed blonde hair. baiting my breath and waiting for grade six. (they put the grade six through eight kids together. i waited and waited until finally, the summer before grade six. thatcher moved to brazil.) timing i tell you. but the thatcher thing is ongoing. he moved back a couple years later and girls still crush on him today.

here's another example. i'm a slow mover when it comes to love and all that stuff. it's experiences like the ones i am describing to you that make me so hesitant. there's rob, this one guy at church who fits the prototype perfectly. a complementary 5'8'' to my 5'7'', hilarious, plays the drums and as a bonus he has thick wavy hair that for some reason has always reminded me of a disney prince. (so why is it reminded and not remound? not finded but found? anyone else think the english language is completely crazy?)

in the fall of grade 11 i'd been debating between liking him. and by the time winter rolled around, it finally felt like things were going right. at my friend darcy's birthday, he hung around me all night long. so i was all set to go. to tell my friends i really was in this for the long haul. the next day, my friend hayley had news too and i made the mistake of letting her go first: apparently after i left the party rob had asked her out.

i still don't know if, had i told her, if hayley would have backed off. i'm not completely sure if she's that type of person. but now i'll never know. timing wins out yet again.

hayley, back then, was not much help in the whole romantic department. similar things just keep happening. when we first became close friends, she was dating this amazing guy, james . he was really nerdy and gangly and awkward but i loved that about him. he fit the prototype of course. and on top of that we were really alike. the same weird interests, the same quirks, the same sense of humour. even now, no one's ever really gotten me like that. in some weird way hew as like a different version of myself. people still say that. they also still say that it'd be bad to date someone like that and i still don't get it. and yes- that does mean we've never gone out and i bet you can tell where this is going already.

though this might not be timing's fault. have you ever noticed that guys suddenly get heaps more attractive when they're going out with someone else? james had always been in the picture but i only really noticed him in the summer of grade 10 and by that time he had already been dating hayley for a number of months and would continue going out for a year. but as i was kicking myself in the summer and all through the fall i kept thinking, if only i had gotten to know him earlier. if only timing hadn't boned me, yet again.

authors notes:

i used to like them stick-man thin, but my tastes have really changed in the last three years. james and i aren't really alike any more. and he's been with a different girl now for the last three years, and i'm super happy for them!

i also wrote here that i wondered if "hayley would have backed off." and i'm thinking now, isn't that kind of selfish of me to think that? cause i mean, if rob liked her and not me, it really wouldn't make a difference, now would it? ahh the beauty of hindsloveight. my question though, is how do you handle it when you and a close friend like the same guy?

till next time!
xoxo
-B.