Friday, February 28, 2014

When does Unseen equal Untrue?

In an off time when surprise boy and I were trying to be "just friends" but really pushed that line over the edge if you were to ask any onlookers, a test of my whole existence came into play.

He told me that he hated knowing that there was another guy I cared about (speaking of Dream Boy)... This was nearly two years into our relationship and I had completely let go of my emotional attachment and even that gimmer of desire to be with Dream Boy.

I hugged Surprise Boy explaining how he was the only one I ever wanted to be with and how I had let go of my history with Dream Boy.

The conversation took an unexpected turn.

"I went to a wedding reception last weekend...  I saw Dream Boy there."

I was very surprised, but confused as to where this was leading.

"I pulled out a picture of you and showed it to him.  I told him you were my girlfriend and asked if he knew you, because I was pretty sure you knew him."

My heart was racing... what would Dream Boy say?  He'd spent so much time keeping what I thought we had a secret, but if he denied even knowing me that wouldn't make sense either cause we had tons of classes and school projects together.  Not to mention all the other odd social situations.

"No, I don't know her."

Surprise Boy didn't lay that one on lightly.

Obviously, even if all the experiences I thought I had with those beautiful head conversations was total bunk.  He knew me!  He would always nod hi in the halls between classes, make funny and cute comments when with me, and we shared some friends.

Instead of thinking of how silly this was, and how he probably was trying to cover up his connection to me, I wondered if it was true.

Since this happened I still wonder sometimes...

Did Dream Boy not know who I was?  If he didn't then over two years of experiences I cherished and learned so much from was all in my head... Had I just imagined that huge chunk of my life?

The only part about it that gives me peace is that each experience gave me more wisdom in how to handle struggles of life.  So even if years of my life was only half real (which I may not know which parts were real or not till I get to heaven), I still grew as a person from it.  Those nearly unbelievable experiences make me who I am today.  The sad part is I have this huge chunk of who I am that has to be completely hidden... What's behind the real beautiful me has to remain hidden forever.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Secrets Behind My Men

Since I was a little girl I dreamed of growing up to have this amazing family.  I wanted to be a princess from a fairy tale that found just the right prince charming, but more than that raise kids and have fun every day.  I wanted to be so deeply in love with my man and be the mom every kid dreams of.  I also had dreams of creating all kinds of cool businesses and being very successful in "doing it all."

If a stranger were to look at my life they would think this had all come true.  I have kids that I love and a husband that pretty much worships the ground I walk on.  We run a couple businesses from home that are not huge, but are profitable and fun, fitting what our interests and passions are.  My hubby and I are best friends and I know that he is the one God wanted me to marry.

When looking a little deeper it becomes very complicated in my head.

To understand you have to look at my history of crushes and boyfriends I guess.

Up through 8th grade I was the typical kid.  Public school, flirted and made friends with lots of boys and crushes here and there.  I had lots of friends that were girls too, and we would talk about which boys we liked and why or we'd play make believe games like barbies, little people, or house.  I had some good experiences and some bad up through then, but for the most part feel like I was pretty well rounded.

In 9th grade it was my last year of Junior High so I felt like a queen of my school.  That year was much different and changed who I was forever.  For a long time I felt like if I could go back in time that would be the year I would want to relive.  Maybe it still is, I don't know anymore.  The first big change in my life came from one of my girlfriends.  One day she came to me asking hard questions about whether our shared religion was true.  As I just went with my parents and never thought of her questions I was struck with wonder.  After not being able to figure out if there was a God or if there was any validity to what I had believed as long as I could remember I found a quiet place in the sanctuary of my room to pour my heart out in prayer.

"My dear Heavenly Father... are you really there?  Are you real?  Are you really my Father in Heaven?"

With each passing minute my prayer became more intense and heart felt.  "Do you really exist?  Is this your church?  Am I here because of you?  Are you there?  Heavenly Father are you real?"

Suddenly I had this amazing feeling... The room seemed to feel so light, almost like it was filled with light.  Then starting in my toes I started to feel this intense tingling sensation and it rose through my whole body out to each and every limb.  I like to compare this to the disney animation of beauty and the beast when the beast becomes a man at the end because it shows all the magical tinkling around, he starts floating, and the light is so strong it is emanating out of each of his toes and fingers.  There was so much love and "light" of God in the room that I felt just like that.  In that moment I was in tears and knew without a doubt that God was there, he was my father, he loved me immensely, he was looking out for me, and that I was on the right track with his church.

After that I began to feel such a desire to listen to promptings to help his other children here on earth, and I strove to be as diligent a disciple of christ as I could be.  I started to come up with whatever ways I could think of to improve myself, to help others, and to become closer to God in a spiritual nature.  That was when I truly became my better self.  I always seemed to have a smile on my face because I knew my place and I would have people comment on my demeanor often.  Things got so difficult sometimes that it would be all smiles till maybe once a week when I broke down crying.  A little cry and a prayer brought me right back out of it though so very few people saw me down.

Shortly after this era of my life began my life started getting a little complicated and a little confusing.

I developed a crush on a very attractive boy that was bigger than any crush I had ever had before.  The cool thing was that he liked me too.  Making googley eyes across the classroom gave so many butterflies in my stomach and was so fun.  My friends would hear him talking to his friends in the hallway about how he wanted to ask me out and how he wanted to marry me one day.  We only talked every once in a while in class cause he was so shy with me but I was dying for him to let go and ask me to do something with him or with him and his friends.  I didn't want him to ask me on an official date or to be his girlfriend yet because I was trying to wait till I was 16 to date (a goal I had to keep me spiritually in perspective and out of trouble).

It was just a couple weeks after he'd made it vocal to his friends how he felt about me that another girl came into the picture.  She was very forward and liked him a lot.  He was such a softy that when she asked him to be her boyfriend he didn't feel like he could tell her about me or say no, this complicated things.  There were months of us oggling at eachother and him verifying through friends that he didn't want to be with his girlfriend, but wanted to be with me.  I went along with it for a while feeling like he would get up the guts to dump her.

Then one day I just got tired of the whole game and even though I still cared about him decided it was stupid to care so much and wish so much when he wasn't doing what he said and dumping her.  I had a slumber party with a girlfriend and told her my decision to cut my emotions for him.  I cried on her shoulder for a couple hours, cause it hurt, but I wanted him out of my heart.  He was the first boy I actually believed I could one day marry so this was big.

I knew I couldn't let him go completely unless I replaced him somehow.  So I decided to just choose someone to have a crush on.  The first thought was his insanely cute and charming best friend.  My dream, dark and handsome, like Derek from little mermaid.  I'll call him Dream Boy.  I decided that even though I could like him that it would hurt my first crush too much since they were best friends.  I decided to go the next best route and chose to like the twin of this best friend.  I'm gonna call him Twin Boy.  So I started flirting and making eyes with Twin Boy in my class with him, cutting out all flirtatious body gestures toward my first crush that I could muster.

As you can guess the first crush noticed very quickly and acted as though I had cut his heart out for a good week or two.  I think he understood why I wouldn't stick around with him dating someone else though.  They actually dated for the next four years, all of them with him saying he was trying to find a way to break up without hurting her.  Yea, it was good I found a new path.

The twin boy on the other hand very much reciprocated my flirtations and we had a lot of fun in class together.  His flirtations escalated and my views changed a little with me being more ok with having a boyfriend, though part of me still wanted to follow my 16 goal, I wanted to be able to spend time with whoever I cared about too.  This flirting went on for months.

One day I read my horoscope which said that my dream boy would ask me to be his that day.  This made me very excited as many times horoscopes have turned out for me.  I went with my friends to the basketball game that afternoon and so did he and his friends.  We didn't sit next to eachother but I was expecting him to talk to me any minute.  He gave me a couple cute looks but his brother, Dream Boy, looked over much more often at that game, ironically.

After the game I was much dissapointed to have not had any confrontation and I was tired of waiting.  I called one of his friends that I talked to occassionally and said, "Will you tell Twin Boy, If he is going to ask me out he needs to do it soon?"  Thats when I got the terribly heart wrenching news.  Her response was "Didn't you know?  He has a girlfriend."  She told me the name of another girl.  Actually one of my friends from one of my classes.

After I hung up I lost all my strength and just sobbed.  Thankfully my best friend was with me to help ease the hurt.  Why hadn't I seen it sooner?  His heart was somewhere else.  My friend consoled me for a while and then started laughing.

"Why are you laughing..."

"Now you are free to let your heart care about the guy you've really wanted all along!"

"What!"

"Dream Boy!"

I started laughing and crying all at once.  I knew exactly what she was talking about.  I really had cared about him all along, but ignored it because I was trying to focus my energies on possible relationships with his friends.  It was so silly to not just start with him, but I think my heart needed an odd route to make it to him.  At that point I remembered so many of the times when I was dealing with the other boys that he would respond so intently to my flirtations and comments.  He really did care for me too.

Once I realized that I cared about Dream Boy I found it was long enough since dropping the first crush to not hurt him now.  I started showing that I reciprocated his feelings by flirting back when he would say things.  He was a little shy still, but much more vocal and flirtatious than the other two.  I fell for him much harder than I had ever experienced up to that point.  I was nearly certain that I'd end up married to this sweetheart.

Meanwhile my best friend had found amazing boy herself... also too shy to straight up and forwardly ask to spend time with her.  It was very cute.

This is where the story gets odd...

One day after school my best friend tells me that she had a really wierd experience in her choir class with the Amazing Boy.  There was free time and everyone was just sitting there for a bit when she heard a voice in her head, as he spoke she realized it was Amazing Boy.  She spoke back within her mind and they had a really cool conversation.  They didn't quite believe what was happening so each asked the other to do weird things like nod their head a certain way when they counted to 3 or raise their hand at a certain time.  With all their weird tests it seemed to be real.  They were speaking to each other with their minds.

When she told me I thought it sounded cool.  I never wondered if she was lying.  She was not that kind of person.  In fact she didn't even seem to believe herself that it was possible.  She was very afraid that I'd think she was crazy and needed mental help, but I was just excited for her.  As time went on their conversations in their heads grew more common and they were becoming quite close as friends.

Part of me was quite jealous as my Dream Boy was still lacking the guts to ask to spend time with me.  Dream Boy and Amazing Boy became friends though, and they both knew about what was going on with my best friends conversations.  I started to get messages from Dream Boy through the head conversation grape vine so to speak.  They were beautiful, though I would have preferred in person.

I went to all the Junior High's functions so I was at a concert which Dream Boy made sure to attend as well, just a few rows in front of me.  He was so cute and I had front row seats to watch him film the concert.  I had kinda a funny idea while I was sitting behind him.  What if I could do what my best friend did?  I so badly wanted to have conversations with my Dream Boy.  I decided to try it out and see what would happen.  

"Hi Dream Boy...  You are so cute!  I love the way that you are recording the concert!"

I nearly laughed out loud when he started blushing... his face a deep beet red... and he nearly dropped his camera.  Had he heard me?  I didn't hear any response in my head from him, I didn't know if I could.  He was sure seeming to react to each little thing I was emitting to him though.  I decided to test it.

"Is this real?  Can you actually hear me?  If you can hear me then when I count to 3 raise your right hand.  1... 2... 3..."  His hand raised... he made it look kinda like a stretch then put it on the top of the chair next to him.

I continued doing tests with him and he looked back at me like he thought he was going crazy.  It really was the cutest yet most pitiful and helpless look.  I had never seen him so helpless as he was very outgoing and egotistical most of the time.  Unlike many ego driven people he used his ego high attitude to help others feel better about themselves rather than worse.  It was really cool.

That night after the concert I told my best friend about what had happened.  She was surprised that I had gotten up the courage to try but was very excited about the idea of us all being able to communicate like that one day.

Things in mine and my best friends life started to get a little more crazy at this point.  Not necessarily because of the head stuff though.  We started feeling like we were being watched.  It was an odd feeling.  Because of it we became more aware of our surroundings and finding evidence most places that we had some legitimate stalkers.

At our sleepovers we would see silhouettes of boys in white t-shirts and jeans looking through our windows.  I chased one boy down the street that was hiding in my front yard bushes.  We would hear and see hands knock on our windows and then either be too scared to look or look and find minimal traces they left (like a doorbell ditcher).  To this day I don't know who was stalking us.  I think it was a group of guys.  Maybe there were multiple groups.  One time I heard a pretty bad fight between two guys on my roof outside my room window, so I don't know.  I thought that may have been a guy I started to like and had my first kiss with back in 3rd grade along with Dream Boy, but I will never know.

To keep peace of mind we decided that the ones we didn't know were one group and that our guys were there too most of the time to protect us from the ones we didn't know.  This is a scary thing for me to think about as it was not just a feeling but we saw people too.  Sometimes well enough to identify them and sometimes not so well.  When I could identify them I didn't know them.

The combination of stress from these stalkers along with not being able to spend time with the boy I cared so much about really was the cause of my once a week cry session I talked about earlier, but overall this was a very happy time in my life.

Wanting to figure out these head conversations more completely, and not quite understanding why he'd respond to me but I couldn't hear him I decided to try out a few things and experiment with it a little.  I decided that the way God works is through communicating with your verbal thoughts in prayer, and I was doing all I could to be close to him.  So I decided to tell Dream Boy that my idea was to have my own prayers but then to have nightly prayers with him as well.  I figured that I would say the prayer for both of us, but that he would also say a prayer for both of us until I could hear him.

As we started this I said the prayer first and then would stay on my knees with an open mind and heart trying to feel his prayer for us.  I know this sounds wierd, but it was actually fun to have two prayers per night and it really did feel like someone else was listening to my prayer for two.

One night I was laying in bed, just before falling asleep, and the most beautiful song started to be sung to me, in Dream Boy's voice.  There was the most dreamy vision/dream of me sitting on one of those wooden and rope swings attached to a large tree with amazing flowering vines on the ropes and Dream Boy pushing me.  It was the most amazing "dream"to tell my best friend about the next day.

By this time she had started to have head conversations herself with Dream Boy as well as her Amazing Boy.  She told me about how he had talked to her that night about singing me a lullaby to sleep and told her which song he sang.  When I told her of my "dream" she let me know what he had told her and told me which song it was he sang in my "dream" before I told her.  I was astounded.  It wasn't a dream at all.  He was sending me this beautiful dream through what many would call telepathy.  I've never been comfortable with that term and prefer "the head thing" much better.

A few days later I was sitting out on my back patio, coloring a map that was a geography homework assignment.  I loved those color coded maps.  Who knew they'd be so stress relieving to color?  :)

I could feel someone watching me but didn't really want to look.  I just colored away.  Suddenly heard this adorable voice in my head say "You are so cute when you color.  I love you."

I felt like I had been hit by a stun gun.  Hearing the words I love you is huge!  Those words just kept echoing in my mind.  I ended up looking up and saw someone laying as still and flat as they could on a flatter part of the roof.  I couldn't see any details but was certain it was Dream Boy.

I carried my flustered self inside and upstairs to my bedroom when I recieved a phone call from my best friend.  She said that Dream Boy had just told her that I was in the house on my way to my room so it was a good time to call, and she was curious if it was actually true.  Once again I was astounded that this was appearing to be so real in so many ways.  I told her it was true and explained what had just happened.  I couldn't get that echo of "I Love You" out of my mind as it really pierced my heart as more than just words.

As time went on from here a day or two after hearing that resounding "I love you" as I was doing our combined prayer I heard his words in the prayer for both of us for the first time.  This was so exciting!

After the prayer I told him how I heard him that time and he said "finally!  I thought you never would hear me."  We went on to talk about how surprising it was when I first sent a head conversation to him at that concert and our conversation was like one of those beautifully long phone calls at the beginning of a relationship.

We interacted at school, but it was almost like we were waiting for the right time to be together physically, even to hang out.  As we would interact things we would say and do made it look obvious that we had a secret life together no one knew about.  This is the way it was for my best friend and Amazing Boy too.  Many things happened that were quite dramatic and things changed a little here and there but things kept flowing beautifully this way.  Time just kept passing this way with our love growing deeper and friendship growing stronger as it went.

Just before I turned 16, which is what I assumed we were waiting for because of my spiritual goal, he found out that his family was moving.  I was devastated at first, but didn't feel that it would impact us too much since he would only be a 30 minute drive from me.

He didn't end up asking me out when I turned 16, neither did my best friend's Amazing Boy.  There was always another timing excuse.  We both went along with it though and kept talking with them with those head conversations.  Happy with what we did have.

When I was 17 I started to hang out with some new friends from another school.  It was very fun.  I ran behind the counter of a popcorn and hotdog store as a volunteer with them at a university football game.  This was fun and also where I met... what shall I call him... Surprise Boy.  He tried to flirt with me, making me really uncomfortable.  I was Dream Boy's girl and didn't want to show any interest in someone else.  I couldn't picture myself having interest in anyone else.  Thats the kind of person I've always been, I stick to who I've committed and am not tempted to pursue anyone else.

Well Surprise Boy was quite interested in me and wouldn't leave me alone all night.  Any breaks from clients and he had more to say or ask.  I was kind and talked freely as a friend.  Then he asked if me and my friends would go watch a movie with him after our volunteer shift was over.  I didn't know how to respond.  I felt guilty accepting a date with someone else, but didn't know how to kindly refuse. I asked my friend and she was all for it so I said yes.

We ended up just driving around with him because the people he was thinking would do the movie with us didn't end up wanting to.  While my friend drove we talked though.  Wow did we talk.  We talked of dreams and how they emulated life.  We talked of all kinds of mysterious things of life.  It was a really sweet and memorable conversation.

He decided that I was who he wanted in his life and this Surprise Boy did everything in his power to sweep me off my feet.  To be honest he was probrably doing everything right, and I really enjoyed all the in person and phone flirting, but I wasn't all that into him.  I didn't find him very attractive and still longed to be with Dream Boy.

My friendship grew quickly with Surprise Boy and I slowly started to care for him more.  He was so attached to me so fast that it scared me a little though.  I prayed about it cause I really didn't want to date him, but I had a very strong impression from above that God needed me to date this boy anyway.  I felt like I was supposed to help him feel God's love in his life.  Surprise Boy told me he had been praying for an angel to help him feel closer to God and he knew I must be that angel.  I couldn't help but feel he was right for a time.

I wanted to save every intimate aspect of myself for after marriage (except maybe kissing) for I felt that was God's preferred way.  Surprise Boy, after many months of dating and feeling so connected, took advantage of a situation and threw his hand down my shirt to grab my chest.  After a few seconds of shock I threw his hand away angrily and told him he couldn't do that.  His family was just a room away so I told him we needed to talk outside.  We went out to a field behind his house and I started telling him how terrible it was that he did that and how it couldn't ever happen again, when he did the same thing again.

Again I pushed him away and said "NO!"

I felt so shameful.  I never wanted anything like that to happen again and was so angry with him.  I went home earlier than usual and tried to figure things out in my head.

I prayed to my Father in Heaven for help.  What was I to do?  I couldn't tell anyone.  Should I break up with him?  I actually would have been ok with breaking up with him at that point, but when I prayed I felt that Heavenly Father had a different plan for me.  I felt like it was being placed on me to help Surprise Boy to overcome his impulses toward pornography and become closer to God.  Who better than someone who knew his love the way I felt it right?

So I developed a set of pretty intense rules with Surprise Boy.  These kept things cleaner.  We started reading scriptures together and finding beautiful meanings in them.  One of my rules was that if he looked at any porn (which made me feel so unloved as his girlfriend by the way), that I wouldn't let him kiss me for a couple days.  This really helped him cause our kisses were magical.

As time went by, the romance just kept blossoming more and more... our friendship was becoming stronger than anything before.  Surprise Boy started to know secrets about me that I had not told another soul, even in those previous head conversations.  I gradually cut all my head conversations out of my life cause it was too hard to deal with Dream Boy and have a relationship with someone else.  I had to do this, and I thought that one day Dream Boy and I would find our way to be together, but this was not the time God prepared for that.

Surprise Boy began to feel like my second half to me.  I started to feel almost incomplete when I was not with my Surprise Boy and nearly every aspect of my life began to slowly revolve around him.  I truly was falling in love little by little.

I am thankful that God has helped my mind to block much of the progression of my relationship with Surprise Boy as it can be painful enough with the pieces I do remember, but as time passed things started to move into being much more physically intimate than I was comfortable.  The things he said and the slow moving into this made it hard for me to notice being out of control until it was too late though.  Each kiss grew more magical and felt to a degree to be spiritually binding in a way.  Both of us felt that our souls were connected.

I wondered for much of my relationship with Surprise Boy if I was supposed to love him, but end up with Dream Boy later in life.  My love had far surpassed that of Dream Boy and I really no longer wanted him.  I wanted my Surprise Boy.  I felt that our love, romance, and intimate magic (this never included what society deems as sexual intercourse, but they were more intimate than I feel God is pleased with before marriage and we were always trying to find ways to limit how much we craved to touch one another).... these all must be more than most people ever get to experience to this degree, right?  I was ready to marry him.  In fact if I felt I could explain it to family and friends than we would have run away to Vegas to get married.  We sure talked about it a lot.

We happily dated for over a year when I saw him flirting with another girl.  I don't know if he meant to... but he really was into everything that she had to say, just like he first had done with me when we met.  She wasn't that into him, but it didn't stop me from feeling really hurt and almost scared.  Was he drifting away from me emotionally?  Our magic didn't seem to be fading, but this threw me off so bad.  I asked him about it and that was when the vicious cycle really started.

He started to think I was this jealous crazy girlfriend.  When in reality I was just hurt and needed him to just show me he loved me like he always had before.  Maybe I was afraid he'd go after another girl no matter what we had like that first crush did.  I don't know.  He started making jokes about choosing another girl for prom, and told me he was going to ask this girl just to see my reaction.

I guess a few of his friends that never really got to know me didn't think his relationship with me was all that great, and said some things about my personality to him that were so untrue its almost funny.  His older sister decided that when I was flirting with him while we were trying to decide on an activity was manipulative... seriously?  I was flirting!  So instead of helping me feel stronger like he always had before he started to internalize the trash talk around us and began to tear me apart little by little.

Up to this point in my life no one had ever been able to make me feel as high, beautiful, and amazing as Surprise Boy, and now no one had ever been able to make me question my point of being and worth as much as him.  When he told me that he even remotely thought the manipulative thing was true I was heartbroken.  He knew me better than any other human being on earth I thought.  I was not that kind of person.  If I ever wanted him to do anything I talked to him about it like any other human being... sometimes I flirted at the same time, but in a relationship isn't that normal?  I was in love.

I tried to think of another definition of manipulative that didn't make me feel so horrible about myself when I thought of him.  I decided that to try to change is manipulating... when people love eachother they talk about things and we were both working to change our lives to come closer to God, so I felt that in a good way maybe manipulate could be derived as motivating to to better.  That's the closest thing to manipulation in our relationship... seriously.  He said that wasn't it and stuck with his sister's view.  A girl I never really got to know as she didn't live in their family's house cause she was already married.

Still, I felt that I could not let go of this love.  He kept doing and saying things that hurt to the core, but I loved in more than I knew how to deal with.  When he wasn't hurting me with his words there was still so much beauty and magic in our relationship.  He still would talk about how much he wanted to marry me, and I wanted that so badly.  He dreamed that we would marry young, he'd work odd jobs and we'd be poor, but we would be the happiest couple on earth.

After graduation from high school my relationship with Surprise Boy became on and off.  He started to tell family and friends all kinds of lies about me being a seductress, obsessed, you name it.  When they weren't looking he'd call me up almost like a booty call for a kissing session.  I was desperate to keep him in my life so I fell into this crazy trap, but when we were together I felt so loved... its still so confusing.  He kept our meetings a secret to keep up his appearances.  The worst is that his mom was one of my best friends and he told her that I seduced him several times.  Because of this her view of me will never be the same, she was such a good friend, and what she thinks happened isn't even true.

He started to find relationships and flaunt them at me... I feel like this was to hurt me more, but he may have cared about them.  Each of them had a few things in common.  I felt like they were totally opposite of me.  Very flaunty type looks and personalities.  Where I felt that my personality was more down to earth and real.  He got engaged to several different girls at different times and always seemed to have at least a day long fling with me in between most of them.

I felt worthless.  I felt I wasn't even worth loving from God anymore.  I had gone so astray from his guidance when I was succored into sharing so much of my soul and physical self with someone before marriage.  I didn't want to date unless it was the boy I loved and grown so attracted to.  I didn't want to go to church cause I just felt judged and unloved for my past.

Some of my friends went as far as playing jokes on him to get back at him for the hurt they saw behind my facade.  This was never my idea but he eventually found out they were my friends and I'm sure thought it was my idea to try to hurt him.  I wouldn't have done that though.  Even if there were no magic there and I couldn't have his love, I would want him to have a happy life.

I began to shake and cry in my sleep, waking up on a semi-regular basis with anxiety attacks that made it difficult to breathe.  I started working 60-70 hours a week with my two jobs just to keep my mind from wandering into something painful.  When I was with friends I would try to cover up my pain with making jokes about how odd Surprising Boy's decisions had started to become with them.  My closest friends could still see how much I was falling apart inside and out.

Then I was given a priesthood blessing.  In it I was told of the Lord's love for me.  The first time I felt it again in a long time.  I was told that he wanted me to date again (though I didn't tell anyone I wasn't dating), and that there was a boy who was waiting for me, he didn't know it yet, and it was my job to find him.  This was so hard to hear.  I didn't want to date.  I wanted to swear off men.  I wanted to wait until my Surprise Boy was done exploring his bachelor territory and was ready to settle down.  He did tell me that he felt he needed that.  I knew I could not disobey a direct order from heaven like that though.

I tried my best to temporarily forget about all the pain I felt and pretend I was normal.  I started trying to flirt again at my new job, now only working barely over 40 hrs a week on average.  My friend decided to join me in the fun and we both really had fun trying to decifer different flirting tactics and boys we worked with.  We cycled through many dates with many of the eligible boys we worked with.  I have to say it was fun.  None of the dates sent sparks flying, but we definitely made lots of friends and have some good fond memories of that time.

A friend of mine talked to me about one of my friendships with the best friend of my Surprise Boy.  I had absolutely never felt any attraction to Friend Boy but he was an amazing friend to talk things through with.  He was there many times when others weren't and I could really talk to him about Surprise Boy without any judgements cast.  Its nice to have friends who see the real you no matter what they hear.  Well this friend kept adamantly telling me that I secretly loved him because that kind of relationship was impossible without romance getting in there somehow.  After so long of hearing this I had a weak moment where I wondered if she was right.  This lasted an entirety of a week as I day dreamed of torturing Surprise Boy by being his best friends girl (not really imagining the Friend Boy himself, just how fun that scenario could be).

Problem was my best friend at the time was pretty much in love with Friend Boy.  This was great as I didn't care that way about him, but something I said to a mutual friend in that week of wondering got back to her and put an irreparable rift in our relationship.  At this point I felt more lost than ever.  I was losing friends right and left, it felt like, and was tired of trying so hard.

One morning I woke up unable to get out of bed.  My body was shutting down.  I had to call in sick the whole week and this led to me quitting as I couldn't physically handle the stress of an average job anymore at that point in my life.  I spent a lot of time healing from whatever this shutdown was.  Then I tried to figure out what God wanted me to do with my life.

I felt like it was right, after praying, to move to a city about 45 minutes away and go to a University there.  I started to transfer my college records and ran into an old friend who said she was starting there the same time as me.  We decided to get an apartment together that was to change my life.

Getting away to this new place was such a breath of fresh air.  I did not have the same people at church or school that used to judge me.  It was a completely clean slate.  I had done what I needed to to clean my slate with God, but never felt like others wiped it clean in their minds, leaving me stuck in limbo with those around me.  Once I was out of that scenario I finally felt God's love on a daily basis again.  I started to pray regularly again along with reading at least a verse of scripture regularly.

I started to see little miracles every day and church along with the midweek activities were such a joy to attend with so many others my age.  It is so fun to socialize with other God-fearing pears as a university student.  The games we played were awesome and they were some of my greatest friends and memories.

There were a few boys I dated after moving to this university apartment.  None of them a big deal now, but each with their own little stories.

Then one day a friend asked me to come with her to pick up a friend for an event that night.  It wasn't a big deal, but I was happy to go with her.  Little did I know she was trying to set me up without officially setting up a date.

Sparks of wonder flew immediately.  He was a sweet boy who seemed to love God more than anything else.  He instantly was very attracted to me and wasn't afraid to let me know it.  It just seemed natural.  I flirted away, he flirted back, and that night I couldn't stop thinking that he may be the one the blessing told me about.  I'll call him Wonder Boy.

So things went on basically constantly after that night.  Wonder Boy moved super fast and always made himself available to spend large amounts of time with me.  He was very funny and I felt I could myself so easily.  I told him of all my past, that I was quite ashamed, and he wasn't even flustered, which blew me away.  I later learned that his high school girlfriend was quite convincing, and though he had standards similar to mine about intimacy/intercourse after marriage, she persuaded him into a very intimate relationship, which he also had to rectify with God years before I met him.

It only took him three days to say "I can picture having grand-kids with you."

I would have to say how quickly he said I love you, kissed me, and professed his growing feelings of connection too me was far too fast for my comfort.  It terrified me.  I did feel like it was right to have a relationship with him, but there were pieces that weren't quite there too.

We became the best of friends and shared many fun sweat kisses.  I did grow to love Wonder Boy but those physical sparks that felt like magic (like what I had experienced with Surprise Boy) were not the same.  I felt so safe and comfortable and genuinely happy in Wonder Boy's arms, but I never felt that I needed to restrain myself from too much kissing or feeling the need to jump all over him.  It was such a different type of love and physical relationship.  Neither one totally bad, just very different.

A month before Wonder Boy was scheduled marry me I began to struggle.  When I prayed there was this overwhelming answer that God knew me better than I knew myself and Wonder Boy would bring me a life of happiness I wouldn't find somewhere else.  I knew I should marry him.  I was not ready though.  I still cared for Surprise Boy and wished he'd break up the wedding to be with me himself.

I wanted to marry someone that I would feel physically and magically fulfilled in every way.  I didn't have this type of magic with Wonder Boy, but I knew he could make me laugh and care truly for me each and every day.  There were no complications with Surprise Boy and the wedding went through with Wonder Boy.

It was the most amazing wedding day.  There were beautiful flowers blooming everywhere and it was nice and sunny for an outdoor reception.  We had scottish performers and Wonder Boy wrote a song that I heard him sing on the guitar for the first time.  We partied for hours and over 700 people showed up to celebrate with us at some time during the evening.

We continued to have fun together every day and I loved spending time with my new husband.  When things got to intimate relations however I struggled immensely.  There was the occasional magical moments that would last all night, or all day, but they just didn't last long term.  I still look back at every magical moment and treasure it deeply.

Sometimes I struggle in my marriage now.  Outwardly it looks beautiful and it is.  I love the way my husband works with me to solve problems and how amazing our relationship is.  After 7 years and kids he still loves me more than I can comprehend sometimes.  I yearn for that physical magic... the desire to just pounce on him.  When I try to build that up though and then he gets home from a long day of work... It gets completely shut down, not by his actions, but by the fact that I don't seem to be attracted to his unique smell or pheromones.

Its funny to me that it seems like each of my kids have the same type of body odor as him rather than the type of body odor that runs in my family line.  I never realized how attractive or unattractive body odor could be.  The body odor from Surprise Boy never impacted me like that, maybe those pheromones from his sweat were more attractive to my chemistry, I don't know.

What I do know is that I love my husband and this is a complicated problem that is hard to solve, but we're in it together forever as neither of us believes in divorce and we love eachother.

I don't think he has the same problem as me, as the physical stuff is natural, easy, exciting, and very fun for him, no matter how much magic I feel.

The first few years of our marriage I would nightly have dreams of sexual encounters with Surprise Boy.  I found that my mind almost made him into a symbol of me feeling sexually satisfied.  This was very hard on my husband and now I don't tell him about these dreams too often.  I don't have them very often either, but sometimes I'll purposely not mention them too.

I've had many dreams of future moments of finding a way to be with Surprise Boy, but these dreams became much less when Surprise Boy finally settled down with a girl who much resembled myself this time, ironically.  I hope he's happy by now, it took him a long time to find whatever it was he was looking for.

Part of me feels that when I look back on my relationship with Surprise Boy I am looking back on an emotionally abusive relationship, while the other part of me says that some of those times with him were the best times of my life.  I don't want to long to be with another man, and have let go of most that desire at this point, but sometimes I wonder if I would have been happy, or if I would have just felt even more emotionally abused than I ended up in the first place.

So my resounding question... the one I try to figure out day by day.... How do I become more attracted to my husband?  How do I satisfy my sexual desire without it being driven away somehow first?  How do I satisfy his hunger for me without feeling like just a puppet with a to do list of acts someone needs to play with me?  I want to love him more and be a better wife, the question is how?



My Unseen Me: Who am I?

I am creating this blog because this morning I realized I need an outlet.  I am not the average person with the average experiences.  Yes, I have some of those, and those are the stories I tell people when I hang with friends, but there is a whole hidden part of my life that on most days I try to forget about.

I believe that our experiences make us who we are.  More important than what happens to us is how we perceive what happens to us.  I would have to say my perceptions have changed a lot as I've grown older.  I still have a hard time placing some of my experiences though.  I have read of some who have had experiences like mine, but they seem so few and far between.

Because I have to keep so much of my life essentially a secret it really wears on my emotional strength sometimes and so I wanted a place like this where no one knows who I am so that I can actually tell my stories and let them out there.  I do not plan on any sort of order to my stories either, so no one should expect a chronological storyline here.