ASSIGNMENTS:
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Sarah
Woodbury, Minnesota USA
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REPORTS:
PREVIOUS NEXT
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I was born late at night on November 19th, 1978 to Jan & Duane, they are still married today. My sister is 4 years older and truly believed that I came into this world just because she asked for a little sister and that she could send me away if she ever wanted. Sometimes she wanted to but I was not sent away. As a child I was happy, clumsy and very imaginative. I often had scabs on my face and knees from running down the porch stairs too quickly in my hurry to play outside. I would dress up as characters like "Boom Boom", wearing too-small clothes, stuffing my shirt and putting on a lot of makeup and put on shows for my family. I wanted attention, I wanted to make them laugh and they did. When I was five my only grandparent died. I had loved her so much. She used to let us have dessert without finishing lunch and use all the lotion in her little rose petal container. I stared at the ceiling at the funeral trying not to cry. Shortly thereafter I came to believe that heaven was located in my basement, at night and I could see my grandma if only I was ever brave enough to go down there. I thought about drinking the pierced ears cleaning solution so I could be with her. I never did, nor did I go to the basement at night.
In kindergarten I only wanted to wear dresses. One day I wasn't allowed to- the day of the apple orchard visit. I was so distraught I let my guard down and held hands with an awful little boy. Everyone teased me. He later chased me around the classroom and kissed me, I was humiliated. My best friend was Nissa, we met on the bus and became friends because we both thought the other was pretty. She puked on the bus once and some got on my blue fake fur jacket. I never wore it again, we gave it away and never told its new recipient what happened. Nissa and I are still friends. I played outside, a lot. Swinging from rope swings and making obstacle courses with my other best friend Beth, my neighbor. I always thought I was a lot like my dad.
In sixth grade I was unpopular. Other kids made fun of my Wal-Mart clothes and the hack job I did on my bangs. I never let on to my family about my unpopularity, I was deeply ashamed. One day in the middle of the year all the school friends I had decided not to be friends with me while they were standing on the risers at a holiday concert I skipped. It was painful. In seventh grade I did better socially. I wore only Umbros and polo shirts for a year. I fell in love with student theater. I experimented with swearing. I was awkward all of junior high, bad hair and gangly legs. By tenth grade I had a good deal of friends and I was pretty (but didn't really know it). I started bleaching my hair platinum and wearing a lot of plaid skirts. I got to be kind of mean sometimes, as a defense mechanism. I still did theater. I still craved attention. I had my first kiss from a boy who turned out to be gay and turned out to be a great man. He is an amazing dancer and he is still one of my best friends to this day. I had my first boyfriend, a really religious guy I fancied before my friend even dumped him. He was really horny and aggressive and loaned me all of his Christian cds. I never listened to them and I never went past 2nd base. I broke up with him over the summer over the phone. I said we lived too far away. We lived 30 minutes apart, that wasn't the reason. The summer before 11th grade I got in a really bad accident driving my friend's car (she was with me). I got nervous and went through an intersection without seeing a big white van. Got hit at 70 miles an hour. No one died or was terribly injured. My face was really scrapped up though and we had guys over putting in new carpet. I was so humiliated I wore a bandanna cowboy-style to cover my cheeks and chin while they healed. Luckily it was summer and I didn't have school.
In 12th grade I felt on top of the world. I had a crush on a guy whose last name was Bates. There were lots of jokes about what he would have been called if he had been a slave owner (Master Bates). I got up the nerve to approach him. I ran in front of him and told him "I just wanted to tell you that I think you're really hot." He said "thanks" and I ran away. I avoided him the rest of the year. I liked to sit in the halls and watch for a cute skate boarder named Clint that I never spoke to. I remained a virgin while some of my friends did not. More because I wasn't tempted than because of morals. I was kind of churchy but sort of eager to sin too. I picked up smoking recreationally and tried drinking a little. One of my friends had a breakdown and tried to kill herself. I spent a lot of time visiting her in the Eating Disorder wing at the hospital. I've visited her in treatment centers quite a few times in the 10 years since.
That friend got pregnant, so did her sister, so did I. She kept her child, her sister gave hers up and I got an abortion. This was right after I really fell in love. I went to school in Duluth, met Andy, fell in love, started sleeping with him, overdosed and got pregnant, in that order. We broke up and got back together a lot. He was really good looking and charismatic and immature. I was depressive.
Eventually I stopped getting back together with him and got much healthier in a lot of ways. I did enjoy going to gay clubs with my friend Claire. Because we could dance and be fawned over but not hit on. We experimented with drugs. She taught me to smoke pot and Holly (of the high school breakdown) taught me to snort coke. I decided to say yes to anyone that asked me out to avoid continuously getting back together with my first love or dating guys like him. I was working at a university at the time and an ugly, older man asked me out. I said yes, chickened out and then decided to after all. He was different. I didn't really feel "in love" but he said he was with me so I figured he knew best. We got engaged. He was a sober alcoholic. I felt like his happy ending and that was validating. We got married. Two weeks after I learned that he was cheating on me. The whole time. With a lot of women and a few men. I was in shock. Terrified of divorce. Tried to make it work. Worst two years of my life. Hell. I drank a lot.
Got an apartment. Reunited with dancer friend. Started feeling much better and working through old problems. Liking life again. Stopped being such a follower. Bought a house. Got a dog with the same name as me because I thought it would be fun to do a name search on petfinder.com and find out what dogs with my name looked like. Adopted her and her sister. They hated each other, fought viciously. Gave her sister to my sister. Both dogs were much happier and I was too.
Joined myspace at urging of friends. Found it a creative challenge to represent all my facets on a social community webpage. Got "friended" by someone with an odd, ambiguous page. He asked me, through comments, to go to an art museum with him. I didn't respond. Eventually, bored, I dared him to post a preppy picture actually showing his face. He did. We made a bet that I lost which meant we would go to the art museum. We didn't but we flirted. My first text to him was "what is the best thing you've seen today?" and he responded "old people taking glamour shots." We met at my house. I was terrified. We took a walk, went to a pizza place and had enchiladas. He was gorgeous but it took me a good hour or so to make eye contact and find out. He is very tall and I love very tall. We fell in love very fast. We got pregnant by accident, very fast. 3 months in. That was nerve wracking but we plunged forward. Now we are more in love than before, with each other and our three month old daughter. She is beautiful. He is beautiful. My life has never been so good. I finally know what it is to "just know" about a person. Every day I repeat the best parts of my life to myself many times just to savor them. My whole entire life I have seen myself as the star of my own story, narrating at each step. And the surprising thing is that even though my melodramatic fantasies of childhood didn't come true (I did not die of cancer or become a famous ballerina) my life story, thus far, is pretty exciting. A few years ago I stopped admiring tragedy and now I feel like I really truly appreciate the bliss I have. Sure, I have a boring job by day (I'm an analyst) but I feel like my heart and my imagination are fully alive. To be continued for as many years as I shall continue on living...
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