I’ll be working on my paper soon–seriously. I just need to vent a little.
I don’t talk much about my relationship without being asked first, generally. But anyways:
I was once talking to some friends and they were talking about how their friend and his girlfriend of 2 years had recently broken up. Why? She was a “psycho-bitch”. In other words, she was completely jealous, invasive, and controlling (stalked his phone bill to see who he’d call, e-mail, etc.).
I know I am far from being that crazily “psycho”, but I seriously wonder where I stand as a girlfriend [also of 2+ years]. I’ll admit, I do get extremely jealous and paranoid, but that can’t completely be helped in a long-distance relationship, in my opinion anyways. Jason sees things differently. According to the Bible, “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy [...] It is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…”. I can’t help believing that I love him, after all why would I have dated Jason forever long distance if I didn’t care? It’s not like there aren’t other fish swimming around here [;) and it's not like I am a troll, I hope]. And yet I am not always patient, I am extremely envious, and easily angered, and I definitely am not instantaneously forgiving (yes I hold grudges, but not forever…who doesn’t, seriously!). Jason, being the abnormal human he is, says that he does not get jealous. I suppose he doesn’t stalk my walls the way I do his. He supports his lack of jealousy with ideas like “the Bible says not to” and “I’m just don’t see things that way”. I can’t do that, even with my ambiguous religious sways. Meanwhile, I hack his Facebook (ah, a confession! I don’t hack anything else, I promise! He knows this anyways.). In my defense, he has a number of close friends that are girls. I don’t know if it is me going overboard and being paranoid, but it freaks me out when he goes to places like art museums with them, or cooks dinner/dessert with them. I think he knows this, so sometimes he purposefully leaves out names (replaces names with “them” or “some people”) until I point-blank ask. He even said he does this intentionally sometimes because he knows I’d get jealous otherwise. It bothers me a lot.
Then he wonders why I have great distaste for the drunkards at his school. I honestly don’t care if people obliviate themselves on weekends–I bet it is a lot of fun, and I’ll probably do that sometime too. But, the second some drunk girl tries hitting on him, perhaps he’ll know why. And if something like that ever happens, I’d be pissed not only at the girl but at him for not understanding why I am so paranoid and for being around them anyways. I like how his school allows the kids in his dorms to smoke pot and get drunk in their dorms; kids at my school only do that off campus. Perhaps it is safer that way. But it makes even less sense there, because he says there are kids that live in their dorm with special peer advisers. Supposedly those advisers keep their kids locked up in their rooms for that reason. But I hope the kids don’t get exposed to that stuff too soon.
Kids grow up too quickly nowadays. [Damn, I miss the old days!]
Then complaints on my own mindset. I’ve changed a lot. I used to be a little less shy and awkward than I am. Whatever happened to me? I have no idea, honestly. I think part of it happened in middle school. I was pretty comfortable with life in elementary school (
). Then in sixth grade I thought life was totally awesome–I had a bunch of nerdy friends that could laugh at the things I laughed at and everything was cool. But then I switched to Osceola in seventh grade, and by then it seemed like everyone had made their friends and “cliques” (spelling?); it was a lonely year where I lost touch with a bunch of old friends, and slowly found new friends in the new environment. Many aspects of Osceola I hated–there, many of the kids were more shallow and concerned with fashion. I realized, prep or sk8r/punk, most of the kids there had to be rich (I would say prices at Hot Topic are comparable to some of those ‘prep’ stores) or fashionable somehow. Not many people seemed to care much about academia and I felt like a complete loser/nerd there [not saying I'm not]. I think I became more introverted from there on out. From my childhood to 6th grade, I had always been surrounded by bands of close friends; seventh grade was kind of gray. But I had been friends with Brittany since sometime in elementary and I had become friends with Diana & Bethany (and in high school Maggie), so middle school got better. But seeing that it was middle school, life was awkward somehow. & then half of my close friends were external (out of state). That kind of drew my attention away from the cool people here.
High school was so weird at first because I was reunited with old friends and new friends and suddenly the people I associated with certain groups merged with others and many people had changed. It was a strange sensation. Life got better though. SO WHY AM I STILL AWKWARD? 
I wish I was more confident too. One person here (USF) was remarking about how “cute and timid” I am. Perhaps it is just in me to be “cute” since few other adjectives seem to be used on me other than that (I hate being stuck in a kid-like persona though). But timid? I know I am quiet/reserved/grave. But “timid” makes me picture some sort of mouse peeping out from under a rug or a whole in the wall. I’ve always wished to be more confident and sure about things. But for some reason I’m not. I used to be more bold–I would smile at people, whether I knew them or not, in hopes that I might brighten up their day (because I like having random strangers smile back too); but I can hardly bring myself to look people in the eyes extensively now.
I wish that more people would care about me, and I wish I cared about more people; but at the same time, I am so bad at keeping up with people. That, in many ways, makes me a bad friend. I generally consider myself to be a good friend in that the people I consider “friends” I care for deeply a would be glad to lay my life down for theirs. I would be glad to give them my time, and whatever else I could offer. But at the same time, I don’t keep up with people; I don’t know what is going on in peoples lives [thanks Xanga for letting me know about SOME peoples lives/adventures 
]. I am a bad friend in that sense.
–If anyone feels like responding to this question, is it possible to be paranoid and to trust at the same time?, go for it.
