Please LIKE Me!!!
Ok, so this weekend I was sucked into the vortex that is Laguna Beach. For those of you who watch, or have seen this show, you know of what I speak. In a nutshell, it's a bunch of spoiled rich teenagers and for lack of anything better to do, the drama that ensues. The idle rich...
Anyway, there are 2 kids in particular that really got to me. Which is just f-ing sad. It's a reality show... on MTV! But, in the shower this morning I was thinking as I often do while showering, and it dawned on my why two of those kids upset me so much. Because my life was startlingly similar to the girl's in this equation.
The basic situation is this: Jessica is a girl who is marginally popular, but basically serves as everyone's personal doormat. As a result, she has next to zero self-esteem, finds it impossible to say no to anyone, and consequently makes extremely poor choices.
Jason is a guy. An alpha-male. He's basically been with every girl on the damn show but can't seem to maintain a long term commitment as he's too busy messing around with someone else. Guy is a total Douche.
Jessica and Jason dated for a spell. Predictably, he treated her like shit. Aaaaand then broke up with her. On Valentine's Day. Jessica then embarks on a campaign of "I still like him" so large, that even her best friends basically tell her to fuck herself.
Essentially how it all boils down is that every time Jason gets with a new girl, he continues stringing Jessica along, and she goes right ahead with it because she is so desperate for affection and attention and approval that she can't see how she is destroying herself, and her relationships with her friends. Jason beckons, she follows. Messes around with him. Gets caught twice. Sadly, Jason never takes responsibility for his part in all this and blames her. "She jumped me, dude." So, Jessica starts lying about what is actually going on because she's backed into a corner. All information points to the fact that she is, in fact, a slut. Which, she's really not. She's just weak.
Ok. So, why am I regaling you with bad reality tv? I know y'all thought I was better than this... but bear with me.
When I was in highschool, I was very similar to this girl. I had friends, but I wasn't the leader. I lived in fear of what they thought of me. Tried to conform to what I percieved to be their expectations. And when it came to boys, I was an absolute mess.
Case in point:
We'll call this boy RB. RB as far as I was concerned was the dreamiest thing since Patrick Dirty Dancing Swayze. I met RB at a party with a friend. There was beer, there were boys, I felt so cool. And then it came ot pass that RB wanted to "scam" with me. Ah! Youth!! Remember the colloquiolisms for making out? Anyhoo, scam we did. I even got myself my first hickey.
One thing though.
I had a boyfriend.
Yeah. So, my friend forced me to call him, tell him, and break up with him. But that was totally ok with me, because I was going to go out with RB. See, in my naivetee, I thought that if you kissed a boy, that meant you were automatically boyfriend/girlfriend. HHHAAAAAHAHAHAA! God I was dumb.
Well, I had his number and began my campaign (obssesively calleing him) to be his girlfriend. He had different ideas. What hapepned between us meant nothing to him and he didn't really care about how I felt about it. I was pretty devastated. I totally beleived that I was like, in love with him? Like, I totally loved the way he smelled, and like, he was like the BEST kisser.
Anyway, long story short, I held a torch for this guy for 2 years. Fucking retarded. He'd call me up when he had a girlfriend and be all "You wanna hang out?" And I'd be all "Sure!" and then we'd make out!! I was a fucking homewrecker! And that's not the first or the last time I had done something like that.
I let him have a lot of control over me.
One time he just showed up at my house with a couple of his friends and we hung out and I was like, SO Happy. Dude just knew that my mom was never home and that he could drink at my house. He went so far as to bring like 10 guys over to my house and suddenly, I was having a party that I did not plan, and my mom came home in the middle of it and those assclowns left behind a bottle of Jack Daniels. He was a total dick. And, no, he didn't apologize.
the sad part is, the reason for all this is the notion that if you had a boyfriend, you were normal. And pretty. And enviable. All the things I didn't feel I was growing up.
Anyway, I suppose the point of this story is that I'm not proud of that time in my life. There are a lot of times in my life that I was weak like that and I'm quite honestly ashamed of myself. Times I couldn't say no and got myself in big trouble with friends. But, I suppose, in the grand scheme, it's experience. It's life. You live it and move on.
I still feel a little of that inability to just tell someone to fuck off. I've spent so much of my life trying to please people and keep them around and convince them that I'm "cool".
Fuck that.
I'm too tired to do that anymore. This is it. This is me.
Oh yeah... last time I saw RB was at a concert.
He was balding prematurely and he looked like a bag of ass.
Anyway, there are 2 kids in particular that really got to me. Which is just f-ing sad. It's a reality show... on MTV! But, in the shower this morning I was thinking as I often do while showering, and it dawned on my why two of those kids upset me so much. Because my life was startlingly similar to the girl's in this equation.
The basic situation is this: Jessica is a girl who is marginally popular, but basically serves as everyone's personal doormat. As a result, she has next to zero self-esteem, finds it impossible to say no to anyone, and consequently makes extremely poor choices.
Jason is a guy. An alpha-male. He's basically been with every girl on the damn show but can't seem to maintain a long term commitment as he's too busy messing around with someone else. Guy is a total Douche.
Jessica and Jason dated for a spell. Predictably, he treated her like shit. Aaaaand then broke up with her. On Valentine's Day. Jessica then embarks on a campaign of "I still like him" so large, that even her best friends basically tell her to fuck herself.
Essentially how it all boils down is that every time Jason gets with a new girl, he continues stringing Jessica along, and she goes right ahead with it because she is so desperate for affection and attention and approval that she can't see how she is destroying herself, and her relationships with her friends. Jason beckons, she follows. Messes around with him. Gets caught twice. Sadly, Jason never takes responsibility for his part in all this and blames her. "She jumped me, dude." So, Jessica starts lying about what is actually going on because she's backed into a corner. All information points to the fact that she is, in fact, a slut. Which, she's really not. She's just weak.
Ok. So, why am I regaling you with bad reality tv? I know y'all thought I was better than this... but bear with me.
When I was in highschool, I was very similar to this girl. I had friends, but I wasn't the leader. I lived in fear of what they thought of me. Tried to conform to what I percieved to be their expectations. And when it came to boys, I was an absolute mess.
Case in point:
We'll call this boy RB. RB as far as I was concerned was the dreamiest thing since Patrick Dirty Dancing Swayze. I met RB at a party with a friend. There was beer, there were boys, I felt so cool. And then it came ot pass that RB wanted to "scam" with me. Ah! Youth!! Remember the colloquiolisms for making out? Anyhoo, scam we did. I even got myself my first hickey.
One thing though.
I had a boyfriend.
Yeah. So, my friend forced me to call him, tell him, and break up with him. But that was totally ok with me, because I was going to go out with RB. See, in my naivetee, I thought that if you kissed a boy, that meant you were automatically boyfriend/girlfriend. HHHAAAAAHAHAHAA! God I was dumb.
Well, I had his number and began my campaign (obssesively calleing him) to be his girlfriend. He had different ideas. What hapepned between us meant nothing to him and he didn't really care about how I felt about it. I was pretty devastated. I totally beleived that I was like, in love with him? Like, I totally loved the way he smelled, and like, he was like the BEST kisser.
Anyway, long story short, I held a torch for this guy for 2 years. Fucking retarded. He'd call me up when he had a girlfriend and be all "You wanna hang out?" And I'd be all "Sure!" and then we'd make out!! I was a fucking homewrecker! And that's not the first or the last time I had done something like that.
I let him have a lot of control over me.
One time he just showed up at my house with a couple of his friends and we hung out and I was like, SO Happy. Dude just knew that my mom was never home and that he could drink at my house. He went so far as to bring like 10 guys over to my house and suddenly, I was having a party that I did not plan, and my mom came home in the middle of it and those assclowns left behind a bottle of Jack Daniels. He was a total dick. And, no, he didn't apologize.
the sad part is, the reason for all this is the notion that if you had a boyfriend, you were normal. And pretty. And enviable. All the things I didn't feel I was growing up.
Anyway, I suppose the point of this story is that I'm not proud of that time in my life. There are a lot of times in my life that I was weak like that and I'm quite honestly ashamed of myself. Times I couldn't say no and got myself in big trouble with friends. But, I suppose, in the grand scheme, it's experience. It's life. You live it and move on.
I still feel a little of that inability to just tell someone to fuck off. I've spent so much of my life trying to please people and keep them around and convince them that I'm "cool".
Fuck that.
I'm too tired to do that anymore. This is it. This is me.
Oh yeah... last time I saw RB was at a concert.
He was balding prematurely and he looked like a bag of ass.
posted by LC Greenwood at 11:07 AM
2 Comments:
I think all of us were like that at one point in our lives to some extent. I know I was. I was unwillingly (and unbeknowst to me) made to be the "other woman". I didn't find out until later, when the emotional connection I had to this person was over and I saw what really happened. Take some comfort in the fact that you now know and are so much stronger because of your past. We all have one. And they're all full of things we could regret. But embracing it is so much harder, yet so much better in the long run.
Everything you go through is a learning experience. I'm preaching to the choir, I know. I've been on both sides of that situation, so I just wanna say, not all guys who's initials are RB are complete douchebags.
~RB
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