Caution~

So I am dating Jack. On one hand, I am determined to not have regrets. I don’t want to look back down the road and wish that I had done more or done differently. On the other hand, being burned in the past has obviously made me much more cautious and I can already see how that makes my behavior different in this situation. The end result is that I am giving a ton of thought into how this progresses. Which is very, very new for me.

Anyone who has read even a handful of my blog stories knows that I always go into everything heart first, head second. And usually that heart is straight out on my sleeve for the whole world to see. Taking time to rationalize my dating life is like the anti-me. This is not to say my heart isn’t involved of course, but my brain has kind of harnessed and muzzled it a little bit.

Jack was the first boy to break my heart. We grew up together and he is in almost all of my childhood memories. We spent countless hours running the neighborhood with a few other kids, thinking we ruled the world. Until I was about twelve, I had really never been disappointed in anything in life. I had great parents, lots of friends, and went to sleep every night worn out from playing hard all day. I was good at school, didn't get picked on, was involved in different things....anything that I really wanted or needed I pretty much had. I am sure in the back of mind I understood people could be mean or things could go the way you didn't want...but I had no real world experience with this.

Jack and I continued to grow up and at some point just ended up on opposite sides. He was a cool kid and I was an unabashed dork. This is probably still mostly true today, except today I love being a dork - I have no shame whatsoever in it. But as a tween girl...I was devastated that one of my oldest friends was suddenly too cool for me. And I didn't understand it. I had no frame of reference for typical teenage boy behavior. It made no sense to me how one day we were friends and the next day I was the object of ridicule. I will never forget crying to my mom and trying to get her to explain it to me. Looking back, it must have been hard for her as a parent to watch me learn a hard lesson about people not always being who you want them to be.

Of course, we were just kids. I don't hold any of this against him now. Everyone hits that age and tries all kinds of things to try and figure out who they are and what they want. I have done many, many things through the years that I am not proud of all in the name of self discovery. What matters is how we take the things we learn and grow from them to become the people that we are today. If Jack hadn't taught me that lesson, then someone else would have. It was just a matter of time. Nevertheless...I am going to be very careful about giving him the opportunity to break my heart again.