Nostalgic thinking. I'm a leaper!

Just for more tailored writings I have started up another blog since I have found that I mostly talk about weight and working out in this blog and it is making me feel scattered.

I wanted to delve into the past here for a minute and really get to where I am today. In school, all the way from elementary school through my senior year, I was the kid who wished I was always someone else. When I was super young my mom never let me cut my hair and always had it up and braided, usually with bangs! GAG ME. People would touch it, redo it during rug-reading time, etc. I was usually caught around picture time giving myself the best updated version of what I wanted using a pair of scissors I found laying around.....NOT GOOD for me or my hair.

After hitting that phase in life where your front teeth have grown in WAY bigger than all the other teeth and your ears seem to stick out just a bit further than they should, I always felt awkward. My mom never had enough money to put me in extracurricular sports or summer programs that focused on learning to love the outdoors. The most I got was a trip to 4-H camp sometime in middle school after we moved to TN from VA. And let me tell you, 4-H camp was better than nothing.

In high school I was the person who remembered everyone's name but didn't really know many people. I was the person who did well in all my classes (except Chem II) and who offered to help people during class because I needed someone to talk to. I was the person who was never allowed to drive in any one's car or have my own, never allowed to go anywhere in town or out with anyone other than my mother and never got to experience the perks of being allowed to go on Spring Breaks or dates!!! Crappy I know. Am I better for all of it? Who knows.

Because of all the things I wasn't allowed to do, and being lucky enough to have a brother who is 5 years older than me, I got to "get away with" some things that were probably detrimental to my health! I snuck out on dates, drove with friends anyway, threw a few parties, lied to my parents, and ultimately tried to make the most of what little bit of school life I had.

Now if I hadn't done those secret things (that my mother now knows about) I wouldn't have met John. Ironic how things work I suppose.

I have always had a problem with having serious talks with people and being able to get all my thoughts organized quickly enough that I don't come off sounding stupid, mixed-up, irritated, etc. My mom had found out about John when we were newly dating. My brother and I had snuck him into the house a few times and snuck him out when we were surprised by my mom coming home sooner than she said she would be (that happened most of the time when we were doing things we weren't suppose to be doing). I had said that I had "met" someone who was in the Navy and when she asked how I met him and I responded with, "he was recruiting at my school" she thought that some older mid-30 year old man was trying to take advantage of a 16 year old girl. I had to get myself straight and let her know the facts as they were and force her to meet him before deciding anything. I think this is one of the times that she actually labeled as "being able to see how much I'd grown up.".

Obviously she was alright with us finally going as far as to say we were dating and things went on from there. I became more comfortable with saying what I felt needed to be said with my mother, which I think was a huge deal, and having things turn out the way I thought they should be.

Now John and I have struggled with things because I think that for a long time we both felt we might have made a mistake in getting married both to each other and so young. For those of you who don't know how this happened, I met John when I was 16. Graduated high school when I was 17. Turned 18 two months after graduating and the next month moved from TN to San Diego and got married. John is 2 years, 11 months and 1 day older than me. We got married the day after he turned 21. Back to our struggles now. We have made the choice to get married super young and face the daunting statistics about young couples. We knew that we didn't really know each other or give ourselves the time needed to really love each other and develop a sense of unity on things before having kids.
I know that all this sounds negative but understand that I took this man for better or worse and we did our worse. Isn't love suppose to be like a roller coaster? Well if so, than we are on a high right now!!! As bad as this is about to sound, I haven't loved John like I do right this minute in years.

We have been married for 5 years this August and we have finally leveled out. We spent the first year of our marriage apart because of the Navy. Me left in a new city, far away from anyone I knew or cared about and John stuck on deployment. Then as soon as he got back we got pregnant, (9 mo. later) had a baby, (6 mo. later) had to move and got stationed back by family (thankfully). And then while under the stress of all that was going on in life, John made some choices that tested our relationship and devotion to each other. However, we got pregnant again and that was our saviour baby. Garrett kept us together during our hardest time and, I feel, has made us not only better parents but better spouses.

Some of you may have thought while reading this, "seriously, how could she say all this?" and I understand that not everyone thinks the same way. My mom once said to me how proud she was of me for growing into the person I've become. She also said to me that when I told everyone I was getting married she was mad at me, partially because I am the type of person who leaps way ahead of thinking and thankfully that hasn't gotten me into trouble. She then went on to say that she didn't want me to get married and didn't understand why the universe was letting me do this thing she considered to be "wrong". She said finally that she thinks I got married so young because that was the only way I would see it through. I'm not a quitter and part of me wants to believe she was right. I knew that I wasn't ready to get married but for whatever reason I did what I thought would be best and here I am falling back in love with the love of my life and being thankful more and more for the fact that I'm a leaper! I give in to what I feel to be right no matter what the world might tell me (or my mother for that matter!) and in the end it all comes out right because I have no other option but to make it better than it was meant to be! **That's a good thing incase you were wondering!**