The Story of Me...Part 1

I have been letting what people think rule my life since forever.  Concurrently, I have been rebelling against those same people since forever.  As a child, the youngest of four girls, I wanted desperately to be accepted and embraced by them.  I was not.  Instead of being sweeter to try to woo them, I chose instead to be their worst nightmare.  Passively, of course, I'm not stupid.  Later, I ridiculed their lifestyles and judged them mercilessly.  After that, I enjoyed shocking them with my bad behavior.  I never received the love and acceptance I wanted from my siblings.  In fact, I'm not sure I always have it today.

In school, I wanted to be well-liked by my teachers.  If there was such a thing as a teacher's pet, I wanted the dish to have my name in bold black lettering.  I wanted to be everyone's friend.  In third grade, I wanted to make sure everyone went to heaven with me as well...but that is a whole nuther blog post.  I was willing to sacrifice anything I needed to to be liked.  This was also true as a young teen.  Though still a teacher's pet, I was often plugged in to some very unlikely behaviors.  My peers had begun to help shape my life.  I began a sort of double life.  I won't go into details beyond saying that I made very poor choices and still bear the scars from pleasing the wrong kind of people. 

I believed with all my heart that as long as I was smart, studied, made good grades, and was active in school activities, life would turn out well for me despite my double life.  I made many poor decisions that a kid without someone to look out for them makes.  I look back and marvel at the little jewels and marvelous people God planted in my life.  I never doubted for a second that he was my best friend or that he loved me.  I just knew I did not measure up in his eyes and behaved accordingly.  I was part of a very active youth group that profoundly affected me, shaped me in wonderful ways.  However, I always felt like an impostor.  I just wasn't 'good' like they were.  At some point I never even tried to evangelize anymore...I was just too messed up and I knew it.  On my score sheet, I did not even really believe God would let me into heaven...I just knew He still had not given up hope that I might straighten up.

Eventually, I gave up the hope of Heaven.  It was then that I set out to do ALMOST everything I was big enough to do.  If it was wrong, I intended to give it a try.  My relationships with friends were very conditional.  You let me down and it was over.  I have a lot of wonderful people in my past that I dumped because they were not what I needed them to be.  My relationships with the fellas were needy and desperate with a side of maliciousness.  Miraculously, I was never involved in an abusive relationship.  Probably because I usually chose men I thought I had power over.  I was a very troubled young lady.  On the outside, I believed I was living it up...on the inside, I was too broken to ever be repaired.