second time around

Hm. where do i start. i guess high school. in high school, i thought i was the man. i mean THE man. in tenth grade i had my own apartment, a job, and car. thats was pretty atypical back then, especially in small town battle creek. well battle creek wasn't mayberry but it definately had that small town feel back then.

i was decently popular in high school, which kinda puzzles me. i mean i only played football one year (because of an injury) and never ran for any class office, but it seemed like everyone knew me even if i didn't know them. i wasn't really that social either. i had my little circle of friends that i hung out with and wasn't all that interested in expanding it. And i had my best friend chris. we are still best friends to this day. guess i had good instincts for picking good friends eh? lol

i say all this as background to the reason for this post. back then i had a friend named karyn. well a couple of friends, karyn and her sister lynn. they hung out with me and chris alot and we got to be pretty close. i think karyn and i were closer than anyone else. that therein is the issue. i really liked karyn. but my lack of maturity and my desire to maintain my "player" status kept me in denial. it was obvious to others who knew us, but i wouldn't admit it. back then karyn was a sexy, funny, wild, extrovert who kept me guessing what crazy thing she was gonna do next. i really, really liked her.

i never told her, or expressed my feelings truly. we had a few quiet moments together here and there that hinted of what was underneath, but they passed without either of us acting on it. then as life frequently does, it moved on. I joined the army, and she moved out of state. that was the end of that...

years later i vaguely remember being back in battle creek, at a carnival, and running into karyn. instead of being happy to see her, i was preoccupied with looking for the girl i came to the carnival with. a romance that quickly fizzled into nothing. i was agitated and impatient with karyn, not even noticing her obvious happiness at see me again, until much later. whoever said hindsight is a mother never told a truer truth.

over the years i have often thought of her. wondering what she was doing. when i last talked to her, she was a mormon, so i assumed she was probably doing missionary work in some God forsaken backwater somewhere. i half heartedly looked for her a couple times or so. not really expecting to find her. not knowing what to expect if i DID find her. eventually i just stopped.

fast forward 20 or so years. i'm a full fledged netizen. i'm all over the net. had the same yahoo email address since yahoo was "born". got a myspace page and a facebook account. up until recently my myspace page has been the central means of communication for many people that know me. i'd always had a facebook page but never really got into until about a month ago. once i started playing with it, i liked it much better than myspace. facebook is much better for communication. [end techno-nerd transmission........now returning you to your regularly scheduled post]

so one day, i'm on facebook and i see a message. its from karyn! at first i didn't know what to do. should i respond? if i do, will she be mad at me? will she be disappointed? will i be disappointed? man i was stressed. finally i just went for broke and sent her a message back. she immediately responded. not only was she happy to hear from me, but all was forgiven! she understood the turbulent emotions and immaturity of the teen years and didn't hold it against me. now we talk every day. i am so blessed to have her back in my life, even if it is from afar. and who knows, maybe this time i wont screw it up ...

second time around...