Boys

I was in year 11 when I met my first real boyfriend. He had an undercut and braces and I thought he was sooo cute. We were together for almost exactly months (which was forever back then). Unfortunately we had really different friendship groups. He'd go off to parties every few weekends - parties that I wasn't invited to, but was allowed to see the photos of later. A friend of mine already had her own place and she had parties there every few weekends too. I have a few regrets about those days, I s'pose I shouldn't - after all, I wouldn't be me without them. Basically we would just get trashed. I got on with a couple of random guys even though I had a boyfriend. A mutual friend told me that if I didn't fess up, he'd have to say something (and fair enough). So I really did try- I walked all the way to his house from school on my own. I spent the afternoon with him bawling, I felt so guilty. He never asked me what was wrong, he just nodded & held my hand & wiped away my tears. If he'd asked me what was going on I think everything would have turned out differently but he didn't. So I didn't say anything - I just went home a few hours later. Then we went to a party together, and a guy I didn't know came up and kissed me. I was surprised, but I didn't pull away and I certainly didn't wallop him. My boyfriend saw it and dumped me instantly. Again, fair enough. I had no excuses, I was just 16 and stupid and selfish.
Not long after that I met a guy who was a few years older than me. Looking back, I wonder what he was thinking, picking up a 16 year old. I lost some of my innocence that year but I didn't lose much of my naivety.
So, by 17 I had dropped out of school and moved interstate with this new guy, into a share house with 4 other guys, all significantly older than me. I tried really hard to get a job - failed miserably in my first one and was fired within a week. I just had no idea of what to do and noone wanted to hire me (no academic qualifications and no experience). I was on the dole for about 4 or 5 months and eventually landed a really good job as an office junior in a law firm. Just as things were starting to look up, I was told that the city just wasn't working out and we had to move back home.
So once we got back, I applied for a job that had advertised no experience necessary. I became a ballroom dance instructor! Loved it - they'd teach me a step and the next day I'd be teaching that step to a student. The pay was terrible and the hours sucked but my contract stipulated that I had to stay with them for at least a year. That place did wonders for my fitness & my confidence. After 13 months I left them and went into hospitality. I was a buffet attendant for a year, which is really just a kitchen "go-fer". It was a good 12 months - plenty of work and great money since it was shift work.There is a Lot of talent in hospitality. My boyfriend said he wanted to go back to the big city and this time I said "no thanks", because I knew it would be a nightmare trying to get another job up there. We did the long-distance relationship for about a month and without him around, I began to see that I had a lot of options. I began to want a lot more than I had with him. When you live alone you have a lot of time to analyse things and I decided that I needed to make a change. We'd been fighting a lot and although he never hit me I always felt it was a real possibility. I packed a suitcase and left it under my bed for weeks, ready to go at a moment's notice. One weekend he came back for a visit and we had a fight. I called my mother to come and get me, took my suitcase and stood outside waiting. He was furious - I could hear him screaming and breaking things, I walked down the road a bit so people wouldn't know I'd just come out of that house. I'm sure they did know though. So that ended a four year relationship. I jumped straight into another relationship which was doomed from the start. I had initially thought the guy was deep and mysterious, but he was actually very shy and emotionally immature. So was I - I strung him along for far too long. We didn't have much in common at all. 12 months later I was in another relationship. This one lasted 5 years and started to deteriorate after about 3. I remember driving home from work, thinking "this is as good as it gets - you can decide to be happy or not. It's up to you to make this work". Thank goodness I came to my senses. I had some ambition - not a lot, but some. That guy had none at all. Zero. Unless you count sneaking over the back fence to go drinking with people so that you wouldn't get in trouble. So I needed to pull up stakes again. By this time I was approaching 30 and I was pretty scared about starting all over again. But I had a good job and some fantastic friends & a very supportive family. Not everyone is so lucky.
The next guy I dated wanted to sell his house & invest the money in mine after only about 3 months. I think he wanted to get married & settle down so badly that he didn't really care who it was with. Poor guy was a pushover to start with; would have done anything I asked. I wanted an equal, not someone I could bully. I told him to "man up" so he pretended to be all tough and mean, and it just annoyed me. We broke up before Christmas, he gave me the teddy bear he'd been saving for my present - he said he couldn't have it in the house. I suggested he just take it back to the store, but he basically threw it at me and told me to get out of his house. Drama, drama, drama.