A Dramatic Backstory to an Eccentric Writer

We all had our aspirations as a child. Some wanted to be veterinarians, others wanted to be firefighters. These are the typical things children want to be, right? Well, I wasn't a typical child. "Why? What made you different from them?" I guess that's the question you're asking. Maybe it isn't the question you're asking. Maybe the question you're asking is, "What is the purpose of this?" Well, I'll tell you the purpose for this. I wished to be normal in elementary school. Can you believe that? I had no aspirations. Sure, I loved to write and thought about being an author, but I just wanted to be a normal kid living a normal life.

I was born with Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Never heard of it? Exactly. Maybe if I tell you this, it will refresh your memory on what it is. You know that one guy on Guinness World Records, Garry Turner? The guy who has "The World's Stretchiest Skin." He has a certain type of Ehlers Danlos Syndrome. Well, I have the hypermobility type; Type 2 of Ehlers Danlos, which means, my joints aren't like the average person's bones. I'm fragile. Which, I guess you could say goes with my personality as well. I still wear my heart on my sleeve, but back then, it was way worse. Even though I still get anxiety, I was worse back in elementary school. Speaking of elementary school, that's where my story begins.

In elementary school, I was the kind of person who tried to make friends with everyone. Even though some of them were only friends with me because they felt bad for me. I was more on the chubby side and I wore these round framed glasses that made me look dumb. Because of this, I had a lot of jokes made about me. By people who I still considered to be my friend. The jokes would be made about my clothing, or my glasses, or my teeth. I can't help that I have crooked teeth, so why did they make fun of me for it? Because I was an easy target. I would cry a lot and that made them feel powerful. It even got to the point where one of my after school teachers told me, if I didn't stop being a crybaby, nobody would want to be my friend. What did I do when she said that? I cried. I'd like to think I've gotten over that phase, but because of past experiences, whenever someone yells at me in a harsh sounding tone, I break down. For the most part, all the teachers were nice to me. It was just the kids that made me have a somewhat bad elementary experience.

Moving on, let's get into middle school. Ah, yes. Middle school—the three years of my life that were full of drama. Why is it that middle school has the most intense drama? In high school, it's all like, "Jenny took my boyfriend so she's a slut and we're just going to ignore her." In elementary school, the drama was who was going to sit beside who at lunch and who got to swing on the swings during recess. In middle school, it was extremely intense drama. I remember this one girl got in a fight with another girl for spreading around her nudes or something like that (PSA: Don't take/distribute nudes, kids). In sixth grade, all the drama was mostly about these popular girls going around talking bad about their ex friends and petty stuff. Sometimes the drama got more than that, due to people opening their mouth and spreading rumors. For the most part, sixth grade was great. I made new friends, the teachers liked me, and no lies were spread about me. Well, as far as I know there wasn't. Seventh grade for me was "interesting." I think that was the year when I started talking to one of my friend's boyfriends as friends because he had added me on Facebook. She and I got into this huge argument and he ended up not talking to me anymore because she forced him not to.

Now, me and that girl I just talked about have had many fights. It was mostly over friends or guys. It never really got intense, up until she sent people to go and threaten to kill me. Even I wouldn't have gone as far as to do that. We were in seventh grade, if you really wanted to kill me over talking to some older guy, then you can have him. Seventh grade me was somewhat attached to him. I don't know why, he just made me feel special. We'll get into talking about him later on in this. Another guy I got attached to was this guy I became best friends with in sixth grade. He was pretty cute, I'll admit. My tiny little heart thought he was just perfect. Though, he didn't feel the same. He thought I was genuinely gross, which is why we stopped talking. Oh, I wasn't the one that ended us talking. It was him. He blocked me after I told him my feelings towards him. I don't hate him for that, though. I was pretty clingy. I just wanted a boyfriend, because all these other girls had these cute guys as their boyfriends and at that point I had only had five boyfriends, and four of them were online. One of the four online guys lives in the same state, but we only saw each other once and it was at my grandparents' house. We still talk occasionally, but there's nothing there. I think seventh grade was also the year I met this really attractive guy from another school in my district. We skyped a lot, but he just wasn't good with feelings. He and I still talk a lot, but we've been in several arguments. You see, seventh grade was the year I was going through a lot of emotions. Enough about seventh grade, onto eighth.

Eighth grade was the last year of my middle school experience, and the year of the eighth grade dance. I had to make that year count. Which I did. Though...there was a lot of drama. When I say drama, I mean guy drama and "fight" drama. Remember that guy I was talking about in the beginning of seventh grade? I dated him in the summer before eighth grade started, and we broke up some time in August or early September, I can't remember since he hurt me really badly. When we started dating, I got death threats from the ex girlfriend's friends and the ex girlfriend was harassing me. Yes, I understand she really liked him and thought they would work out, but in all honesty, they were never going to work out. Even after he and I broke up, she went back to him, foolishly. He broke her heart again and cried about it online. All I had to say to her was, "I told you so." Now, I know that wasn't right because she was genuinely hurt, but she knew he was going to hurt her again. Anyways, back to my experiences with him. He was a troublemaker. I think he mentioned getting suspended for shoving someone up against a locker and breaking their nose or something like that. To me, he seemed sensitive and caring. Boy was I wrong. He wouldn't let me talk to guys he thought were going to take me away from him. Ladies, if your boyfriend does this to you, it's a red flag. I think he even tried the "I'm gonna hurt myself if you talk to him" card on me. Once again, another red flag. Remember that attractive guy from the other school I mentioned? I finally saw him in real life at the first football game that school year. I was still dating that guy, and I was hanging out with the attractive guy because I finally got the chance to see him in real life. This caused my boyfriend at the time to get angry and tell his brother he wanted to beat up my friend. I defended him because that's what friends are for. If my boyfriend doesn't like one of my friends, too bad. The guy settled things with my boyfriend, and then after the game, he admitted he liked me. I was about to break up with my boyfriend because there was already a lot of red flags with him, but the guy insisted for me not to. Then, later on in the football season, he broke up with me to go to homecoming with this 18-year-old girl. At the homecoming game, he tried getting me back. I told him I was done, and I'm glad I did. Because a lot of bad things happened after we broke up.

Later on into September of that year, I met a really great guy. I was obsessed with his YouTube channel because he played the same game I did and had a great personality. He was a well-known hacker in the game, so when we started dating, I expected drama to occur about how I didn't deserve him and such. I started to think that I didn't really deserve him. He started to get hate, so I defended him every single time. That didn't help my situation I was in, considering I was still very sensitive. He showered me with compliments, I gave him smiles to keep away his depression. Not so long later, he broke up with me for this other girl in the community. This girl...I don't know what to say about her. She was the one who didn't deserve him. She was the one who was heartless. When they started dating, she did nothing but harass me. Made tweets about me on Twitter, made livestreams talking about me, and even tried convincing him to stop talking to me. One day, she and her friend took my photos off of Twitter and tweeted them out, making fun of my appearance. I cried and cried and only one of my friends defended me. You know what I did? I still loved my friends that weren't there for me. Because I was so easy to manipulate. I was so easy to forgive people. 2017 rolled around and I met this guy in my science class—this amazing guy who did nothing but make jokes with me and never had anything negative to say. That guy is my boyfriend. We started dating in May and went to the eighth grade dance together, but broke up in August because I never got to see him.

I'm in high school now, and here's what I've encountered so far. I dated this guy who was really affectionate. I also had this senior that liked me. I liked the senior, but I knew things wouldn't work out because he was so much older than me (I say that even though we're in the same school). My boyfriend at that time was in the grade above me, so we had classes near each other and he would kiss me on the cheek or on the forehead before he went off to class. I felt loved. Then, getting towards the middle of the football season, he started flirting with his best friend. He said he wasn't, but one of my friend's friends even said so. At that game, I met this guy who I ended up going to homecoming with. He had told me he thought it was obvious they were flirting, so I started ignoring him at the game. He and his best friend kept going on and on hitting each other, laughing at each other and such. I just kept talking to the three guys telling them how I felt angered. Then I said, "I'm just gonna ignore him for the rest of the time," and he came up behind me and asked me what was wrong. Then he sat down and kept asking what he did. So I just walked away and went to my parents. That night he kept spamming my messages asking what he did wrong. The day after, his exact words to me were, "OK, we're just gonna take a break," and I just...snapped. I broke up with him then and there. I believe it was two days before his birthday, but oh well. I couldn't stand the anxiety and tears he was causing. The guy I went to homecoming with tried convincing me he would break up with his girlfriend for me, then never did. Then I found out he was flirting with one of my so-called friends, and she even knew I liked him. I felt so betrayed, so I stopped talking to guys for a while. Then, my boyfriend right now asked me out, and we've been happy since. As I'm writing this, February 7th, our three months is tomorrow. Even when things don't seem to get any better, know that there's a place for us weirdos or geeks or whatever you are. There are people out there who are there to help you be happy. Remember that.