Lessons Learned in Love and War

All throughout the history of the human race, men have been courting women. And in that time, there have been many, many mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable in life, love, and unfortunately military operations as well. The trick is learning from your mistakes and if you're really good, others' mistakes too. I have made an effort to do this. I have courted women, and I have made mistakes in life, love, and military operations. I have learned lessons from my mistakes and others' mistakes, especially those of my best mate Unkle Sam.

Unkle Sam is my right hand man. Is he my sidekick or am I his? It depends on the circumstances. In many instances we're partners in crime, but when it comes to girls, we're very much left to our own devices. I intend to move chronologically through the timeline of our relationships and relate the lessons I have learned through the experiences Unkle Sam and I have had.

My first crush that really went anywhere is also my most embarassing. I was in eigth grade and she was in seventh. Yes, a fourteen and a twelve year old. What can I say? I was cradle robbing when I was in the cradle. My best friends have always been female and I have a constant ache for female companionship of any form. Which is likely why I had to teach myself not to be a sissy, which definately helped with the girl situation. What makes this situation even more embarassing though is that Pickle Juice is Lexie's little sister. Yes, Lexie Knudsen, my long-time friend from Northridge. Her little sister. People shutter when they hear that (though few hear that), but she was actually really really cute back then. I had a sneaking suspicion that she liked me and so we passed notes and it was disgustingly cute and thoroughly cliche. I was so happy to have a girlfriend I couldn't contain myself. Alas, the lunch schedules switched and we stopped seeing each other. Just as well. Being much younger than me, she was also much less mature, and it showed. A big part of being immature is fickle affections and shaky loyalty, which is not a good recipe for a relationship. She broke it off soon after that. Through a mutual bitch of ours, no less. It was harsh.

The lessons I learned from this situation didn't come until much later when I had some perspective on relationships in general. I realized that even though this totally qualifies as an embarassing mistake, it was a neccesary mistake to make. I gained experience with the opposite sex that I would not have otherwise had, and there was no other way to gain that experience. The first girl, I decided, will probably be a mistake, but nobody should get in the way of that very neccesary experience. This will become important as we move down the timeline.

During the following summer I had picked up some awful habits and was becoming quite the deviant, drifting farther and farther from the gospel and from the values I had been taught growing up. As the summer drew to a close, I was introduced to Rabecca Latour. Anybody that knows me well knows that she represents an enourmous blight on my very existance. Which is kind of sad because she really is a nice girl, but...oh so damn disfunctional! She gave me essentially my first kiss, unless you count taking that dare from Fish and kissing Alisha Rife. Not actually a bad kisser, if I recall. Becca, however...*shudder.* Our second kiss was...jeez...that girl knew what a tongue was, and did NOT know how to use it properly. I recall the sensation of drowning. It was absolutely disgusting, though very gratifying for an EXTREMELY horny fourteen year old. The central problem to our relationship was that we never got comfortable around each other. We were both so shy that we couldn't hardly say anything to each other unless it was over IM.

She broke it off once, through the same mutual bitch, and actually due to her advice. Come to think of it, Pickle Juice was taking Nikki's advice too. THAT CHICK loved to ruin my relationships. Such a snot! She left me for some fat geeky kid too. Admittedly he was kinda cool, but SUPER annoying! After two weeks of that, though, she realized that I was pretty much the greatest thing that had ever happened to her and came crawling back. The sad thing is that I probably was the best thing that ever came her way, even though I didn't treat her all that well. I essentially took advantage of her in every way. Our relationship was far too physical for the age we were, and the depravity and disfunction of just that could really weigh on guy's conscience. Finally it became too much for me. During one of her pathological lying, hyperemotional meltdowns telling me how awful she was and how I shouldn't even be with her, I told her, "Okay then. It's over." And that was that. I spent the next few months trying to say as sensitively as I could that she was a whore and I never wanted to see her or hear her again, at certain times abandoning the sensitively part in hopes that she would just hate me and go away. For those of you taking notes, yes, this was when I first began to turn into the asshole you know and love.

I learned a number of things from this relationship. I won't date girls that don't respect themselves. I will watch for the "whore" red flags. I need to take the advice of the prophet and not date before I turn sixteen and not steady date before my mission.

Running from Becca meant running back to the church and back to living like I should. I kicked some bad habits and took up reading my scriptures, attending church and EFY, even spending less time with the !US! Crew in hopes of completely retrofitting my personality to the "good kid" that my neighbors remembered from my shy little childhood. I even succeeded for a while. I essentially turned into a miniature Sean Hannity, ignorance and closed-mindedness inclusive, but doing my best to be the most righteous person I could. And that's when I met her.

Hannah Morse was everything I wanted in a girl. She was the original good girl, toting her scriptures wherever she went, beaming soft smiles and that light in her eye everywhere she went. It was an uphill battle to try and make her talk to me, but I did manage it. I wouldn't even think about dating her; neither of us were sixteen yet! But I wanted her as my friend, and closer than that emotionally, like Rilee and I used to be, or Alisa and me before that. It didn't really happen until one day she was crying and I was in the right place at the right time. There's nothing special about my listening powers. I don't have a magestic tallent for comfort and sympathy. I was just in the right place at the right time and it made all the difference. We got to be good friends, but there was a brewing problem.

I had never felt anything like it before. I found myself violently shoving images of our married future from my mind. I thought about her constantly. I filled up a notebook of drawings just failing to capture that glimmer in her eyes. What was worse is that she was catching on and putting some buffering zone between us, which who can blame her. And then it became a royal clusterfuck because I wrote about it in a blog and I forgot to make it private and all hell broke loose. She was about ready to move to Europe and never speak to me again, she was so freaked out. I stayed up until 5am trying to talk her out of cutting off all communication with me, and thus began the downward spiral of my sanity. For the next six or eight months I was subjected to the worst depression I have felt before or since. Whether her not returning my feelings was the cause of that or if it was because my mind was just sick, it doesn't matter. She was the only one that made it better, even when she made it worse. The entirety of my junior year was characterized by lonliness and heartache that I can't even describe. I tried to take my life three times, and almost succeeded once and my parents freaked out and threw me in a mental institution for a month wherein I met the man that I have killed in three short stories, too screenplays, and one film (played WONDERFULLY by Kate). His breakdown of my friendship with Hannah was more than mocking and condescending, it was disrespectful to her in the worst possible way, and my one regret is that I didn't deck him in the teeth right there and then, even if it would have kept me in there for another month. Bastard.

When I was released, I was on an almost ineffectual antidepressant. When my depression worstened, its effects and the drug's effects combined to turn me into an apathetic log. I didn't have the energy to get out of bed. I slept through entire school days, even when I did go to school. I would be making up the credits I missed for the next year. It was during this time that I met Taylor, aka Unkle Sam. I knew him from the ward and from hanging out with  Scoot and other things, but this was the first time since Elementary School we were actually friends. He was going through a rough time himself and so we related well. We were both becoming disaffected from our inner crusades to be good people, taking to swearing and drinking *ghasp!* Mountain Dew. Our unstable emotional states began to make us cynical and sarcastic and really just into a couple of assholes. And we loved it. The dark humor mediated the effects of the depression until at last, Hannah told me that in some non-romantic fashion, she had grown to love me too. That was the last day I ever succombed to that sickness.

So the last three paragraphs hardly constitute a relationship, but I'm going to count it anyway, because I learned that it doesn't take more strength than one is able to give to be a good person. Pefection doesn't come in a single day but over a lifetime of steady improvement, and improvement only at a rate that one is in a position to provide. I also learned what Love feels like and the difference between loving someone and being IN LOVE with them. This will also become extremely important later.

Taylor, unlike me, never had Whookos to break him out of his shy shell, and only when lonliness ovecame him did he get the courage to bust out of his shell. Courage actually had less to do with it than the fact that we both had up until now committed to take the advice of our church leaders and stay away from serious relationships in High School. We always rolled our eyes and mocked the hand-in-hand couples, kissing in the halls. The truth was that we secretly envied them, we just wouldn't admit it to ourselves. One day we got so fed up with being alone that we did. We decided to pursue relationships, even though we still had the better part of a year left in High School. I never talked about my history wtih Hannah but I had recovered from my infatuation enough to actually envision myself with someone else, at least on the short term. During these days I was spending a lot of time with her and her new friends from American Fork High, one of which was a spoiled little bitch but I really liked the other three. All of them had their plusses. Shawna really seemed to appreciate my dark humor and take on life, which had survived from the depression episode, as well as my taste for Mountain Dew. Lauren was a country girl, which is SO HOT, and she was really good-looking too. And Katie was...adoreable. She didn't strike me as the most beautiful of them at the time, but she was disgustingly cute and she loved to snuggle, especially with me, which I think (know) irked Hannah a little bit. Katie and I were getting to know each other the most, and as it turned out we had a lot in common, but I couldn't seem to get in contact with her to pursue any kind of feelings with her, so I eventually went for my Salt Lake friend Sammie.

I have to interject in this narrative to briefly mention Taylor's first girlfriend was a girl named Lauren. Gorgeous. Tall. Dumb as rocks. But she was into him and it was good for him. She's so completely stupid and insensitive that it ultimately blew up, but remember the lesson from Pickle Juice? I never got in his way because A. He was happy and 2. He needed the experience.

Now back to Sammie.

Sammie is a REALLY sweet girl. She has a need for speed kind of attitude and she has the same yearning for companionship that I do. She's a ton of fun and...okay she's probably the "hottest" girl I've ever dated. I'm not sure kissing her was much fun, but she certainly was good-looking. The distance between our houses was a bit of a problem, and there were so many things that she couldn't understand about me because she did not share my religious views. That and I had finally established contact with Katie and I was in denial about the shameless crush I had on her, and I suspected it was mutual. Kate understood me on levels that I really didn't think were possible. One day Unkle Sam noted that I really needed to date Kate. He was right, but I really didn't like the idea of walking out on my girlfriend for someone else. That's harsh. So I didn't.

It didn't end up mattering, because the clusterfuck was only beginning. Hannah admitted that she had feelings for me. Deeper feelings than she had allowed herself to admit. This was going to be a problem. I broke it off with Sammie because a three-pointed love triangle was going to be tricky enough. I felt really bad, but this was going to suck enough without her in the picture. And it only got more and more complicated as time went on. My immediate instinct was to tell Hannah that the timing was all wrong, but all I could think about was what it did to me when she shot me down over a year earlier. I couldn't do it. A well of emotion came flooding back to me, feelings that I had let die with my depression. I was quickly beginning to care about Kate, but in the end I chose to try to make it work with Hannah. Oops. She was my girlfriend for three days, and then freaked out and ended it. She locked herself away, and I was left without either of them...sort of...

Let's take a break here and analyze. Lessons learned from this situation: Hannah sucks at relationships, relationship advice, and romantic timing.

For some reason I still can't fathom, Kate stuck around, hanging with me a lot and making me feel better about the situation. What Hannah had done had really hurt me. I deserved most of it, but that didn't change the fact that I was a wreck, and despite what I had done to Kate she continued being my friend. Lonliness was soon no longer an issue. I even kissed her. A lot. Best. Kisser. EVER!!! Guilt-ridden over it, I tried to make our relationship official but she wanted nothing to do with it. We were benefriends, and it was pretty gay. But something was better than nothing in my mind, so we continued kissing...a lot...and even got ourselves into a little trouble and backed off. And then did it again. And again. Finally we backed off for a really, really long time, not so much as talking to each other for over a month. This brings us to May 1, 2008.

Lessons learned: benefriends suck ass, and even when somebody says that it doesn't bother them to help you out and listen to your problems, sometimes they're lying and you need to keep your yap shut. I did finally figure this out, during the month preceeding May 1. Hannah had hurt me because I loved her deeply, but Kate didn't need to hear that even if it made me feel better to say it. I kept my feelings for Hannah to myself until they began to shrivvel and die.

May 1 was the film festival, which Kate came down for. It turned out to be really gay so we left and bought food. We came back, I accepted my award, then went home with Kate. We snuggled. She was so cute that I couldn't help it. I kissed her again. That kiss began the best year of my life. We went for a drive, talked about it, and for the first time I made her my girlfriend. Real and true. And from that moment on I vowed to treat her like the goddess she had been to me over the course of my trials. Graduation happened, and we spent the summer together. Nearing the end of the summer I admitted that I had fallen in love with her, and she reciprocated. Never have there been two happier people. But college loomed on the horizon, and I expected it to be the end of our makeshift relationship. But it wasn't. We decided not to break up, and for the entire semester we were seperated from each other, but we were so happy being together that it made the months go by like days. She returned for the winter semester and we continued, two people so deeply in love we often times couldn't even comprehend it.

Now what was happening to Taylor in the meantime? Taylor got involved with this BEAUTIFUL blond that I never knew very well named Alecia. Everything went great until Valentines day 2008 when he gave her a valentine that said "I love you" and she freaked out and broke up with him as harshly as she could, causing him the most pain she could. The poor guy didn't mean anything by it, but the jerk broke his heart anyway. The entire situation was frakked up.

Lesson: Some girls freak out for no reason. Avoid them. They have issues.

This is when he met Brittany Harper. Not too hard on the eyes, though freakishly tall. She seemed to genuinely care about him, and he loved her SO MUCH! Like Lauren, she annoyed the hell out me because she was lound-mouthed, insensitive, and...less than brilliant. Besides that, she, like Becca, had latent sexual issues that were nothing but trouble. But he was happy, and willing to work out problems that they had. The biggest problem they had, as it turns out, is that she didn't make time for him. She got so involved with school that he never saw her. He was even willing to overlook that, but their relationship was decaying and he was powerless to stop it. She eventually broke it off because she needed to spend the time on "her studies" (she was a sophomore at the time), and because Taylor was mission-age.

Girls, don't ever break up with a guy due to mission-related issues. He has to make that decision for himself or it's meaningless and frankly really obnoxious. DON'T DO IT! Other lessons learned: a relationship with someone who won't make time for you is NO GOOD! Once again: whore red flags, pay attention!

It was ultimately a very good thing for Taylor that she broke up with him, because it ushered in the era of Kim. Where do I even start with Kim...let's put it this way: if he didn't have dibs I would date Kim. She's awesome! Texas girl, ROTC, tiny ADOREABLE little thing, and really nice. And not stupid! YES! She's actually rather intelligent, which I was so glad of! I had kept quiet about Taylor's other relationships, but if he ever starts pursuing an obnoxious bimbo again I'm going to punch him. He and Kim began at a leisurely pace, but a shadow from the past was lurking in the headlights.

Brittany returned with a vengance. She had realized, as Becca had with me, that Taylor is amazing and she was unlikely to find anyone else quite like him. Much to our relief he told her off promptly to pursue his feelings for Kim. We like Kim. Brittany...not so much. Because of her and Becca and their psycho-hose-beast properties (psycho hose beast is the evolved state of stalker chick, as in stalker chick AFTER you've dated her), Taylor and I even invented emergency protocols for escaping them. We have an understanding.

Lesson learned: creepy stalker vibe=no good. Beautiful Texas girl = so good!

...but no good. Kim was a bit of a failure to launch, unfortunately. She preferred being just friends, or at least claimed to. I have a sneaking suspicioun that she did what many girls do and confuse what they want with what they think they should want. I hope Taylor doesn't give up, because they're really cute together and I know that he could make her really happy. And a girl like that doesn't come around every day. Girls seem to be under this impression that they're one in millions, even when they're actually one in a million. I don't understand giving up opporunities for happiness for theoretical opportunities that MIGHT show their face at some point in the unknowable future. Taylor seemed to take it okay but the situation annoys me. She's so sweet and, like me, he aches for someone to love and someone to love him back. Currently he's looking for a summer fling to tide him over until she gets back in the fall, and if he finds love before then so be it.

Lesson learned: Girls don't know what they want, with very few exceptions. You have to convince them that you're what they want, or they're going to become "The one that got away." Guys have them, and serial killers have them.

And where am I now? Before we answer that question, let me just say a few words.

Damn Fuck Shit.

Okay. That's better. Where the story left off, Kate and I were doing wonderfully. Even a semester spent apart couldn't douse the candle of our passion. I loved her so much! I can't even describe it! I had essentially decided that if my health problems or anything else were going to keep me from my mission indefinately, I was going to propose to her. I'm dead serious. I'm only nineteen, but spending the rest of my life with her...I would never regret that. And I won't apologise for that either. It's true, we fight sometimes, and we disagree on a lot of topics, and we have other problems, but to me that all seemed like trifles; problems that I was willing to devote my life to solving. She's everything I want in life, and I wouldn't change a thing about her...except one thing.

Katie gets itchy feet. Things get too serious and she can't breathe and has a meltdown. She's also a quitter. When things get too hard she runs. She was behind on credits in school so she settled for a GED. She and I both got really behind in our English class last semester, and the makeup work load was absolutely atrocious. But I did it. She gave up. Things get too hard and she gives up. She gave up on us. Something (AND I QUOTE) "just didn't feel right," and instead of trying to work things out she went and humped a doorknob after some jackass from a mideaval reinactment club. After a year she just dropped me, like the things we shared didn't mean a damn thing. And she didn't just drop me, but she made sure that every aspect of it hurt as much as it could. She broke my heart so that I would stop loving her, which is of course bullox. I will never stop loving her. If what Hannah did to me never shook my love for her, then nothing Katie is capable of could even come close.

The lesson learned is much like the lesson with Kim. When you have something good, hold on tight and never let it go. Girls run off. That is the only lesson I can gather from this situation. The whole damn thing is so screwed up and none of it makes any sense. The other possible lesson is too depressing to consider, because the other possible lesson is that no matter how much you try there is nothing you can do to stop your girl from running off with somebody because he has a larger dick. I talk to her again and again about what I could have done to prevent this. Did I not treat her like a queen? Did I not do everything I could to make her happy? Did I ever spare any expense for her sake? With guilt-ridden eyes she tells me that nothing I could have done woult have mattered. She's "screwed up" and would have ran away anyway. So there you have it.

The lessons you learn through life will continue to influence the person you are, even if sometimes the only way to learn them is the hard way, even if sometimes they're hard to swallow. The question is how willing are you to endure the pains of heartbreak in order to hopefully find the one girl that won't run, the girl that you can convince to stick around, the girl that isn't a stalker chick or a whore or a bimbo, a girl that respects herself and won't freak out and run off over nothing. A girl that will love you back. Forever.