I'm winning

I feel like a big fat copy cat because I have just read 2 inspiring blog posts (here and here.) and now I feel inspired myself.

It's funny how what makes you happy can change so much in just a few short years. Like Tina, in the first years of high school, I strived to be the most different, awkward, and unfriendly person at RHS. I found everything others had or did that I didn't like and made sure all my friends knew how uncool that person was... (when it was really us who were uncool. funny how that works.) most of the time we wouldn't even try to lower our voices. "____ _____ smells like B.O. and I don't care who knows it!" Just plain rude girls.

Of course, things got better as the years went on. I was growing up. First kisses, getting my driver's license (I was a little late on that one) and the teenage badittude came along and phased me into a less-awkward, more-rude typical teenage brat. I ditched the black shirts and opted for a black/grey heart. Nobody was good enough to be my friend except the ones I already had.

This continued on into my first year of college. I thought people thought I was funny cause I wasn't afraid to speak my mind about things/people I didn't like. Turns out, when people find out that you are talking crap about them, they don't like you. Badittitude-1, Jessica- 0.

I think I figured it all out when I moved to Boise the first time. I had LITERALLY zero friends. I babysat from dawn to dusk. There was no one my age in the ward I was going to. It was time to TAKE A STAND. I started going to a singles ward BY MYSELF and sat at the back of the chapel during sacrament. I then sat in the back in sunday school and... big shocker... relief society. I was missssserable.

Then, I changed my attitude. I didn't need new friends to make my life complete. That was really the only reason I tried out the singles ward in the first place. So i started going to church for CHURCH, not to make friends. It was amazing how my difference in attitude changed my whole experience with this ward. I changed, transformed if you will, into someone that wasn't trying so hard to be different or conformist, but into myself. I did what I wanted because I wanted to do it. Not because everyone else, or no one else, was doing it. I thought differently about people. I became a happier, more content version of myself. Just Jessica. Badittude-1 Jessica-1.

Since then, life has only gotten weirder. I am a young, married woman, and when people find out I'm married I get strange looks because some people think I'm 17. Thanks guys? But I have a new errand in life now and it isn't listening to Alkaline Trio or hanging out at Video Cinema or egging B.O. girls car or making all the boys think I was a bad girl. It is simply to make me and my husband happy. And I think I have a pretty good idea how to do that.

Battitude-1 Jessica-2.