My Cringeworthy Teenage Years Haunt Me Once Again

After reviewing my 26 Before 27 progress, I decided to use my downtime during the long weekend to make some realistic timelines for a few of those goals. 5K in October? Check. Making a movie with my sisters? Working on it.

But seeing five friends from high school and telling them how much they meant to me?

I have tried to get together with some pretty great friends in the past few months, only to be thwarted by sickness and my lack of checking messages. Although it is a worthy goal, I probably won't realistically be able to see five friends before March (at least ones who I don't see regularly anyway, and therefore know how much I love them). I decided to crib from a latter goal on the list and write these friends a letter. An honest-to-goodness, snail mail, licked-envelope letter.

My strategy was to look through each year of high school, choose an influential person from my freshman through my senior year, and then allow myself one extra person. Freshman year was easy, as was sophomore year. My junior year choice was a breeze and my senior year choice was obvious, but awkward. I would throw out some names for you, but some of these people might read this blog and BOOM, there goes the element of surprise.

Let's talk about my extra.

I make a lot of effort to tell my friends what I think about them. It isn't necessarily difficult, but I do try to be mindful of showing my appreciation. Unfortunately, I also made an extreme amount of effort in telling my crushes what I thought of them. Luckily, most of them were cool about it, even if the feelings weren't reciprocated. And now I don't have to worry about that, because my husband lets me tell him how much I like him all the time...and then tells me right back!

Those in the know now, and even those who tangentially knew me during high school, knew all about my crushes. I made so many choices in high school because I wanted to be close to this boy or have more in common with that boy. Several of my extracurricular activities that I originally joined because of a boy, I ended up loving the activity itself later. And I never would have done some of those things if it hadn't been to share the same air as several, several boys in my high school.

I know that I have made myself sound like a ravenous, man-hungry girl. And I was; I dearly, dearly wish that I were exaggerating in the slightest, because I would have saved myself a lot of grief had I been. And I am sure that a lot fewer boys in Redlands would have had less embarrassment in their lives. But what's done is done.

Please tell me I wasn't the only boy-crazy teenage girl.

And would it be weird to get a letter that said, "Thanks for being cool enough to influence me to do good things, even if I did them because I wanted to love you forever"?