Sometimes you get a fairy-tale...

... and sometimes you get real life.
Last October I lived a fairy-tale. Check it out.
In February I got a text from the dude telling me his girlfriend read my blog and was none too pleased. His GIRLFRIEND of over a year, mind you!!! That was the last time I spoke to him. 6 months later I get an email from his girlfriend's friend asking for details on how my going to the ball happened and what the intentions were. A week after that I got an email from his now ex-girlfriend.
In October I decided to be impulsive. I decided to be adventurous and spontaneous and allowed myself to be swept off my feet and take a risk. 9 months later I'm still dealing with the backlash of that decision.
I was told that he had been dating a girl, but it was very much not exclusive and she lived in a different state, turns out they celebrated their anniversary two weeks after the ball. She was told I was an old friend of his of like 10 years. I hesitated to go due to cost and not knowing him, but he covered half my flight and insisted he really wanted me there. She was told I pressured him into taking me.
I was humiliated. I spent a total of 2 days with this guy and 9 months later I'm feeling like a home-wrecker.
The truth is the girlfriend and I actually had a really good conversation, she was very sweet to me and appreciative of my honesty and apologetic that I found myself in this situation at all. My heart went out to her for being in such a long relationship with a guy who was so deceitful and manipulative.
The truth is, it's still a fun thing I did once. I'm able to compartmentalize the fairy-tale and the ridiculous reality. I was never attached to this guy so what happened doesn't hurt me or anything, it's just another story in my ridiculous repertoire.
That being said, it has been decided. I'm going to write a book.

5 Months

Well friends I have been living in Arizona for 5 months now.
It's still crazy to me to think that I actually moved here. That I don't live in Utah. It's crazy to me to remember in the beginning when I kept telling people, "I just gotta give it 4-6 months and then I'm sure things will be getting better" and that I am at that point now.
My plan for the first 5 months was to learn my way around, meet people that I could really become good friends with, find a place I really wanted to live and just basically find a life for myself here.
A friend of mine from Utah just moved here for med school and I spent Monday with him. I took him to a pool party and introduced him to some people. By the time he left my house that night I just thought, "My gosh... I'm not the new kid anymore." It was so surreal to me to realize that I had people now, I had a life here now.
On Tuesday I moved into my new apartment with my friend Shakira. Yesterday I was on the phone with a friend of mine and I realized, I feel like everything that has happened in AZ thus far has been to get me to this point. The first 5 months of me living here were preparing me to get to this point. When I first moved here I didn't know anyone or anything but with this move I feel like I have more of a purpose. I feel like I'm at the start of something real, something worthwhile. There is just something about this move and this apartment that makes me feel more at home.
I still don't know what Arizona has in store for me. I still don't know my purpose for coming here and I still want to eventually end up in Utah around my family, but for right now I feel like I'm in the right place. I feel like I'm doing the right thing.

Entertainment

My dating life is nothing if not entertaining.
The goods are good the bads are bad, but they are always entertaining.
I find myself in the craziest of situations. Whether it be being flown across the country to go to a military ball then later (months later) being approached by the friend of the GIRLFRIEND of the military man that flew me out there, or dating brothers, roommates and cousins and not having any idea before-hand.
I always have a story to tell my friends and family, and more often than not they bring gasps and laughter. Most times also bringing the question, "How does this stuff happen to you all the time?"
I am either dating no one, or my cup runneth over. I like having options, but I don't like dating multiple people, I get anxiety. Makes things hard.
I have had several people tell me, "I am so curious to see who you end up with." because the guys I date are so different from one another. No one, myself included, has been able to figure out my "type".
I have a high turnover and for some reason whenever my cup runneth over, all the guys are so similar in name and attributes that no one can keep up with who I'm talking about or who did what.
This last week my journal has just been overloaded with, "Get THIS!" stories. Some horrible, some hilarious and some exciting.
At this point I can find the humor in my dating life (this point meaning right now, who knows how long this will last before I'm super frustrated and crying for the same reason)At this point it's easy to turn it into a joke and make people laugh with the stories of my life. One day I'll look back at all this and just think it's hilarious. At least it's active. It could be worse.
I'm debating whether or not to post the sequal to the Cinderella incident, twas such a romantic story. I classify it like this, the ball itself was the fairy tale, what has happened since is just very much real life. But man oh man is it a story!
That story in and of itself goes to show you how my dating life works. It's very entertaining to those who aren't actually living it. It's a good thing I like telling stories.

Past Relationship Shmast Relationship

OK, so I've started a number of new relationships in my day and one thing that I've noticed pretty early on, first date sometimes, is the topic comes up of past relationships.
Past relationships: What was your longest relationship? Have you ever been in love? Have you ever had your heart broken? Have you ever broken someone's heart? When was your last relationship?
I don't love answering these questions because they make me feel like a failure. LIGHTBULB! If I'M going out with the guy he's a failure too, and if he's not then I'm in some real trouble!
Why do we talk about past relationships and use that information to judge the other person? Oh his longest relationship was only 4 months, he has commitment issues. Oh he's never been in love, he's incapable. He's never been dumped? He's cocky. He's always the one to be broken up with? What's wrong with him that I haven't figured out yet? He hasn't been in a relationship in a year? Why bother? He JUST broke up with a girl? Dude's on the rebound.
These are things we all think, these are things I'm afraid guys think when they hear my answers.
Peeps! Those of us that are still in the wonderful world of dating need to realize, we all gots baggage, we've all failed at every relationship we've EVER had for one reason or another. So let's leave it where it happened, in the past.

The ability to love

Warning, this post is one from the soul, so if you're looking for funny in this blog today you're gonna get emo... I give you permission to go elsewhere :)

I have been thinking a lot lately about love. I will admit I am a person who has never been in love. I'm going to clarify by saying that to me, being in love means loving someone and having them love you back. I have definitely loved, and I have been loved, but those two loves have never been simpatico, they've never lined up.

I pride myself on the ability to see people for who they are capable of being. I pride myself on being able to love people who feel undeserving or incapable of being loved. I pride myself on the fact that I can make someone feel like they deserve it, that they are worthy of it.

Problem, I do love those people. I give them all I have to show them that SOMEONE can, they thank me and with their new found confidence find someone else that loves them.

I am grateful that loving people comes easily to me. I love people. The people in my life are everything to me and I do what I can to show them or tell them that. I think that is a virtue!

Is it unreasonable to hope that someone will appreciate that enough to love me back?

How I did it...

Recently I have posted a before and after picture of my weightloss on the Facebook. It has been 5 years since I lost all the weight, 6 years since I started the journey and that was the first time I had ever posted a before picture.
That picture got an amazing response, which I am so humbled by and grateful for. I appreciate so much everyone's support and praise.
I've had a lot of people ask me for advice and tips on losing weight and keeping it off. I've had a lot of people ask how I did it.
Here is what I have learned in the last 6 years...
For starters, how I did it...
On June 18, 2007 I had gastric band surgery. I, along with my parents, did a year's worth of research prior to having the surgery. I studied it, I went to seminars, I talked to people who had had it done themselves, I talked to doctors. I wanted to know everything about it. The reason being, I was 23 years old and I had been over weight since I was a little girl. I had tried EVERYTHING and failed at EVERYTHING and before I spent all this money on something I wanted to know everything about it.
I remember the night before the surgery writing in my journal, terrified that this would just be something else I had failed at. I had resigned to the fact that the girl I was then was the girl I would always be. My life was set. I'd never get picked in sports, I'd never make it as a singer, I'd never fall in love, I'd never be able to go shopping at a regular department store, I'd never run a mile, I'd never be a "head turner". Writing in my journal that night I was afraid of all of those things, but for the first time in my life I felt like, maybe they weren't true.
I will say this, that surgery changed my life, BUT it was nothing more than a tool. It was nothing more than a catalyst. It was nothing more than a jumpstart. Yes it was forced portion control which does a lot for an overweight person, but I was still in charge of what those portions were. I was still in charge of my exercise and activity.
Over the next year I worked harder than I ever have before, mainly because it was working. As the weight came off, the more I could do physically, the more I could do the more I would do, the more I would do the more weight would come off and so on and so forth. In one year I lost 80 pounds.
One thing about myself is I am a naturally athletic person. Being active is just what I love, I was just never able to be that person before because what I was capable of was so limited. I love working out and pushing myself. I love racing, NOT because I actually like the racing part, but because no matter how many years it's been I'm still amazed at what I am NOW capable of. I don't think I'll ever stop being surprised and amazed at how my life has changed. When having that surgery, I NEVER expected that I would make it this far.
After that first year I had the band expanded all the way (I won't go into the details of how the band works but the basics are it can be tightened if you only want to be able to eat smaller portions, and it can be loosened if you want to be able to eat more) I wanted to know that whatever weight I lost from that point, and IF I kept it off that it was me doing it. It was my determination, it was my work. I didn't want to be dependent on it for the rest of my life.
In the 5 years after that I lost 20 more pounds for a total of 100 pounds.
I have changed my diet completely. I rarely go out to eat, I rarely eat sweets, I rarely (if ever) drink soda. I work out, I do races, I play sports, I go hiking, biking, swimming and running. THAT is why I have lost all of this weight. That is how I have kept it off. It was not an over night thing, and it was CERTAINLY not an easy fix. Those don't exist.
You can do all the fad diets, you can limit yourself in so many different ways and you can have results, but the fact remains: The only way to lose weight and keep it off is to change your diet and exercise plan forever. It's not something you can do for 6 months and then stop. It has to be a life change. That's it. It's that basic. Is it easy? Of course not! Is it possible? Absolutely.

Love you All!
-J

That Awkward Moment When...

...you see identical twins, but they aren't by each other and you only know one of them, but not well enough to know which is the one you know.

This was what happened to me last night. I went to a stake activity last night of a stake that I am not a part of. I have friends there so I was meeting up with them. When the activity was over, everyone was standing around mingling. Again, this was a stake activity so there were a lot of people, very few of which I knew. I look to my right and in a small group of people I spot a guy I know. We have only met a few times but he is someone I know. I thought about going over and saying hi, but then I looked to my left and there he was again... in a different group of people. He is an identical twin so obviously it wasn't him in both groups, but there-in lies the problem, I didn't know which was the one I actually knew.
I stood there looking to my right and to my left trying to decipher the two.
Here is where it gets tricky, I made eye contact with one of them. I didn't know if I should smile and wave, potentially looking like an idiot if it was the one I didn't know. Or if I don't acknowledge him at all, potentially looking like a jerk if it was the one I did know. So by default I did nothing. I looked away and stayed where I stood.
Luckily I didn't go to this activity alone, so I didn't just look like an idiot standing there by myself. (I looked like an idiot for completely different reasons, but not because I was alone)The next thing I knew one of them was standing right in front of me. I was almost certain it was the one I knew, so very awkwardly I poked him, he turned and looked at me, and I'm pretty sure time stopped as I waited to see if familiarity would streak across his face or if it would be a look of utter confusion as to why this strange blonde girl is poking him. He smiled and hugged me (phew!!!) and we caught up for a bit.
I'll tell ya... that is a strange reality to be faced with.



Pretty sure I'll use this picture of Leila for all of my awkward posts... I just love that face.