April Chimes In…

Today’s guest is April.  Her personal blog is Did That Just Happen? and she also is one of the contributors over at The Sisterhood of the Shrinking Jeans.

Here’s here take on the question…

Since hindsight is 20/20, what is the best “mistake” you’ve ever made?

Thank you, April!!

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I’ve had a few people tell me that I’m a completely different person on my blog than I am in person. And I guess in some ways this is true. If you were to ever see me around my family, I’m the quiet one. Sometimes, when I first meet someone, I can be a tiny bit shy at first. But in just a few short minutes, I can and will be wide open.

Outgoing April is a new part of me. I used to be shy all the time. Painfully shy. I would want to speak up and have more fun, but there was a part of me that just couldn’t. I would sit right over there *points at wall* and make sure that wall wouldn’t fall all night long. (Because you know, walls fall all the time for no good reason.)

I know exactly when this changed for me. I was shy and reserved through high school and college, but instead of getting better, after college it got worse. Because of one person.

We’ll call her Keri. We met at work, and at first, I thought we had a lot in common. It became clear to me from very early on that Keri was in an abusive marriage, and it pained me to see my friend hurting. So, one day she came to me and said that she wanted out of the marriage, but that she couldn’t do it alone.

I moved out of my parents’ house and into an apartment with her and her son. And a few months later, my life became hell. I think that it made Keri feel better to make me feel like crap most days. But at the time, I didn’t realize that’s what she was doing, I thought she was “helping me”.

I felt so poorly about myself that I was convinced she was right. Being geeky wasn’t cool, being different wasn’t cool, and if I were ever going to find a man, I needed to learn to wear nail polish.

One day after taking years of this (yeah, I was a little slow), I decided I had enough and broke off the friendship. That pretty much left me friendless. Because even those that I did hang out with, I wasn’t close friends with. I could never have talked to them about what I was going through.

In those friendless months, I found me. I discovered that I liked being different and geeky, and if a dude didn’t like me because I didn’t have my fingernails painted, then he was a horse’s arse anyway. In those friendless months, I found new friends. I could be completely myself around them, and I loved it. And then I found one of the best friends I’ve ever had, and she helped me to see that I am beautiful (even though I will blush if I’m told this), and that I love myself very much.

So, instead of saying that becoming friends with Keri was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, I really should walk up to her and thank her. Because without her I may never have hit rock bottom, I may never have seen how much I truly hated the person that I was, and YOU would have never known the real me.