Part 3

So moving on, I went through several different elementary schools, actually about 8 different elementary schools, all before second grade. My dad just liked to move a lot. There was no army brat or any of that, just moving. So with the final school where I met my friend who is a Jehovah's witness, lifelong friend. So moving on to junior high, I met my best friend in 7th grade, and we were inseperable. He started going Christian on me, when he had been vehemently against it until that point, in 8th grade. But he still hung out with a few of us who were into pot and all of that at the time. He subsequently moved away, and with him, he doesn't like leaving people or people leaving him. So before he moved, he would cut all ties, completely be a jerk, etc. So I lost my best friend in 8th grade essentially speaking, when he moved away. This was the friend that was there through it all, who dumped girlfriends because they got all paranoid about me, the best friend. He asked me once what I would say if he asked me out, but I had no idea what he was actually saying and just went off on some tangent like an idiot. He never asked again, because apparently I was the only girl at that time that he was interested in but actually scared that I would say no. Who knew right. But had he stayed around, it was the plan to go to all the high school dances together and all that. With the pot smoking, in a way, I understand I did it to myself, but it was still pretty scarring. First, I stopped smoking, because one day, I smoked too much, basically thought I was going to die, and everybody was so high that they hardly even noticed as I was freaking out. And then, it was partly because they got into some of the harder stuff. But I watched a few of my friends die and some died when I was not there. So that was something I never forgot. I mean to this day, though some of my friends never officially stopped smoking, they have been the friends that have always been there for me, always been around, always been good friends no matter what my choices were. But seeing our friends die had an effect on all of us, just different depending on who you talk to.

Once I hit high school, there was a girl's home in the area where I lived, and I was still trying to go to church and maybe hoping that god would come around. I was friends with a few of the girls in the girl's home, and they were amazing. They had been through a lot of challenges, and they overcame more than most people could. Cool girls. One was thinking about coming to church with us, and I was honest with her. I basically told her that I was trying to find God, because the whole friends dying thing freaked me out and all that, but I didn't care who was what. So I went with her and we were doing whatever. And then one of the leaders of the women's group came up to me and basically told me in so many words that she hadn't grown up with all the things I had, so I should lead my friend to the truth and I should be the better example, because she didn't know right from wrong. I was livid, offended, a lot of things at that point, because honestly that friend was better than I could ever hope to be. We had been through many of the same things, but she was so much stronger than me about it. Yes, she ended up in a girl's home. But the circumstances tend to warrant it, and she was such a fighter. But honestly, the fact that a major religious person could be so judgemental and not see this amazing person that I saw got to me.