I'm going to start a little over a year ago at the beginning of 2012, January 14th to be specific. It was the day of the Lawrence Arms show, and I was pee my pants excited. I got to see my favorite band live for the very first time, and the day before I had gotten their logo tattooed on my arm. I was going with a friend of mine because my at the time boyfriend of over 4 years, Kyle, was going to record with his band that night, not to mention he doesn't really like the Lawrence Arms anyway. Along with myself, my friend was also driving a few other people to the show. Two of which I had never met before, and one of those two, Andrew, is going to come up a little later in this little story of mine. We all met up and went to the concert and had a fantastic time. I got a free poster and got it signed by Brendan Kelly, who I also managed to get a hug from, and let me tell you, I was in fan girl heaven. That night I had brought my backpack to the show instead of a purse because it was easier to hang on to while watching. In my back pack I had brought a tube of A&D ointment for the tattoo I had gotten the day before. Being the smart person I am, I decided to mosh the night away, and after the show realized the tube of A&D and been smashed and the entire contents had covered everything in my backpack in a nice sticky coating, including my phone which I was not able to use until we got back to my house. So when we finally got back, I cleaned off all of my stuff and turned my phone on. I had one missed text message from Kyle that read something along the lines of, "Headed home from recording babe, we recorded a new song and it's about you. See you soon." Now, if you know Kyle, he is the most non affectionate man I have ever met, let alone dated, so to find out that he had done something like written a song for me was heart melting. And it turned out to be a great song. Musically it really is one of the best songs he's ever written. That was probably the nicest, most loving thing he ever did for me in that entire relationship. Unfortunately, this is when our downfall started.
Fast-forwarding about a month, Kyle and I were fighting, which was nothing new for us. However this was one of our nastier fights and we "broke-up." We lived together at that time, so he slept in the basement for about 4 days. What was killing me was his band was going on a mini tour that weekend, and I was having a really hard time coping with the "break up"/him leaving the state for a few days. But, like every other time we had gone through this "break up" situation, before he left for tour that Friday we made up and everything was fine. And by fine I mean slightly better than it was the day before that but still not good. Things gradually went further and further down hill from there until one morning in April we had such a big argument we decided to call it quits for good. And as much as it hurt, and as much as I cried, as much as I drank, as much as I didn't want it then, it was the best decision we could have made.
Not too long after that I lost my job. I was a manager at a retail store and was incredibly busy. The way they worked schedules there, there was no overlap in management so management was forced to work during their breaks and lunches. I made the mistake of complaining about having to do so one day, and in return got fired for working off the clock. It was a total bummer at first, but it also helped pave the way to an awesome 9 month vacation. I wound up getting unemployment out of it also, so I wasn't in too bad of shape either.
Sometime during the end of May, a friend from when I lived in Idaho got back in touch with me. I'm going to preface this by saying at the time I was still pretty torn up from the break up and any attention I was getting was great, and I was just reaching for ways to cheer myself up. The conversations started out harmless, but as I should have suspected from this guy, things got pretty deep pretty fast. "He missed me," "he wanted to be with me," "he loved me." Yikes. It was intense, but at the time I was feeling pretty reckless. He flew out for a day to visit, oh yeah, he didn't tell his wife and kids either. A few weeks later him and his wife separated and he moved in to his own place. Two weeks later I was on a plane to Idaho, with everything I could manage to fit in a suitcase. I didn't know when I was going back, and at the time I didn't really plan on it either.
As you could probably have guessed it was a total disaster. I mean whatever relationship we had was anyway. He was emotionally unstable, and I wasn't doing too hot myself. He didn't know what he wanted and things just weren't working out. However, I did get to spend a great deal of time with my best friend and her new fiance and their kids, and I couldn't be happier, because this June I have the extraordinary honor of being the maid of honor in their wedding.
After a month in potato land, I came back to Michigan and was in a pretty big funk. I was incredibly depressed, I had lost a good job, I felt like I had lost most of my friends to my ex, I was terrified of settling for the wrong person so I avoided a relationship. Every guy I met I did whatever I could to find a reason why I shouldn't be with them. Sure, I had a one night stand here and there, but in the end it's not fulfilling. This is also about the time that I got talked in to an OK Cupid account, but I'll get back to that later. Also around this time, house shows at my house started taking off like crazy. First it was once a month or so, then it was two a month, then, we got the Suicide Machines. It was crazy. It was something you could never even dream would happen when you're some shitty high school punk kid listening to your favorite band from the back of shitty bar that you're not even supposed to be in. It was crazy. It was great. It's something I will never forget.
So back to OK Cupid. I never got much out of it, it was flattery in my pocket. Most guys on there would figure out I was the girl who lived at the Toepfer House, and would just ask me to let their band play there. That and the creeps. Boy oh boy are there some creeps on the internet. But one day, my friends Jess and Vince and I were getting tattoos, and as i'm laying on the chair my phone vibrates with an OK Cupid message. "Oh great, let's see what this weirdo has to say to me." I had done this about fifty times a day for the last month or so and never expected anything good. But it was Andrew, yeah Andrew from the Lawrence Arms show. And it wasn't anything special, it was him very casually sending me his phone number and a "Hey let's hang out sometime." I didn't think much of it at the time, but at that point it had definitely made my day. A couple weeks later we ran in to each other again at a show, and he again brought up OK Cupid, and being completely oblivious to the fact that someone who I thought was attractive and funny, and just an all around awesome person would want to have anything to do with me, I just kind of blew it off. Then a couple weeks later again he asked if I wanted to do something. We wound up just going back to his house and in true punk rock fashion drank a whole bunch of PBR, and smoked a whole bunch of weed, and then as the night came to an end we kind of awkwardly cuddles on his couch, while a few others were passed out on the living room floor. I was overwhelmingly excited, but tried to contain myself. Even if it wasn't going anywhere I was making new friends and having a good time, which is something I hadn't done in quite a while. But another week or so went by and we hung out again and again and again, until we were together everyday. I guess by the first or second week of December you could say we were "seeing each other." On Decemeber 14th we I was having a show at the house and some of my favorite local bands were playing (including Andrew's band), and I was having a great time. Great music, great friends, great times. But by this time I had started to get a little discouraged with the Andrew situation, because while we saw each other almost everyday he still had really made anything official yet. Well that night I had quit a bit of whiskey in me, and that's when I decided to put on my big girl panties and just ask him myself. And I couldn't be happier that I did. It turns out we were on the same level, we just sucked at expressing it. And that's how we came to be Beth and Andrew.
Now a couple months later I'm happier than I've been in a very long time. My boyfriend is incredible. As ALL put it, "Head over heels, banana peels, it's funny how you make me feel." I couldn't say it any better. I can't put in to words how happy he makes me. And it's not just because he's a nice guy. He's nice and funny and smart and talented and good looking and caring and the amount of things we have in common is insane. Everyday I think of all these awesome things I want to do for him just because of the way he makes me feel. I have never been so lucky in my life. He's absolutely wonderful and I dread the day this ends (knock on wood) because I think that would definitely be a break up you don't recover from. I realize that's silly to say so early on in a relationship, but this one's different. I just know it, deep deep down I can feel it.
A couple weeks ago I landed a new job. It's not the highest paying job ever, but it's incredibly easy and I can pay my bills again. I'm making new friends, realizing which old ones were never friends in the first place, and for the first time in my entire life, I finally feel like I've found my place in life. I have a good job, I'm booking shows on the side and having a great time doing it, I have some of the best friends a person could ever hope to have, and I have a boyfriend that Prince Charming can't even compete with. As for the depression, I can't explain it. It's probably why I'm supposed to take those little blue and red pills, but hey at least I have control of my own brain right now and I'm sure it'll pass. Winter's almost over and I have a feeling things are just going to get better from here on out. I feel much better too after letting this all out. Who knows, maybe I'll go back to updating this more often. It can be my therapy, and if anything, it made my work day go by a lot faster.
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