This actually happened.

This time last year, a very good friend and I were, to put it mildly, very unhappy in our relationships. So one day, before the end of the year, we made a pact -- that by the end of 2011 we'd at least be rid of our current guys, and hopefully be with another, better man.

Fast forward to now.

It's been a rather interesting year in my own love life, to say the least, but no, I'm not with the guy I was a year ago, thankfully. For that, I count my blessings. 

(Side note: Girls, never, ever, EVER be with a guy who continually tells you things that put you down and make you feel like shit. A REAL man will love you, support you, and stand up for you and defend your honor if he finds out his friends are dissing you. Don't let his own lack of self-esteem put a damper on yours. You're better than that and you deserve much better.) 

(There are obviously details that I choose not to get into online in a public forum, but the above is enough. Sad to say, looking at my own track record vs. my self-esteem is not a pretty picture, but I digress.)

Anyway, since our conversation a year ago, my good gal pal has gotten divorced (with my assistance of a referral to an attorney friend) and reunited with a long-lost love of hers, and is now engaged to him, happier than ever. I'm extremely happy for her (not to mention glad to have been of assistance, though I'm sure it would've happened without me, regardless).

So the other day she and I were having a text message conversation (which is as good as any these days, right?), and apropos of nothing, she said,

Oh, and you fulfulled the New Year's resolution. No more [ex's name]. Feels years ago, doesn't it?

To which I responded,

You fulfilled it more. You've got another man!

She admitted,

I had a head start. I already knew last New Year's that I'd be with him this New Year's.

I replied,

I've got another cat. I'm not sure I like how this is going!

(I took in a friend's gray cat, Nermal, last summer when she and her husband moved to New York.)

Regardless, though I'll admit 2011 has been a rather tumultuous year, I gained a cat, found out who my friends really were, and can't complain too much.

I never really made any real resolutions last year, and I'm OK with that. I decided to stop trying to pigenohole myself on my own damn domain and just write about whatever I wanted there. 

Which is not to say that I won't post here, of course. This is an area of the web I've reserved for stories from my past, and I intend to keep it that way. No, I haven't updated this as often as I wished, but the great thing about the past is that those stories won't change. Maybe the way you tell them, or the way you see them, but overall, what happened is always past-tense.

And regardless of anything else, I hope to continue to keep this an area of the interwebs I can reflect on the past, and tell my stories the way I remember them. 

Thanks for reading, and may you have a happy 2012, no matter if the person you're kissing at midnight is the one you will be a year from now. ;) 

In the movie "Romy & Michele's High School Reunion," there is a scene near the end where the duo is talking to Heather Moony (played by Janeane Garafalo) at the reunion. Reminiscing back to high school, Heather reveals that she had no clue that while Romy & Michele were making her life a living hell, the "A" group was making their lives hell.

"I bet everyone made someone's life a living hell in high school," said Michele.
"Nope, not me," Heather replied.

Just then, Toby, the ever-giddy girl who was always the recipient of Heather's anger ("Oooh, Toby, FUCK OFF!") enters the scene.

I am reminded of this scene from a conversation I had last night with a guy I'm connected to on Facebook. He and I went to the same small, farm-town middle school... I attended from 4th through 8th grade before heading to the local private high school in the nearest big city.

It's amazing the things we find out in retrospect was happening while we are dealing with our own stuff.

I learned more in our conversation about the things that were going on in our small-town world than all my years of living there.

He told me that I broke his best friend's heart, and all "all the guys" had crushes on me, and started naming them off. I was clueless. So I asked them which of his friends are still single. "You're single? OMG life is  sooooooooooooooo not fair!" (Tell me about it.)

I was busy dealing with my own private hell at the time to notice if any boys were crushing on me. I was being bullied by the "A" group of our microcosmic society. He was surprised and had no idea.

"Oh yeah, all those girls? They were super mean to me," I told him. "The internet wasn't around then but if it were today, that bullying would be the subject of an ABC News Special or something." Again, he was dumbfounded.

He then told me of the things that were going on in his life in Small Town, USA that I was oblivious about. He told me about how he got beat up all the time because he was poor. About how, though of limited means, his family took in foster kids from broken homes, and now he does the same.

He told me of the time he got "expelled" for a while for beating up a guy who wouldn't leave his sister alone. Then later the same guy he beat up committed suicide. I assured him that obviously that guy had other issues he was dealing with, and he shouldn't blame himself.

"I know," he said, "Still, it's something I've got to carry every day. I contributed to it."

Ouch.

He then named off a few names of kids that his family took in, including a certain little person.

"Whatever happened to her? I always liked her," I said.

He didn't want to be the bearer of bad news, but was surprised I didn't know. Apparently she and her boyfriend got involved doing some cocaine one night and got into a car accident. She ended up with a severe closed head injury and to this day is in a foster care home.

This was over a decade ago.

The things I missed not going to the small town public school. I didn't know of any of the drama that was going on. My only connection to it was my best friend KD and my boyfriend, JC, but I rarely hung out with his friends. Yet at the same time, when I revealed to my friend that I went out with JC, who went to his school, for the majority of high school, he had no idea, and said JC probably kept it quiet because he knew the other guys would beat him up. Oh, and because they never saw JC with a girlfriend, they assumed he was gay. (Far from it!)

"I went to your prom," I told my friend, "... and MY prom, in the same night. How could you not know we were together?"

"I didn't go to prom, I couldn't find a date," said my friend.

"Meh, you didn't miss much," I told him.

Of course, everybody's got their own stories of the things they found out later that was going on in others' lives during middle/high school (or insert your time period in the past here). But it makes me think about how much we live with our self-imposed blinders on.

Since our conversation I can't help but think of all the things that happen in our worlds that we're oblivious to, because we're too busy dealing with our own immediate drama. We are so preoccupied with our own lives that we often fail to realize the personal hell that the people around us are going through. I think we all need to step outside of our own lives a bit and open our eyes more.

How are your current actions (or inactions) affecting others right now?

While you were busy dealing with your own stuff 20 years ago, you could have broken someone's heart and not even known it.

Or that could have happened yesterday.