Blog 38: Personal Anecdote

Alright well here it goes, a personal anecdote based on my Common Place topic of, the problems hiding who you are can cause in a relationship.

I used to date this guy Matt in high school. He didn’t go to my high school, but he went to a nearby school. We met at a track meet and he asked for my number. So, we did the usual routine: texting all the time, then you start talking every night on the phone, next you hang out a few times, and then he asked me to be his girlfriend. Of course, you know, I said yes. I thought I knew him pretty well after talking to him for a couple months and going on some dates. Also, I knew some of his friends and they were cool guys.

But, boy was I wrong. After dating him about a month, he started acting weird. He didn’t want to hang out as much and I couldn’t help but feel like he was hiding something from me. I didn’t understand why he didn’t want to see me one Friday night, after we hadn’t seen each other the whole week. The next week, someone from my high school said that they had seen him at a party Friday night and asked me why I wasn’t there. I told them, well because I didn’t even know about it. They got that “oh shit” look on their face. You know the one I’m talking about. The one where you just said something you had no idea would put you in the situation you end up in. Now that I knew about the party I couldn’t help but want to find out more. So, I did some asking around and turns out Matt was a total stoner. You might think, yeah so what? Thing is he didn’t just smoke pot; he drank, did shrooms, air duster, and the list goes on. Now, to top it all off, he dealt drugs as well. What a winner, right?!

I often wonder how I didn’t realize any of this before I agreed to be his girlfriend. Turns out when someone doesn’t want you to know something about them they are pretty good at hiding it. He never said anything that led me to believe that this was who he was.  I guess he figured that to get a girl like me, the class president that gets straight A’s type, he would have to act like the kind of guy I would want. Let me tell you, the man should get a freakin’ Academy Award!