Intermission: Shallow friends

These next few posts have all become a refreshed bitter memory this weekend. I don't know in what order to tell them because I think to know the story, you must also understand what I came to realize this weekend. So I will take a break from the story itself (although this is very much a part of the story as it was a large part of the reason that I spent a year playing games and this weekend very very upset) and discuss this weekend so that you can better understand the story as you go along. It might help you understand why Dave was such an ass during this entire year long period, although it is no excuse for the bullshit he put me through. So now I give you the intermission:

Patty asked if our friends had always wanted us together. That was never part of their plan and it was probably the farthest thing from their minds. After my little discovery this weekend, I would have to say they probably tried even harder than I know to make sure that we weren't together. Some friends huh!

This weekend all started from an email. One of Dave's friends in Wyoming, Gabe, is going to be in our wedding. I don't know him or the best man. I won't meet them until July. I will only meet them because I planned a trip up there. I got Gabe's email for our wedding stuff and I just took the initiative to write him and say thanks for being in the wedding and I looked forward to meeting him. We have since written to each other every day. I think this is nice because he is taking the time to get to know me even if it is only through email right now. I have been asking Dave for the last few years to go up there, but these friends were always like his secret friends. He would never talk to them if I was around and it really started to bother me. So I took it into my own hands and talked to the friend on my own. Now Dave thinks its just great because I appreciate his friend up there as much as he does (duh! if you gave me the chance to meet him I could have told you that!)

As I said Gabe and I have been emailing. In Wyoming, no one calls Dave, Dave. They all call him David. I have never called him that because he was introduced to me as Dave. So when I write I try really hard to write David, but I always forget and end up writing Dave. Gabe wrote me back Thursday and he titled the email Alter Ego. I thought that was a funny title until I started reading. He wrote something so simple, something I probably read so much into it wasn't even funny. But it didn't matter...no matter how he meant this statement, I suddenly understood what I thought he meant.

He wrote: It's funny when you write Dave...it seems that he is trying to get away from his old self some...Brian, Greg and I were talking about it at lunch and we don't know who Dave is...we only know David.

Now I'm sure there was no super secret meaning behind him writing that. I'm sure by old self he really didn't mean that Dave was trying to get away from something in his past. But, whether Gabe meant it like this or not, I understood that Dave was probably a very different person than David.

I breifly mentioned this email to Dave. He was like I wonder what he meant. This was at lunch. By the time I got home I knew exactly what Gabe meant and I proceeded to tell Dave. You see when I met Dave he was really good friends with Steve. I told you all in my earlier posts that our friendship was going to taper off and I wasn't going to think Steve was all that great anymore. After being friends with Steve for the time I had been, I had started to see him for what he really was. He was a really shallow person. He was very materialistic and not in just the fact that he liked nice things...in the way that he liked nice things, would only purchase the best of the best, and then would proceed to rub it all in your face. He was the kind of person that needed arm candy and if the girl wasn't smokin hot, she wasn't going to be good enough. He is the kind of person that has to put a price tag on EVERYTHING! When I bought my new car, the first thing out of his mouth was how much was that? Oh it wasn't like 30,000, must not really be a good car! He's that kind of a person. But I wasn't trying to date him, and he was still a good friend to me (or so I thought) and I could live with his personality. Another thing I have always known about Steve is that he has some power over people. I truthfully don't think he does it on purpose or that he is even aware of it, but he sweeps people into some trance if you will that he is a god. You can tell me I'm nuts, but even Chrissy who knew him before me can attest to this. Everyone has to impress him. It's just a fact...I've done it, Chrissy's done it, Dave's done it, Eric still does it...we all do it. Like I said he doesn't demand this, and I'm not sure he is aware of it, but it happens. We would have all decided that we didn't want to go somewhere downtown for the weekend. Steve would show up, he would say oh let's go to the place you guys already decided you didn't want to go, and that's where we would go.

Dave was no exception to this rule. Dave had to always impress Steve. They had to shop at the Buckle and he had to wear Lucky...he always did what Steve wanted, always went where Steve wanted, and apparently always hooked up with girls that Steve saw fit. Enter my livid state of pissed offness this weekend!! You see, Dave was a different person down here. He had to be because he had to be what Steve wanted him to be or what Steve thought was cool. I suddenly realized that the person Gabe talks about isn't the person that I first met...he is the person I am now going to marry, but he isn't the person that I first met. There was no way that Dave would have acted like this in front of his Wyoming friends...not the Dave I know now anyway. As I start to tell Dave all of this...it dawns on me even more that in the world of Steve, I wasn't hot enough...I wasn't good enough and therefore, Dave wouldn't have ever let his friends know that he was hooking up with me!!!

Ok I'm sure you can now start to think that I was just being irrational...Dave isn't really that much of a jerk. WRONG PEOPLE!!! As I was telling him all of this I was saying things like in the eyes of your friends, I wasn't hot enough...I wasn't Janna, Kelsey or Rachel (all girls that the guys encouraged him to hook up with because oh my god how lucky was he they were so hot!) Do you want to know what this dumb ass said to me...YOU'RE RIGHT!! I'm WHAT! Ok I appreciate honesty as much as the next person but did you seriously just tell the woman you are going to marry that at one time, she wasn't hot enough and you had to impress your friends and so therefore you put me through a year of games? Oh and did I leave out that STEVE was the one that he was trying to impress and he is also the person in our WEDDING! Yeah I was furious...I couldn't believe that he had just admitted to me that for part of the time, he did like me, but that the guys didn't think I was hot enough so he couldn't be with me.

As you can well imagine, my little feelers were hurt! I knew I couldn't geniunely be mad at him because it was in the past and he couldn't change it. What was important was the he did change and he stopped being like that. He stopped caring what Steve thought or what anyone thought and did things for himself. For that I am happy. But as you will see in the story, Janna is a very very bitter sore nerve. I always thought I was second best to her...like she didn't work out so he came back and settled for me. Well it took me a VERY long time to get over that and then what does he do this weekend? He rips that wound open and dumps a gallon or so of salt into it!

He spent all day Friday text messaging me telling me how he had hated the person he had become and that he was so sorry that he had ever cared what they thought and so on. Yeah that was all fine and dandy, but that didn't change my hurt feelings or the fact that this guy is in our wedding!!!!!! Why would I want someone in our wedding that thought I wasn't good enough for you because I wasn't hot enough? Dave also told me that it was being with me that changed him back to the person he was in Wyoming. It was because I always told him to stand up for himself, and to not worry about Steve. It was because I loved him either way and he knew that I wasn't going to be like the skanky girls that he was trying to appease Steve with...I had substance and I was pretty. (That one might take a while for me to believe again!) I was someone that was a good person and someone that he could trust being in a relationship with. I was the person that was going to deal with all of his issues in relationships and be there to work him through them...not just pass him over because he was a mess!

All in all the weekend turned out good. I did something that I probably never do soon enough and just let it go. I said my peace. I said it hurt me. I said that he opened the Janna thing again and proved everything I had always feared so that if that was a sore subject for a while again, sorry. I said that I knew there was really nothing to be mad at...it is in the past. I said I realized that he wasn't that person anymore and that I loved him either way (although I certainly didn't like him very much at the moment). I was the bigger person and I didn't drag it out forever like I normally would have. Probably because I knew I was just going to have to get over it because there was nothing he could do. And probably because it really didn't matter...I was the one that was going to marry him so somewhere along the road he pulled his head out of his ass!!

I will now continue with my story...you will see bits and pieces of this come up again as I write the next chapters. Hopefully having this understanding will make the story over the next few chapters make even more sense!