...you change your name to Gertrude.

I feel more comfortable sharing my personal life on here rather than on Facebook, particularly since the audience is significantly smaller.  I feel like a blog is more of a journal anyway...which is why I'm going to pour out my deep thoughts here for my seven followers to sift through.

Almost a year ago, I left for college at BYU-Idaho, leaving behind a great guy.  Jake, being the wonderful person that he is, left for a mission a month after I left for school. We were both each other's first loves and hadn't seriously dated anyone else, so consequently, we both had talked about and planned on me waiting for him while he was on his mission.  My family and some of my friends counselled me against it, but since I was a teenager and knew everything, I didn't listen.

It's kind of funny how things turned out.  I would watch The Best Two Years before Jacob left and think about how selfish the missionaries' girlfriends (and essentially all Dear Johners) were.  How could they completely forget the person they pledged their life to?  Why are they throwing away years of dating for a sleazy RM they met three weeks ago?  Two years isn't that long.  I'm going to be able to do it.  Easy-peasy.  Oh, how the mighty have fallen...

I was doing fine with waiting for the first month of Elder Siler's mission...then my sleazy RM came along. ("Sleazy" isn't a good word at all to describe Eric.  "Persistent" would be better.) He swept me off my feet with his charismatic and wily charm (that's a story for a different post and another day), and before I knew it, we were dating.

When I returned home for the break, I knew that I had a major decision to make.  I could keep waiting for Jake and hope that he would forgive me for what, at the time, seemed like just a "fling" with Eric, or I could write him off, join the dreaded Dear Johner club I despised only months before, and date other people.  I honestly was planning on the former.  After all, I had invested a good three years with Jake.  Why throw it away on a person I dated for a month?  But my thinking changed.  I kept in touch with Eric over my break.  We talked, skyped, and texted the entire four months.  In fact, there wasn't a day that we didn't contact each other in some way.  The more I talked to the kid, the more I realized he was going to be more than just a fling.  I really started liking him...a lot.

And so, being the selfish young lady that I am, I wrote Elder Siler off.

Lately, the question I've hated hearing is "So how are you and Jake?" Well, I'm doing fine, but he's suffering from a broken heart because I decided to dump him.  Thanks for asking.

I hate that I've hurt him.  The guilt of it all has been tough.  Last semester while zoning off in my Shakespeare class (Henry IV:  Part I didn't excite me at the time), I was skimming through Hamlet when I thought, Oh. My. Goodness.  I'm Gertrude.  When her husband died, she only mourned for one month before she found her new main squeeze.  Jacob didn't die (obviously), but he was only gone for one month before I moved on.  "Frailty, thy name is woman Emily."

Sometimes I find myself nit-picking Jacob's flaws in my head, but then I stop myself and wonder why I'm thinking this way about a very good person.  I think it may be my coping mechanism.  If I feel like he is a worse person than he really is, I won't feel as guilty.  I've been trying to get into the habit of thinking in a different way though.  When the guilt comes, as it does daily, I think to myself, Self, it will all work out.  He'll find someone that will be better and will make him happier.  Then, you won't feel so guilty.  Is it weird that I actually hope this?  Elder Siler is still one my closest friends.  I still care for him, and I want him to be happy...even happier than he was with me.

I feel guilt for my decision everyday, but I don't feel regret.  I only regret getting serious with him before his mission.  A whole world of hurt could have been avoided. What makes me feel better about the situation is that I'm no longer distracting him from the work he needs to be doing.  He can now focus completely on his mission.

The moral of the story:  Admitting you're a hypocrite is part of life.  I never expected to Dear John a missionary, but I'm going to take this experience and make the most of it (as cliche as that is).  When faced with circumstances in life, you always have a choice:  to get stuck or to move on.