I'm living in a time warp...

I'm sure I'm not alone when I say that I never felt like I fit in while I was growing up. I always felt out of place, awkward... I was the girl with the really long hair that was always picked last in gym class. I liked to read and in the third grade I was cursed with glasses. On top of all this, I was a bit of an oddity because my parents were divorced and I was being raised by my mother and grandmother in an apartment. Living in the suburbs, well, this meant I was pretty much exiled.
High school got a little better. I got contacts, years of ballet made me thin and slightly graceful... boys started to notice me... But I was never what you would call popular. Yes, I had friends, went to parties, dated... but I was still always the awkward girl. In my yearbook I had a lot of, "You are so sweet! I wish I could have gotten to know you better!"
Then came college. Again, I lived off campus so I missed out on most of the parties. I worked full-time to pay for my car and apartment so I missed most of the football games. And I wasn't in a sorority, so while I had a few good friends I still spent a lot of lunches eating alone under a tree with a magazine to keep me company.
Flash forward to my first job... flight attendant. This is the ideal job for someone who loves to explore and doesn't mind being alone, which was me. I never had a problem hitting the streets of a new city in search of some random landmark or with eating dinner at a restaurant alone. My company was always the people around me and I could entertain myself for hours just watching the world go by. Later, living in New York fit me to a tee because I finally found a place that revels in aloneness. To be surrounded by ten million people yet be all alone is strangely comforting. There's no need to try and fit in, it's easy to disappear into a crowd, crying on the subway is OK, being different is a goal not a handicap.
Over the years I learned the art of talking to strangers and finally earned my title of "sweet girl."
Then, we moved to Wyoming.
In this small town (6000 people) it's hard to hide. Everyone knows everyone, and everyone talks about everyone they know. And no one trusts newbies so everyone tells tall tales about the newbies to everyone they know. Since moving here I've learned a lot about myself and my life.

My favorite top 10:
1- I didn't really attend and graduate from Columbia.
2- My husband is a thief.
3- We bought our condo with the money he stole from the bank where he worked in New York.
4- My husband worked for a bank in New York.
5- We left Tennessee because my husband was fired from the police department for a shooting.
6- My husband shot and killed a man.
7- I'm a liar.
8- I'm a bitch.
9- My husband is an asshole.
10- My husband is an alcoholic.

Shocking really. I must have blacked out for the last seven years because I didn't know any of this until two women (ages 32 and 35) decided to tell the entire town of Jackson Hole that these things were true. (Oh did I mention that according to them I'm pretending to be pregnant because my husband wants to leave me? This is not verified to be about me yet, but I'm pretty sure I'm the only Erin in Jackson Hole from New York who works as "some fake gardener.") What's funny about this is that one of the women was our real estate agent. She is still holding a grudge after a year over an $11 sewer bill she was forced to pay because she screwed up. Come to find out, she and her boss got me fired from my first job over this, but that wasn't enough for her. Her and my husband's ex-best friend's wife have spent the past year running a smear campaign against me that would rival any political campaign. I've heard things about myself from complete strangers who didn't realize they were talking about me to me.
It's really quite amazing. I feel as if I am back in high school and I'm the really uncool girl at the dance. I've been "Carried" if you will. Unfortunately, I am not possessed of demons and can't rain down a swarm of locusts and bring about a thirty year plague of the earth. Unfortunately, I have to live here and smile here and grocery shop here... walk and work among people who hate me and want to destroy me. I'm 31 years old and at a time in my life when I should be worrying about starting a family and mortgages and the economy and the state of the union, instead I'm having to dispel nasty, childish rumors just so I can walk my dogs without being finger-pointed and laughed at. It's amazing to me that adults would actually behave so childishly, but I guess that's what happens when you live in such a narrow minded place where no one can see past the mountains that trap us all in.

Christmas goes on

Even though our lives seem pretty unstable right now, Christmas must go on. The tree is up and tomorrow the fudge will be made. Ho Ho Ho.