Boys

Hi, my name is Haley and I am afraid of boys.  I guess fear has played a major role in my life to the extent of not being involved in activities that I very much wanted to be involved in.  I'm not that way so much now at this point in my life, so I guess that is a good thing.  Back to being afraid of boys . . . I guess it goes back to when I was 10 years old and had a crush on a guy in my fifth grade class.  He was in my class the next year and I obviously still liked him.  Other classmates could tell I liked him and made fun of me for liking him (he was kind of a weird kid back then).  I denied their claims and got it into my head that if a girl talks to a boy it must mean that she likes him.  I continued my friendship with this boy the rest of the school year and we parted ways and went to different junior highs.  The next experience was probably one of the most traumatic things that had happened in my short 12 years of life.  I had an art class in seventh grade and I thought a boy in my class was cute.  I told a girl sitting next to, who I thought was my friend, that I thought so.  She promptly stood up and yelled across the room, "_(name of boy)__, Haley thinks you're cute!"  As if this we're bad enough, the boy turned and looked at me and gave me the most disgusted look. Yeah, that was pretty embarrassing.  Fast forward through the rest of junior high when I don't talk to boys at all anymore and then my parents divorced when I was 14.  I went to high school and still really didn't talk to boys until my junior year when I got involved with a pretty cool group of friends.  Still though, I never was really that good of friends with any of the guys.   I went to BYU-Idaho and I magically was pretty forward with guys for the most part.  I was fairly normal around guys even my second year at school.  I had my first boyfriend when I was 20 and he was the only guy I had held hands with or kissed at that point.  We actually dated on and off for 2 years and I finally broke things off completely.  In the middle of this, during Summer of 2007, my good friend returned from his mission and later that summer I told him that I had liked him for the past 11 years.  He in turn told me he never felt a thing for me.  This was probably the biggest blow to my ego that I can think of.  It hurt so bad and took me months to get over him and years to get over the pain.  Summer of 2009 brought what I thought was a chance at a relationship with a great guy.  It never turned out that way though . . . not by anything I did.  He broke up with me 3 times in 2 weeks and then told me that God loved me.  It hurt a lot and took months to get over.  There was a breaking point though the January following this.  I had gone dancing on campus and not expected to see him there, but he was there and with a girl.  I really think I had a panic attack or a mental breakdown of sorts.  I got back to my apartment with my roommate and started pleading silently in prayer that this hurt and my feelings would just go away.  With the help of my roommate's friends and the priesthood blessing they gave me, all of the pain was gone.  In it's place was just peace and I was able to move on.  I graduated from school that April and then another summer came and I went off to what I thought would be an amazing year-long internship in Hawaii.  It did not turn out this way (refer to previous blog posts for details).  I did get to hangout with a pretty cool guy there and I didn't expect anything, so it was fun.  Now I've been home from Hawaii since the first part of November.  I still don't really know what direction I'm going to take with my life.  I'm 24, only kissed 1 boy, held hands with 2 boys and I'm still afraid of boys.  Mainly certain boys.  I had an experience the other day wherein I acted like a fool in front of a cute boy.  I was all nervous and blushing like crazy.  I normally act like a human around this boy, not a weirdo.  Guess I'm still an awkward teenager.  Hopefully I can grow out of this or find a cure so that I don't scare boys away with my awkwardness.  I'm not afraid of all boys, just some.