House Painting… Situation

My personality is basically summed up like this: Unending curiosity coupled with an inability to tell people “no.” Years ago, I never would have qualified myself as a “spontaneous person,” but lately I’ve found that certain personality traits (mentioned above) require a great deal of spontaneity, which tend to land me in strange (sometimes sticky) situations.

One such situation happened during my second week in Nashville. One of my ex boyfriends from high school just so happens to live outside of Nashville in Springhill, TN. Right before I moved here, we began messaging each other over Facebook and basically just catching up and seeing how each other were doing. I was job-hunting and he was living in Tennessee with his wife, Sharayah. Life had been good to both of us.

Sharayah and John (I knew him back when he was JJ) are both from Vicksburg. I vaguely remember playing soccer either with or against Sharayah way back when. We were maybe 12. Not sure. JJ (I’m not calling him John, that’s awkward to me) I dated in the ninth grade. Ten years ago. Wow. Hadn’t done the math til just now. Ugh. I’m old.

Anyway, JJ sees my Facebook updates and realizes I’ve moved to Nashville. We exchange phone numbers so that we can communicate faster than Facebook messaging. That was a little weird for me because I literally hadn’t talked to this guy in about 10 years. But I knew he was the kind of guy that has no problems having friends that are girls, so I figured Sharayah would be fine with it.

Then he asked me if I wanted to come hang out one night that week and paint his house.

Um… Paint your house? No thanks.

Actually, I passive-aggressively told him I’d “get back to him on that.” We all know I had no intentions of doing that. However, he and I both knew I had absolutely nothing to do when I got home because I was pretty verbal about not knowing anyone here and all my friends being in MS and all that. So, it didn’t take much to talk me into it, since I can’t tell people no. Another one of those sketchy personality traits that I really need to work on: Lying.

I was able to put it off a day because I didn’t have clothes with me that day (he first asked if I could come that night). Geez. I needed time to wrap my head around hanging out with my ex and his pregnant wife. Oh, I didn’t mention that before? Yeah, she’s pregnant.

As the time got closer for me to go over there, my mind starting freaking me out. I had no idea what he’d told her about me. What in the world did she think of me? Does she know we dated? Does she care? Should I even mention any of that? What if I get to their house before JJ does and it’s just me and Sharayah? What the hell are we gonna talk about?

So, I get to their house and, of course, JJ isn’t there yet. So, I’m freaking out but ring the doorbell anyway. Too late to turn back now! Sweet little Sharayah answers the door and is so freaking nice I immediately feel better about this whole thing. In fact, if JJ had never shown up I think we would’ve had a great time either way.

We found plenty of things to talk about. Namely, his mother. I learned what a gem she is and how much I lucked missed out on. I met one of their friends who was there painting as well. She was super nice and also hated Bama, so we got along just fine. I ended up staying a couple hours and painting a little bit. Though I didn’t feel like I really helped that much.

All in all, it was a successful venture! I’d love to hang out with them again and babysit their little girl when she joins us.

Needless to say, it was awkward telling my friend what I’d been doing when she called me later that night, and my mom even thought it sounded strange when I told her. (Everyone needs to know what I’m doing with my time since they all know I have no friends here and there’s only so much a non-talking, stressed out rabbit named Poe can do for entertainment.) I probably got a gray hair over this whole thing for nothing. I really need to quit stressing over things so much.