Story Time: Ex-Friend was Obsessed

Before I start my story time, I would love to say that I am very grateful for all the people who have read and supported my blog up until now. The amount of comments, followers, email subscribers and people messaging me on social media is astonishing. I really appreciate all the love and support and I hope you continue to read my content.

This will be my first actual story time on my blog! For the sake of the story time, lets give the ex-friend a fake name which is, Jessica. Absolutely fake and I literally googled a random name. 

This story time took place in the 2nd year of my post secondary studies. Jessica, was in her 1st year of post secondary studies and was 1 year younger than I was. The only reason I associated with Jessica was because she was mutual friends with my best friend at the time, and she came along. We pretty much hanged as a group, and we met at post-secondary during breaks and after classes. Post secondary was not the first time I met Jessica, as she also went to the same high school as I did. I did not associate with her in high school as she was not the nicest person to communicate with. Due to that, we just went our separate ways and I never saw her until she enrolled in the same post-secondary school as me. 

At this period of time, we would hang in the general computer lab that was located at the middle of our school campus. It's a pretty decent size, lab hall, where students can just do their work and socialize.  I think of myself as a person who takes time to become friends with someone. I like to warm up to people and see what type of vibes they are giving me. However, Jessica was becoming way too comfortable, way too quickly. It didn't take her long to start opening up to me about her personal problems or people she has an interest in. As time went on, she started asking odd requests. These odd requests would surround her love interest. For me, at least, I was not comfortable in assisting her to track down her love interest. She would be looking elsewhere, and she wants me to see what her crush is doing. By doing this, it doesn't look like she's stalking him, and I was. She would ask me to describe what her crush is wearing or who he is associating with. This started to become a routine where she's asking me to scan the whole computer hall to find where he is. It wasn't just me, it was other members of the group as well who had to tolerate this behaviour. We did not want to be rude to Jessica, so we just did what she said and moved forward because it wasn't harming us in any way, until later -- you will see in my side story. 

This continued for quite some time, however, I started to get more irritated, and she started to become more demanding. She always wanted to talk about her issues with her crush. She did not like that he surrounded himself with many females, or he was not giving her the attention that she wanted. Jessica would belittle herself or she would ask our advice on how to approach the man, and at this point, we stopped caring. We could see that when we did not give her the answer she was looking for, she would lash out and/or be disappointed and go ask the same question to another member of the group. Pretty much, she already had her mind set on what she wanted to do or what she wanted to think, but she was requiring validation from the group members, so she can justify that her actions seemed acceptable. 

Due to this poor behaviour, the guy she had an interest in started to notice, and he ended up having problems with her as he didn't feel the same way. She ended up telling him that she liked him, when he obviously already knew, and he ended up rejecting her. The only problem was he implied that it was a "No", which meant he didn't actually say it. He wanted to be nice and not hurt her feelings but in actuality -- he should have just been honest from the beginning. Jessica decided to not give up and was after him for quite some time. Due to this behaviour, our friendship was on and off and it really took a toll on me when it came to school. I was more than annoyed and I had several fights with her to stop this behaviour, however, she did not want to. The only reason I would become friends with her again was because it was affecting my friendship with the other members. When they would hang out with her, I would not be there and when they would hang out with me, she had to go do something else. It was a lot of work and at that point, I thought it wasn't worth it, so I resolved the issue, unfortunately.  

Side story: She wanted to say, "Happy Valentines" to her crush, but she didn't want to say it herself, where she ended up using my Facebook to do so. Due to this, he started spreading rumours that I was homosexual and I had an interest in him. I had to then message him and resolve the issue since it was not me. Regardless to say, it says a lot about this guy's character and how dumb I was. 

Not that I have to mention this because it is self-explanatory, but we are not friends anymore. We have not talked for over two years, and she tried to get in touch with the group for selfish reasons a little less than a year ago which I will make another story time on in the future. I just want to say, that this story only sums up 40% of what actually happened when dealing with Jessica, and we were only friends for a little more than a year. 

What should you take from this story time and why did I share it? It's because I want you guys to know that you do not need to do anything you don't want to. If you are not comfortable in doing requests your friends have asked you, you have the right to say NO. If they get angry or disappointed then it's their issue, not yours. Do not put yourself in that emotional state where every day revolves around your friends drama and you feel suffocated. Surround yourself with people that are positive and good for you. I made the mistake in staying in that friendship for much longer than I should have. But I am grateful for the experience I obtained because it helped to shape the person I am today.    

   

"When dieting controls your lifestyle"

Inserting red flag here: This post is from my perspective, All opinion(s) written below are my own. 

I want to give some background information before I decide to continue with this topic. I have done many diets that I have found reasonable or I think will benefit me, and I agree that some of them do work in the short run depending on the person. I am not targeting any particular diet, and this is just what I think/have experienced with dieting. I have always been a bigger body size, and I have always wanted to lose weight thus, I go on “diets.” I am now a believer that changes you make in your life should be affecting your lifestyle permanently. I do not believe in short term results or the quick fix because if I wanted to make myself feel and look better than I would want to obtain it as a long-term result which a diet does not provide for me.

Lower your calorie intact, eat fewer carbohydrates, have more protein, add more fiber, decrease the amount of sugar, become a vegetarian (I am a vegetarian but people do say this.), become a vegan (I do support the cause of veganism, but I am using this in the context of being a vegan just to lose weight), count your macros, and so many other types of diets out there. To be honest, when I read all these different types of "diets" and I see that they are telling me to avoid different types of food depending on the diet and it makes me very confused. Why? Let me break down my thinking process. I pursue one diet and take into consideration all the information they have given, and I decide it's not for me, so I try another diet. When I try the next diet, I take all the core details of the foods to avoid from the previous diet and I incorporate it with the current diet because I remember that those foods are not good for me. It doesn't necessarily need to be a particular food and can be to "avoid foods with high contents of sugar."So when I do this and let's assume that I have gone through several diets, and they are telling me to restrict or lower the quantity of different food types and it gets to a point where I am unsure what to eat, it boggles my mind. Like am I suppose to eat nothing? The problem I find with food is I find a product with a lower number of carbohydrates and fat but the sodium and sugar is high. I always have this issue, the product is lower in particular areas of the nutritional facts and higher in other areas to compensate it. There is no winning to this situation. 

You can debate that I can go into a raw fruit and veggies type of diet or extreme veganism (not trying to offend anyone) I would call it where you avoid everything except natural foods. It sounds like a great idea until I go to the doctors, and they're like my sugar is high, so the doctor would like me to cut down on particular fruits and vegetables because they have a higher natural sugar content. So I get rid of root vegetables and fruit with high sugar content and now I am in a position where I am eating a different variety of fruits and vegetables that can be counted by two hands. See the issue with diets? IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT RESTRICTION. You can say that oh well if you do a 1400-calorie diet, you can eat whatever you want and it just needs to be within that calorie intake. How is that not restricting yourself? Manipulating words to make a diet sound like you can eat whatever you want and lose weight is not fixing the issue. Don't get me wrong, but big boy gotta eat. 

Okay, let's say that this diet works out and I lose a lot of weight, and I am content with the results I am at. Then I think to myself, and I got the results I want, so now I can eat normally like I used too before I started the diet because there is no point in restricting myself anymore or motivation to restrict myself. Pretty much, this backfires and I end up at the same position I was at before the diet. Like seriously? Was there a point of me doing this? I know, you must be thinking I have low self-control and I did this to myself, and you're 100% correct. But this is the reality of dieting for my situation, it just backfires in every direction. Side note: dieting is a whole life process by itself because you need to think about everything that you consume in your body and make sure its compatible with the diet you have chosen to pursue. So along with backfiring on results in the long run, it's a complete waste of time for me. 

My solution? What I have been doing since the beginning of this year is taking things out/changing things in my lifestyle that I know that I don't require and I make sure this is a lifestyle decision. If I make the decision to keep it out, I keep it out forever. They are not huge changes in my life that will clearly backfire but small changes I can survive with like taking out Ice caps from Tim Horton's from my lifestyle, changing white bread to whole-wheat bread permanently, adding fruits and vegetables to every meal, or drinking more water progressively (I am used to drinking two bottles of water which is equivalent to four cups, now I drink three bottles.) Along with these changes, I have added some sort of physical activity in my daily routine to help me out and I keep this going consistently. I have seen results and these changes are things I can do for the rest of my life without having an issue. I don't know if this will work for you, but it is working for me and it's not complicated to do. 

It might seem like I am bashing diets, but this was purely my experience and if dieting works for you then you should totally pursue it, and I am with you 100% as long as I don't think it's dangerous to your health. I wish all of my viewers a healthy and prosperous life.