A pioneer naive enough to believe this...

Due to an intriguing combination of being a couple years older than most of my friends and being the reckless and somewhat headstrong woman that I am, I have often been the first to do things.  From having sex to going to college to having children, it was me first.  Even with more simple things like hobbies and general interests.  I have had somewhat of a pioneering spirit, and perfectly willing to drag people into activities even if they weren't sure they would like it.

Unfortunately, this has had some uncomfortable side affects as well.  Being the first person to try something meant that my friends had no idea how to react to my actions.  I was who they learned with.  This benefited everyone who came after in a given activity, but not me.   When I went away to college, no one was real sure how to respond.  I wasn't visited until well into the second semester of my freshman year.  Everyone seemed surprised that I wanted to make plans with them when I came home for breaks.  There was a lot of anger and missed connections that simply were a matter of people not thinking.  When the next on the list scampered off to school, these hiccups had been overcome, and we'd learned from our mistakes how to communicate with each other and avoid unintentional insult.

When I became pregnant, I was still pretty young (just shy of twenty), and no one knew how to handle it.  People pulled away from me - hell, my male friends stopped hugging me because they were so weirded out by the concept.  Ironically, this strange abandonment contributed in ways to me marrying the father of my child, even when I knew deep in the back in my mind it was a bad idea.  Yet he was offering to be there for me when everyone else I loved was turning away just because this concept was too uncomfortable, too new, and they weren't ready for it.  This is perhaps why it hurt (and continues to hurt) all the more to see them be so easy and accepting with other people's children.  They worked through the strangeness with me, which is good, but it also fueled bitter anger when no one else was ostracized the way I had been. 

I could go on, but it's going to make me sound more bitter than I actually am.  Yes, I do still get sad when I think about some of these things.  Depending on the incident I even get angry.  I have never been very good about my expression of anger, and as such I have lingering bitterness on a number of issues.  It isn't all consuming, and most days I don't even think about it.  Truth be told, this strange trip down memory lane is inspired by the fact that an acquaintance is going through some similar challenges. 

I think, in closing, I wish that my firsts had been met with more celebration, or at the very least more understanding.  In the end I suppose I'll just have to content myself with shaking my head and feeling vaguely superior for having done all of these things before they were "popular".