Matty

So I met Matty not too long after meeting Shara and Melanie and Christina. He started working the same 4am job as we were (lets face it, that is how I made all my friends for a long time there!). This was after the Zach and Dan era (as Christina so kindly reminded me about - I can't believe I forgot about Zach! oops). Matt was always very perky in the mornings and he would sing showtunes really loud in the middle of the empty, echoey building and everyone would sing along. It was always way fun (we all always were singing - it was the only way to stay awake haha). It is funny, because I don't really remember how we started hanging out either. I do remember that every time he saw me he would sing "Mandi, there's a minister handy" and I just kept telling him I had no idea what that was from. I was also friends with this guy named David (he and I were pretend engaged haha) and Matty and Dave were super good friends. Anyway, Matty finally said - we are going to watch "White Christmas together!" (which is what that song was from if you didn't know). We decided to have some sort of really good spanish food (I think) and watch that movie and invite everyone we knew to a little shindig in the lobby of mine and Christina's apartment building. Then we just started hanging out. It also helped that Matty and Christina's then boyfriend Steve got along really well and we would all hang out together.

We did things like go on roadtrips together - we went to California, which is where Matty had gone on his mission, and we got to go to Disneyland and we got to see a lot of things that Matty had done on his mission and meet people that he had met there. We stayed at the house of one couple and the wife had us draw a picture of a tree a person and a house and then she could look at the picture and tell us a bunch of stuff about ourselves which was way cool. We had put the camera on the dash and pretended we were getting in an accident and then later, the roads were kinda snowy and we actually did spin out on the road and hit the guardrail. We were so lucky that we spun when we did because the guardrail had just started so we didn't fly off the road into the ditch. Also, we were lucky that there was no one else around to run into. Of course, that didn't stop us from taking more road-trips. Matty was having a hard time that semester and just wanted to get away, so one time he was planning to go visit some family in Canada for a long weekend and asked if I wanted to come. So I did and surprised my Mom which was fun. We also went just up to visit his family in Montana which was way fun too. I probably wouldn't have done quite so much with him, but I was totally in love with him at the time, but I never knew how to say anything or do anything about it. So I just went on roadtrips with him and got on his cell phone family plan with him and treated him as a good friend. I remember on one of our roadtrips he mentioned something about his first kiss and I asked him about it and he said he didn't want to talk about it. I said okay and just let it go, I didn't pry very often (that was Christina's job, but she wasn't there). He said it was very astute of me to realize that he wouldn't be okay with prying and to just let it go.It made me happy that even though he didn't share the details with me, he gave me a compliment like that.

As I mentioned, he had a hard time that semester and by the end he had pretty much sucked it up at all his classes and just needed a break. He knew a guy from Virginia from his mission, and although that guy was still on the mission, Matty went out there to stay with his family (I think he knew them, although I could be totally wrong here) probably in either April or June of that year. Before he left Christina told me I should just kiss him, so that I wouldn't regret not doing it. I said no because I am weird. She then said she would pay me $20. I still said no, that would be weird. Then our bosses and co-workers all caught wind of this and said they would chip in on the 'kiss Matty' fund - I think the total ended up being around $75! I even told him about it and he said that he'd do it if I split the money with him. I never did it. I wanted him to kiss me because he WANTED to, not because he was getting money out of it. I regret not ever telling him I liked him, but I don't regret turning down the money for the kiss.

We stayed in touch quite a bit after he left - we still had a cell phone bill to pay together - and by October of that same year he came back to Provo to visit and for a mission reunion and he brought a girl with him that he was engaged to that he wanted me to meet. It hurt me a lot that he was engaged but at the same time I was so happy for him and glad that he was happy. He never ended up marrying that girl, and I am not really sure why. I think he might have mentioned what happened in passing, but we didn't talk a whole lot after that. I was too hurt and didn't know what to say, and he had his new life with his new friends over in Virginia. Not that we never talked, but we were just never close like we had been.

From him I learned that you shouldn't pretend to be someone you aren't just to impress someone. I learned that you can be happy for someone else and sad for you all at the same time. I learned that you can recover from heart-break. I learned that road trips can be a total blast as long as you have a positive outlook. I learned that sometimes what you think you want for your life isn't really what is best for your life. I learned that sometimes it is okay to take a break for a while to get back on your feet. I learned that it isn't weakness to admit that you aren't doing okay. I learned to not regret things that you didn't do, just to learn from them and make better mistakes in the future.