My first name was Apollo. There were plenty of opportunities for name calling there, but mostly I got things related to the space ship. My last name was Lemmon. That didn’t help much either. An amicable name I received in juniour high school for a short time was “Spaceship Citrus”.

My shyness was compounded over time because of the bullying, so it was quite a spiral of lowered social ability.

I’ll likely share more about my later crushes in an entry sometime in the future. In juniour high my crushes were on two girls named Jenna and Alicia. Alicia was absolutely brillint, the class president, active in band and theatre, one of the smartest girls in the grade and overall a nice person. Jenna was more an average student in most respects, but still attractive to me.

The first person to ask me out I wasn’t truly attracted to and we didn’t have much in common. I was quite vulnerable at the time and somehow stayed with her for a year and a half. Looking back now I don’t really understand it.

In high school I finally started to develope true friends – some of which are still among my best friends today. I think I was fortunate to find those sorts of people. Interestingly, it was during that time that I felt unchallenged by school work and let my marks slip, no longer caring if I was in the top 5% of my grade.

I consider myself leagues ahead of where I was in high school. Every aspect of my life has improved since then and I’m very thankful for that.