Construction 101, Cassidy Shay [unputdownable books TXT] 📗

And they do it all with great big smiles.

When I was working with Sister R, I was amazed. It was hot and humid in that little room. She was in tons of layers. I was in a t-shirt and shorts and miserable. She had a big smile on her face and it seemed like she didn’t even notice the heat and humidity. That was amazing.

And then she kept reminding me, “Whenever you do any work, no matter where you are of who you’re with or what you’re doing, do it for Jesus.” That helped me get through the rest of the week without complaining. If I thought, “It’s hot out here,” or “I’m thirsty,” I just thought, “Okay, this is for you, Jesus.” Well, if I was thirsty I got more water (not gonna do me any good to get dehydrated), but you get the point.

I also learned how much a few teenagers can get done in just a week. And we really only worked for 3 days. But all of us put together did over 500 hours of work. That’s a lot.

I learned how much I love just sitting and praying and talking to God. I’ve done it in the past, too. But you know people say it’s good to just sit and talk to him about your day and everything, instead of only saying, “Hey, God. Thanks for everything I have, I’m blessed, watch over this person, and can I have this? Thanks. Goodnight.” I mean, that’s good too, I guess. But people say that you should also be able to just sit and talk, tell him how your day was, your thoughts and this and that, even though he already knows. But never really did that until we came on this trip. And I found out that God is really a GREAT listener.

Oh, and I learned that sleeping on a cold, hard tile floor isn’t comfortable, but it feels better on my back than sleeping on a couch. Of course, after a week of it, I’m ready for a real bed. But the floor wasn’t nearly as bad as I expected.

I really want to try to get Jake to come next year, and Shelsey when she’s old enough. I think Jake would have fun and I think that any doubt that he has left would be wiped out if he saw the things that you experience on a mission trip.

And Shelsey would definitely benefit from something like this. She’d get an idea of what other people go through, and she’d learn what being a Catholic and what being a Christian is really about.
My Reflection

When I look in the mirror, I don’t see me. I don’t see the person that I’m supposed to be. I see the person that she has caused me to be, the mold that she built. I see the person that she created, and then destroyed.
It was a weird transition, at least for me. As we went from best friends, sisters, to less than acquaintances, I never expected it to last. I thought she’d come back to me, just like she always did.
The last time I talked to Rosa, it was a message over Facebook. I’d seen that she was dating Jotman again, and wanted to let her know that I hoped it would work out in the end, that she wouldn’t be hurt like she was the time before.
Her response was expected, but it still came as a shock. She yelled at me, told me it was none of my business. She doesn’t have to answer to me. I’m not the boss of her.
I had just told her that I hoped she didn’t get hurt again.
Rosa met Jotman in third grade, when he was in fifth. They “dated” and “broke up” when she moved out of Lincoln City, Oregon to Mexico.
A few years later, when she lived in Idaho, she found him on MySpace. That summer, she went to visit family in Lincoln City, and they got together.
For the next few months, I was shredded. Peeled, layer by layer. Ripped apart, bitten, bleeding, left to die.
He lied. He cheated. He begged her not to leave him. Each time he lied, she called me, crying, in the middle of the night. Each time he cheated, she screamed over the line, confused, hurt, needing help and strength. He hurt her, I helped her. That was the pattern. Every time he broke her heart, it broke my heart to see her upset and hurting. The only band-aids, the only casts, were my words, soothing her, healing her.
But each time he begged, she fell. She was his prey, he was the predator, thirsty for her tears, hungry to see her heart spilled out, stomped on, crushed. But she didn’t see that. She only heard his kind words, only saw the sad look on his face. After all my work, he always won.
When Rosa’s cousin Ana called her, crying, that’s when things changed. Ana thought she was pregnant. With Jotman’s baby.
Rosa still wouldn’t leave him, wouldn’t push him into her past. Instead, after hours of me pleading with her to break up with him, she pushed me into the past. She ripped me apart, bit me, watched me bleed, and left me to die.
Obviously, I didn’t want her to go through that again. So I sent her that message.
She told me that I had no right to try to break her and her boyfriend up (even though that’s not what I was trying to do in the message).
What about what she did to me?
I moved from Idaho to Arizona the summer after I met Rosa. Once I was in Arizona, I made new friends, but still, Rosa was my best friend.
In seventh grade, I had a boyfriend. And Rosa… she decided to make him her boyfriend.
We flew her down to Arizona as my birthday present. While she was at my house, she took my phone. The entire trip, she was texting my boyfriend. At the same time, she was telling me what a crappy boyfriend he was.
I had planned on breaking up with him. I was just waiting for Rosa to be there with me, so that if I needed any moral support, it wouldn’t have to come through a telephone. But I knew that he wasn’t a good boyfriend. She was just trying to speed up the break up. Because she wanted in.
Well, that’s what I thought, then and for several months afterward, until she had me read her diary and found out the truth. What I didn’t know at the time was that she was already in.
I guess I should have seen it coming. I mean, a little more than a month before, she had called me with some disappointing news.
“Cassie… I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.” I could hear her voice shaking. She was crying. After she calmed down, she told me what happened. One day, the week before, her and Juan had decided that they were dating. The next day, she decided to break it off, but she felt that I needed to know, even if it was over with.
It was December 31, 2009 when she called me. “Rosa,” I said, walking around my Nana and Papa’s driveway at 11:58, “we only have a couple minutes left of this year. Once it’s 2010, we’re done with all this. No more talking about it anymore. It’s in the past.”
At the time, I was kind of blinded. Of course I was hurt. Of course I was mad. But I was used to it. I was used to being treated like that. She hurt me, she apologized, I forgave.
Besides, I rationalized, it’s not like they were really dating. She was in Idaho, he was in Arizona. What could they do? That’s not really dating. Of course, this was before Jotman, when I hadn’t seen the kind of power and pain that can be transferred or taken away by a long-distance relationship.
She told me she’d ended it, and that it wouldn’t happen again. I chose to trust both of them again.
“He’s really sorry too, Cassie. He’s crying.” Ironically, at the time, Rosa was telling me not to break up with him. I wasn’t texting him or talking to him at all that night. I was too mad. I didn’t want to talk to him. “He’s really sorry. Don’t break up with him over this.”
So I didn’t. I kept him and Rosa close by my side. “Only you, Rosa. If this had happened with any of my other friends, they’d be done. Gone. Only you.”
When she came in February, I was sick for a couple days. Those days, she spent with Juan. By this time, I’d broken up with him. Two days later, Rosa and Juan were officially together. I told her that it didn’t bother me. And really, it didn’t.
Juan was part of my past. I didn’t care.
Months later, in May, I found out all her secrets. That she and Juan had never really stopped “dating” in between New Years and the trip to Arizona. That she had had sex with Juan that February.
That’s when it hurt. Not back when it was going on. When I found out that the person I cared about the most had lied to me.
But I couldn’t remind her of all this when she was yelling at me. That’s not how our friendship worked.
So instead, I listened to her yelling even more.
She told me that she didn’t need me anymore, because she had Makayla. She told me that Makayla was a much better friend than I had ever been.
What about the plane ticket that I bought to go see her when her aunt died? What about all the conversations we had until 4 AM while I was comforting her and helping her through rough times? What about all the times I listened to her complain about her parents’ argument over what to make for dinner, while my parents were going through a divorce? What about all the times I told her what she needed to hear, instead of all the things she wanted to hear?
If she did something wrong, I didn’t encourage her. I told her to knock it off. If she hurt me, I didn’t pretend like everything was okay. I told her what I thought. And when she listened to me, things turned out better for her.
What did she get from Makayla? She got unlimited (and unsupervised) access to alcohol, drugs, and boys, all at the same time. I didn’t like that.
So when she told me that Makayla had replaced me, I was shocked. How can she be so blind? How can she want to push away the good influence, and go down the path that she knows will only lead to trouble and heartache?
I was hurt.
So I told her what I thought