You've been raised in limitation but that glove never fit quite right

This is something I've been thinking about the last little while, so thought I'd write it out to see if it makes any more sense....

One thing I've noticed, especially in the last few years ('few' being subjective, and could possibly mean anything from 1 - 10 years), is how I react to interactions with guys.

I think that I spent a lot of my life, more so after I started high school, being teased by boys. I started gaining weight around this time, and high school is not a very forgiving time for someone who's chubby. I did have a strong male influence in my life in the form of my Dad, but that was pretty much it. My male cousins are pretty awesome, but we didn't spend a lot of time around them either.

At school, I was teased. Not by everyone, but by enough that it made quite the impact. And when I got home, I had my brother's taunting to deal with. In fact, I also recently re-met a guy from high school who partook in this - and I'm glad to report he is still a total douchebag...

Anyway. What's happened from this is that now, if a guy is nice to me or engages in friendly conversation or some such thing, I automatically start to read into it a little bit more. Only if they are single mind you, or I have no idea of their status (I've no intention of being a home wrecker). I'm just used to guys only talking to me in order to be horrible to me (even if it is from over 10 years ago), that anyone lovely takes me by surprise. And then my 'what-if?' kicks in and thinks that more could be going on, and that maybe they're interested. Experience tells me that 99% of the time, this is not the case, but apparently that doesn't mean much to my wayward imagination. My low self-confidence does eventually kick in and tell me not to be so silly, but for that day (or so) I have a lovely time in my head wondering about what could happen.

I really must remember that I'm now a grown up (debatable, but technically it's true since I'm almost 30), that inter-gender friendships are possible without any other agenda, and that people generally aren't as arsehole-ish as they were in high school (and it wasn't all of them after all).