The Silly Things I Cry About and The People Who Deal With It

Waterproof mascara is my best friend and has been since my senior year of high school when I started crying. A lot. If you ever need a recommendation on a good waterproof mascara I'm your gal. I have many different kinds of crying, I can do the whole quiet sobbing, the loud screaming sobbing, the ugly face crying (my specialty), and my favorite the tears you just can't hold back the ones that come out for no reason or for a reason but you just can't help the salty water from rolling down your face.

Needless to say, again, I cry, often.

I will be the first to admit that I cry over stupid stuff, for example one time I cried because an avocado fell off the counter and smashed and I wasn't able to eat it. Or when my sister ate the last french toast the day before I left for school, hash tag fat kid problems any time you want to. I cried because I didn't know what was wrong, I've cried for no reason at all just simply because I could. I like to cry in the shower so then my pillow doesn't get wet but the steam makes breathing even harder. I cry when I'm stressed, and if you ask my boyfriend or friends, I cry when I'm mad or when I'm yelling. Basically I'm a mess and I shouldn't be surprised by the fact that my tears have little to no impact on anyone anymore. I get over emotional. I cry when I have to say good bye, even knowing when I'm going to see them next I still turn into a baby, I do this with friends on move out day, with my boyfriend when our couple day visits are over, and with my parents when they drop me off for school. You'd think at twenty years old I'd have some kind of handle on my life, but as my mom always told me I came into this world crying, so I'm pretty sure that's how I'm going out.

Has anyone ever found colic in adults? That would be interesting to know.

The point of this post, as many of you I'm sure are wondering, is that I see nothing wrong with crying, for anything. Cry when something is sweet, when something is sad, when you are mad or stressed or confused. Cry when things aren't going your way and cry when they are. Cry when you are having sex or when you are brushing your teeth. Hell drown yourself in your tears and get a headache from it. The important part is what you do once you stop crying. I go and hug someone, I give myself a pep talk anything from "don't be so stupid", "why are you crying", "he/she/it isn't worth it", "did you really just cry about that? I didn't know you were a 70 year old cat lady", and my personal favorite "everything will work out". The people who comfort you when you are crying truly are the closest to you because lets be honest, no one has a cute crying face, if they can see that and still want to be in the same room with you they are a keeper. While crying feels good it doesn't change anything, it wont change the situation it wont help you figure out what is wrong. Like I've written before, you and only you are in charge of your own happiness, if you aren't happy, do something about it.

We May Only Live Once But We Only Have One Life

Today I am thankful for every piece of toast I was forced to eat, crust and all. I am thankful for the feeling of pain, for not being able to sleep because my room is too hot or because my dad's snoring. I'm thankful for every moment of sadness, for every time my heart was broken and for every tear that has run down my face. I'm thankful I get to be thankful for all these things because all these experiences mean I'm alive. We may only live once, but we only have one life. Be thankful simply for that.

You Will Miss

The moment they go you already miss them, that's what makes them leaving so hard. Knowing you won't see them again, knowing they won't ever know how you feel, knowing that you are left with the memories, left in that spot where they said good bye, even if you move.
You'll miss the way he asked you to scratch his back and sit right in front of you blocking the T.V.
You'll miss the way she cried every time you had to say good bye even though it made you uncomfortable.
You'll miss how long it took him to respond to your text messages causing you to worry, but at least eventually you got a response.
You'll miss the way her alarm woke you up every morning at 6:30 AM, when you didn't have to be up till 9.
You'll miss his snoring that caused you to move down the hall to sleep and you will resent that moment for the rest of your life knowing you missed out on countless nights together.
You'll miss the way she always wanted to cuddle, despite the heat, despite her cold, and despite your headache.
You'll miss dancing in the garage, making dinner together, celebrating birthdays and grieving together.
You'll miss going on late night drives and going down to the docks. You will miss your friends laughter when you fell in the pool full clothed, and you will miss how she always bugged you to come out at night.
You'll miss all these moments, not the ones when you slept plenty, or got to watch your T.V. show and finish your homework early. You'll miss the moments that even though you were angry, upset, tired, nervous, scared, happy, sick, excited, you'll miss the moments that you were there with each other, those moments you created.
People walk in and out of our lives every day, by choice or by force. By changes in life, or causes of death. And that's the funny thing, once the people we love are gone, we would go back to any moment of time we had with them just to get them back. The moment you were fighting in the car, taking a nap in the middle of the day, or even the first moment you met. The moment they are gone you miss everything that made you love them, made you hate them. You miss everything about them and you are left with nothing of them.

"I had fooled myself into believing that every time I added another notch to my bedpost I had opened myself to the possibility of love, but that was bullsh*t. I can easily look a man in the eye and ask him, “Do you want me?” while I stroke him and press myself against his chest, but how the hell am I supposed to ask him, fully dressed and standing in line at Target, “Do you want me?" I suppose it’s not about “easy” anymore."

--- Elephant Journal

I think we forget you choose to be happy. You choose how you pick yourself up, how you move on. You choose those who surround you based off of how they make you feel, and if you have people around you who make you feel anything less than happy, chances are you don't need them. There are times when you don't choose what happens to you, when you can't control something, but you choose how you deal with it. You let yourself sulk for a few days and then get back out there.
If this summer has taught me anything it is that we aren't invincible. Not every day is a for thing. To me, it is once we realize how fragile life is that we truly start living. I don't mean becoming afraid of the world, I mean realizing that any given moment tragedy can come upon you rather you are in your car, in a movie theater or in your house. With this in mind, I started to make a bucket list. I've made them before, however, I wanted to make one more realistic, one with things on it that I truly wanted to do.

1. I want to sky dive. More than anything, I want to know what it is like to be at the mercy of a stranger, to fall through the sky and to jump out of a plane. 
2. I want to bungee jump somewhere amazing. I looked into this and this might come as a shock to some of you, but the Midwest doesn't have the best places for bungee jumping. 
3. I want to see one of the seven wonders of the world. For a teacher salary seeing all 7 is just too much. 
4. I want to noticeably make a difference in someones life. 
5. I want to experience love at first sight. I've come to believe I'm a hard person to fall in love with and then to continue to love, but this goal isn't something I need to happen to me exactly. I want to see it, or hear two people who have been together for over 30 years tell me it happened to them. 
6. I want to own a horse. 
7. I want to teach until I can't anymore. 
8. I want to go to every state. 
9. I want to visit a shoe tree. 
10. I want to get married 
11. I want to have kids. 
12. I want to have a puppy, preferably a husky or a bulldog.
13. I want to have a boat and live by a lake. 

That's all for now, but I'm sure I'll add to it later. 

What Falling In Love Gets You

This is what you get for falling in love. You get to be obsessed, slightly nauseous, like you’re on speed but better because the comedown doesn’t happen for a long time. You get to have something or someone to look forward to, something more than a new episode of your favorite TV show on your DVR. You get to have the privilege of knowing someone beyond their tweets or stupid, ridiculous Facebook. You get to know what turns them off, what turns them on, what makes them yawn with indifference. You get to know that their dad is an asshole and that their mom was once sick with cancer and that things are sometimes strained between them during the holidays but then they all get drunk and it’s okay for a little awhile. You get to know someone beyond the context of going out and getting drinks. You get to know someone at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday when they look like shit and are totally boring to be around. Like, they’re just watching TV and they feel no pressure to entertain you. They’re just being who they are and you’re there to witness it. It is dull but it’s also, in its own way, exhilarating.
You get to share your life with someone and invite them to participate in the most arbitrary decisions of your life. “Chicken or fish tonight?” “Vodka or gin?” “Doggie style or missionary? “Baby or no baby?” You get to be inspired to be a better person, to be the type of lover who knows how to really care for someone. You should want to protect them from everything that’s bad. You don’t want to be the thing they need to be protected from. No no, they’ve already had that, they’ve already been burned. You want to be the best partner, an antidote to all the other lackluster ones they might’ve had in the past.
You get to know that if you ever died alone in your apartment, your body would be discovered shortly thereafter. It wouldn’t be left to decay and ultimately be found by your landlord. You get to know that you really affected someone’s life. You left an indelible mark. They will never be the same after you. They will cry, cry, cry in your absence. It all sounds so morbid but, I don’t know, it feels so nice knowing that you have the ability to leave someone grief stricken once you’re gone.
You get to go on vacations and screw all day in some hotel room. You get guaranteed sex, the kind of sex that you know and love and are sometimes bored by but it’s okay because you love them and a little boredom never hurt anybody, right? You get to drink too much at dinner and have someone put you to bed. It’s better than passing out alone, isn’t it? You get to see new things with a partner, revel in fresh experiences together, Instagram photos of you two smiling near a waterfall and be too in love to worry about being cool. Only single people have time to care about maintaining the perfect internet persona.
You get to be a goddamn brat. You get to push the wrong buttons and kick and scream, and trust that you won’t be penalized for it. You get to test their patience away, run them against the wall, be an overall insane crazy person, and still be forgiven.
You get to say no. You get to say yes. You get to say screw you. You get to be okay. You get to be safe. You get to be in love.

-TC

It was hard not to consider where you were at that moment, what you would have been doing. When we call someone, we’re inevitably poking our noses unexpectedly into a life that is very much in the process of being lived. They’re out at a bar, they’re having a serious conversation, they’re watching a movie. There is something going on that you are now interrupting, and though it’s not a crime to tap them on the shoulder, the moment you walk into changes everything about the conversation. I thought of how embarrassed I would be if you had picked up with sharp, shouted bar talk filling the room behind you. If you were surrounded by friends, by opportunity, by everything that I didn’t want to think about — how would I talk to you? You telling me, “I can’t hear you, can you speak up?” with your friends laughing in the background, and me doing what? Telling you I’d call you later? That couldn’t be the context of my call.
Why am I calling? I’m calling because, though the inevitable silence following your “Hello?” that necessitates a breathless explanation on my part makes my palms sweat and stomach turn, not calling is no longer an option. The percentage of my days spent thinking about what would happen if I spoke to you, if I reached out, if I said something, now greatly eclipses the time spent where you don’t cross my mind. What was once an itch at the back of my brain, an amusing what-if that was never supposed to be acknowledged, is now an all-consuming need to confirm that, regardless of what direction life has taken you in, you are still familiar of the path that led you there. You know, the one that included us, together, as something that we cannot smother with the passage of time. I guess calling you to say hello, to even confirm that you still exist with that same voice and the “hmm” I can hear when you smile through your words, is more necessary than it is uncomfortable.