Life Savers

"You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?"

-- Jodi Picoult

I haven't updated in a while so I apologize for repetition. If you ask me at the right moment I would tell you that sometimes it seems like life is hazing me. Like I'm jumping through these ridiculous hoops to get to the one place I hope to belong. And once I think I can handle it, that I know the exact height to jump and when, they set the rings on fire and place them over a pool of sharks.

So my question is when we are drowning, when we are over our head and close to giving up, how do we pull through? 

Answer? The people we allow into our lives. 

Feel free to get nauseous, to say I'm going soft, because maybe I am, but there is a quote saying that a true friend reaches for your hand but touches your heart. Once you are finished gagging, hear me out. To say I have trust issues may be an understatement, but recently I've started this 100 percent honesty thing with this guy. How do I know he is being honest? I guess I don't, but I can't imagine why he would lie. 99 percent of the time we get in over heads because of lies we tell, or the situations we put ourselves in, and that is what I was doing. I've never had a more honest friendship with anyone before. He truly reached past all my external flaws and choose to see and accept the internal ones. He, like my friends in the previous post, are the people in our lives that throw us the lifesavers when we need them. 

We don't always know where we are going, or what we are doing. And the obstacles that life chooses to haze us with become tedious or destructive. But we hang on because we have people that are hanging on to us. 

Love Me!

There is something to be said about someone who loves you even when you aren't lovable.

Maybe its a girl thing, but numerous times in my life I have heard the sentence "these girls will be your bridesmaids." It is silly really, girls spend most of their life choosing their bridesmaids, they usually know the girls standing up there with them longer than the man they are marrying. They have been through more with them, these friends have seen a side of them that man hasn't. And that seems to be forgotten when we are growing up. We forget about the people who answer their phones at 3 AM as you do the wake of shame (walk of triumph) to your room, and goes to Planned Parenthood to buy plan b with you. They know you hide your condoms in your band aid box and they know when you say you're okay, you are lying. But we get wrapped up in relationships, we spend more time at the significant others house, or eating with them, and less time with the people who listen to you gush about him. & lets be honest, except for one time those boys fade away, they break promises, and forever doesn't last and those friends are still there for us to come back to. Today for no particular reason, I realized why I love my friends so much. Because they know me and still love me. I've talked about wanting to be able to stand emotional bare in front of someone and have them still love me, but have failed to realize I have a group of people who already do. 

Me & my best friend Matt @ prom senior year

Me & my sister at a game

Me & my sisters Taryn, Sam & Katie in our Sorority house

Bethany, Sarah and Sadie. Three girls that literally hold me together.

My Tattoo

For a year people have been asking about the meaning of my tattoo. Its a thick, black peace sign on the top of my right foot. My response is usually just that I like peace signs, I'm a hippie at heart, pretty typical things. But the peace sign is much more to me than that. As I have talked about before my parents fight, a lot. I have always been aware of violence and hate and as a child I had to go to therapy because of some irrational fears I had. I'd go in and we would make these worry dolls that I could put on my bed to protect me. I was afraid of fires, of my parents dying, or of the house being broken into. Every night either ended with me laying in my bed bawling or laying on a mattress on my parents floor. They would leave to go to the grocery store and I would stand and cry at the window till they got back. I was in 4th grade. This was when I started to draw peace signs. Compulsively. I would get nervous and trace them on my wrist and would draw them in class to stay awake. The habit never got kicked. I still do it today, but surprisingly after learning the meaning of the peace sign I began to feel relaxed by it. Which is why there is one on my foot. I don't have to tell you the evils of the world, or that life is hard, but when I see my peace sign I calm down, it is like having a security blanket always attached to you.
So that's why.

P.S I'm in an awful mood sorry if this sucks.

Drunk v. Sober

As of right now, I have little to say I just feel like I need to blog since I'm bored out of my mind in my class (don't tell me I should be paying attention). 

Things that are more serious sober & less serious drunk

1. Anything involving police
2. Sex
3. Being sick 
4. Having a test 
5. Being naked in public
6. Showering with all your clothes on
7. Losing your phone/id/wallet/shoe/dress
8. Walking alone in the ghetto
9.  Calories
10. Walking in to a room of people you've hooked up with (it doesn't just happen to me) 

 

Things that are more serious drunk & less serious sober

1. Somebody spilling your drink 
2. Someone touching "your" man
3. The alcohol is gone 
4. Someone not answering their phone
5. Mom calling
6. Someone cutting you in line
7. Someone looking at you "wrong" (they probably weren't looking)
8. Dinning hall being closed
9. Texting correctly
10. Lets be honest, standing is pretty damn serious.

The End Of My Rope

When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.

I've written about it before, and I'm hoping writing about it now will keep me from doing it. Bad days,  moments, or when I'm stuck in a mood  I don't know why, always forces me into these thoughts. Theres a release of emotion with each pull that just makes sense as oppose to the invisible pain. One day I hope to be able to say I went a month, a year, or longer with out cutting but for now every day is a battle. Its like in that Greek mythology story about the man who pushes the boulder up the hill but every time he gets it up there is falls back down and he has to started again. When resisting the urge to cut the time between each varies, but once I think I'm okay something breaks and I fall down the hill again. But don't we all have something like that, like being on a diet or even something as simple as the avoiding the internet. Rather it was getting in a fight with someone, failing a test, getting frustrated studying, or even bad traffic finding relief in knowing there is one thing you can control is empowering. I've never been able to discuss this out loud, and I don't know why, when I have had friends who see it. I get embarrassed, I know its a weak problem. And maybe its because I treat my blog like a diary, or that I don't have to see peoples faces as they read this and see their disappointment in me, but this seems to be the only place I can say it. But today I write, in hopes to avoid what use to be inevitable. In hopes that in some way this blog could actually do me some good. 

Have You Forgetten?

Ten years ago today, a group of men boarded planes, in hope that their actions would break the spirit of our country and make us weak. Well those men were wrong. Very wrong.

10 years ago, I sat in my fourth grade classroom and watched as the a building I never heard of fell to the ground and people jumped out of it. I watched as my teacher, whose husband was a pilot, cried, and kids got pulled out of class. I went home and sat with my family. 10 years ago I didn't understand the impact this would have on our country. 

9 years ago today I stood in front of a news crew and read a poem about the loss we experienced.  I stumbled out the first sentence of "I hold in my hand a beautiful thing, I hold in my hand the American Flag" and watched as people teared up. Yellow ribbons were tied around trees in the front yards, and the enlistment numbers were at a high. Being an American had become a number one priority.

5 years ago today I didn't understand the war. I didn't understand the eye for an eye ideal, I couldn't tell you the difference between Iraq and Iran, and God knows I couldn't find them on a map. I flew on a plane and as a 14 year old was patted down and watched the man in front of me get taken somewhere to be strip searched. We had to pack very carefully, and nothing was a joke.

2 years ago today our school didn't have a moment of silence for the people killed during 9/11 and people were outraged. But in all honesty most of us had began to live the day like every other. I watched videos of soldiers coming home and I'd cry. I would see on the news almost every night a new death total, and a women crying for her son to come home. Gas prices rose and talk about soldiers coming home began. We waited as a nation for our loved ones to return, in hopes they were still breathing when they did.

1 year ago today, one of my best friends was away at boot camp. Local heros had died, and every time he called me I cried. The impact on the country finally connected, and I knew that with the national debt increasing getting out of this war was going to be impossible. 1 year ago today we had spent 9 years fighting a battle that started with a major loss, and 1 year ago today we barely ever had good news about it 

Today, a boy from my home town was killed in a plane shot down on their way home. Osama was killed, and while people made jokes about it being Obama, the country still rejoiced. Today I sat in my room with my roommate and listen to patriotic music, and cried watching heaven 9/11. Today I cried thinking of how 10 years ago today, every ones life changed.

We don't forget, we don't move on. We move forward, taking the memory with us and as a Nation we build upon it and become stronger. I won't ever say I agree with the war, but that isn't what today is. Today is remembering the men and women that lost their lives that day, the men and women that have been continuously losing their lives since then, and the husbands, wives, parents, siblings, children and friends that go on each day with a part of themselves missing. Today we remember, and we will tomorrow and for the next ten years for as a country, we have never been the same since that September day. 

Pro Rights Has Never Felt So Good

Beliefs are like a penis.
It's fine to have one.
It's fine to be proud of it.
But please don't whip it out in public and start waving it around.
And PLEASE don't try to shove it down my kids throats!

(revised from "religion is like a penis")

 We all have them, beliefs that is (not the penis part). I stand by mine, I vocalize mine when the timing is appropriate and I have never been disrespectful to someone else while protecting mine. Drake University has this group, pro life. Its exactly what it sounds like, an anti abortion group, and let me tell you they are making themselves well known. Last year they had a "grave yard" set up in the green space, with crosses for the number of children aborted in a month, they use side walks as their billboards and write things such as "Abortion is the worse form of child abuse". And they have stickers saying "I find it funny people who are pro abortion were born." And that phrase, pro abortion, really grins my gears. There are few people, probably no one, who is pro abortion. There are few people who want everyone to abort every baby that is ever conceived. Pro choice, however, is giving people the right to do with their bodies as they feel necessary, kinda like the right that is allowing this group to take the chalk and write their incorrect messages on the pavement.

My point of my rant is that its okay to have beliefs, and its okay to share them with others, but every time I look down at my feet and see "choose life!" I want to stomp on someones face. There is a time and a place for certain topics, and my walk to Econ at 11 A.M. isn't it. So while this group is out at midnight writing on the sidewalks, I'm going to be practicing my belief of pro rights at club dub or in my bedroom.

& just to add the the dynamic of the last sentence, this is one of my favorite songs recently.