It's never too late

For what it's worth: it's never too late, or in my case too early to be whoever you want to be.

There's no time limit, stop whenever you want. 

You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. 

We can make the best or worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. 

I hope you see things that startle you. 

I hope you feel things you've never felt before. 

I hope you meet people with a different point of view. 

I hope you live a life you are proud of.

If you find that you are not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again. 

-F. Scott Fitzgerald

I Digress because I'm Sad

I think it is an interesting fact of life that it makes all of us feel so much better when someone we aren't close to tells us something compared to your best friend or your family. I guess we all believe that the people closest to us have to love us regardless of the instances where we screw up or fail, whereas a random person does not owe us anything. When a guy I don't know tells me I'm pretty it suddenly has so much more credibility, because he has no motive or anything to gain behind telling me the truth. When people we are just getting close to tell us to remember that we are amazing it just feels so much warmer. They don't have to say those things, they do it because they want to and they believe it to be true.

I know I'm in a stuck place when I can't sleep at night, because my brain pounds and not in a migraine way, just a fuzzy way. Like there is no definitions or lines drawn and there is no certainty involved. I wish I knew how to make rejection hurt less. I wish I knew how to stop feeling emotions when emotions aren't worth their weight. The truth is there are things I think that no one knows. Maybe because I know when I say them out loud it will sound silly, or fall upon deaf ears, or just enter into the vortex of things I've said that lost their meaning. That doesn't make them any less true thought does it... Sometimes I wish I could be honest free of the editing I do to spare people. I came to a conclusion the other day about why the summer I spent at Stanford was the best time of my life so far. I realized that it was because those people didn't know me, they didn't know that I was actually over emotional, or a snoopy person, I can't eat sushi with chopsticks, that I run my mouth unchecked, or that I wasn't in the top ten of my class. All they saw was a shell of me, and they really valued me for that version of myself. I felt free from the expectations that I find pressed upon me at school. There was no one that I had to stand next to and feel small beside, no one that thought I talk with double meaning or sassy undertones, and no one to say I was insignificant. Maybe I was insignificant, maybe I always have been. That month was the first time however that people thought I was the best at something. I was the one who brought my best guy friend along and could perfectly curl hair. It wasn't that I thought I was the best person ever, but I just never get to feel like that at home. When I'm here I always feel stuck in the middle, somewhere between invisible and like last season's Tory burch flats. When I look around I gaze out onto a scene of people interacting, and it isn't that I don't feel I belong, it's that I don't want to. I've never felt like anyone's minion, nor anyone's leader. I just wake up in the morning with a very defined sense of who I am and where I want to be. I know the clothes I like and which ones I don't, and I put a lot of emphasis on outward appearances remaining in a poised and composed fashion. What makes me laugh (even though it isn't laugh out loud funny) is that when I get upset, I always tell myself I'm tired of putting on the brave face and waking up the next morning and putting on the eyeliner just like everything is peachy keen. Every time though, even when I tell myself I'm really going to let everything go, I always still pull it together and fix myself some tea and put on my lipgloss. I can't find it in myself to quit. In the midst of winter I found within me an invincible summer.

While I'm on the topic of feeling small, another thing that has always bothered me is that people never remember who I am. I ask myself, do I not have a memorable face? Is it that I'm boring when I talk? Or is it about something I can't see in myself when I look at the reflection in the mirror. It makes me feel even smaller than my actual frame when my life is a constant line of being called a nickname that doesn't fit me or just not remembering my name at all. It's dumb.. I know. I've just always been curious why I didn't stick out. I know I'm just a white girl with no striking features, but I just thought my footprints left a mark where I walked instead of blowing dust to the wind.

What I Thought in the Past..

It always seems like we never remember anything more than what is right in front of us. Is it really human nature to forget, for the very essence of who we are to dissolve and dissapate from our thoughts with nothing more than the alleving powers of time? Days pass whether we count them or not, and even on the mornings where it seems questionable whether your world will continue to roll on, the sun has never failed to rise over the mountains in the east and fade again that evening over the palm trees in the west. Each day itself holds the potentail to be more than one more Monday in the earthly span of worst days of the week.

Some mornings I lie tangled in silky sheets, worry blanketing over my eyes, clawing in the dark to figure out why I should rise from my cozy cocoon of safety. Then I see it. I see it all. I see a maroon gown that swallows me up, and loosely curled hair, and antsy smiles with glossed lips nervously fidgeting with my painted fingers while waiting to hear my name. I see that moment when I rip off the matching maroon cap ladeled with honor tassles, and toss it into the May moonbeam lit night air in the unified symbol of the end, that all of the nothing was never really nothing at all. I see that day in December when I walk to the mailbox, shivering in a sweater and clutching the mail key anxiously in one hand. The moment when I twist the door to the mailbox and I see a innocuous yellow envelope, and how I will sink to the ground with triumphant tears of joy for the toil of four years of sadness. I see a future with autumn leaves, and vivid reds and yellows that remind us that losing everything can be the most beautiful part of all. I see a young lady who still goes by Miss but won't for long, squeezing hands tightly with a young man who's love dismisses all her fears.

 We hold on so tightly to whatever it is that makes us feel safe that we lose the value of the unforeseeable. High school will be over soon. No more will the same ecletic group of individuals parade the halls, no longer will the best friends laugh in the corner or the enemies bicker behind gray desks of academia. There will be no more early release pazooki eating or laughable group projects, no more Homecomings with ill fitting bodices and painful heels. There won't even be going home to a house filled with comforting yellow light and a hot plate of food served next to the side of parental love and guidance. That all will come to an end soon enough, and that's something we all have to accept. Look around and notice that the people you see do not match their image in your memory. We all change, in all the right and wrong ways. Maybe the haircuts and T-shirt choices have improved, and the teeth are all less crooked but the minds will never be the same shade of pure innocent white, unscarred by the bitterness and acidity of youth. The big issues always seemed less important than the small ones, then one day it flips beneath you and getting invited to parties and being accepted and owning the right brand of shoes gets replaced with decisions that impact the rest of your life. Maybe it makes us mad that metamorphasis transpired all around us and we never noticed until it was too late. Maybe the people and way you get used to isn't always going to be that way, but all the best parts of life are fleeting. The truth is we have to forgive each other for growing up. It's just like the leaves of fall, let them drop down around us, each leaf like a memory, whether it be success or failure. The best moment is right before we lose it all.

Breakup Babble

Nothing goes as planned, and people say goodbye in their own special way. Breaking up is hard to do, and not because we know the consequences of what awaits us on the other side of loneliness are unwanted and unpleasant. A break up symbolizes a change in the weather, a paradigm shift, an ever noticeable transformation that we all try so hard to run away from. What can really be done about it though, when on a Saturday night you sit at your house alone and think about the possibility of the end and what would become of you? Even the strongest of us have to admit defeat sometimes, that in many instances fighting is weaker than giving in and admitting there is no solution. It can be more noble to acknowledge that there is not going to be a solution to the problem. It isn't that other people will respect you more, but you might find that you yourself will have more respect for yourself as you walk away from the break up. The end is haunting and chilling and leaves all of us with the distinctive impression that life is a dark hole and that we will never see a sunny sky again. Experience will always be the only way to know that this isn't entirely true. One thing I learned this month that I think everyone should know is that not getting what you want makes you just as happy as getting what you want does.  Maybe it's a philosophical issue to be debated whether there is truth to this statement or if it is one giant falsity, but scientific proof is undeniable. As humans, when we do not get the desired result, we learn to teach ourselves to value our other options. It might seem contrite or forced, but it really does work. A breakup might truly break your heart, but some good will come of it. You will find friends you lost, other people who you forget, you will forge new relationships that are built on stronger foundations, and you grow into a new mold of yourself. When you have nothing left, you grow as a person into a much more powerful entity. None of us like to admit defeat, but there comes a time when it's time to get out and find yourself alone. How will you know if you can stand alone if you never try?

Irrelevant Truths

1. I really like Jesus music.
2. I'm not a big hand washer.
3. I get headaches multiple times a week.
4. I never forget. Ever.
5. I eavesdrop on everyone.
6. I can hear people talking when I'm asleep.
7. I only dream about being romantically involved with one guy.
8. I pick out my eyelashes.
9. I hate being alone so much.
10. I watched 345 Youtube videos last month.
11. I really enjoy dark books.
12. I love mystery.
13. I'm scared of the dark.
14. I like to text.
15. Sometimes I get acid reflux when I eat certain foods.
16. I've never thought I look pretty in a picture.
17. I talk to myself in the mirror sometimes.
18. I do not sleep with pants on.
19. I like lipstick prints.
20. I am a fruit snob.
21. I've secretly always wanted to look like Lauren Conrad.
22. I get jealous easily.
23. I still get upset about events that happened years ago.
24. I'm scared to go to college.
25. I do not like when people shorten my name.
26. I tend to be naive in my perception.
27. I see the best and worst in people at the same time.
28. I really appreciate people with clean mouths.
29. I do not like being left out of anything, even if there is no reason I would be invited.
30. I relate my life to Gossip Girl.
31. I've always wanted to go to Italy.
32. I miss people I shouldn't miss.
33. I fantasize about scenarios that aren't realistic.
34. That which I regret I pretend did not happen.
35. I do my homework at the dining room table.
36. I've been to 22 states in the United States.
37. I have never been to Hawaii. Or the Dakotas.
38. I have expensive tastes.
39. I've always been a pink girl at heart.
40. I'm a romantic.
41. I love the summer.
42. I'm a summer baby.
43. I love history.
44. I have an intense sweet tooth.
45. I'm not ashamed to not be wearing makeup.
46. I like the smell of a burning paper.
47. Armani Code triggers so many memories in my mind.
48. I go through music phases.
49. I cry until I fall asleep.
50. I use my laptop enough each day to drain the battery.

Photos I Cannot Explain but Cherish

The Best Advice I've Ever Given

As you grow up, you learn a lot about the in's and out's of societal normality's and what is expected of yourself as a person in each stage of adolescence. I know that it can be tricky, because most of the time I lie in bed at night reminiscing on the path I chose to walk down and how utterly wrong I was. I can't even tell you how many situations I've handled so poorly and the person I am today would treat so differently. As I learned all of this the hard way I began to compose a list of some of the basic advice that seems super self explanatory, but I had to learn from causing prodigious messes. 

1. People in relationships are off limits forever. You just stay away from them because given enough time every relationship is doomed to fall apart. 

2. The worst is always yet to come, but it always eventually arrives, and at that point you regroup and pull your life together once again. 

3. The possibility of "what if" is strong enough to motivate even the most apathetic of us to accomplish tasks we never believed possible. 

4. The secret to being boring is to tell everyone everything you know. 

5. We compare the lowest moments of our lives to the highlights of everyone else's lives.