A Kind of Nostalgia

Always June...

"I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it's always June..." Montgomery L.M.

Out with the October.. in with the November

My month in songs....

When the working day is done....
Girls Just Wanna Have Fun- STRFKR

Gotta love the way you love yourself
Heart Out- The 1975

It's so much colder, but it's no surprise. Changing of the Seasons- Two Door Cinema Club

We're all the things we do for fun
Buzzcut Season- Lorde

And in this perfect weather, it's like we don't remember, the rain we thought would last forever and ever
Sweeter than Fiction- Taylor Swift 

Preach It

“Some people say, “Never let them see you cry.” I say, if you’re so mad you could just cry, then cry. It terrifies everyone.” 

― Tina Fey, Bossypants

"You should know I disagree with a lot of traditional advice. For instance, they say the best revenge is living well. I say it's acid in the face- who will love them now?" 
― Mindy Kaling, Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?

"Everyone knows that you should never wreck your life for a boy, and especially not one that you meet while you're in high school. Seriously, everyone knows it. You never hear someone say, "Oh, wow, you're seventeen and you really like him? That's great, you should do whatever it takes to get him, even if it means wrecking your whole life. 
 —Lauren Barnholdt

“People aren't either wicked or noble. They're like chef's salads, with good things and bad things chopped and mixed together in a vinaigrette of confusion and conflict.” 

― Lemony Snicket

Never look for a boy's car or do something like stalk his house it's embarrassing and you'll probably have to go to therapy or journal about it like me to move past the shame

I do not know why I still look for that car. I haven’t been in that car in years, nor have I talked to the owner in months. I wouldn’t even say that I miss him anymore. I don’t stalk his whereabouts on social media, or look for him at parties, nor do I wake up from dreams where he plays my counterpart. He’s not in my life anymore, and finally it feels like this was by my choice, not by force. I don’t have to look for the white Acura anymore because I’m no longer the girl who keeps an eye out for a boy’s car all over town, wondering where he is going and what he will be doing. I suppose it was never so much about the car, although that much was always apparent. I feel it represented what I wanted him to be and what he never was.

            I cannot recall when the car stalking commenced. I would guess it began the summer before senior year when we broke up. I never knew where he was, or what he was doing, and I always wanted to know. The whole summer I just wished so desperately that when I arrived somewhere he would be there too, and that he would be sitting there and get to see me feeling content with my life without him in it. I never saw him though, and I should have realized the fact I was looking suggested I wasn’t as content as I told myself I was.

            I have empathy for every girl out there who has lost someone who they have loved. No one ever wants to hear the unpopular opinion that at some point you will move on and stop caring, but the truth is simply that you do. It takes a very long time for certain girls to move on, but eventually you just hit that place where you find yourself on the top of a mountain and you look out and you ask yourself what you are doing spending your days wishing for a boy who isn’t even there to share it with you. (The mountain part is probably region dependent.)

            For me the toughest part of letting go was my mental scenarios. I always could predict our bright future every turn of the way, envisioning summer nights spent cozied in a hot tub, and sushi date nights. The scenarios developed as our relationship progressed, and as time went on and I began to realize they would only ever be that- mental fantasies. I began to struggle with denial that the teen fiction novel vision in my mind was merely a figment of a powerful imagination. My acceptance of this was incredibly meaningful. I came to the realization that just because I would never live out my invented sequence of events didn’t mean I wouldn’t experience ones in reality that were just as thrilling. I couldn’t predict what was going to happen to me, but that didn’t necessarily mean I wasn’t going to have perfect moments with the car owner in my future. Sequentially, we did share many memorable interactions in our future, and the majority of which were even better than my fictitious versions.

            I always wondered who I would experience all those first times with, and much of those mysteries have been resolved. Now I feel settled and I only reflect on the past with disconnect that I would have never believed possible a year ago today.

           Now that I stopped looking for the car I see it everywhere. It’s at the grocery store late at night, and it’s at the red light at the corner of my block. He’s everywhere now, but not in a frustrating way. It’s almost a comforting way, like the words he told me. He keeps his eye on me.

           In the meantime, I no longer feel as though I am near death when I drive, so that's a significant step towards sanity. Word for the wise- get drunk off margaritas... not love. ;)

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.

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?

Song Lyrics from the past

In my mind, the sun shines all the time. Oh I'm just a summer girl, I wear my flip flops, when I wear my hair down, thats when the party starts, and who needs a boyfriend I've got my girlfriends and when we get together the summer never ends. - Leighton Meester "Summer Girl"

Last night, I fell in love without you. I waved goodbye to that heart of mine, leaving solo on your lawn. Every aching wound, will caught a rising bruise, in memory of what we used to call in love. Motion City Soundtrack "Fell in Love Without You."

Let's fly where we used to run, let's fly where we've never gone, let's dream what we've never done, let's make a road where there isn't one, lets fly, let's go where we used to run. When I'm with you I feel so weightless. Landon Austin -"Where We Used to Run"

Tell me the wars you're fighting, behind the smiles you're hiding, all of the things I know you want to say. We tried our best to find us, but there were no lights to guide us, I can't sleep beside a stranger now. And piece by piece we fall apart, with every beat slows down my heart, so I'll just say what you want say. And I'll take the blame if it's for your sake, we are so far gone, we are so far gone. And this is the face of letting go, all these are things we already know. No turning back on what you can't say. James Blunt -"So Far Gone"

Photos I Cannot Explain but Cherish

The Girl behind the Bow (and what coruscation means)

Coruscation: a verb meaning the brillant reflection of life, or the sparkle and shine of a light. The minute I discovered the word I knew it would become one of the those words that never really left me. What it truly means I have yet to really figure out, all I know is that I like the hope it inspires within me when it runs through my head. I hope that the life becomes a brillant reflection of light for me, and I hope that I can find myself through this shimmering light.