Words...

Words come more easily to me than to most people. I can put words together on a piece of paper and make sense of people and emotions and life in a way that people understand. I can make ugly things sound pretty, I can make pretty things sound horrid, and I can make average things sound wonderful. It's a gift I've had my entire life.

And yet lately, I feel like I'm wasting my gift. In my attempt to better myself, I lost sight of what I was reaching for. I went to back to school because I wanted to write. I went back to school because I wanted the novel that I'd already written to be worth something. It's now been 4 years since I finished that novel and I have done next to nothing with it.

4 years. That's almost five times longer than it took me to write the damn thing. When I went back to school, I was going to be a creative writing major and be the next Great American Novelist. Then practicality got in the way of creativity and I lost sight of the dream I had.

Now I look at my graduation date in six months and I wonder whether I'll have time to do what I went to school to do in the first place. When I'm starting my career as a young adult and trying to make my life in a bad economy, will I have time to write? Will I be able to do what I love?

I was trying to find myself and I lost sight of what I was looking for along the way. I miss this. I miss the words flowing through my mind and onto the screen so effortlessly. I miss having an outlet for all of the thoughts and stories constantly swimming through my brain.

I don't have time to write like I used to. Life got in the way of what I love and now I don't know how to get that back without sabotaging the career that my degree could get me, the one I've worked hard for.

I'm caught in a very strange place... I miss my words.

This blog is named after one of my all-time favorite quotes, "I write for the same reason that I breathe, because if I didn't, I would die."

I'm dying. I need to come up for air, but I'm lost in the currents of life, struggling to swim to the top but being pulled under whenever I think I've caught a break.

"If I get it all down on paper, it's no longer inside of me,
Threatening the life it belongs to
And I feel like I'm naked in front of the crowd
Cause these words are my diary, screaming out loud
And I know that you'll use them, however you want to"
- Anna Nalick

Broken

I've been trying hard to be positive lately, and it's done some amazing things for my happiness and overall attitude in life. But that doesn't mean that all of the things that have always brought me down aren't still there.

The truth is, there are days when I don't think about the past. There are days when it seems like I'm doing things right and even though its not prefect, I'll get it figured out. And then there are other days...

Days when no matter what I do, I can't get my past out of my head. Days when I remember all the reasons I've never been good enough. Days when I can't stop thinking about why I'm alone. Days when I feel overwhelmed by the negativity.

On days like today, I want to give up. I just want to say screw it and get in my car and drive away and leave my past in the life I'll leave behind and start over somewhere else. Forget all of the bullshit and the pain and find a new me somewhere that no one knows who the old me was. But I know that these issues are bigger than that. They are a part of who I am. Each circumstance that has messed me up has also helped shape who I am.

When I'm living in my world of positivity, it's easy to forget how serious my issues can be. When I'm not putting myself in circumstances where I have to deal with them, I can almost forget about them. But the truth is, no matter how much I try to kid myself, I still have an almost crippling fear of abandonment. My anxiety still gets the better of me sometimes. My attachment issues continue to define my relationships.

Deep down, I'm still broken. 

That's not an easy thing to admit. Yes, I'm doing better. Yes, I'm so much happier. But part of that is that I don't let anyone in far enough to have to deal with the issues. I keep everyone at arms length and  develop superficial relationships where I never have to get to the part of me that's not so pretty.

I still run. I still hide. I still have walls so high I don't know if I will ever find where I put the door and where I put the key cuz I found a super great hiding place for that so that it would be hard for anyone to get in... 

I'm making changes. I'm bettering so many parts of myself. But it's like I think that if I ignore these parts of me, they'll just go away. Or maybe I think that when I find the right person, they won't matter. But they matter. Or else I wouldn't have been dealing with them for so much of my life.

If I'm always wondering why I'm not good enough, when will I accept that I am? If I'm always thinking everyone will leave, what is going to make them stay? If I'm always keeping myself at a distance, why would anyone let me close? 

I'm living for today, and I'm having fun and its good for me right now. But eventually, I'm going to have to deal with this shit or I'm never going to have a promising tomorrow...

"All I want is for you to see the side that I don't show to anyone in fear that they may turn and run..."

Living For Today

It's funny how what's important to you changes as you go through life. Whether it's work or school, family or friends, loving someone else or learning to love yourself.

I've spent much of my life living in the past, dwelling on what has happened to me and worrying that it could happen again. Wondering why these things keep happening and wondering if it was because of something I'd done. I got a new tattoo a couple of months ago. It's on my right foot, in my own handwriting. It says "Let go... It will be okay." I've been trying, ever since I got that tattoo, to live by what I, in essence, wrote on my own body as a reminder.

Let go. Let go of the pain. Let go of the past. Let go of the people who are holding me back. Let go of the fear. Let go of the reasons I have for not doing the things I've always wanted to do. Just go out there and do it. Have fun. Be selfish. Because it's the time of my life when I can do all of those things. So just do it!

It's harder than it sounds when I've spent so many years doing the opposite. Every day presents a new challenge, a new reason to give up and go back to the way I used to be. But every day I fight for what I want. Every day I fight for the happiness I deserve. And every day I remind myself that everything is going to be okay. I can't live my life the way other people want me to live it.

I can't worry about wondering who is going to disapprove of my latest decision. It's about time I took control of my own life and my own decisions and do exactly what I want. I love my friends. I love my family. But for most of my life, I've been living the way someone else wanted me to live and I wasn't truly happy.

It's time for my life to be my own adventure. And that's what I want. Adventure. I want to be able to look back on my life in ten years and know that I didn't waste my 20s. I will be able to look back at all of the cool things I did and say "I made the most of it." Because most of the last ten years of my life has been spent worrying about other people and what was best for them. But now it's time to worry about what is best for me.

I am going to live each day as a new adventure. No past. Just today. Because I deserve my dreams.

"Let's make this fleeting moment last forever. So, tell me what you're waiting for? I'm gonna keep it frozen here forever, There's no regretting anymore... I know what it feels like, come on make me feel alive!" - Krewella

Change Today

Being lonely isn't weak
Being happy isn't strong
Being loved isn't right
And being hated isn't wrong

The assumptions that we make
By what we see above the skin
Can never tell the story
Of what truly lies within

Sometimes happiness is fake
An act put on to get through
When we're drowning on the inside
And don't know who to turn to

Sometimes loneliness is hidden
A weakness we won't show
We keep others at a distance
And watch life as it goes

We keep emotion locked away
Until we are home alone
And we scream til our lungs are tired
And don't pick up the phone

What if we are judged?
What if someone knew?
What if they don't understand
The pain we're going through

So we keep building these walls
So high the sun won't shine
We think that we are safe
From the pain that waits outside

But what about the pain within
The kind we can't ignore
Those we keep at a distance
Will never know any more

Someday we'll be better
At least that's what we say
But if we keep saying tomorrow
What will change today?

Someday...

I believe in love. I've seen it change the lives of people around me. My mother, who loved the same man for 11 years and never really gave up on him until he pulled his head out and realized he wanted to live his life with her. My brother, who found the perfect woman for him, whether she is truly perfect or not. My grandfather, who despite being happily married and being in love with his wife for 17 years now, still loves my grandmother who died almost 20 years ago.

Love is real. But much of the time, I've believed it wasn't real for me. I believed that I was never meant to find the kind of love that makes you better and pulls you through the hard times and finds you when you're lost. I've never believed that I would find the kind of love where I receive as much as I give, where someone would appreciate me for who I am. The kind where someone knows your faults and loves you in spite of them.

I still have a hard time believing it, much of the time. I look at my past and the love I've given versus the love I've received and I wonder if that is how it will always be.

But thanks to my wonderful best friend and roommate, I'm trying to believe in someday.

Because maybe someday I'll find someone who has the capacity to love as deeply as I do. Maybe someday I'll stumble across someone who loves me exactly the way I am, and tells me so. Someday I'll find the love that I've dreamt of in the small optimistic part of my brain that is left from when I was a child, from before I was bitter and jaded, from before I built walls so high that no one had a chance of getting in.

Maybe someday someone will take the time and make the effort to get past all of that. Someday someone will decide I'm worth the fight it will take to get in. 

Maybe I haven't found them yet because I'm not where I'm supposed to be. This is not the place where I'm supposed to make my life, so it can't be where I find the person I will make my life with.

It's okay to be alone. It's even okay to be lonely. But if I believe in someday, then maybe I'll get it...

"One day I'll fly away, leave all this to yesterday. What more could your love do for me?"

Good Enough

I've spent years trying to be good enough. Good enough for my friends, good enough for my boyfriends, good enough for my family, good enough for myself.

But how does one actually decide when they are good enough? And how does one overcome the feeling that they never will be? 

I've spent most of my life comparing myself to others. I don't know where I picked this up. It's not like my mother, who raised me and my brothers more or less by herself, ever made me feel like I should. As I child, I very rarely heard anything but praise about myself. I was a smart, over achieving, pretty young girl.

I used to hear all the time that the boys would be lining up for me when I got older. But they never did. And though I was intelligent, when I was put into the advanced class, I was never accepted by my classmates and I began to do poorly. I did fine when I went back to my regular class, but that was the first time I began to doubt my intelligence.

Now, it's only fair to note that when I was placed in the advanced class, I'd just been through a very traumatic life event, the suicide of my step-father, whom I was very close to. Maybe I wasn't accepted because I was shy and unwilling to reach out to my fellow students. But that year affected me, even if I was only 10 years old. 

When I was 13, I moved away from the neighborhood I'd grown up in. I had some good friends there and being 13 before the age when 13 year olds had cell phones, we didn't really keep in touch. In my new school, it took a long time for me to find friends, and then when I went to high school, I went to a school away from the people I'd gone to junior high with, thus going through the process again.

After dropping out of high school halfway through my senior year and losing contact with all of my high school friends because of my very controlling boyfriend, I didn't have much left to look back on.

I hated school. All of it. I was good at it, when I wasn't dealing with emotional issues, but I hated it. For some reason, I never felt good enough there. Maybe that's where it started. But now I'm 24. And I'm still not good enough.

I want to look at myself and be proud. I want to look at the people who love me and be happy. I want to have the confidence to find someone who will love me for exactly what I am and never make me doubt whether I'm good enough ever again; but at the same time, I want to find that in myself and not go looking for that affirmation in someone else who may just leave me and take that feeling away all over again. 

I am broken. But maybe I'll find something in myself to make me feel good enough...

"You have been weighed, you have been measured, and you have been found wanting."

The Reason

I've been writing as long as I can remember.

As soon as I knew how to create letters and piece them together into words, I've been expressing myself through the words I write. It's a part of who I am. I hope it always will be.

When I decided to create this blog, I thought about the words that are always in my head, the ones that are always there and I rarely share with the world. These words are the part of myself and the part of my soul that I very rarely share with the world. My words are the closest thing to my heart and therefore the part of myself that is the most vulnerable.

Writing has always been a coping mechanism for me. I write the most when I'm going through the most. As any creative person would probably tell you, their best work comes from their most raw emotion. For me, that has always been my darkest emotion.

In the 24 years that I've been alive, I've been through a lot. Maybe I haven't been through as much as some, and maybe I don't deal with it as well as others might. But the truth is, what I've been through and how I've handled it have made me who I am. I can't change the past, I can only hope for a better future. You may not agree with the way I've handled my life so far but I've done my best with what I've been given and I'm a better person than I used to be. What more can you really ask of any human?

When I say there are constantly words in my head, I want you to understand. I'm sure you've all read a novel in your life, at least in your English class, if at no other time. You know how everything is described in perfect detail and there is a constant narration of what's happening? That is what is constantly in my head. It's no wonder I could write a novel in 9 months with that kind of a brain. I hope that only makes me different and not completely insane.

Before you follow this blog, you should know: what I write here will not always be happy. You may not always like what I have to say. I have seen some dark places in the world and within myself and I will paint pictures with my words that you may not want to see. But everything I say is real. Everything I write is the truth. If you don't like it, don't read it.

I am not perfect, but I am me. This is the way that I express myself. I am putting a piece of my soul on the internet to share with the world. I am making myself vulnerable in a very real way. But I will do it because there are people in the world who need to hear these words because it will show them that no matter how alone and isolated they may feel through whatever horrible thing they are experiencing, they are not the only one feeling that way. And more importantly, they can make it through. I share my words with the world in the hopes that I can affect a life, if only one.

"I write for the same reason I breathe, because if I didn't, I would die." - Unknown