Undying Love

I love music. Like...it's a natural, widely varied, never ceasing adoration of music. Ever since I was old enough to sing along with it I have had a love affair that no one can break. It is the one thing besides writing that can take me a million miles away from wherever I am. I can just lose myself in it. No one can ruin great music for me. No one can come between us. And quite frankly, I don't think anyone can understand it. My friends are always astounded by how much music I know. They don't listen to the kinds of music I do. And not just in the sense like, "Oh, so-and-so is really into Jimi Hendrix" and then most people don't listen to Jimi Hendrix but then so-and-so doesn't listen to much else either. No. I listen to every kind of music. I love every kind of music. And I pretty much know the lyrics to every song on the planet. I actually think it's a sickness. Someone will say, "I love this song" and I'll respond with, "Me too! The way he's talking about blah blah blah is amazing." They tend to look at me like I spoke German for ten seconds and follow it with either: A) "Uhh, yeah. That's cool." B) "I have never even listened to the lyrics. I just like the music." or C) "I guess I never thought about what the lyrics meant." This is not to say that I am a music snob (okay, maybe I am) but I have found my musical equals, though few and far between. They usually don't have my exact expertise, but they usually know areas that even I don't, so it sort of balances out. I usually come away having learned a thing or two and adding to my playlist. Point being: I love music. Just thought you should know. ;-)

I think that I would die without good music --Joan Jett, Good Music

The Loneliest I've Ever Been

What comes to mind today is how my decisions have led me to the place where I am. I think of all the choices I've made and where they have left me. I think about this town and realize how alone I am. I'll go home at the end of the day today and won't have anyone to call. I won't have someone to come console me. I am a hundred miles from anyone who would come to my rescue at 4am or realize that I'm a ticking time bomb. I've let all of my friends go over the past two years. Were they ever really friends of mine anyway? Today is the first day I've ever felt lonely in my own home. I've always enjoyed my solitude and independence. People have asked me numerous times, "Don't you get lonely living by yourself?" And I've always thought that that is so absurd. I've never felt lonely...until today. All the shit that's happened this year has made me question being so far away from home, but not until my mom asked me last night if I wanted her to start looking for a job for me did I truly consider moving back. Why should I be so far away from the only people that have ever truly and wholly loved me? What am I proving? What am I giving up to be here? It's obvious that I can't make it on my own so why keep trying?

Saying Goodbye Is The Hardest Thing I've Ever Done

I have put off writing this entry for some time now. I don't know why I thought it might get easier with time, so I guess there is no better time than now. Back in June I lost my grandmother. She was only 75 and in such good health that her death came as such a shock to everyone. She had gone out to dinner with some people from church, something they were doing every other week and she was so happy about. When she got home that night she was having what she thought was really severe heartburn. She suffered all night in pain and finally called my cousin to take her to the hospital around 6 a.m. It turned out that she had had a massive heart attack. By the time she got to the hospital, the doctor said there was so much damage done to her heart tissue that he didn't think she would recover. They took her into emergency open heart surgery to put in a stint and the next day she was alert and talkative and making jokes and we all got to go in and talk to her. She looked so good that we got our hopes up. But later that night she went into cardiac arrest and was in a coma for the next few days. My mom and her siblings finally decided to take her off the respirator and she passed with her kids right there with her.

I guess I just didn't expect to be so affected by her death. It was so unexpected and so sudden that I kind of couldn't believe it. I still haven't really grasped the fact that I'll never see her again or talk to her again or have Christmas Eve at her house like we have every single year I've been alive. I still expect to go by her house and her welcome me at the door. And it really hurts to realize that I didn't really know how much she meant to me until I lost her. I'm afraid that I'll live the rest of my life with regret because there is so much I could have done to be a better granddaughter these past few years. She'll never know how much I loved her. Or how many amazing memories I have because of her. I think she always felt second best to my Mimi and I'm not sure that that wasn't my fault. I'm afraid she died never knowing how much she meant to me. Having to live the rest of my life with that thought is what I fear makes me the saddest.

But the thing that has been the hardest to deal with is how sad my mom is. My mom, my pillar of strength, is just absolutely broken-hearted. I don't know how to act around her and that's the worst feeling. For example, we stopped by my grandma's house to pick up some things my mom wanted to get and the house was just torn apart. My family had already gone through her stuff and taken a lot of it. My uncle was redoing some flooring and getting ready to rent it out. It just wasn't my grandma's house anymore. I was trying to hold it together because I didn't want to make my mom upset, but I couldn't. I started crying and was trying to hide it, but she saw. It made me feel so bad. I feel like I have to be the one who is holding it together for her sake.

I know that this is the kind of thing that only time can make better, but it just feels like it changed a lot of things. It makes me want to be home. It belittles the importance of pretty much everything else in my life. I just want to be with my family. This whole year has been rough for my family. It just makes me feel guilty for being so far away. It makes me feel more alone than ever...

My Life Is Better Than It Ever Was

This summer is beginning to come to an end, as it is already mid-August, and I can't help but look back at these past few months. For me, however, it has just been another three months gone. (Read: Adult life and a nine-to-five absolutely suck.) I graduated from college just over three months ago and it has given me time to evaluate my life, transition into an actual human being, and prioritize things. I've come to realize that my values have changed. The transition into an "adult" that I once feared so much is now seeming to be a welcomed change. I'm happy working five days a week, having responsibilities, waking up early and feeling accomplished. Trust me, it's quite a change from staying out until 4am, sleeping most of the day away, and finding my greatest "accomplishment" being that I woke up before 2pm.

In addition, I've come to find that my greatest asset that I've come away with over the past three years of college is not an education or a sense of independence, but the people I get to call my friends. When I left my small town and my tight-knit circle of childhood friends three years ago, I was devastated. I thought that nothing and noone could compare to the life I had been leading up until then. I knew in my heart that I would never find anyone else to trust or confide in; no one to call my friend. Luckily for me, I could not have been more wrong. My college friends have renewed my faith in humanity. They have convinced me that there are still unselfish, loving, considerate people in the world, something I thought I could never believe. They have helped me to grow, shown me that it's okay to be whoever it is that I am, and helped make my life feel like home. I can easily envision these individuals being a part of my life for many years to come.

The only bad part about being so attached to these people is that these years, too, will come to an end. My friends will move on to their own lives and to their respective locations around the nation, and I will be once again at a loss for the people I love more than anything. They have become my family away from my own, my caretakers, my inspiration, the very best parts of my everyday. I am quickly realizing that life is simply made up of one transition after another, but that realization doesn't make facing them any easier.

Maybe I'll learn to move on with greater ease over time, but even ease of transition will never take away or fill all the spaces in my heart that have been occupied by those I've cared about over the years. Even if they may never know how much they have impacted me or how valuable they have been to my life, I will never take for granted all of the beautiful people that God has blessed me enough to know.

Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they
arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born.--Anais Nin

Throwback to 2005

[Note: This is an unedited piece from October 2005. I am reprinting it because I can.]

Day by day, this savage world rushes on,
Cruelly, spontaneously giving and taking.
The world is six billion people feeling alone in a crowded room.
It’s the song we don’t know, and that one we can’t forget.
Life is the water rushing up to meet the sky.
That feeling that tomorrow can never be as good as yesterday,

but pretending that there’s no where to go but up.
It’s time flattening every single word that’s ever been uttered,

both idle and earth-shattering, into equality by passing years.
Time makes everything useless.
We will all be passed by and we will fade into obscurity.
So what is this life then?
“They” say that life is blood coursing through a heart, air rushing into lungs,

and synapses in the brain.
But haven’t you ever felt dead inside your own living body?
That’s because life is purpose.
It’s meaning.
It’s that stinging moment of clarity when you realize for the

first time that someone actually cares.
Maybe it’s discovering that you care.
Life is jumping straight into the deep end with all your clothes

and baggage and for one second in your lifetime

not caring what gets damaged or exposed.
It’s the vulnerability that we all own

and yet are so scared of that we fear what showing it might do.
It’s the million weapons we all own,

but fear what extreme damage they could truly do if unleashed.
True life is reckoning.
An adding up of what you owe,
But learning to overlook what is owed to you.
It’s the day when your preconceptions are destroyed by a surprising friendship

or discovery that the character inventory you took of someone

was wrongly and grossly underestimated.
Time causes that increasing anxiety as it goes on

that you can’t get back any of the days passed.
It’s because you can’t.
Time causes you to regret, feel inadequate, and despise yourself.
But it also teaches you.
You learn to appreciate making it through the rough times.
And you learn to hold onto friends that never gave up

even among the sea of friends who did.
And, most of all, you learn to cherish the times that are irreplaceable.
Life is many things; many different things to everyone.
But the one universal thing life is for those six billion strangers wandering the earth

is something not to be wasted.
And we’re all guilty.
It’s time for reckoning.

Lessons Learned: 2008

15 Items of Note:

1. Do not live with a friend. Live alone if at all possible.

2. Read books. Constantly. And for fun. (I already knew that one, but I've recently been reminded.)

3. Don't procrastinate. (Knew that one, too. Just have never been very good at it.)

4. Love with your heart, not with your mind. You'll find yourself much happier.

5. Everyone deserves to think that they are great.

6. College is the single most important thing you'll ever do.

7. A college degree is the least important thing on your resumé.

8. People will judge you whether you are twelve, twenty, or forty-two. Stop caring.

9. What seems like the "right" thing is usually wrong and what seems "wrong" might just turn out alright.

10. Do not start out a night by taking five to six Jäger Bombs. It will not end well.

11. Friends will never be as loyal as you hope. Forgive them.

12. Your parents are your best friends.

13. Find what makes you happy and do it. Don't worry about what anyone else thinks.

14. Learn to do something interesting. Not to look cool at parties, but to feel like you have something you can call your own.

15. Make extensive lists and make them clever.