THE QUIET YOUTH

23 / Calgary / i'm not sinking, i'm just kicking it at sea level.

[keexperience]

Adulting is a Scam and a Lie

I look at my bank balance and do some quick mental math. “Okay, so after I pay rent and my student loan payment comes out, I should have… $42 for the next two weeks. At least it’s not in the negatives.”

I’m struggling a little bit. My finances are a mess, I still struggle to make a doctor or dentist appointment on my own, and my work-appropriate wardrobe is meagre. The little bully in my head starts whispering: “You’re 24 now, almost halfway through 24 actually. Why don’t you have it together?” I tell it to shut up and swallow a bit more wine.

I went straight from high school to university, straight from my parent’s basement to a residence building. University in so many ways is an extension of high school. You don’t reeeaaally have to grow up, not yet. I mean, maybe some people do, but I didn’t. I moved into residence, and I had a meal plan (so I didn’t grocery shop or cook) and a curfew, and I still didn’t drive. My mother did my laundry all through my first year of university! (Thanks, Mum. You are the best).

Then I moved out of residence into an apartment with my sister (still didn’t drive) and was catapulted into this new world of almost adulthood. Bills, laundry, groceries. Do you know how hard it is to buy groceries when 1. You don’t drive, and 2. Dairy Queen is literally 30 steps from your back door?

THEN I finally finished university. I remember as I approached graduation I thought to myself, “Huh, I guess I’ll see what all this adulting stuff is really about. At least I drive now.” I thought it would be a breeze. But then I couldn’t find a job within 5 seconds of looking and thought I’d have to be a cake decorator at Sobeys. Fortunately, I did find a job in my field (I am very, very fortunate in this regard) but found that jobs in my field don’t pay six figures (who would have thought). I moved into a house with my best friend and her sister (sometimes sisterS), started my dream job (for quite a bit fewer dollars), and adulthood really set in. It kinda sucks (or maybe it is/was my attitude). Bills up to my eyeballs, a car to put gas in, insurance to pay, student loans breathing down my neck. There were days in the not so distant past when I would buy the bare necessities for food because my bank account couldn’t stretch that far, pay days when within 4 hours, I had pretty close to $0 because all my bills came out at the same time.

I have a job that I love but that is also extremely exhausting. I’d come home from work expecting to do something useful and productive (Exercise! Clean the baseboards! Have a social life! Record a vlog!) and then sit in my bed and watch 18 episodes of _____ (fill in show here). Rinse and repeat.

I don’t feel like I’m a good adult. I mean, I do work out (sometimes). There’s (usually) food in my house. I (almost) made a budget. I do all my own laundry (by throwing it all in one load and crossing my fingers for the best). I manage to scrape together enough money to fly to Nova Scotia once in awhile to see my boyfriend (who ISN’T a douchebag, which is a GREAT success if you know anything about my former dating choices).

Yet I feel all this pressure to do more than I’m already doing, even though I feel like I’m going to implode from all the stress. In fact, sometimes I almost do implode and end up crying while doing the squats I feel like I’m supposed to do in order to be a successful adult!

WHY THOUGH!?

So what, I’m struggling. I’m trying to get my two feet on solid ground, and sometimes I don’t have anything more to my name than my overwhelming student loan debt, my cat named Felicia, and my friends who love me. Is that so bad?

Yes, it took me a year and a half to ask a professional about why my face hurts all the time, but I did it. I also called Health Link and made several appointments when I had weird abdominal pain without waiting six months (and only complained a little bit). PROGRESS.

So what, sometimes I’m so tired from doing something I am so passionate about (seriously, ask me about an STI and I’ll tell you WAY more than you want to know) that I sit in my bed like a lump and just watch TV. Why not do all that while I can before there are mini-Kirstens running around needing my care and attention?

Young adults/slightly-older adults/old adults put so much pressure on themselves to have it all together all the time. I’m still figuring out a budget and how to possibly put aside $25 a paycheque to save for retirement. But I’ll figure it out. My room isn’t always clean, but my best friend and I have a blast hanging out together and watching “the old classics” that are actually terrible and not classic at all.

If you’re struggling, CUT YOURSELF SOME SLACK. You don’t have to have it all together. You don’t have to have it 25% together. If you can open your eyes in the morning and say, “I have awoken” before going back to sleep, YOU GO GLEN COCO. Do what you can, when you can.

One thing I’ve learned since walking across that stage and getting my $50,000 piece of paper is that sometimes you have to ask for help. It sucks. I had to ask the government for help making my student loan payments after trying to do it myself for almost 10 months and sometimes not eating because I had no money. I have asked older, wiser folk around me for help and advice. There’s no shame in that. We’re all learning.

Adulting is a scam and a lie. It makes us feel crummy when we don’t do the things we are “supposed” to be doing. Sometimes adulting is sitting in your living room with your best friend playing on your phones because that’s all you have the energy for. Do that.

But celebrate the moments you manage to do something you didn’t want to, didn’t think you could, or initially resisted. You made that doctor appointment? CONGRATS. You went grocery shopping and didn’t envision ramming your cart into someone’s ankles? I AM SO PROUD OF YOU. Progress is great and essential, but go at the pace that you can.

Go easy on yourself. You’ll figure it out.

If you don’t, just come live with me, and we’ll just do Buzzfeed quizzes all day.

[keexperience]

When the grief belongs to someone else

I’m a verbal processor, which by extension means I process by writing. I think that’s mostly what this blog is. I have a long list of drafts, half-finished writings of whatever was on my mind at the time. So I hope it’s okay when I come here to process. And hey, if it’s not, then don’t read it (haha Kirsten, you’re so sassy, etc.)

I hope I’m not a broken record as I write (/process) my grief. I’m just really struggling with this.

I haven’t been able to really voice this to anyone, so I guess it’s coming up here.

My chaotic, fractured mind has framed the death of my uncle as “belonging to someone else.” I resist grieving in the ways that make sense to me because the grief seems to belong to others in my family, people who saw him more or had a closer relationship.

Perhaps some of this is guilt. I didn’t go see him in the hospital. People told me not to because I had just worked a night shift and it wasn’t safe to drive and all the emotion would probably catapult my tired mind over the edge. I’m not sure if I regret this or not – lack of sleep seems like such a… lame reason not to see him. By that point, he was hardly there anyway, a shell mostly. So a part of me is glad I didn’t see all the tubes and the coldness and that I have this brilliant picture of bright, alive, healthy Randy.

But I don’t remember when I saw him last.

This haunts me. This thought brings me to my knees, robs the breath from my lungs, and brings tears to my eyes.

Am I allowed to grieve for my rough around the edges, at times offensive, stubborn, hilarious, loyal, helpful uncle if I don’t even remember the last time I saw him?

I mean… you just never, ever expect that your uncle Randy that you spend Sunday afternoons debating with and telling the stories of your tragic love life to will suddenly be ripped away.

I say to people, “My uncle passed away,” but that’s not right. He didn’t slip away, he didn’t die of old age. He was ripped away, abruptly, and I didn’t get to say goodbye. It wasn’t accidental. Someone took him.

It’s been a six month long journey of trying to say goodbye while being confronted with my own guilt.

I didn’t see him on his birthday.

I didn’t make the trip.

I didn’t drink a big cup of coffee and go see him as he lay in the hospital.

I sat on my couch and napped on and off and comforted myself with the knowledge that nothing could take down my uncle, my Randy.

I got the call and my mother said something, something about life support and I don’t remember if she was crying, but I do remember feeling awkward, like I had to get off the phone immediately or else I’d explode.

Do you want to talk?

No Mom, I need to go lay on my floor while my world flips upside down.

I love you.

I love you too.

I read a tribute to my uncle at his funeral, and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. My cousins came up with these great, hilarious, personal memories, and all I had was… we laughed about my love life and debated.

My siblings and I are older than most of our cousins, so we were there. We were there when Randy wasn’t around. We were there when tensions ran high and he stopped coming around. There are great chunks of my life that Randy wasn’t a part of.

By the time he started coming around again, I was long gone with my small town falling far behind me. It seems so silly, but not having a car, I couldn’t come visit much.

I know on some level, somewhere, that I can miss him in whatever way my heart feels. I feel this deep gaping ache for the uncle I could have known better. I wish we had another twenty, forty years. I wish I could ask him about how it was to grow up with my dad. I wish I could sit at his feet and hear more stories. 

There’s never a good time to say goodbye, but I find myself catapulted into darkness when I think of what I missed out on.

Oh, Uncle Randy. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. I love you so much. I have loved you from the times you paid me to clean your trailer (and Grandma thought you were too generous with how much you gave me). Or the times you’d get the dog to chase my cousins and me. I loved you through every debate, when you were so stubborn and wouldn’t just admit I was right! I loved you for listening to my tragic tales of woe and reminding me, “You don’t have to put up with that.”

I love you, I miss you, I don’t know how to say goodbye.

[keexperience]

the ocean is much like you

If there was ever a lesson I never wanted to learn, it was the lesson of grief.  I’ve been fortunate to be relatively untouched (before a few months ago) by the profound grief people feel when they lose someone through death.  I’ve lost people, yes, but it was mostly at a distance. Grief was an arms length from me. It made me awkward when supporting people through their own grief, never sure what to say, but I was always thankful in the back of my mind that my family had been mostly spared from calamity. We had dealt with death, yes, but these things mostly happened when I was too young to understand their gravity.

However, the warning bells sometimes went off in the back of my head: “That’s going to change.”

When tragedy hits, it’s tempting to say things like “my family was torn apart” or “my family was destroyed,” but I’m not sure that in this case that is true. Just shy of six months ago, my family was devastated and thrust into something we wouldn’t have dreamed of in our worst nightmares or wished upon our worst enemies.  We have hurt in ways that defy the use of words and have cried tears to feed the ocean. But we were not torn apart, nor were we destroyed. We were, and are, irreparably changed, and there will always be that longing and aching for the one we lost, but now we hug each other a little closer and take a little more time out of our days to say “I love you.”

The night before my mom told me that my uncle Randy was in the hospital, I was with some friends before my night shift. I was telling them funny stories about my silly, wacky family, and I told them that I’d make bets about how long it would take for Randy to ask about my disastrous love life. He always asked what new dramatic tale I had for him, and there was always something (such is my life). There was always some silly boy doing silly boy things. But at the end of my story, after I’d worked myself up about the latest injustice, he always reminded me: “You don’t have to put up with that.”

I remember the first few days after he passed away, everything had a surreal quality. When my mum first called me, I cried tears that seemed heavier, different somehow. I’d cried many tears in the few weeks before, tears over a broken relationship, but these tears were different. They were the tears of grief. I went through the next few days, mostly just kind of numb.  One minute I’d be fine, and then the next I’d be crying those heavy tears. I tried to go about my life and live, as he would have wanted me to, but no matter where I went, my heart felt like it was being twisted and contorted. There was no normal left in my world.

I’d burst into tears in the most unusual of places (I’d say inappropriate, but I’m not sure tears from real emotion are ever inappropriate). I’d try to explain through my gasping breaths that I’d lost someone and oh, it hurts so much. Most people were understanding. Friends of mine, who typically would never do such a thing, wrapped me in hugs and showed me love and care. But I’d go out in public and I’d just dissolve and cry more tears than any human should be able to produce: He’s gone, he’s gone, why is he gone?

On the day of my uncle’s funeral, I stood in front of all the people who knew him and loved him and tried to show them how much his nieces and nephews loved him and ached for him to be with us still. I started speaking and my voice shook and I wondered how I would ever finish what I had to say around the lump in my throat. I looked at my baby brother, tears pouring down his face, his poor twelve year old’s heart unable to comprehend the loss. We are all unable to comprehend the loss. I looked at my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my mom, and my dad - all people who never, ever deserved such tragedy (no one ever does).

I wasn’t sure at the time if I’d ever return to “normal,” but over the last six months, I realized I will never return to life “before” this occurred: my sense of normal has changed. My new normal is that some days, I’m just sad, the kind of sadness that has me on the edge of tears for days at a time. My new normal is that some stories, songs, conversations, or whatever else make my heart contort in that painful way and make my eyes fill with tears. My new normal is that some nights my mind is too tormented to sleep. My new normal is that I still have the sense of free-falling, that my world hasn’t quite righted itself since I got that phone call.

And that’s okay.

Many people talk about grief being like ocean waves. It rises and it falls. Of course, at first, it seemed like the waves would topple me over and I’d drown. I couldn’t catch my breath as I tumbled through my daily life. Now, there are breaks, moments of respite where I can almost catch my breath. But sure enough, another wave builds and it falls on me again. In this year of all the firsts without him, the waves will continue and they will be big and they will threaten to topple me. Even after all the firsts, there are the seconds and thirds, and the waves will never stop. But I will be able to breathe and I will be able to stand strong. I am sure of this.

Since the day my uncle passed away, I have seen suffering and grief more than ever before. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m more aware of it or if the world is just that broken. I have seen friends who I love dearly grieve their own losses. My heart aches in a way that it didn’t before. I cry because my friends are hurting and I know, because of my own experiences, that there is nothing I can do to take that pain away entirely. I can help and I can support, but I cannot take their pain away. My heart aches because I can relate, at least somewhat, to the pain of that loss in a way that I couldn’t before. All situations are different, and no two people grieve the same, but there is a sense of “I’m in this with you” even if the situations are completely different.

The only thing that got me through perhaps the darkest time in my life was the people who loved me when all I could do was cry and lay in my bed. So while I’m still sad and will miss Randy for the rest of my earthly life, there is beauty in sharing in the sufferings of others around me. Grief is awkward: we live in a society where emphasis is put on progress, on solutions, on results. I have struggled in the last months to let myself process my grief as it comes. I have struggled with feeling like I have to keep it together, shoulder this burden alone. No one should have to bear the burden alone.

It is important to me as I move ahead into my own grief to also be there and present for others who are grieving.  It is important to me to allow people the space to grieve in their own ways, even as I allow myself the grace to grieve in my way. My ways of grieving may look different from someone else’s, but all expressions of grief are valid. All suffering is true and painful. Sometimes I need to be on my own and just drive and weep. Others just want someone to sit and hold them while they cry.

It’s a lesson I never wanted to learn.

I miss you so much.

[quotecatalog]

“Caring is not something you should be ashamed of, in fact it’s something you should be proud of because no one seems like they have that enough courage to care nowadays.” —  Helen Jaberi

[photographiex]

[perpetual-grace]

Ask yourself

[clementinevonradics]

I kiss him and say: There is something in me cannot be healed. There is something in me needs breaking open.

A Bad Weekend In Three Parts, Clementine von Radics (via clementinevonradics)

[keexperience]

Dating is dumb & other truth bombs

I’m not an expert in much or probably anything. I could maybe claim expert status in procrastination or dumb catchphrases or dancing like a fool to “Shake It Off,” but what I’m really an expert in is making the same dating mistakes over and over again.

For real though, I don’t make a mistake once, learn from it, and do better next time. I make the same mistake twice, three times, eighteen times because I’m an idiot. In the many years I’ve been single (hollaaaa), I’ve learned a lot about what not to do.

I’ve spent a lot of time recently reflecting on the things I’ve done wrong and have come to some conclusions about quote-unquote modern dating. I’ve ranted about it before to people but I thought I’d share it here.

I suppose my biggest issue is how it’s become a game. We even call it the dating “game.” If you’ve ever used Tinder, then you know it markets itself as a game: it asks if you want to “keep playing.” I think this is problematic because it keeps people from being intentional and involved. There is the illusion that there are endless supplies of eligible bachelors/bachelorettes out there, so we start treating people like they are replaceable and unimportant, commodities even. We play games with each other: gotta wait three days to call/text, wait at least as long as they did to reply, keep it short, be witty, etc. etc. It’s dizzying, honestly.

Do you see how this is problematic? Just because a person isn’t sitting in front of you doesn’t mean they are any less of a person. The person you’re texting, Snapchatting, whatever, is a real person with real emotions who feels love, adoration, pain, and rage. A person who is affected by the way you treat them.

We have become so afraid of finding ourselves in an awkward situation that we favour the "fade out" instead of just being upfront and honest. If you can't deal with an awkward conversation, then you might as well move to a remote area far from human beings. We all hate it. No one likes it. No one likes the awkward "I'm not interested" conversation or the "where is this going" question. But it is far better, I think, to do someone the dignity of being honest than to disrespect them by trying to squeeze your way out of an awkward conversation. We're so afraid, in fact, of these awkward moments that it's easier also to write people off as crazy or creepy. I often get the crazy label because I find it really hard to hold back on how I'm feeling. Sorry, not sorry. We need to learn how to relate to people in different ways without simply dismissing them.

The “game” we play then revolves around power, and the sad part is that the one who cares more has less power. Obviously this is problematic. First, that relationships are about power instead of mutual caring and also that the one who cares has less power and is at the disadvantage.  Often the one who cares more is labelled as crazy for, you know, having human emotions. I think there is such an emphasis these days on being independent, strong, aloof. Caring has become synonymous with weakness (it’s a psychological fact), so it’s cooler not to care.

I think that we’ve also learned that if you’re the one who cares less, you won’t get hurt. In reality, you probably end up hurt just as much, but you’re just able to pretend you’re not because you select “keep playing.”

I always try not to care but I always end up caring. I can’t help it. I’ve sat there with my best friend, crying around a bottle of wine, and vowed to care less, to play the game better. But I’m not good at this game.  I have a big heart, and I even started to think that was my greatest weakness. How backwards is that? I hated the fact that I want to see people happy, help them, support them, make them smile. But perhaps that’s one of my greatest strengths: a heart so big I have to actively strive to restrain it.

Anyway, I had spent a long time trying to fit myself into this new way of doing things. I compromised on my own feelings and standards to try to be that calm, cool girl we all want to be (well, unless you’re a dude but you get what I mean). I realized that that wasn’t working: why was I breaking myself into pieces to smush myself into a system I despised anyway?

I realized that the common denominator in all my failed relationships (or non-relationships as I call them) was me. That sucks, but hey, if I’m the problem, I can also change. I want to be honest, vulnerable, and unashamedly me. Instead of trying to be cooler than I am or downplaying certain parts of my personality, I’ve decided to be completely and utterly myself. Do I want people to fall for some tidy, falsified version of myself? No way. I want people to be attracted to all the weird, less than glamorous, slightly awkward parts of me. I say weird things all the time, I get anxious, and I probably post way too much on social media, but hey, that’s me.

I used to think that being in a less-than-ideal situation beat being alone, but I’ve realized that’s totally whack. I’m never completely alone because I have some of the greatest friends on the planet. I have enough going for me that I shouldn’t have to convince or manipulate someone into being with me.

Now if you think I’ve magically matured past this, you’re wrong. I play into the game and stay in situations where I really need to hightail it out of there, but I’m trying.

I feel like we are all desperately craving a real connection. We are one of the most connected generations ever, with all the apps and texting and whatnot. We can connect with multiple people a day and we can say that we are happy, but what we really want is a meaningful connection. Someone we can tell our secrets to, cry with, and feel secure with.

But with that, we risk being hurt, and we don’t like that risk.

But aren't the best moments of your life the ones where you take a chance?

[oofpoetry]

Had I told the sea What I felt for you, It would have left its shores, Its shells, Its fish, And followed me.

Nizar Qabbani  (via thatrefinedwoman)

[theonion]

[wordsnquotes]

Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.

Leo Buscaglia  (via wordsnquotes)

[wnq-writers]

You’re allowed to miss the people who were bullets to you, but you’re not allowed to let them shoot you again.

allyfillebrown (via wnq-writers)

[keexperience]

Dear Kirsten of approximately a month ago,

{this is a letter to a former version of myself. ya, whatever is therapeutic, right?} I wish I could spare you what is coming. I picture you, so naive, oblivious to the struggle you are barreling toward. Every time you think it can't get worse, it will. Every time you think you won't lose one more person, you will. Every time you think your soul can't take one more shot, you'll get that one shot. You will cry a lifetime's worth of tears. You will get in your car and just drive and weep at the wheel. You will feel out of control. Confused. Angry. Empty. You will begin to feel nothing at all, only to be ripped apart by another wave of loss and grief. You will curse your own existence. You will swear to cut yourself of from everyone around you, even though you know that is against your very nature. You will try to build walls you know will never stay. You will make poor decisions in a misguided attempt to feel control over anything, anything. You will feel let down by those closest to you and supported by strangers. You will lie awake as your mind screams over and over I NEVER WANTED THIS. But you will survive this. It is not one thing you have to survive: it is multiple. It is not one loss, but many. But you will survive. Some day, sooner than you think, it'll all ache less. You'll be able to breathe. You'll be able to laugh without that edge of desperation. You'll be able to get out of bed without feeling as though you weigh a thousand pounds. You've always told yourself "I've been through worse than this." This time that may not be true. But you will survive and what's more, You'll thrive.

[keexperience]

| Middle Child Syndrome |

This has been a hard week.

It’s felt like there was nothing I could do right, that everything I did was a misstep, that no matter what direction I chose, I would let someone down.

I’ve been aggravated and sad and angry and resigned and frustrated and stressed. I am the middle child and often this feels like I am an island. I am an island, never quite sure who I’m connected to.

I don’t want to be dramatic, and I don’t want to be harsh. But I want to be heard, felt, noticed, understood.

But then I remember that this is temporary, a bump in the road of what otherwise has been a wonderful few months. I have built a good life for myself here, with people who love me, console me, support me, tease me, accept me, protect me, and appreciate me. Who hear me, feel me, notice me, and understand me.

I am both alone in a crowded room of those who should be closest to me

& surrounded by loved ones in what should be a lonely city.

[keexperience]

To the ones who get left

You're the kind of person who's always missing someone. There's always someone who left too soon with too few explanations. You're the one who gets left.

You don't do the leaving, even when you know you should. Leaving feels like quitting, so you stay patient, you stick it out.  You put up with agony, confusion, and anger in hopes that this time, THIS time, your efforts will pay off.

They don't.

You're the one who gets left, and each time you cry into a bottle of wine with your best friend, you tell yourself, "Never again.

Next time I'll be careful.

Next time I'll leave first."

But you know you won't. You know you love too big, too bright, too loud. You're never quite sure if this is your biggest weakness or greatest strength. So you know there will be another, and you know you will have to deal with the leaving, but you endure, you endure, you endure.

The people who don't get it call you nasty names: desperate, needy, crazy. The ones who know you know that your heart is just too big not to love in a terrifying way, a way that sets people on edge, makes things move at an accelerated rate.

You're not even always mad at people who leave, at least not for leaving. You might be mad for their methods: nothing makes you more angry than the ones who just fade out and leave you scrambling, clutching the shattered pieces of what you thought it was. But the good ones, the honest ones, you can't make yourself really be mad at them. Everyone has baggage to deal with, and you never want to hold someone captive. People are going to leave, you know this. Because

you are the one who gets left.

So you take your time to be sad. You lay in bed and you cry. You cling to those first moments when you wake up before you remember what happened, the moment of ignorance before you recall. But you know you'll pick yourself up and keep loving in your big way.

Because you are the one who gets left.

But you are also the one who loves.

[keexperience]

I do this every year

At the end of every year, I write a post looking back on the twelve months I just lived. I don’t know why I do it. I’m partly sentimental. I also live based on the romantic notion that my life is a story, My Story. Each year is a new chapter, denoted by year or circumstance or which boy I was into at the time.

Fun fact though: when I was a little girl, maybe ten but possibly even younger, I was delighted to find a book series at the local library that featured a female protagonist by the name of (you guessed it) Kirsten. I loved it. I devoured those books, but I always wondered in the back of my head whether it was Kirsten (emphasis on the KIRRRR, thank you) or whether it was Keeeerstenn. This is and continues to be an important distinction.

At Christmas, my family and I discussed the always cheerful idea of “the worst year of our lives.” My mum jokingly offered the year 2003, when my youngest brother was born (this prompted a laugh and exaggerated eye roll from said youngest brother). I was torn between 2011 and 2013. 2013 was brutal, and as I began the year 2014 with my friends in Red Deer of all places, I couldn’t help but think “good riddance to you, you crummy old year.”

Almost every year since starting university has appeared to be “the worst year of my life,” at least at the time. University has been a bumpy ride, but not altogether unpleasant. Just bumpy. As I look back on 2014, I get the overwhelming sense that there was just a lot that happened.

I turned 22, which (thanks to Taylor Swift) has become a significant milestone. I went to Las Vegas with my best friend and saw Britney Spears and got lost in big casinos. I got a letter from someone I never expected to ever get a letter from and man, I must have read that thing 100 times. I could almost recite the entire thing from memory (not anymore). I finished the most difficult but rewarding semester of my life. I realized I love and am pretty good at teaching sex ed.

The summer was harder. I worked two jobs and pretty much hated any day that ended in Y. I went to Montana, where I boldly claim I “almost died” (I didn’t - it was just a nosebleed). I MC’d a wedding and fell for a boy who took me to the lake.  I cut someone out of my life after too many painful years trying to make sense of our complicated non-relationship/friendship, and the Lake Boy broke my heart (niiiice). I remember sneaking into the bookshelves at work and letting hot tears drip down my face until one day I decided I wouldn’t cry over Lake Boy anymore. And I haven’t since (though I’ve tried).

I made friends who have shown me what friendship is, again. Somehow I keep unlearning that. I keep getting tangled in unpleasant friendships and pesudo-relationships along the way but this year, I have been blessed with people who have brought me back to shore, people who listen to my quirks and fears and tears and somehow love me anyway.

I have overcome stress that would have crippled others, I’m sure. Oh, there were days I wanted to give up on it all. Throw my phone in the ocean, change my name, and hop on a bus to anywhere. I became skilled at falling asleep around the knots in my stomach and the ache in my heart. I learned how to calm my breathing after being jolted awake in a moment of midnight panic/terror. I took more legitimate sick days than ever before.

But I also started cooking and “blogging” (I use the term loosely) about what I cooked. I read what felt like a billion pages about sex ed curricula and (most times) loved it. I relished looking at an article’s reference section and mentally checking off the ones I had read. I overcame heartbreak and disappointment with varying degrees of grace and decided to focus on other things (school, work, people who don't hurt my feels).

I experimented with my Voice in a new way, pushing back against ideas with which I did not agree. I started to see things in society, relationships, and what-have-you and decided it was time to speak up. I always have this little fear that someone will just completely shut me down and call me dumb, but I've also kind of stopped caring. I welcome dialogue but I am allowed to have opinions. I never want to hold back out of fear of rejection or loneliness (been there, done that. Just not worth it dude).

I learned that even when you’re angry at God, He doesn’t give up on you. Even if it’s the kind of anger that makes you avoid any church-like setting, even certain music, when saying His very name tastes like hypocrisy. The kind of anger that asks God why you were even put on this earth and whether you’re really cut out for this (whatever this is. Life? Calling? Anything at all?) Yet He continues to wrestle with you in your own personal desert, determined to fight for you and win you back. And somehow, even though you’re still angry, that knowledge is enough.

2014 definitely prepared me for a lot of what might be ahead in 2015. 2015 is gonna be a huge year: graduating, finding a career, getting a vehicle (!!!!!!!!!!!), spending hours with my closest friends, and moving on from things (people) that have hurt me. I'm blessed to have lived the year I did, even with all the hard things. I'm even more blessed to be heading into what promises to be an incredible but challenging 2015. I'm excited for what feels like the firs time in years. I'm ready.

[keexperience]

I can't believe we have to talk about this

List of things no doesn't mean:

Convince me.

I'm only playing hard to get.

I really mean yes.

Compliment me until I change my mind.

Better yet, harass me until I change my mind.

If you get mad, then I'll definitely say yes.

Tell me I'm pretty so that I'll say yes.

List of things no does mean:

No.