#daisies diary

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Katie’s Thoughts Thursday || Dreaming With Daisies&Mixtapes #3||

Dreaming With Daisies&Mixtapes #3

(Photo cred: X) 

Welcome back to our dream journal series! We’re already at part three, and we decided to officially give it a name. How about, “Dreaming with Daisies&Mixtapes”? Yeah, we’ll stick with that! Alright, so let’s get to a new theme: childhood homes.

Dream:  I’m in a living room. Everything is quiet. I open the front door and take a quick look outside, I hear people talking. I’m in my childhood home. I’m not supposed to be here. I haven’t lived here in years, but my whole family is here. We are secretly living in this house again. We are desperately trying to not get caught. 

Childhood: To dream of your childhood indicates your wish to return to a life where you had little responsibility and worries. On the other hand, some childhood anxiety has yet to be resolved in your adult life.  

Home: To see your childhood home, your hometown, or a home that you previously lived in,reflects aspects of yourself that were prominent or developed during the time you lived in that home. You may experience some unfinished feelings that are being triggered by some waking situation. 

Sneaking: To dream that you are sneaking around indicates that you are feeling ashamed of your actions or are lacking self-confidence in achieving your goals.

Hiding: To dream that you are hiding suggests that you are keeping some secret or withholding some information. You may not be facing up to a situation or dealing with some issue. 

As a child, I used to live in a two family house. Our landlord lived downstairs, and we got the upstairs floor. I lived there for a little over a decade until we were forced to move. Our landlord had sold the house to a new family, and originally, we were supposed to continue living on the top floor, but the new family changed their minds and wanted both. I was crushed. My middle school brain was convinced that this was an infinite goodbye to my friends and the rest of my family. 

A lot of my habits and the things that formed who I am started in my childhood home. My insecurities, my dreams, my fears- they were created there, and now that I’m taking risks and pushing myself out of my comfort zone, it’s like my brain is trying to remind me of where I was and who I used to be.

I seem to only dream about anxiety, but it makes sense because that is something I deal with everyday. The overall feeling in my dreams is this weird, hazy nostalgia. Even though I am my present self  (at my current age), I can still tell that I don’t belong there. For some reason, I’m never living in my current house, and I’ll see that as me being afraid to accept a new phase in my life. I need to continue reminding myself to not be afraid of moving on. When you suffer from a mental illness, the idea of progress feels overwhelming: it feels like you are eliminating and erasing yourself- even the good. I don’t have to hate the little girl that was, I don’t have to completely forget her either, but I can’t let her stop me from being who I need to be right now. Sometimes, memories need to be just that, a distant image of the past and not something that stops you from making new ones.

That is all for this dream journal post! Let us know what you think, share some of your dreams, or leave us suggestions on what we should discuss next! Who knows, maybe my dreams will stop throwing shade, and I might just have a completely silly one next time!

[daisiesandmixtapes]

DAISIES DIARY: Katie's Thoughts Thursday

“Yet you still value the things you’ve lost the most. Because the things you’ve lost are still perfect in your head. They never rusted. They never broke. They are made of the memories you once had, which only grow rosier and brighter, day by day. They are made of the dreams of how wonderful things could have been and must never suffer the indignity of actually still existing. Of being real. Of having flaws. Of breaking and deteriorating. Only the things you no longer have will always be perfect.”

- Iain Thomas

A letter to no one, 

We all do it. We romanticize things. We create a story in our minds. We change the past, but for what reason exactly? Does adding and altering the details make it easier for you to cope with your life as it is right now? Is living in a fantasy going to help you get through your today? Maybe yes, maybe no. The only definite here is that you will never be able to move on. Life may not be so great right now, but don’t waste time and energy living in a candy coated, rose tinted view of what was and never could have been. Focus on today. 

[daisiesandmixtapes]

DAISIES DIARY: KATIE'S THOUGHTS THURSDAY

I have been told that I’m the type of person you want to bring to a party. At this point, you’re probably thinking, “What a *#&%$. She thinks highly of herself!”. No, that is not my personal opinion, but this IS the exact reason why people find it so hard to believe that I have social anxiety. I have that crippling, nagging dread- the one that won’t let me go to the local grocery store, because, “ What if I bump into someone I know?”. The kind of social anxiety that made me miss out on college, the type of paralyzing fear that kept me locked up in my house for months- may have even been a year

One day, I will get into the specifics of my year as a hermit- yes, humor can heal wounds, but for now I want to focus on coming to the realization that my outgoing personality is most likely a defense mechanism. I am the bubbliest, friendliest, “extrovert” in the room because, in a weird way, I have to be. It makes me feel like I have control. I feel as if I might actually have a say in whether my anxiety is triggered or not, and that’s how I’ve always coped with it. So, before, this turns into an early draft of “The highs and the lows of Katie’s mental status”, I’ll leave you with this. What if the loudest, friendliest person you know actually wished they could crawl into a ball and hide in the corner? Did you ever notice? Could you ever tell?

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Daisies Diary: Katie's Late Night Thoughts Thursday

A reminder to myself:

You are successful.

There. Did that seem weird? It took me right up until this very moment to realize, ‘Hey! I AM succesful!“ I’m running an online magazine with my best friend! That is something I’ve always wanted to do and here I am accomplishing that very thing.

Today, I want to redefine my definition of success. I want to put 100% effort into the things I care about. Forget what other people think. Do not let them discourage you. All you need to do in life, all you need to be, is yourself.

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Daisies Diary: Katie's Thoughts Thursday💭

I’ve watched this video several times. Every few months or so, I revisit it as if I’ve never seen it before. I hear the message and I think, “Okay, I should try doing that then”. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ve actually tried to follow through on that.

Vulnerability. It is scary. I’ve done such a good job over the years at numbing myself because I don’t want to take that risk, I don’t want to go whole- heartedly towards something that might leave me in tears later, but what never really clicked for me, until I saw this video, was that by not allowing myself the chance to possibly go through something upsetting, I wasn’t allowing myself to go through something that could lead to excitement and happiness. I thought I could control my life by not feeling anything at all! Trust me when I say that it hasn’t really done anything positive for me.

I want so desperately to not have to calculate my every move and just allow myself the courage to accept myself for who I am. It sounds almost too easy, “Just love yourself. Accept yourself, flaws and all”. I know that resolutions are usually saved for the new year, but I’m going to make one now. I want to allow myself to take risks. Yeah, Katie, go for something without trying to determine all the possible outcomes. Go for something that scares you. Don’t feel ashamed if it doesn’t turn out the way you had hoped. Don’t feel embarrassed, don’t be timid. This is your freakin’ life, no one is going to live it for you! Here’s a reminder from me to….well, me, but also a reminder to you: Allow yourself to be vulnerable, maybe that’s all we need to have a chance at true happiness.

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Daisies Diary: Katie’s Thoughts Thursday 💭✏

Coming to terms with my childhood…

“I am a princess. All girls are! Even if they live in tiny old attics, even if they dress in rags, even if they aren’t pretty, or smart, or young, they’re still princesses - all of us! Didn’t your father ever tell you that? Didn’t he?!”

This was one of my favorite movies from my childhood. So, it shouldn’t have been that much of a suprise to me when I rewatched it a few days ago and immediately started crying. As with most things in my life, I decided to dissect this moment. 

I guess I’m going to start this post with a cliché. You ready? Okay, here it is. I had a pretty difficult childhood.  I don’t live under this delusion that there wasn’t a single moment of happiness, but I do know that they were greatly overshadowed by my father- more specifically, the way he treated me.

I have always felt uncomfortable talking about my nonexistent relationship with my father because I didn’t want people to asume that he was this evil person, but I wasn’t exactly happy with people buying into the persona that he created of being social,funny, and easygoing. My father was very good at manipulating what people thought of him. He only let his anger out when other people weren’t looking, but our closest family members knew the truth. He had anger problems and he drank too much.

As a child, I wanted so desperately to feel loved by him, but he terrified me. He scared me. All of his mood swings, all of the constant fighting between him and my mother, how he would get so angry that his eyes would turn red and how he would yell until the veins popped from his neck and his arms…All I ever got from him was negativity. My fondest memories don’t involve him. He never taught me how to ride a bike, he never showed up to parent/teacher night, he never helped me with my homework or the science projects I decided to start at the last minute, he never tried to help me practice any of the million sports I played; he only wanted to drink- to escape his reality that I was unfortunately a part of.

When my mom kicked my father out of the house for what I believe was the third time, I was actually happy. Those six months were the happiest I had been in a long time. I didn’t have to hear someone commenting on my weight 24/7, I wasn’t called rude, despicable names, I didn’t have to hear glass breaking and yelling every day (and I mean everyday), I didn’t have to stay up at night worrying that my father would be drunk and beaten on the street, I didn’t have to feel anxious about the situations I was left in. I almost completely stopped doing the rituals that I was convinced kept me safe. I thought I was finally going to have a chance at being and feeling normal.

Back to the video clip….I guess, in a very long winded way, what I’m trying to say is that I envied the love Sarah had for her father. She absolutely adored him, and he equally adored her. I never felt that in my own life. Did I just simply want my dad to call me a princess? No. In my mind I already was (as well as Peter Pan’s future companion). I just wanted to feel loved. I wanted to think that he actually cared about me, not only as his daughter but as a person. 

Now, as an adult, he has become somewhat bearable. Sometimes I wonder if I have just become numb to his ways. My mom and I have developed a pretty dark sense of humor, and I assume it’s because of all that we’ve been through. We jokingly refer to my father as “the dictator”. Whenever he comes home, we remind each other to “stop smiling”, “You know how he hates laughter!”. Pretty fucked up, but that’s just the way it is. Am I doomed to forever be a girl with “Daddy issues”? I don’t know, but maybe it’s a good thing that I’m finally willing to talk about these things- to apparently share them with the whole freakin’ Internet. Maybe one day I’ll even be able to show this very post to my father and have that talk that we so desperately need to have. Maybe, just maybe..

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Daisies Diary: Katie’s Thoughts Thursday 💭✏

“And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees, just as things grow in fast movies, I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.”   - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby                             -------------------------------------------------

I hate the summer. There, I said it. It’s more than the humidity, the dreaded bathing suit shopping, and everything else that I’m going to decide to keep to myself. For some reason, there’s this overwhelming feeling of needing to start over ( I guess we take our cue from nature). That pressure to create a “summer to remember”....

Does anyone else feel this way?? 

[daisiesandmixtapes]

Daisies Diary: Katie's Thoughts Thursday ✍✍✍

We all have this idea of the way our lives should go. We can't help it. We build up these expectations about who we'll be, who we'll date, where we'll work. Sometimes, it feels like there are people out there that get everything their heart desires and more. It's hard not to feel discouraged when you're constantly comparing your level of "success" and happiness to someone else's.

Thanks to the lovely world of technology, it is like we are constantly surrounded by what other people are doing. Against your own will, (it seems), you now know who's expecting, who's getting married, who got accepted into what school, or who is having a really shitty day and decided Facebook was the perfect outlet for it. What are we to do? I honestly don't know (hope you weren't expecting a detailed plan). I'm still trying to figure it out myself. I, too, have seen someone's status update and just felt completely inadequate and as if I am just wasting my life away, but I've also noticed that I'm not necessarily jealous of them accomplishing something that was my goal. It's more of the fact that they're actually going for what they want, and I seem to be in this perpetual limbo of : What do I want to do with my life? What will make me happy?

I think that once you've been through hell and back, your idea of "happiness" can be muddled. Maybe we think that someone who is truly happy has everything they want, is jumping up and down from excitement, or can't stop smiling from the perfection of their world. In reality, how many people have we seen really act like this? Most likely zero. We would probably jump to the conclusion that this person was nuts. Maybe being happy is just appreciating what you do have. I don't think we have to lower our expectations or forget about our dreams, but we need to remember not to give ourselves a deadline. Must do this by 23, must be married with kids and have a stable job by thirty- good luck with that because life is notorious for screwing things up!

Can't believe I'm going to quote Troy Dyer here, but "All you have to be by the time you're 23 is yourself". So maybe you're a dreamer, maybe you're a pessimist, maybe you're sort of weird ( oh hey, let's be friends). Maybe the first step to happiness is just knowing who you are. That is the one success we should be striving for: accepting ourselves, accepting what our reality is at the moment, but knowing that we can change it. We are capable of bettering ourselves just as good as we are at putting ourselves down. Soooo, I guess I'll stop my rambling now because I'm not even sure where I was heading with this. I'll say goodbye, and I wish you all luck on your journey in life. I'm still trying to figure mine out, but I'll keep ya posted on any progress.