mb

2012-02-14T20:37:00.000-08:00

best friend since the eighth grade.

person that i love the most.

"if i know what love is, it is because of you." herman hesse

i pray that everyone gets to experience a love this deep and a friendship this authentic one day.

2012-02-14T19:36:00.002-08:00

i never did anything that could have made me deserve how perfect my friends are.

i wish i had the words.

2012-02-13T20:56:00.000-08:00

"and in that perfect moment, i nearly ruined it, by saying i love you, and nearly meaning it, but you know i would never waste those words."

"but then she tried to kiss me and i said don't bother, you know we don't really love one another, and there's no use burning out this flame."

noah and the whale

izze sparkling clementine

2012-02-12T10:45:00.000-08:00

The fact that Mrs. Baggett wrote in a comment on my grade for the group presentation in class last week that said "I put Mary Beth at the end so she wouldn't steal the show, but she didn't give me the depth I expected" bothers me more than it should, and also frustrates me that she gave me an 88 when it was a very short passage we were analyzing and I was last of a group of five, and I led the entire group discussion and my group basically regurgitated all of the things I had said. This is why I stopped caring about my grades for so long, because when I care I care too much, especially about English, and every single grade I take personally.

In reality, however, I haven't been very deep lately, and I can feel that my mind has been glazed over for a bit of time, especially since I haven't hardly read at all and normally I am constantly reading. And thinking about things that are more than the present moment. This is a problem that I have that every once in a while I go through a duration of time where the most important thing to me is trying to be skinny and pretty and I find myself online shopping instead of reading poetry and as I am coming out of it I begin again as myself and realize that no pretty dress will ever be as infinitely enjoyable as a poem that I connect with or an interesting essay. Some days I choose to study before school and some days I choose to fix my hair and I think when I can find the balance between those two and all they represent I will be much a much happier person.

Joseph and I got in an argumentative discussion the other day in Physics that lasted the entire class period. I would preface this by saying that I absolutely hate debating. I can reason extremely well but not on the spot and not in front of other people; I get too flustered when that happens and am altogether entirely too emotional. I actually didn't do too badly this time- I am completely outmatched with Joseph, that is for sure, he is an excellent debater and, God bless him, has an excellent skill of turning what you say around in and rephrasing your ideas in a negative light in order to make his argument appear better, which is actually probably the essence of debating and I admire him for on some level, no matter how exasperated it makes me.

This all started because Joseph said that he thought people should only be allowed to reproduce if they passed an intelligence test.. which angered me from the starting gun. The whole concept that intelligence is the superseding positive trait is among the thoughts and attitudes in the entire world that I most disagree with. I have seen the world of intelligent people, I am an intelligent person, and the pride and selfishness that I believe usually accompanies a high level of intelligence would be a horrible ingredient for the making of the world. This is not to say that all intelligent people lack other positive character traits, because I know intelligent people who are honest and kind and compassionate, just as I know many intelligent people who are insufferable. I also know people who are of average intelligence who are honorable and wise and a great deal of other positive adjectives that I think are important and admirable independent of their coexistence with intelligence.

Joseph's entire argument was that he didn't want his tax dollars supporting people who were unintelligent and producing more children than they could support who would "never contribute anything to society" which is another statement that angers me that I honestly can't even write about right now because that is another two or three blog posts in itself. My counter-argument was that instead of forcibly neutering people (which I will get to in a minute) why would it not make more sense to just have a society where the government didn't have welfare for the poor, which I, in theory, agree with, so that the people who want to help others, like me, could choose to give their money to help others, and the people who don't, like Joseph, wouldn't have to spiel out ideas that are unethical and slightly reminiscent of Nazi Germany. My argument was that if people didn't know they would be supported by the government they would stop producing so many children, and then Joseph said that if unintelligent people weren't able to reproduce then they wouldn't be producing that many children to begin with, so my plan was abortion and his was a condom, which was not an entirely accurate analogy but did serve to get all the males in the class excited, especially the ones who didn't have any sincere thoughts but got extremely excited when the thing that occupies most of the free space in their brains and time (i.e. sex) was brought into the discussion. Apparently in my scenario people would be "dying in the streets" which is an extreme exaggeration, and also something that I would in fact prefer to the option of human beings forcibly having a biological right taken away from them.

So we arrive at the concept of forcibly neutering unintelligent people. I use neuter because I do not know a better word for it, and the word "castrate" which we initially were using was abandoned because Joseph still wants the unintelligents to be able to have sex. This was my second largest issue with this entire idea, because there is absolutely no way that taking away people's right to reproduce is ethically sound, or even close to ethically sound. How on earth is it possible that any human or human institution has the right to tell another human that for lack of meeting some standardized criteria their body is going to be physically altered and a basic function of human existence taken away? If you believe in God, that seems to me in direct defiance of Him; and if you do not believe in God it defies nature even more strongly. I conceded that there was a slight possibility that something like a sliding tax scale that negotiated with your intelligence level and offspring amounts could be instated- though that of course would never be practicable in reality, and still is socially reprehensible, it does not seem to me AS ethically wrong because some degree of choice is still left- however I would never support such a thing. My biggest qualm was that when I attacked the ethical soundness of is argument Joseph made the statement "let's step outside of ethics for a minute"- and that was the moment when I knew there was no way this argument would ever be culminated because that statement embodied such a strong difference in our viewpoints that they could never be reconciled, regardless of argumentative skills and good analogies. I guess I'll wrap this up by saying that I love Joseph and he is one of my best friends, but Lord have MERCY we disagree on so many points.

I have to study my AP psych now because by God I am going to get a 5 on that exam.

why have i never read G.K. Chesterton before now

2012-02-12T09:54:00.000-08:00

"It is not merely true that a creed unites men. Nay, a difference of creed unites men--so long as it is a clear difference. A boundary unites. Many a magnanimous Moslem and chivalrous Crusader must have been nearer to each other, because they were both dogmatists, than any two homeless agnostics in a pew of Mr. Campbell's chapel. "I say God is One," and "I say God is One but also Three," that is the beginning of a good quarrelsome, manly friendship."

"Idealism only means that we should consider a poker in reference to poking before we discuss its suitability for wife-beating.."

"There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning."

"If your aeroplane has a slight indisposition, a handy man may mend it. But, if it is seriously ill, it is all the more likely that some absent-minded old professor with wild white hair will have to be dragged out of a college or laboratory to analyze the evil. The more complicated the smash, the whiter-haired and more absent-minded will be the theorist who is needed to deal with it; and in some extreme cases, no one but the man (probably insane) who invented your flying-ship could possibly say what was the matter with it."

"A man who thinks much about success must be the drowsiest sentimentalist; for he must be always looking back. If he only likes victory he must always come late for the battle. For the man of action there is nothing but idealism."

"I am quite ready to respect another man's faith; but it is too much to ask that I should respect his doubt, his worldly hesitations and fictions, his political bargain and make-believe."

"We often read nowadays of the valor or audacity with which some rebel attacks a hoary tyranny or an antiquated superstition. There is not really any courage at all in attacking hoary or antiquated things, any more than in offering to fight one's grandmother. The really courageous man is he who defies tyrannies young as the morning and superstitions fresh as the first flowers. The only true free-thinker is he whose intellect is as much free from the future as from the past. He cares as little for what will be as for what has been; he cares only for what ought to be."

"My point is that the world did not tire of the church's ideal, but of its reality... Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. Certainly, if the church failed it was largely through the churchmen."

"Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult; and left untried."

2012-02-11T21:54:00.001-08:00

i am yearning and i don't know what for.

God

2012-02-09T18:46:00.001-08:00

Please let it be me. I'm begging.

"i wanna know, can you tell me plain and true, how high will you fly, without me there to be your sky?"

2012-02-08T19:48:00.001-08:00

"imagine a world where kisses mean something."

i guess i'm bummed because i want an authentic and meaningful friendship but i find it so hard to act like i really am around people. and i feel that i come across as so shallow and silly because i am too scared to be weird and say the things i actually think.

2012-02-07T21:30:00.001-08:00

"goodnight."
"no."
"yes. look. your hair was long when we first met. i loved you first. this discussion is over."

blake obviously knows that quoting my sleeping song to me is an effective way to get me to go to bed.

p.s. they're just old light.

2012-02-07T15:25:00.000-08:00

"he'd walk in and be like, hey, you're pretty. and i'd be like, hey, you're hot. and he'd be like, wanna go to prom with me? and i'd say, i don't know you, but SURE! that's how it would go." - lynn nevels

2012-02-06T21:02:00.000-08:00

i genuinely wonder sometimes if my extremely strong maternal instincts are linked to my wide hips. and then i think it's cool that i was named after the Virgin Mary and she was the mother of all mothers.

i have been thinking a great deal lately, and i have decided that the thing that matters most to me in life is authenticity. i really honestly cannot stand people who seem disingenuous. and i can't stand people who put on a show about how great of people they are and who have that reputation of being "the leader" because i think so often so many great leaders and great people are overlooked because they are not the stereotypical "Jesus guy" or "good girl". which really isn't a reason for me to not stand the person, i guess, but rather just the whole attitude. i love saints but i also love reformed sinners, you know? i guess i am ready for college because people's reputations get a fresh start. i know so many people who have remnants of their bad reputations from earlier on in high school who really are incredible people and who have changed for the better and it frustrates me that no one seems to notice or applaud them.

racism really bothers me a lot.. especially towards hispanics. i think the language barrier thing is so much more of an issue than we realize, and probably part of the reason i am not as racist towards hispanics as a lot of contemporaries is that i can speak and understand spanish fairly well (though i think i failed my test this morning). for example. i have been talking to a mexican boy a lot lately. he is a really, really incredibly nice and good hearted guy. he has a much cleaner life record than most white boys i know. but i know that most people will freak out if they see us together in public. and they will assume bad things. i already dealt with that with my last boyfriend and he was only half hispanic and adopted and raised in a white family. and this frustrates me because i have talked to some of the guys on the soccer team lately that i met through johan and they are just really NICE guys. like genuinely nice. and shy around girls which is funny. put them up against most of the "good guys" from my grade that everyone knows, and they would really, honestly, shine. they are such kind people. so this is me being frustrated with the world, i guess.

the new ingrid is so calming and i love it.

"we hate the rain when it fills up our shoes, but how we love when it washes our cars. we love to love when it fills up the room, but when it leaves, oh we're cursing the stars."

i love my best friend. i feel sad for other people who don't get to have a friendship this perfect.

talamuk

2012-02-05T19:41:00.000-08:00

today at church the pastor mentioned a concept that i have thought about some recently but haven't been able to accurately sum up until i heard him say it- that instead of trying to do what is "right" instead of what is "wrong" that it is more important to do what is WISE. that really is an important concept because wisdom leaves less gray area than does rules.

i like redemption. it's pretty incredible when you think about it.

life is big but God is bigger.

2012-02-04T22:01:00.001-08:00

i hate my big face and one day i would like to do something without being criticized.

2012-02-02T20:45:00.000-08:00

i loved you first, i loved you first
beneath the stars came falling on our heads
but they're just old light.

like all the other tumbling mud balls

2012-02-02T20:19:00.000-08:00

"Some people could look at a mud-puddle and see an ocean with ships. But Nanny belonged to that other kind that loved to deal in scraps. Here Nanny had taken the biggest thing God ever made, the horizon- for no matter how far a person can go the horizon is still way beyond you- and pinched it into such of a little bit of a thing that she could tie it about her grandmother's neck tight enough to choke her. She hated the old woman who had twisted her so in the name of love. Most humans didn't love one another nohow, and this mislove was so strong that even common blood couldn't overcome it all the time. She had found a jewel down inside herself and she had wanted to walk where people could see her and gleam it around. But she had been set in the marketplace to sell. Been set for a still-bait. When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into a millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine." Zora Neale Hurston (Their Eyes Were Watching God)

2012-01-31T21:28:00.001-08:00

I have missed my best friend. This is a good week.

2012-01-29T19:30:00.000-08:00

gracias a la senoras turner y wiggins por los anos de español porque ahora yo puedo "SPIT GAME" en español y me encanto hombres latinos ;)

i hate calculus

2012-01-27T20:35:00.000-08:00

i spend a lot of time wishing that the first 15 years of my life hadn't been spent with my entire self worth being derived from how smart i am and with me as the wonder child who could read at age three and got a thirty on her ACT in the seventh grade because then maybe not understanding calculus wouldn't be such a huge blow to my confidence. i've never been not able to do anything before, ever. there have been things i haven't achieved because i haven't tried enough, that's for sure, but i have never EVER encountered anything that i couldn't do if i actually tried. when coach white had to do the counselor's part of the common app, there was a question that asked for one word to describe each student, and my word was tenacious. i usually am tenacious. if i want something i get it. i make it happen. but calculus is different. i hit the proverbial wall and THE WALL KEEPS HITTING ME and i can actually hardly think about calculus without crying. i cry after every test. and i try so hard to control it. i sit there and i talk to myself and try to calm myself down and remember that it is NOT the end of the world, it's just a math test, and i am good for other things, but it all wells up and i lose it and before i know it i am literally doubting every single part of my existence and hating myself because i am not excellent at anything at all, and i start to feel like i am a pointless person because i am not the smartest or the prettiest or the nicest. like that time aaron said olivia was the smart one and lynn was the nice one and christina was the hot one and i was.. the bitch. but i'm not even the best bitch! i am a failure at being a failure. it's disheartening. like i just want one thing to make me special besides my astonishing mediocrity in all facets of life. i am a really good hula hooper. here is the humor masking my inner turmoil. but really i am alright. i just want to be out of calculus. and i only have to take it one more time and i am good forever and i can grow up and be what i was destined to be, a third place trophy wife. i can make a mean peanut butter sandwich too and you best bet my children will be getting notes in their lunch boxes, and until they're about 11 they will think i'm the coolest person in the world so that will be nice, i can just keep churning them out and i will have a supply of humans that appreciate me. i've also recently experienced liking a boy who doesn't like me at all or even want to talk to me anymore, which is kinda lame and something i haven't experienced ever, because every other guy i have been interested in has been at least slightly interested in me, so in my mind he is now calculus, and listed under failed ventures of my life, but i don't cry over him, cause that's just silly.
today during the pledge me and lynn cried because we were talking about how sad we're going to be when we graduate. of all the people i will be leaving behind, she is the one person i will miss the most. she's been my best friend since the sixth grade. i remember meeting her at all city chorus in the fifth grade because we sat next to each other and i went home and told my mom i met a girl i could be friends with in middle school and i wasn't as worried anymore, and through years of cross country and band trips and football games and really hard classes, sitting with each other EVERY DAY at lunch since the seventh grade, she has become one of the people i love the most in the world, up there in the highest tier right below Jesus. i feel blessed to know her because as everyone knows she is a literal saint. and more importantly i have seen her in her not saintly moments (there have only been like, three) and she has seen me in mine, and we always forgive each other (she forgives me a lot more than i have to forgive her) and even if we don't hang out all the time or we get busy or we have new friends too we don't ever grow apart. God I love her. southern miss is a little bit too far from auburn.
i am however excited that blake is at auburn. because blake is half of my soul kinda. and the person who knows me best and still loves me which says a lot because especially on days like today it's hard to remember that there are good things in me. i miss blake being here because when i am upset about math or life he is the person who says "calm. happy." and when i need someone to go with me to walmart blake goes (after complaining a bit) and when i have twenty minutes of spare time while i'm out his house is the one i drive to because i like existing simultaneously with him. i can't wait to be in auburn next week. especially cause my friends will be with me. and they are funny as CRAP. i wish i could tell you how funny they are. you are missing out.

this has been an entirely too depressing blog post. i'll be okay next week. with my much needed vacation from school. here's my last complaint. i want to be smaller.

i like this song a lot lately. why i don't know. i love it at 2:10 though.

sooner than later

i did have a good run today. if it wasn't for the trails at chula vista my whole life would be a lot more insane because there are few things more calming than leaving my phone in the car and going out on the trails. in the wide open spaces. i like open space. and quiet. and being alone. and running through the mud and being too tired to care about everything else. it's really beautiful out there. it feels like God is running with you. it's good for me when i get into my thoreau moods.. which i get into a lot more often lately.

can i talk about how nice people are? the other day i went to buy a brownie at lunch and only took a quarter and they were fifty cents and i had no money on my account.. so i walked over to wesley's lunch table to get a quarter from him, and as i walked back up to the register, jimmy, who i haven't talked to hardly since sophomore year when he was last in my english class, walked up to me and handed me the brownie he had bought for me. and i just thought that was incredibly good hearted of him, i know it's just a brownie, but that simple act made my day so much better. it's nice to be reminded of how great people can be. we tend to focus on the bad a lot, or at least i do. and today, when i went into coach white's office crying after my calculus test because i seriously had a BREAKDOWN, sophie (valedictorian sophie) was in there, and when i got home from the basketball game tonight she had messaged me that she hoped i was having a better day and she said "I know we're very different, but i think only the best of you and I have total faith in your abilities" and then told me her phone number and email in case i ever needed her help with anything. people are sweet. i like em.

2012-01-25T14:21:00.001-08:00

Told my boss I didn't want to go to prom cause I didn't have a date. She replied "go your ass to prom." Love.

roy from the IT crowd is seriously my biggest tv crush ever besides OF COURSE jim from the office and logan from gilmore girls. look at this man. tall. awkward. funny. accent. geeky. this is what dreams are made of.

people, what a bunch of bastards

sean just texted me and told me that i looked nice today and when i said thank you he said "i'm trying the positive reinforcement technique" hahahaha i love my friends. even sean.

2012-01-25T13:37:00.000-08:00

seeing all of these high school memories tweets is making me so sad and happy at the same time... i miss all the older people. come back to me. like ketan tweeting about the time me and him and blake all had ISS hahahaha and after them yelling at us not to talk at all in the hall during the bathroom break, ketan standing next to me whispering "i think we're bad IB students"... and all of tenth grade year all i think i ever did was play the tent game and tetris and talk to justine and blake in current world affairs. and me and blake had library aid together seventh block and every single day mrs. carpenter would walk in, mutter something to herself, spin around, and leave, and we'd laugh. and telling bryan, tanner, and ak that they were all my favorite but not to tell the others. i miss working out with blake and bryan and wesley and eating all of the vialls food and making wesley mad every sunday by eating a bigger part of the digorno pizza than he got. i want my friends back.. come home from college. i miss you. COME HOME. especially blake. i want my best friend back.

p.s.

"i'm all about our love, not all the razzle dazzle for the sake of razzling." -best friend

2012-01-24T15:00:00.001-08:00

90% of Bon Iver songs make me anxious.

did not our hearts burn within us

2012-01-23T21:29:00.001-08:00

Luke 24:4 is when they are looking for Jesus and he isn't in the tomb because he has been resurrected and it says "why do you seek the living among the dead?" That's a pretty powerful question if you think about it. Or maybe only to me.

You should read Acts 6:8 - 7:60 if you ever need your life put into perspective. Stephen GAZED INTO HEAVEN AND SAW THE GLORY OF GOD. I feel like I take the existence of God and definitely his glory for granted. A lot.

God is big. We are small. I am very small. God keeps reminding me. I think he has a plan.

2012-01-23T20:50:00.000-08:00

the secret to happiness is really, really low expectations, coupled with good work outs and special k.

p.s. a friend of mine who will not be named is SERIOUSLY sending me screen shots of her conversations with the guy she likes, so i can analyze them, and see if he is interested in her. as if i don't get enough of that already. hahahaha. i love you, you little crazy.

the kids say hello

2012-01-23T16:38:00.001-08:00

darling please come home, i've cleaned out the fridge.

I LOVE THE HEAD AND THE HEART AND I DONT KNOW WHY I LOVE THEM THIS MUCH.

What up from the x ray room

2012-01-23T11:57:00.001-08:00

As I sit here flooding social media with my trivial thoughts due to my lack of contact with an actual human right now, I am reminded of one of my strongest convictions that one of the things people need most is someone to listen to their unimportant thoughts. If I had a boyfriend that was forced to listen to my ruminations on life, then I wouldn't tweet so much. But I can't keep thoughts to myself. So the rest of you pay the price.
You can tell being single is weird for me because I talk about it so often. I can't describe to you how used to being a girlfriend I am and how weird it is to not have someone to automatically belong with. But I like it. It's fun being me. I'm growing up.
Back to x rays. I am amazed by them and I know that is kinda ridiculous but I am often amazed by simple things. Like cars. Next time you're in the car realize that you're in a big piece of metal that is propelling itself. And an x ray takes a picture of the inside of your body. For the love of all that is holy why do we not see how incredible these things are on a more regular basis. Life is so cool. Pandas exist, how cool is that. Somewhere in the world right now there is a panda and it exists, not as a cartoon or picture but as an actual real thing. Animals are cool and we never think about them. Why this blows my mind I don't know. The world blows my mind. I'm writing this in a language that has evolved for thousands of years. Language isn't real. But it is. Money has no absolute value but is a representation of an idea. Everything is incredible when you think about it.

2012-01-22T20:30:00.001-08:00

"Oh God, I love my vices, but they've taken me to places that I never thought I'd go, and I'm ready to be home." The Head and the Heart

2012-01-20T20:44:00.001-08:00

2012-01-20T19:38:00.001-08:00

i feel like the fact that i just ate hot wings by myself and drank straight out of a two liter coke bottle makes me more single than i ever have been.

still funny.

the IT crowd is so funny.

"i hate to generalize you know that, BUT ALL WOMEN JUST WANT BASTARDS!"

watch this > http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOwTF_i6zOc

what i didn't say

2012-01-20T14:31:00.000-08:00

"no really, it was my pleasure that my unreturned interest in you gave you positive attention until other girls started paying attention to you. i'm happy for ya."

not as bitter as i sound, i promise. bitter was just a short layover on the trip and now we have arrived at the humor of the situation.

2012-01-19T18:59:00.000-08:00

frustration.

winter song

i love a man with dark hair and a beard.

2012-01-19T15:47:00.001-08:00

I have big hips and I don't like em.

i'd like to clarify that i'm not in love i just like love songs when it's cold outside

2012-01-18T20:52:00.000-08:00

if i forget who i am would you please remind me

you left a mark, and i wear it proudly on my chest. above my heart. to remind me that i feel the best when i'm with you.

wrapped in the grace to make a good man come apart

if it's a friend you need, let it be me

after all it was a great big world, with lots of places to run to

2012-01-18T17:54:00.001-08:00

I'm a great friend. +#;%+%+;3+%+$;+$

i wish i could find someone who liked this as much as i do.

2012-01-18T14:45:00.001-08:00

I Was Trying to Describe You to Someone

By Richard Brautigan

I was trying to describe you to someone a few days ago. You don't look like any girl I've ever seen before.

I couldn't say "Well she looks just like Jane Fonda, except that she's got red hair, and her mouth is different and of course, she's not a movie star..."

I couldn't say that because you dont look like Jane Fonda at all.

I finally ended up describing you as a movie I saw when I was a child in Tacoma Washington. I guess I saw it in 1941 or 42, somewhere in there. I think I was seven, or eight, or six.

It was a movie about rural electrification, a perfect 1930's New Deal morality kind of movie to show kids. The movie was about farmers living in the country without electricity. They had to use lanterns to see by at night, for sewing and reading, and they didn't have any appliances like toasters or washing machines, and they couldn't listen to the radio. They built a dam with big electric generators and they put poles across the countryside and strung wire over fields and pastures.

There was an incredible heroic dimension that came from the simple putting up of poles for the wires to travel along. They looked ancient and modern at the same time.

Then the movie showed electricity like a young Greek god, coming to the farmer to take away forever the dark ways of his life. Suddenly, religiously, with the throwing of a switch, the farmer had electric lights to see by when he milked his cows in the early black winter mornings. The farmer's family got to listen to the radio and have a toaster and lots of bright lights to sew dresses and read the newspaper by.

It was really a fantastic movie and excited me like listening to the Star Spangled Banner, or seeing photographs of President Roosevelt, or hearing him on the radio "... the President of the United States... "

I wanted electricity to go everywhere in the world. I wanted all the farmers in the world to be able to listen to President Roosevelt on the radio....

And that's how you look to me.

cause they both end in trouble and start with a grin

2012-01-16T20:56:00.000-08:00

back again. second time in a day. i have so much i want to write down because i don't have anyone to talk to about these things and they're overflowing and i need to write my research paper outline but a) i can't do that until i clear my head and b) i don't know what my research paper is exactly about yet so here i am.

first off i would like to list the things that make life good today: b complex vitamins, coral lipstick, and showers. and peanut butter sandwiches. these are the four things i am grateful for today.

you know what frustrates the hell out of me? a lot of things. but especially people. which reminds me of our saying at the store.. "oh people, and their people-y things." anyways. i can't stand when people think things about me that aren't true. but i realized tonight that i shouldn't care about that because i can't let every single person's idea of me define me, and i think in that moment i grew up a little bit. so this feels kinda good. another person's perception can never change the truth.

read this. the missing piece meets the big o

i hate when you see people post on facebook "the only one who can judge me is God himself". cause that's true. but God's judgement is no joke. no happy alternative to the judgement of the world. God's judgment being the only judgement that matters is logically more awesome and fearsome BECAUSE IT MATTERS.

mrs. stroh once told us "you are the treasure. the treasure doesn't seek itself."

this is the millionth and one-th time i've said this but i hate when people say they don't like "close minded people" because in essence that is being close minded to people who you judge as close minded. i just in general hate the whole attitude of "my logic applies but only when i apply it my way."

on my third calculus problem tonight i cried. i have a theory that no one has ever cried for a single reason. for example i know that what triggered my crying was how hard the calculus problem was, but deeper than that was the extreme feeling of inadequacy math gives me, and also because i'm emotionally worn out because my grandmother is dying and even though i wasn't very close to her, seeing what it's doing to my mom is making my problem of over empathy kick in. and because i am so frustrated with myself and my seeming inability to be myself with a person who would probably like me if i could ever be myself. so i cried. and then i stopped crying and did more math homework than i've done in months, so i'm kinda proud of myself.

i've done a lot of evaluating lately of who the people are in my life that i am actually seriously close to, and there are really very few. i feel like a lot of people are closer to me than i am to them. and i'm okay with that. but i am overwhelmingly grateful for the handful that i do have. that i can actually TALK to. i honestly believe that i am surrounded by the most beautiful and kind people in the world. i can't imagine someone having better friends than i do. they're incredible people.

i hugged blake today and cried and asked him not to die because he is my best friend in the entire world and the person who encourages me to be better and even though he frustrates the HELL out of me sometimes, i love him more than any other human in this world.

i feel like i'm waiting for my life to be more exciting but i really know that life probably never gets exciting like you think it will be, because your view of the future is like your view of the past and generally skips over the mundane task and details of life and puts it in a kind of polaroid view backed by indie movie music where you are always in cute outfits. MAYBE that's just me.

i want to watch the princess diaries. and go to the beach. and go to new orleans. i want a lot right now. mainly to get away and do something EXCITING. and different. i'm tired of calculus homework and cheering basketball games. i'm tired of trying to ACHIEVE things. i don't care right now about achieving.

i think it would be really, really cool to live in a teeny tiny house. this is on my list of weird dreams.

if you ever keep track of how much you lie to yourself in a week you'll be amazed.

you'd also be amazed if i told you how much i stress about the size of my face. i have a huge face. but it's ridiculous and obsessive how much it bothers me. i will never be skinny or slender so i'm not sure why i haven't let it go yet. i'll never be AMAZINGLY pretty and that's really okay but i think i am still subconsciously hoping that i'm gonna be a super late bloomer or something and turn into a total babe instead of a normal looking girl with a decent personality. maybe i'll be a really good lookin sixty year old. that would be kinda cool. pointless, granted, but kinda cool. they like old women in france i think.

"so kiss me in the back room where the music plays, i know that it's not over."

i miss the summer, a lot. i want to lay on the trampoline. and look at the stars. and ride bikes. that was quite possibly the happiest i've ever been in my life. actually, definitely. it's funny the things you miss about people. and about times in your life. and the things that make you remember it, like the kings of leon cd. and someone wise told me recently not to live in the past because i should be getting ready for the future, or something like that, and they were right, but i kinda like the past, i was happy there, and the future isn't here yet.

this song makes me feel nostalgic.

in the way that my antonia does. my antonia affected me in the weirdest way any book ever has affected me. it's such an incredible book. willa cather is incredible.

this song does too. it also weirdly associated with my antonia because i heard it for the first time while i was reading that book. gah i love that book.

"some say she made me the loner i am, i say her memory keeps me alive."

Lord have mercy i'm too much of a romantic, this is ridiculous. time to discover the topic of my research paper.

i never wanted to believe that you're killing all my energy

2012-01-16T08:03:00.000-08:00

I LOVE THIS SONG.

i really like idle warship. this song is different from all their others though.

time to quote my favorite lines from it before i continue this blog post:

.....

way before attraction deteriorated to madness

all i wanted was to hit it and quit it

or smack it and tap it

i wonder why i love so violent

....

i'm being honest as of now i'm moving past the lies

not because i'm noble, it's the only thing i haven't tried

my actions bad, but your reactions was tragic

well though both can be broken

i'm not your heart, i'm your habit

......

i think i always want to be someone that i'm not and that's probably sad. i have decided this because i like guys who like girls that i am not like at all and then i get frustrated at myself for no reason because it's not like i can just suddenly become a different person and this should be the biggest indication that i shouldn't care but it's not because my name is mary beth and i have to learn everything the hard way multiple times.

.....

i had more to say but i can't yet. i'm frustrated with myself. but i am good now. reality has come back to me and i am good.

.....

the other song i love a lot recently:

i would be sad - avett brothers

and now to finish with more lyrics:

......

i know we are young, but we won't always be, so marry me

(i hope i get proposed to with that line)

......

i meant what i said when i said i would rearrange my plans and change for you
you know me i've always been the kind with easy confidence
confident enough to honestly believe that nothing out there's stopping me
especially not someone who's not loving me
now listen here i told you i could live on without loving you
i was bluffing then but it seems that just might have been the truth
well my dad told me one day son this girl will think of what she's done
and hurting you will be the first of many more regrets to come
and he said if she doesn't call, then it's her fault, and it's her loss
i say it's not that simple, see, but then again, it just may be

....

there are good things about me i promise and i have faith that eventually SOMEONE will see them.

......

p.s. i'm not as sad as i seem like. just thoughtful. it's all good.

the world had been sad since tuesday

2012-01-12T19:53:00.000-08:00

this is the short story that i am using for my research paper:

a very old man with enormous wings

my favorite line besides the title of this blog post..

"The most unfortunate invalids on earth came in search of health: a poor woman who since childhood has been counting her heartbeats and had run out of numbers; a Portuguese man who couldn't sleep because the noise of the stars disturbed him; a sleepwalker who got up at night to undo the things he had done while awake; and many others with less serious ailments."

it's an oddly beautiful story.

now to reblog a piece of literature i have blogged a million times before but is my personal inspiration, and also a piece of literature that describes not what i am but what i'd like to be.

"My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.

I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate."

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisernos

2012-01-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

hospitals are hell for overly empathetic people. i hate hospitals.

i came here to say that i am actually happy sometimes, those are just usually not the times when i blog, but just so you know, i am a happy person who likes life.

i may have posted these lyrics a million times but

2012-01-07T23:33:00.000-08:00

i wish you'd hold me when i turn my back

the less i give, the more i give back

your hands can heal, your hands can bruise

i don't have a choice, but i still choose you.

i don't love you, but i always will.

2012-01-05T19:20:00.000-08:00

what absolutely blows my mind at least once a week is the re-realization of that fact that though i view the world surrounding me in three hundred and sixty degrees as if i am the center, every one else does too, so nobody's perspective of the world is ever exactly the same. even on the lowest spatial level this blows my mind, because even if i think about this in something as insignificant as someone i am talking to while sitting in a booth at a fast food restaurant, my entire mental record of this situation is taken from my perspective, but theirs is different. even the silly things amaze me when i think about it. what if the person next to me is taller than me? the room they see is a little different than mine. and if i try to put myself in their place and picture me as a person sitting next to myself, if this makes sense, which it probably doesn't, that completely blows my mind, because i am so fixated in my own viewpoint that it startles me when i remember that it is not shared by everyone else. it startles me when i remember that other people look at me throughout the day, and i wonder how many people actually look at me, and notice little things about me. i can tell i am getting older because years ago i probably would have been excited about people looking at me, but now the thought actually makes me a little uncomfortable, because i would kind of like to hibernate lately, which is another story for another blog.

on a side note, i am doing a bible study about joshua, and i like it a lot, and here is a quote from it.

[about Joshua] "... In fact, his entire brilliant career was a straightforward story of simply setting down one foot in front of another in quiet compliance with the commands of God." Phillip Keller

I like that a lot.

mbsv

2012-01-02T23:07:00.000-08:00

i am here to blog about something that i have blogged about many times before, and that is my relationship with blake viall. i am going to do the full story here too, because every single day, someone tells me either that i should get back with blake or that me and blake are going to get married or some similar thing, and while i think it is sweet that people are interested in my life, it is also extremely aggravating, especially when people are persistent in not believing me when i tell them that blake and i both are where we want to be right now, and we are both without a doubt sure that we are not supposed to be together.

i would like to start by saying that blake has been my best friend since i was 14 years old, back when neither one of us was attractive at all and we still talked every night on AIM. if you don't know him, you are missing out, because he is the kindest, wisest, sweetest, and most good hearted person i have ever met, in my entire life, and i honestly believe that God made him differently than other people. i believe that since i am the person in the world who knows him best i have the license to say this. i respect him and love him more than anyone else in the world.

the thing that most people can't seem to grasp is that we can be the way we are and be "over" each other. they say things like "well if yall can be friends you're either not over him or you never really loved him." this always makes me feel bad for the person telling me this. i firmly, firmly believe that if a relationship was made of the rights stuff in the first place, it can survive in different forms. it probably helps that blake and i never had sex, because now we don't have the added chemical turmoil in our brains that sex adds. and it probably helps that he is the most patient and forgiving person in the world. but really, if blake and i spent a year and a half dating and we truly loved each other, how could we stop loving each other now? we don't need each other like we used to, that is true, and for the best for our development as people. but the love is still there. not the infatuation of head rushing heart stopping desire or anything, which is the shallowest level of a relationship by the way, but the deep, sincere love.

blake is the one who taught me about sincere love. we were best friends for almost two years before we dated. and for almost all of that time, blake liked me. and as i dated other guys and got hurt over and over again, he was always the constant. he told me he loved more than a year before we ever kissed. he has loved me for the good in me; he is the reason i know what that feels like. it makes me sad that a lot of people haven't experienced what i have, because it is one of the best and most pure emotions and experiences possible on this earth, outside of our relationship with God. the way blake has loved me has shown me the way that God loves me in a way more real than anything else ever has: loving the good in me despite seeing the bad in me, and forgiving me every time i mess up, and accepting me back with love. just as we don't deserve the love God gives us, i've never deserved the love blake gives me.

i don't mean to seem that i am bragging about how much blake loves me. it is simply that he is the bigger person of the two of us, and is and always has been much more selfless than i. i am always following along, learning from him. i have a story that i think illustrates how selfless blake is.

the summer before last, we were at the lake, and we were out on the innertube all day. at one point i had an innertube mishap that is the closest i ever want to be to flying, which ultimately resulted in a great deal of pain and fear for me because i am small sometimes and i get scared slightly easily. i eventually got back on the innertube. me, blake, and bryan were riding while wesley was driving, and as anyone knows, the entire goal of innertubing is to see how much terror the driver can inspire in the riders before someone falls off, because then you have to stop and go pick them up. the ride was getting scary and i started to freak out and i turned to blake and told him i was scared, and he instantly, without thinking about it at all, said "i'll let go" and just... let go. and fell off the innertube. just so wesley would have to stop and i wouldn't be scared anymore. that is such a blake thing, and one of the moments that sticks out the most in my mind of the million moments we have spent together in the past four or five years.

i say all this to say that sometimes letting go is the best thing that you can do for the other person's wellbeing. sometimes you have to love someone in the way that they need and not the way that you want. that's love. there are a million reasons that blake and i are not dating right now, and i don't feel that i owe that much information about either of our own personal struggles and growth in life that i have to explain them all to anyone, but i am taking the time here to say that both of us are growing in ways that you would not believe, and both of us are fighting our own personal battles, and while we are always there to cheer each other on, it is best for us both if we are not together romantically right now. and we don't know God's plan, and maybe we will never be together again, or maybe we will, but there is one thing for certain, and that is that we will not be together until we both know without a doubt it is what God wants for us and our lives. what we do know is that we will always be a part of each other's lives. blake once told me he'd be at my wedding, either as the groom or in the front row. and in his going away letter (to college) he illustrated it better than i think i ever could.

"Besides, even Batman has an Alfred, a Robin, and a Rachel. I may be your Alfred, and not your Rachel, but we're still in this together."

so this is me assuring you that while i appreciate your concern, we've got it. and most importantly, God's got it. and one day, if it is right, it will happen. or maybe there is someone out there for each of us who is exactly who God has in mind. who are we to tell God how it's gonna work out? as for now, we are best friends, and nothing more. and that's the way it needs to be.

"And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens. Nothing good gets away." John Steinbeck

new year

2012-01-02T09:40:00.000-08:00

i have already done stupid things in the new year, and that shouldn't surprise anybody.

i assume too much. i get afraid too much. i am always in fear. i am always worried. always. and i don't even realize when i am, because it is just my normal state of being.

i'm really frustrated with myself right now because i'm tired of being stupid. i keep thinking of coach white telling us "never be stupid again" but hell, i don't know how. i can't stop being stupid. and i'm beating myself up for it cause i'm tired as hell of being stupid. and being scared. and worrying. and getting nervous. and being small. i used to know how to be big, i think, but i lost it. last march. and i haven't yet remembered except for certain small moments when i think "oh yeah, this is what it felt like."

another thing that i'm bad about is if i'm doing good at being who i'm trying to be, and then i hit a roadblock or whatever, and i fail once, i pretty much just throw up my hands and say screw it, i can't do this, and try to go back to the way i don't want to be. which is extremely, extremely frustrating, because i hate being defeated. but i do it again.the only reason i'm writing this is cause i have to rant about this and i literally don't have anyone i can talk to about this because i am so frustrated i don't even want to tell anyone.

Lord have mercy.

2011-12-30T15:59:00.000-08:00

I say that phrase a lot lately. To which someone responded recently "ask and he will." Which was clever. Anyways. I am currently laying in my bed, and for the past hour or so I've been reading, and because I am an extremely fast reader I have read more than half of A Separate Peace (Knowles), which I have actually read before but remember nothing about. And it is a book that is actually depressing as hell. My gosh. It might not be depressing to a normal person but to a person like me who is more emotional than probably ten other people put together and is influenced by every single thing whether it be a certain phrase or the way the lighting is or, I swear to you, the mood in the air on a certain day, it is a depressing book. It feels like winter. Winter is not a happy time. It hasn't even felt like winter lately, it's actually been rather summery and nice and I've liked it and been happy to be alive and all of that, but when it's dark, i'm just automatically sad again, and I wonder if all people who think and feel are sad because there is essential sadness in the world or maybe I am just melancholic, which I'm actually not, I don't think, except probably 15% of the time, all of which occurs at night or in winter or while listening to certain music or reading certain books, and maybe the rest of the time I'm choleric or sanguine, cause we know I'm never phlegmatic since the description of that usually involves the world "calm" which is not a word that I would ever actually add to my personal list of attributes.

I need a vacation from vacation.

2011-12-29T10:04:00.000-08:00

he said i wanna see you again, but i'm stuck in colder weather.

maybe tomorrow we'll be better, can i call you then?

she said you're a ramblin man, and you ain't ever gonna change.

you got a gypsy soul to blame, and you were born for leaving.

avett brothers

2011-12-26T22:13:00.000-08:00

the weight of lies will bring you down
and follow you to every town
cause nothing happens here that doesn't happen there
so when you run make sure you run
to something and not away from
cause lies don't need an aeroplane to chase you anywhere.

you know me; i've always been the kind with easy confidence
confident enough to honestly believe that nothing out there stopping me
especially not someone who's not loving me.

2011-12-14T21:02:00.001-08:00

same old me, same old problems. no matter how fast i run i can't outrun myself.

Lord have mercy.

i hate thinking of names for these things.

2011-12-12T20:25:00.000-08:00

why does the new blogger not let my font be automatically set to georgia? i am passionate about the font georgia. passionate in the way i am about lots of things that are seemingly unimportant but for some reason make me extremely happy, like visual repetition in displays and the feel of a smooth writing pen. lots of things that i notice that make me a person who will never make more than 60k a year. which is why in college i plan to hang around the chemical engineering building a lot looking cute and single. anyways.

so i have decided that i would like to write something that people would want to read. like a book. filled with my thoughts on the universe. but only people like me would like it, and i'm pretty sure there's like five of us in the whole world. i don't say that in a conceited way. i just think we're weird. i am speaking for the collective five of us. and anyways, those five probably wouldn't find my book anyway, because they would be overwhelmed by the choices presented to them in their local bookstore, like i always am, and instead of buying a book, they'd look at about fifty, then leave filled with indecision. also a chocolate chip cookie. my gift to my three and a half blog readers today is the knowledge that if you buy a chocolate chip cookie at books a million, they'll warm it up for you. but if you have the time, go to whitts. they have the best chocolate chip cookies in town. they taste like everything that is good in life plus heaven. since one of you is from taiwan, however, i'd like to apologize right now for the fact that you can't have these cookies. comment with your name and address though and i'll mail you one, if that's legal. not sure about the rules on mailing food internationally. it's not like i'm going to send you some alien animal that will disrupt the ecosystem of your entire country, though. it's just a cookie. what up.

so today i have thought a great deal and i have realized that i have a specific pattern of things i naturally do to cope with my own unhappiness. the list is as follows:

1. work out really hard
2. eat a chocolate chip cookie
3. shop
4. nap
5. blog.

here we are at step 5, and my light hearted banter serves here to mask my inner turmoil. no, i'm joking, no inner turmoil here. or is there? you'll never know. but really. today was not a great day. and whose fault is this? mine. i will spare you my thoughts on everything i did today that i could have done better but rest assured tomorrow will be a good day, dead gum it. dad gum it? dead gum it? what does that even mean anyway? what does anything mean? what is the purpose of life? again joking. i just like to take things to a really existential level sometimes. it's a fun game to play. ahh. here we go. another thing to write about. life games.

life is more fun if you make it a game. there are many games you can play in life. one of my favorite and most trivial games is to air quote phrases in a conversation back to the person who just said them. does this make sense? surest way to piss someone. for example:

- i'm nervous about the physics test tomorrow
- "TOMORROW"
- why did you just do that?
- why did i "DO THAT"?
- yes, that, STOP
- you want me to "STOP"

etc. etc. it's a great game. don't play with people you only casually know. its best with strangers who have no impact on your life or people who you know well enough to be able to piss them off with no negative repercussions.

another game: mine and lynns favorite.
when you're in a group of people (you need one other friend who knows how to play it) look down at your hand and say "did you know it's impossible to hold your hand completely still" with a look of intense concentration. five seconds or less and every single person in the group will be lookin stupid and you're the one who caused it. juvenile? yes. but still fun. after years, still fun.

another one, the one that made me think of my habit of playing life games: the make everything existential game.
it's really extremely easy. you just see how many things you can turn into questions about the meaning of life. you'd be surprised how easy this is.

- where are you going?
- where are any of us going in the long run?

this is actually a problem of mine because i tend to think of things in this way anyway, so sometimes people will ask me how i'm doing and instead of telling them i like the weather that day i want to tell them that i am troubled by the lack of empathy between human beings or something like that. you know, something that would make people walk away from me shaking their heads. which actually might not be that bad some days.

other life games are also fun. like if you make everything a challenge, even ridiculous things, it makes life more enjoyable. i can't tell you how many people i've raced to school that didn't know we were racing. or how fun it is to see how many times you can make eye contact with the same person before they start to freak out. also if you pretend like you're a secret agent when you go out in public. or assess every single person as if they might be a criminal and try to memorize their profile and clothing so you could identify them. am i the only person who does this? maybe so. it's awesome though.

i am now going to tell you about one of my favorite websites on the entire internet: yahoo answers.
yahoo answers is like the walmart of the internet, and by that i mean, it will expose you to worlds that you are not normally accustomed to. my favorite of the day:

this is a serious question

this is all for the day.

to my sophomore girls.

2011-12-09T21:14:00.001-08:00

The other day, yall said that I seemed like I knew a lot about relationships and that you were going to start coming to me for advice, which I hope you do, because it will fulfill my needs to mother everyone around me. I've been thinking about a question you asked me- "how do you know when a relationship is going bad?" and I've decided that I will blog my answer, since I couldn't properly respond at the time. So here you go, this is what I think is important in a relationship.

1. The most important thing in choosing someone is their soul. Their hair may swoosh perfectly to the side and they may do that chin-raising thing that we all love and swoon over. They may be hilarious, and that is good, and they may say sweet things to you, which is also good. But if you don't absolutely love their soul, then they are not good enough for you. I hope you understand what I mean because it is hard to explain unless you have experienced it.

2. There is a difference, a crucial difference, in being attracted to someone, and respecting them. And I can promise you that respect, in the long run, is way more important. You want to be proud of the man you are with. And I know at your age especially there is little that is manly about the males around you, but I promise if you look hard enough you will find glimmers of manliness in the guys you know. And I don't mean can break down a door and grow a beard manliness. I mean a MAN. A strong and steadfast and honest and kind man. Guys at your age don't know yet how to be this because they're too busy trying to be "bros" but as you get older you will be able to find it more and more, and it will be of much more lasting value than coolness or looks. If you find a boy that seems to be honest and kind, hold onto him, and encourage the manliness in him, because as the good girls that I know you are it is your job to find the good things in people and help them grow, and without girls like you that manliness could be squashed out of every guy we know by his constant contact with girls who value his hair swoosh more than his kindness.

3. Numbers 1 and 2 work in reverse as well: the guy you choose to be with should love your soul and respect you. The thing about guys is that no matter how much they joke about girls with the heh heh and the you know what, most, at least the kinds of guys you want, want a girl that they can respect. Don't ever be with a guy who likes you just for your looks. You are all such beautiful girls, but your physical beauty is not the best thing about you. So don't ever rob yourself by being with a guy who thinks that your pretty hair and slender body are the best things about you, and goes on by all the other things you have going for you. I've watched yall and I know that you are silly and you are kind and you are vivacious and a spunky and a million other good adjectives I could place here, and I don't want that to go unvalued. Not that I think it does, or that there is anything wrong with being pretty, but by now you are all at least 15 and you probably can tell the difference in a guy who talks to you because it makes it less awkward when he looks at you and a guy who talks to you because he genuinely wants to know what you have to say. Choose the latter. Always.

4. If someone belittles you constantly, get out. Even if they don't mean to. It is a sign that their heart is not ready for a relationship because they need to work on themselves first. I feel like this should be covered by my earlier points but since I have fallen into this trap so many times I decided to give it it's own place. You don't deserve to be constantly brought down, especially by someone close to you, and in the long run it is bad for your emotional and mental health. If the person you are with makes you feel inferior, something is wrong. You are in a partnership. You are not a slave. Don't let yourself be treated like one.

5. Don't be with a guy who pressures you to have sex. I realize that this knocks out the majority of guys you will ever meet. But I promise you that the best thing is to have a guy who loves you for who you are and because of that wants to protect you. People are shocked that after dating for so long Blake and I never had sex and say BUT I THOUGHT YOU LOVED EACH OTHER.. but I don't understand why that is so surprising. Blake loved me and wanted to keep me pure for the person I end up being with forever. I will always be grateful for that. And yes, there will be guys that are great guys that will have the desire to have sex with you and you are not going to escape from that, but if they are worthy of you they will respect you enough to surpress that urge, especially when you tell them, as you always should at the beginning of the relationship, that sex is not an option. Tell them that if they care about you they will protect you, and they will. When me and Blake had been dating for about two months all his guy friends at his lunch table asked him if we'd had sex yet, and when Blake said no they all of the sudden got really serious and said "If you love her, don't." And these were guys who you would not expect to hear this from.

6. Though it is too late to matter by this point, the end of a relationship can tell you a lot about the relationship as a whole. When you break up with someone or someone breaks up with you, neither one of you should want the other one to be miserable. That is selfish. Most relationships at this age are going to end, that is just a fact. So think of your relationship like you have been entrusted with something extremely valuable, but it isn't yours to keep. But you want to keep this valuable thing in tact so it gets to the person it actually belongs to whole. Or even better than it was before you got it. Following me here? You are not to destroy another person. If your relationship tears you down when it is over then it was built on the wrong things all along.

The best way I can think of to convey everything I have been trying to say to you is through part of a John Steinbeck letter to his son that I absolutely love which addresses this issue more perfectly than I ever could.

"There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness, and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greatest respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had."

This is all I have to say.

standards and love

2011-12-09T21:13:00.001-08:00

I have a friend who tells me that she has "such high standards" that she will "finally meet a guy in college that lives up to them and then get married to the first person she ever dates". While that sounds nice to say, especially because it makes you feel like you are up on a pedestal, I disagree with that more than I disagree with almost anything in the world. It reminds me of that popular Sunday school activity for teenage girls where we're supposed to "make a list of all the qualities that we want in a future husband" and "never lower our standards until we get the exact man we're looking for." And to that I say, how is that biblical? In essence that seems to me a lot like telling God that you know how to choose your husband better than he does. It is taking control into your own hands that is not yours. Now granted, she may not say that for this exact reason, and I'm not saying standards are bad. Standards are great things to have, and I too have standards. I need to have a smart guy, mainly because I am smart, and as a woman I don't want to be dominant over my partner, and I think that having a husband (or boyfriend) more intelligent than I am is the best for the relationship to keep it in natural balance. I have to have a guy who would be a good father, because I love children more than I love almost anything else in the world, and I couldn't be in a relationship where that wasn't mutual. I have to have a guy who is compassionate, because that is extremely important to me, and I have to have a guy who is grounded, for the moments when I get flighty. It is also important to me to date a guy who is a Christian; I could never date an outright atheist because my faith is important to me and I want a man that can lead me in my faith; but I am not totally against dating someone who is a struggling Christian or has some doubts, because I am not against dating a human and those things tend to come with the whole humanity deal. This friend I have, when we talk about this, subtly belittles me for having dated guys, implying that my standards are low. And I somewhat resent that, but I also laugh to myself because she doesn't understand. As long as you hold onto your ideals of perfection, you will never be in a real relationship. And you'd better hope that your future mate isn't holding onto perfection either, because though you may forget it you are a person too and you are most definitely not perfect. I have dated a handful of guys, actually, and none of them have been perfect, but that doesn't mean that I have low standards. It is no flaw to see the best in people, as long as you don't take it to extremes and so deceive yourself. Every relationship I have had has helped me learn better how to be in a relationship, how to be more selfless while still retaining my identity as a person. I have friends who think that I can't live without a boy, and I really honestly disagree with that. I will concede that I used to be like that, but I've grown out of it now. I just don't see the point in not dating someone who I care about and who I like spending time with for the sake of my pride and proving something to the outside world. And maybe the boys I've dated haven't been perfect, but they have all been good guys, just like I am not perfect, but I would like to consider myself a good girl.

Taking it back to the biblical basis of this high standards mandate, I'll give my scripture based thoughts on this and hope that I have not wrongly interpreted anything and that I am representing the word of God as intended.

If you have never read the story of Hosea you really should because it is beautiful. Hosea marries a prostitute and she leaves him and he goes and gets her back and just on the whole gives her lots of undeserved love, which I think is absolutely beautiful and I'm not going to try to summarize it anymore because someone already wrote it better than I could. I also recently read the book Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers which is a retelling of that story set in the time of the California gold rush and it was a beautiful book. It starts off with this sweet man named Michael Hosea walking down the street in a mining town and seeing this beautiful high priced prostitute being escorted down the road and he hears the voice of God telling him that she is the one he has been waiting for. And because he is a God-fearing man he listens. And the whole book is a story of his love for her. But the point of this story and the story of Hosea is not to be just a love story, nor is any love story, ever, in the history of the world, at least not the good ones. These stories are at the very base about the love God has for us despite our filth. How he goes and rescues us when we are unfaithful.
And I'm not saying that everyone should go out and marry a prostitute, or always go for people of a low moral character, because that is not what I believe. I believe who you spend your time with and who you share your heart with is very important and isn't something to be taken lightly, and you can trust me that when you do take it too lightly it will wreck you inside and lead you away from where you are supposed to go. I'm just saying that God has a plan that is much greater than yours and when you try to limit God by your own imagination and desires you are selling yourself short. I mean personally, I would like to tell God right now exactly what I want in life. I know what I want. And I know that what I end up with will probably be entirely different, because that is the essence of life.

2011-12-04T21:32:00.001-08:00

i'm blogging a lot because my soul is in a weird place and this is the only thing that i know to do. i don't even know how to categorize how i feel right now, except that time has stopped, maybe. i am more in the moment than i normally am. i am scared of the future and also excited and sad and expectant and joyful and peaceful and i'm not really sure what is going on inside of me but there's a watercolor of emotions going down and i don't know what to do about it.

austin pride

2011-12-04T19:36:00.001-08:00

i just want you to know that there is no way for me to express how much i love austin high. i get a little bit of a different perspective on it than most people do; austin has been kind of my life since i was in the fourth grade and my dad became the principal. most of my childhood memories involve going to austin basketball games with my dad.. or football games... or softball games.. and occasionally even soccer tournaments. and plays. and band concerts. and national honor society inductions. and senior nights. or drawing on scrap pieces of paper in the front office while my dad was in a meeting after school. it used to be so exciting to me to drive around with my dad on homecoming week and look at all the different floats under construction, or go up to the gym and see it being decorated for prom. i've had maybe two teachers since i've been at austin that i haven't known since i was little. so this probably explains why it is hard for me to relate to other people how i feel about our school; they just haven't had the same experiences that i have.
i have never loved austin more than i do after this weekend. a friday night rivalry basketball game where beat decatur in boys and girls games. the student section doing the interlude dance. the faces of the decatur student section when we chanted LET'S PLAY FOOTBALL, their traditional chant after losing to us in basketball which they couldn't use this year because we beat them in football for the first time since i've been at austin. and coming off the high of that night we hear that two of our students have died in a car accident. and instantly people are praying. and calling each other. and spontaneously gathering to comfort each other. and facebook is covered all weekend with people turning to God and turning to each other to support each other and remember these two. and we are learning the value of kindness because life is too short to not be kind. i think they would have been proud, you know? i'm proud of us. i'm so proud to call austin my high school. because it is a school filled with so many people with such good hearts that i am blessed to get to be around. and i am thankful that God has put me in the place that i am in. and i am thankful that i have met the people that i have. and i love my school.

here at the frontier, there are falling leaves

2011-12-03T22:31:00.001-08:00

although all my neighbors are barbarians
and you, you are a thousand miles away,
there are always two cups on my table.

- tang dynasty poem (translated to english)

in peace.

2011-12-03T06:24:00.001-08:00

here's what i remember about nick and bailey: they were sweet. i didn't know either of them beyond the level of a hey in the hall and occasional conversation. i always teased nick when i saw him because i really liked him.. you could tell he was a great guy. with a great heart. you can always tell when you find people like that. i was never close to them. but i could tell they were good people. and i can tell they will be sorely missed.
when i found out last night that two austin students had died in a car accident, i cried until i almost threw up. i went into a panic. i didn't know who they were yet, because the names hadn't been released. i started calling everyone i could think of that was at the game that i was close to the check on them; going down my mental list of people whose lives are precious to me. it kind of surprised me the people that popped into my mind. i drove to johans house and he came to the door and met me and found me sobbing and repeating that it wasn't fair. that it was just a friday night where you went to a rivalry basketball game and hung out with your friends. that two people my age or younger were dead and they weren't supposed to be dead. somehow finding out names made it more surreal. bailey was so little to me. i've known her since she was teeny tiny. and nick was so... kind. that's the only way i can describe him.
it's funny how stuff like this brings the community closer to God, even though you'd expect it to have the opposite effect. i thought that there would be an outpouring of anger against God, and confusion over him letting this happen. but what we have is a community who is realizing the sovereignty of the Lord and His plan and that is the most comforting thing in the world.
another thing that hit me last night is how absolutely shattered my world would be if i lost someone that close to me. i can't even grasp the concept of death, really. i've written about this before. someone was there and now they're not. and if they belonged to God they are in heaven. but they're not here anymore, and it's so hard for me to grasp emotionally no matter how much i understand it mentally that their body is here but that's all that's left, and a body isn't the person you loved anyway. i called so many people last night. i became over aware of death. i had this crazy urge to take everyone i love and put them in my arms and never let them leave because the world is scary and big and it can hurt you really bad and i don't want that to happen.
i think the picture painted of these two in their remembrance is kind of beautiful. you read all of these facebook and twitter posts and you see a nick sawyer that stayed after school to help his math teacher learn how to work her new smart phone, who was an extremely hard worker on the football team and who loved the Lord and was not ashamed. and you see a bailey robinson who had a huge group of girls that loved her and a church and a family and loved God. and you remember nick and bailey walking through the halls with what mrs. haughaboo called "that crazy stupid teenager kind of love" and holding hands and hugging and i remember the day i asked her about her new man because she's in the spanish 3 class i tutor and she got giggly and excited and you could tell she was so proud of him.
i know this has been kind of disconnected and random but something like this throws you for a loop and it makes you think no matter who you are or how close you were to them. i can only imagine how hard this is for their intimate friends and family. no one should have to bury their own baby, and not one but two families will be doing that this week. so we should remember them in our prayers. and one thing i know is hard for me is that people say that and it took me a long time to really figure out what that meant.. i think i've spent a lot of my life praying really unspecific prayers. but what i'm gonna pray for when i'm praying is that God comforts them with the peace that surpasses all understanding. and i'm going to pray that our outlook is changed by this; that we are more grateful and more kind to everyone we meet. and i won't forget what B.J. was saying last night, probably ever, because it broke my heart. he kept saying "man the last thing i ever said to him was to get his legs up" (doing exercises in football) "i didn't preach the gospel to him or nothing." so i'm going to pray that we are given opportunities along with the guts to use our opportunities. i know that i don't use mine like i should. i am an unbeliever magnet. i'm pretty sure God is giving me chance after chance because i continually fail my job. because i get so intimidated, especially if i'm really close to the person. but how would i feel if i lost them and i hadn't done my job? it reminds me of mr. nichols telling me that when he was a band director he always told the kids that no friday night football game would be lost on account of the band so play louder and at the right times. am i doing that? nick and bailey did. rest in peace.

sweeping streets

2011-11-30T19:38:00.001-08:00

"And when you discover what you will be in your life, set out to do it as if God Almighty called you at this particular moment in history to do it. Don't just set out to do a good job. Set out to do such a good job that the living, the dead or the unborn couldn't do it any better.

If it falls your lot to be a street sweeper, sweep streets like Michelangelo painted pictures, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music, sweep streets like Leontyne Price sings before the Metropolitan Opera. Sweep streets like Shakespeare wrote poetry. Sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will have to pause and say: Here lived a great street sweeper who swept his job well. If you can't be a pine at the top of the hill, be a shrub in the valley. Be be the best little shrub on the side of the hill.

Be a bush if you can't be a tree. If you can't be a highway, just be a trail. If you can't be a sun, be a star. For it isn't by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are."

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Perhaps the thing in this world that can get under my skin and infuriate me more quickly than anything else is the air of condescension towards "non professionals" that I am constantly exposed to. What I'm talking about is this whole attitude of "if you don't do well in school you'll end up working at McDonalds" which, though in some cases is true, makes me angry, because someone has got to work at McDonalds, and I don't feel like it is respectful or fair or decent to belittle people because they work lower paying or "lower level" jobs.
I'm not saying not to try in school. What I am saying is that yes, we need doctors and lawyers and chemical engineers and businessmen, but we also need garbage men and fast food service people and chicken plant workers and a ton of other jobs that most of my friends would consider way beneath them. And I hate when people say "well somebody's gotta do it" in that way that really sounds more to me like "thank God I'm better than THOSE people who because of their lack of worth are forced to do menial tasks to serve privileged upper class people like myself".
Do you know that there is a job at the hospital that pays about 15 dollars an hour I think (which is actually kind of a lot) and all you need is a high school diploma and a little training? Do you know what this job is? I don't know the name, but the person who does this job sits there and watches multiple computer screens to monitor the vitals of different patients in the ICU and CCU You know who this job is pretty important to? Those patients whose lives are on the line, and the families of those patients, and the nurses and doctors taking care of those patients who cannot possibly be in every room at one time.
There are tons of jobs that I could name like this. Auto mechanics. Being someone who is apparently an extremely harsh driver with a car that often needs repair, I am thankful for auto mechanics. When my car is messed up, I don't want someone who can write me a 200 page thesis on what is wrong with my car, I want someone who can fix it, and fix it well. And the girl who cuts my hair is the bomb, and she gives me a deep condition and a hot towel head wrap when I've had a long week and never cuts too much off of my hair and always knows exactly what I want and is easy to schedule with and makes great conversation. And the people who work at my gym are always friendly, and they give work-out advice when needed or a nice "you're looking thinner" at the times when I need it most. I could go on and on.
So in closing, tomorrow I think you should thank every person you encounter. The custodial staff, the cafeteria ladies, the woman behind the counter at the gas station. Because I know that I don't do it enough. And because they deserve it. They do good jobs at what they do. They aren't anesthesiologists or college professors or aerospace engineers, and we shouldn't want them to be. We should appreciate them for doing THEIR jobs, and doing their jobs well. Sweeping streets, you know.

lyrics

2011-11-28T19:39:00.001-08:00

and you have your choices

and these are what make man great

his ladder to the stars.

mumford and sons

castles and cathedrals crumble

pyramids and pipelines crumble

the failure keeps you humble

leads you closer to peace

brett dennen

10

2011-11-28T19:06:00.001-08:00

1. i wish i could see the future. kinda.
2. i wish my best friend wasn't so far away when i needed him.
3. i wish i didn't get nervous doing my back handsprings on the gym floor.
4. i wish people weren't mean for no reason. why are we so mean to each other.
5. i wish i had more than two people who actually believe in me.
6. i wish i was skinnier. and more muscular.
7. i wish time would stop at night so i could sleep more.
8. i wish i had time to do all the things i want to do.
9. i wish distance didn't matter.

1. i'm thankful for my sweet boyfriend who i am so lucky to have.
2. i'm thankful for my best friend loving me even though he is far away.
3. i'm thankful for endorphins.
4. i'm thankful for having a comfy bed to sleep in.
5. im thankful for the existence of sunshine.
6. i'm thankful for chocolate chip cookies.
7. i'm thankful for those people you meet who restore your faith in humanity.
8. i'm thankful for cute little children that you can't help but love.
9. i'm thankful for existence.

2011-11-27T19:57:00.001-08:00

"so, i love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you." paulo coelho

2011-11-27T07:11:00.001-08:00

my best friend is the best friend in the world, and i am so thankful that i have him.

Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light.

- Albert Schweitzer

i love you.

here's a fun fact

2011-11-24T22:15:00.001-08:00

every bad decision i have ever made was made before the moment when i came to face the decision. i think this is a concept that i have always kind of been familiar with but have not grasped until now. but it's true. i'm reading the battlefield of the mind devotional because if i am being honest, satan is wreaking havoc on my mind. i let my mind defeat me all of the time. i want to be stronger, so badly i want to be stronger. so i am trying. i came across something a minute ago that i thought was so simple yet so true.. "Satan is never in a hurry. He takes time to work out his plans." how incredibly true is that? satan doesn't play the short game, he is the master of the long game. this reminds me of a c.s. lewis quote that i love. it is from mere christianity, which i believe that everyone should read at least once, if not more times, because it is that excellent of a book.

"Good and evil both increase at compound interest. That is why the little decisions you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good act today is the capture of a strategic point from which, a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed of. An apparently trivial indulgence in lust or anger today is the loss of a ridge or railway line or bridgehead from which the enemy may launch an attack otherwise impossible."

by the time you make a really bad decision, you have made a million small decisions that paved the way to get to the place where you were even capable of making that decision. which makes me think of another c.s. lewis quote


"The safest road to hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts." and also this quote"If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading." - Lao Tzu

so i guess what i'm trying to say is that i am changing directions, because i do not like where i am headed.

2011-11-20T20:23:00.001-08:00

I would like to start off this post by reminding everyone that I am intelligent, and by everyone, I mean myself. This is the struggle of my life, to feel significant and like I am actually good enough despite constantly being told that I am not. To feel that I am not a complete idiot and a disappointment to everyone around me who has always expected more from me when it becomes apparent that I am not good at math or science, and sometimes logic in general. I actually think that I am more logical than people give me credit for, when I stop to think about it. I am not math logical, but I am logical. And I am intelligent. I think. I hope. I like words, I like people, and they make more sense to me than they do to other people. This is not an intelligence that will ever make me six figures a year and does not impress the people around me, especially males, who scorn me daily for not being like them, but it is an intelligence that God has given me and that makes up a part of who I am. So here is my reminder to the world, and by the world, I mean myself, that by God I may never be an engineer or doctor but that doesn't mean that I am worthless.

avett brothers

2011-11-20T20:17:00.001-08:00

decide what to be, and go be it.

2011-11-17T03:43:00.001-08:00

"Attack each day with enthusiasm unknown to mankind." Jim Harbaugh

2011-11-07T20:24:00.000-08:00

being life tired is worse than any other kind of tired because it is not just your head, or your feet, but your soul that is hurting. it is a weariness that i feel can defeat me no matter how hard i try. i feel like crawling under a rock. or laying in bed for four hours awake in the dark, or driving to another city and sitting in my car with the windows down for no other reason but to escape. this is me, i am strange. i feel like there is nobody that can really understand me, and the one person who is even close to being able to is four hours away, and i am here alone, being small and scared but also big and alone too. there is nothing worse than being small and big at the same time, because you can do neither adequately. i would like to be big, and strong, but i'm not sure how anymore, and i know this is the melancholy talking and that today the weather was dreary but it will be sunshine again soon, but then again it's almost winter and maybe so am i. spring seems like a long way away and fall is almost over and winter is cold and draws people away from each other. and i want to draw away, because people make me weary and people make me sad, and there is nothing more frustrating and difficult and saddening than other people.

i haven't blogged in a long time because my words go with my feelings and for a while my feelings were gone, and then they were so confused, but i've been sifting through them all day every day and i think i know who i am again. i've missed me, as messed up as she is, because me is almost all i've got, besides Jesus, who i love and am trying to know better, so Jesus if you're reading this help the melancholy go away please and help me know you because i think that's the only way to be happy.

"My mother says when I get older my dusty hair will settle and my blouse will learn to stay clean, but I have decided not to grow up tame like the others who lay their necks on the threshold waiting for the ball and chain.

In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.

I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate."

i've blogged that before i know but i still love it. i wish i could be like that, but i'm not. maybe one day i will be, or maybe not.

i love this myth

now for poems

End of April

Phillis Levin

Under a cherry tree
I found a robin’s egg,
broken, but not shattered.

I had been thinking of you,
and was kneeling in the grass
among fallen blossoms

when I saw it: a blue scrap,
a delicate toy, as light
as confetti

It didn’t seem real,
but nature will do such things
from time to time.

I looked inside:
it was glistening, hollow,
a perfect shell

except for the missing crown,
which made it possible
to look inside.

What had been there
is gone now
and lives in my heart

where, periodically,
it opens up its wings,
tearing me apart.

Notice

Steve Kowit

This evening, the sturdy Levi's
I wore every day for over a year
& which seemed to the end
in perfect condition,
suddenly tore.
How or why I don't know,
but there it was: a big rip at the crotch.
A month ago my friend Nick
walked off a racquetball court,
showered,
got into this street clothes,
& halfway home collapsed & died.
Take heed, you who read this,
& drop to your knees now & again
like the poet Christopher Smart,
& kiss the earth & be joyful,
& make much of your time,
& be kindly to everyone,
even to those who do not deserve it.
For although you may not believe
it will happen,
you too will one day be gone,
I, whose Levi's ripped at the crotch
for no reason,
assure you that such is the case.
Pass it on.

shake the dust

For the ones who are told to speak only when you are spoken to and then are never spoken to. Speak every time you stand so you do not forget yourself.

Do not let a moment go by that doesn't remind you that your heart beats 900 times a day and that there are enough gallons of blood to make you an ocean.

Do not settle for letting these waves settle and the dust to collect in your veins.

So You Want To Be A Writer

Charles Bukowski

if it doesn't come bursting out of you
in spite of everything,
don't do it.
unless it comes unasked out of your
heart and your mind and your mouth
and your gut,
don't do it.
if you have to sit for hours
staring at your computer screen
or hunched over your
typewriter
searching for words,
don't do it.
if you're doing it for money or
fame,
don't do it.
if you're doing it because you want
women in your bed,
don't do it.
if you have to sit there and
rewrite it again and again,
don't do it.
if it's hard work just thinking about doing it,
don't do it.
if you're trying to write like somebody
else,
forget about it.
if you have to wait for it to roar out of
you,
then wait patiently.
if it never does roar out of you,
do something else.

if you first have to read it to your wife
or your girlfriend or your boyfriend
or your parents or to anybody at all,
you're not ready.

don't be like so many writers,
don't be like so many thousands of
people who call themselves writers,
don't be dull and boring and
pretentious, don't be consumed with self-
love.
the libraries of the world have
yawned themselves to
sleep
over your kind.
don't add to that.
don't do it.
unless it comes out of
your soul like a rocket,
unless being still would
drive you to madness or
suicide or murder,
don't do it.
unless the sun inside you is
burning your gut,
don't do it.

when it is truly time,
and if you have been chosen,
it will do it by
itself and it will keep on doing it
until you die or it dies in you.

there is no other way.

and there never was.

2011-11-06T19:29:00.001-08:00

joseph topliss' advice on how to marry a billionaire - go to harvard and marry the guy who drops out after sophomore year. hahaha

2011-10-29T22:20:00.001-07:00

The best thing is to be known and loved

2011-10-25T19:50:00.000-07:00

me and God are back on good terms again. i'm not gonna lie, it's been a long time. i let my sin get in the way. i let it hold me down and pull me farther and farther away from the way i was meaning to go and the person i should be, and the farther i got from God the farther i got from me, and i'm quite honestly disgusted at all the bad decisions and wasted time that i've spent.

do you know how sweet it is to love God and love Jesus? it is literally the best thing in the world. it fills your soul. it gives you comfort and peace despite the insanity and chaos of everything around you. and i've missed that. i haven't had that feeling. i disobeyed the spirit so much that i forgot what it's voice even sounded like. but i'm hearing it again. i'm hearing it a whole lot, constantly showing me how sinful i am and how contrary my desires are to the desires of God. how much i want that i have to let go in order to become the person that God wants to make me into.

i think i am becoming more wise. i don't say that to brag because the good Lord knows I need a whole lot more wisdom before i can be classified as anything but foolish.. but with His help I am learning. slowly. but every day i think a million thoughts and i think about half of them are contary to what God wants me to think. lately, at least, i am learning a lot about unselfishness. my first impulse when someone is rude to me, or does something that i don't like, is to retaliate full of vindictive self righteousness. and sometimes i am in the right, but nobody is in the wrong and wants to be in the wrong. when someone says something hateful to me, i'm trying to remember that their soul is the one that i should pity, not in a contemptuous prideful way, but in a forgiving and loving way with an honest desire that one day they improve themselves. other people have reasons they act the way they do, reasons that i can't understand, and it's not my place to judge them or condemn them or even get upset when they hurt me, i'm supposed to love them, despite their unlovableness.

i've posted this before but

2011-10-19T20:33:00.000-07:00

i love it.

a letter from john steinbeck to his son

November 10, 1958

     Dear Thom:
     We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers.
     First - if you are in love - that's a good thing - that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you.
     Second - There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly and crippling kind. The other is an outpouring of everything good in you - of kindness, and consideration and respect - not only the social respect of manners but the greatest respect which is recognition of another person as unique and valuable. The first kind can make you sick and small and weak but the second can release in you strength, and courage and goodness and even wisdom you didn't know you had.
     You say this is not puppy love. If you feel so deeply - of course it isn't puppy love.
     But I don't think you were asking me what you feel. You know that better than anyone. What you wanted me to help you with is what to do about it - and that I can tell you.
     Glory in it for one thing and be very glad and grateful for it.
     The object of love is the best and most beautiful. Try to live up to it.
     If you love someone - there is no possible harm in saying so - only you must remember that some people are very shy and sometimes the saying must take that shyness into consideration.
     Girls have a way of knowing or feeling what you feel, but they usually like to hear it also.
     It sometimes happens that what you feel inside is not returned for one reason or another - but that does not make your feeling less valuable and good.
     Lastly, I know your feeling because I have it and I am glad you have it.
     We will be glad to meet Susan. She will be very welcome. But Elaine will make all such arrangements because that is her province and she will be very glad to. She knows about love too and maybe she can give you more help than I can.
     And don't worry about losing. If it is right, it happens - The main thing is not to hurry. Nothing good gets away.
     Love
     Fa

more thoughts

2011-10-19T20:00:00.001-07:00

i have come to the realization lately that i deserve more than to be somebody's "kinda" anything.

i am tired of people constantly picking on me for everything i say. everyone in my grade has suddenly turned extremely pretentious and rude .. well at least all of the boys. all of them. they're not nice. the only nice one i ever talk to is brandon and everyone calls him weird.. well yeah, it is weird that he is a halfway decent human being unlike the rest of you arrogant SOBS. actually take out the SO because you don't even deserve a masculine derogatory term.

i also realize that i have my moments of being arrogant.. but they are very rare. and i try to not be mean to people. i feel it seeping in on me though. people were especially rude to me today, and in turn i was especially rude to other undeserving people, which made me so mad at myself, because it makes me a hyporcite, which makes me a human.

"Do you want to get away from hypocrisy? Dig a 20-foot hole in your back yard, jump in, let someone cover you with dirt, and even then you are going to be sitting down there in the bottom of that hole with one hypocrite."

pick a partner and dance

2011-10-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

this week i was given some of the best advice of my life. coach white and i were talking about colleges and i was freaking out because i've been trying to decide where i want to go for a while, and he said "stop stressing about decisions. pick a partner and dance." and finally, after all of my LIFE filled with stress over decision making, which is the predominant theme of this ranting blog, it finally makes sense to me, that sometimes you just have to do it. so i have, i think. i am dancing with auburn, and i'm happy about it. because i love auburn, and i am happy there, and it is home. and my friends are there, my best friend is there actually, and it is just.. home. and i am getting really, really excited now.

2011-10-11T21:18:00.000-07:00

i havent blogged in forever, but i need to, because this is how i find my peace. you know the thing that is the hardest for me to cope with? it's uncertainty. i cannot stand being uncertain, not being in control. i can't stand decision making. how am i supposed to know what is best for me? how is anyone? in the end, you just live with the choices you make along the way, and chances are you won't even know how much you're missing out on or if the other path would have been better. it's different i suppose when there is a definite good option, or a definite bad option. but so often in life we are presented with multiple equally good but different options; those are the hardest choices to make. two roads diverged in the woods you know. but in the end i think you go with your good option, whichever one you pick, and you make the best of it, and at some point you look back and your choice has become reality instead of a list of possibilities in your mind, and you're too far down the path to even think about the alternative options anyways, and reality is what you have and what you know, and i think most normal and healthy people can accept the choices they've made because they know that it is a part of their story, but as of right now, i haven't chosen a path, i'm still standing at the fork, and this is the theme of my life, i am uncertain.

2011-10-02T20:33:00.000-07:00

i love relationships. i'm just being honest. i love them. i am an intimate person. i would rather have one extremely deep relationship than a great deal of shallow ones. i love being a girlfriend. i don't have to have a boyfriend to be happy, but i'm not a partier and i don't have a ton of friends so i really like spending saturday nights in sweats watching movies and going to get yogurt late at night. but it's hard, you know? it's hard to care about people that you know you're going to have to leave. and i always seem to end it or sabotage it because i want to end it before it gets even harder. and i never really get over things, and i never really stop loving people. i guess that's just the way it is.

2011-09-26T19:06:00.003-07:00

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Alexander Pope

i love this so much.

2011-09-26T19:06:00.001-07:00

Act well your part, there all the honor lies.

Alexander Pope

2011-09-24T22:30:00.000-07:00

it's like that woman who decided to take the train instead of walking and missed meeting the man of her dreams.

when i have a daughter and she has broken hearts, i will know how to fix them, because i am a pro.

read this.

wuthering heights

2011-09-23T22:47:00.000-07:00

It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same, and Linton's is as different as a moonbeam from lightning, or frost from fire.I cannot express it; but surely you and everybody have a notion that there is, or should be an existence of yours beyond you. What were the use of creation if I were entirely contained here? My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning; my great thought in living is himself. If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I should not seem a part of it. My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods. Time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees — my love for Heathcliff resembles the eternal rocks beneath — a source of little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly, I am Heathcliff — he's always, always in my mind — not as a pleasure, any more than I am always a pleasure to myself — but as my own being — so, don't talk of our separation again — it is impracticable.

Wuthering Heights (also my life)

2011-09-21T20:21:00.000-07:00

"I love you. Good-by - because I love you." The Awakening

2011-09-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

I loved you; even now I may confess,

Some embers of my love their fire retain;

But do not let it cause you more distress,

I do not want to sadden you again.

Hopeless and tongue-tied, yet I loved you dearly

With pangs the jealous and timid know;

So tenderly I loved you, so sincerely,
I pray God grant another love you so.

Pushkin (translation)

I love you
Not only for what you are,
But for what I am
When I am with you.

I love you,
Not only for what
You have made of yourself,
But for what
You are making of me.

I love you
For the part of me
That you bring out;

I love you
For putting your hand
Into my heaped-up heart
And passing over
All the foolish, weak things
That you can't help
Dimly seeing there,

And for drawing out
Into the light
All the beautiful belongings
That no one else had looked
Quite far enough to find

I love you because you
Are helping me to make
Of the lumber of my life
Not a tavern
But a temple.

Out of the works
Of my every day
Not a reproach
But a song.

I love you
Because you have done
More than any creed
Could have done
To make me good.
And more than any fate
Could have done
To make me happy.

You have done it
Without a touch,
Without a word,
Without a sign.

You have done it
By being yourself.
Perhaps that is what
Being a friend means,
After all.

by Roy Croft

I love you for what you are,

but I love you yet more for what

you are going to be.

I love you not so much for your realities

as for your ideals.

I pray for your desires that they may be great,

rather than for your satisfactions,

which may be so hazardously little.

A satisfied flower is one whose petals are about to fall.

The most beautiful rose is one hardly more than a bud

Where in the pangs and ecstasies of desire

are working for a larger and finer growth.

Not always shall you be what you are now.

You are going forward toward something great.

I am on the way with you and

therefore I love you.

Carl Sandburg

2011-09-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

FUERTE.

‎"i know if you get mad enough you can do anything. fight for what you want." - ann faulk, the wisest woman i know and one of my best friends

your alfred

2011-09-05T20:53:00.000-07:00

the sweetest thing i've ever been told. from my going away letter from blake.

"... So happy up! You are little, and the world is big. But the world is full of little people who stood as tall as they could and were as determined as they could be, and they came out on top. Besides, even Batman has an Alfred, a Robin, and a Rachel. I may be your Alfred, and not your Rachel, but we're still in this together.

You are beautiful. You are smart. You are loving. You are friendly. You are successful. You have been given every tool to succeed. God is on your side. So smile more. Remind your emotions, because I know they forget. I love you."

2011-09-05T20:26:00.001-07:00

i just want to be a mother. i want that love. that pure love. i want pure love.

i get frustrated because people treat me like an entity. i am a person. but people don't treat me like a person. or at least not like how i think a person should be treated. people treat me like all they want to do is break me. i don't know how it started.. maybe i have always been fighting the world, or maybe i used to be at peace.. i don't remember anymore. but all i know is that now, it seems like every day is just another day of me on my guard, trying to prove to everyone around me that i am a good person. i'm not the greatest person, that's for sure. i'm a sinner, and i make mistakes, lots of them, and when i make them, i make them big. but my heart is usually in the right place. i have a good heart. a big heart. i just want to love everyone and sometimes i go about it in the wrong way and maybe that's where the problems arise. or maybe my defenses have been so routed in now that i don't know how to love properly anymore, and that makes me sad. but i just want you to know, if you're reading this, whoever you are, that i genuinely do try, and that i'm weary, and i don't want to have to try so hard to prove myself anymore.

Celebration for June 24 by Thomas McGrath

2011-09-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Before you, I was living on an island

And all around the seas of that lonely coast

Cast up their imitation jewels, cast

Their fables and enigmas, questioning, sly.

I never solved them, or ever even heard,

Being perfect in innocence: unconscious of self;

Such ignorance of history was all my wealth—

A geographer sleeping in the shadow of virgins.

But though my maps were made of private countries

I was a foreigner in all of them after you had come,

For when you spoke, it was with a human tongue

And never understood by my land-locked gentry.

Then did the sun shake down a million bells

And birds bloom on bough in wildest song!

Phlegmatic hills went shivering with flame;

The chestnut trees were manic at their deepest boles!

It is little strange that nature was riven in her frame

At this second creation, known to every lover—

How we are shaped and shape ourselves in the desires of the other

Within the tolerance of human change.

Out of the spring’s innocence this revolution,

Created on a kiss, announced the second season,

The summer of private history, of growth, through whose sweet sessions

The trees lift toward the sun, each leaf a revelation.

Our bodies, coupled in the moonlight’s album,

Proclaimed our love against the outlaw times

Whose signature was written in the burning towns.

Your face against the night was my medallion.

Your coming forth aroused unlikely trumpets

In the once-tame heart. They heralded your worth

Who are my lodestar, my bright and ultimate North,

Marrying all points of my personal compass.

This is the love that now invents my fear

Which nuzzles me like a puppy each violent day.

It is poor comfort that the mind comes, saying:

What is one slim girl to the peoples’ wars?

Still, my dice are loaded: having had such luck,

Having your love, my life would still be whole

Though I should die tomorrow. I have lived it all.

—And love is never love, that cannot give love up.

hay

2011-09-01T22:34:00.000-07:00

there are certain questions that come to mind only at night time. questions like why am i here. what am i doing. who am i. what is good about me. what is good about the world. what is the point. why is it like this. why why why what and there are questions to the point where you can't even form a full thought any longer because it is night and all of the sanity and logic and comfort of the day died with the sun and no matter how normal and healthy you are during the waking hours when the world is asleep we are all a little bit more lost and scared. the more you think, the more sad your life will be. and life is already sad enough as it is. the more you think, the more you are confronted with the hard questions and the messy feelings and the knowledge that there is so much knowledge you'll never have. those of us who live in the grey areas will never be understood by those in the black and white. those of us who live in the words and the air will never be understood by those of the numbers and the lines.

2011-08-31T21:14:00.001-07:00

no one will ever be my best friend like blake viall is my best friend.

2011-08-23T05:06:00.000-07:00

—And love is never love, that cannot give love up.

Thomas McGrath

2011-08-22T21:19:00.000-07:00

Monet Refuses the OperationBy Lisel Mueller
Doctor, you say there are no haloes
around the streetlights in Paris
and what I see is an aberration
caused by old age, an affliction.
I tell you it has taken me all my life
to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels,
to soften and blur and finally banish
the edges you regret I don’t see,
to learn that the line I called the horizon
does not exist and sky and water,
so long apart, are the same state of being.
Fifty-four years before I could see
Rouen cathedral is built
of parallel shafts of sun,
and now you want to restore
my youthful errors: fixed
notions of top and bottom,
the illusion of three-dimensional space,
wisteria separate
from the bridge it covers.
What can I say to convince you
the Houses of Parliament dissolve
night after night to become
the fluid dream of the Thames?
I will not return to a universe
of objects that don’t know each other,
as if islands were not the lost children
of one great continent. The world
is flux, and light becomes what it touches,
becomes water, lilies on water,
above and below water,
becomes lilac and mauve and yellow
and white and cerulean lamps,
small fists passing sunlight
so quickly to one another
that it would take long, streaming hair
inside my brush to catch it.
To paint the speed of light!
Our weighted shapes, these verticals,
burn to mix with air
and changes our bones, skin, clothes
to gases. Doctor,
if only you could see
how heaven pulls earth into its arms
and how infinitely the heart expands
to claim this world, blue vapor without end.

2011-08-22T21:06:00.000-07:00

Eros TurannosBy Edwin Arlington Robinson

She fears him, and will always ask

What fated her to choose him;

She meets in his engaging mask

All reasons to refuse him;

But what she meets and what she fears

Are less than are the downward years,

Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs

Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity

That once had power to sound him,

And Love, that will not let him be

The seeker that she found him,

Her pride assuages her, almost,

As if it were alone the cost.

He sees that he will not be lost,

And waits, and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees

Envelops and allures him;

Tradition, touching all he sees

Beguiles and reassures him;

And all her doubts of what he says

Are dimmed with what she knows of days,

Till even prejudice delays,

And fades—and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates

The reign of her confusion;

The pounding wave reverberates

The crash of her illusion;

And home, where passion lived and died,

Becomes a place where she can hide,—

While all the town and harbor side

Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,

The story as it should be,—

As if the story of a house

Were told, or ever could be;

We’ll have no kindly veil between

Her visions and those we have seen,—

As if we guessed what hers have been

Or what they are, or would be.

Meanwhile, we do no harm; for they

That with a god have striven,

Not hearing much of what we say,

Take what the god has given;

Though like waves breaking it may be,

Or like a changed familiar tree,

Or like a stairway to the sea,

Where down the blind are driven.

2011-08-22T20:58:00.001-07:00

i'm really incredibly disappointed in myself right now and i hate it.

2011-08-22T20:16:00.000-07:00

i want to be loved like this

any time i doubt myself i think of you

2011-08-20T22:34:00.000-07:00

sometimes i look at joseph and i'm sad because i know eventually we're going to break up. and i don't like endings, endings are sad, but they're also usually necessary and we are not going to be together forever.

and you know what's crazy? the person who he will be with forever is out there somewhere. she exists. and so does the person i will be with forever. and i hope that one day if i run into them at a friday night football game or the grocery store i can look her in the eye, whoever she is, with no shame. i hope she can look me in the eye and know that i once loved something that is actually hers, that i once held something fragile, and i did my best to protect it. that i left it better than i found it. that i loved it truly and not selfishly.

people tell me that it's impossible for me and blake to still be friends after dating for so long and breaking up. we were talking about it the other night. the other girls had been in similar situations, and they were like "no, no, it's not possible. me and ____ are not friends anymore." and then they paused and said "well.. you and blake are different." and they're right. me and blake are different.

i love blake. and blake loves me. and we will always love each other, but not the way that you're probably thinking. i love blake's soul. as a person, i love him. without needing him as my boyfriend. i love him enough to sincerely hope that eventually he finds the person who God intended for him and that she is everything he deserves. i love him enough to not need him, at least not as much as i used to. i love him so much more deeply than anyone else that exists in this entire world. and i don't think that anyone else really understands this but him, but our connection is just different. it's on a whole other level from anything else i've ever experienced.

blake made me better. he just did. he protected me. he made me stronger. at first he was strong for me, but eventually he made me realize that i can be strong for myself. he will be at my wedding, and my husband will be able to look him in the eye and thank him for having such a large role in molding me into the woman that he will be with forever.

"and if there ever was somebody who made me believe in me, it was you." garth brooks

my own quiet war

2011-08-18T19:31:00.000-07:00

In the movies there is always one with red red lips who is beautiful and cruel. She is the one who drives the men crazy and laughs them all away. Her power is her own. She will not give it away.

I have begun my own quiet war. Simple. Sure. I am one who leaves the table like a man, without putting back the chair or picking up the plate."

The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisernos

2011-08-17T20:25:00.001-07:00

do not forget yourself.

2011-08-16T20:16:00.001-07:00

i feel like a part of me moved away.

i don't tell anyone the whole truth about myself anymore.

i don't trust anyone completely anymore.

i don't know what's wrong.

2011-08-15T20:10:00.001-07:00

Self Portrait

by Chase Twichell

I know I promised to stop

talking about her,

but I was talking to myself.

The truth is, she’s a child

who stopped growing,

so I’ve always allowed her

to tag along, and when she brings

her melancholy close to me

I comfort her. Naturally

you’re curious; you want to know

how she became a gnarled branch

veiled in diminutive blooms.

But I’ve told you all I know.

I was sure she had secrets,

but she had no secrets.

I had to tell her mine.

2011-08-12T20:45:00.000-07:00

there once was a little boy who begged for his parents to buy him a stuffed tiger at the zoo. the tiger then got to be there as this little boy grew up. the boy had a big imagination. he liked to play pretend like wizards and spies. he also had a good heart. he was a great little boy.

slowly this little boy grew into a great man. one of the best of men, in fact. and the tiger was always there on the shelf in the closet watching over him. ready to come out of hiding when he was needed.

but men don't need stuffed tigers anymore, because they have to go off and do men things that don't involve stuffed tigers. which is a shame, because sometimes even men get scared and old friends are good to have.

the man knew someone who could use watching over though. someone that was close to being a woman, but was still really a little girl. and who could really use a stuffed tiger, because little girls definitely get scared and the old friends of old friends are good to have.

and the little girl loved the tiger as much as she missed the man.

2011-08-09T20:37:00.000-07:00

i just don't want to be a consolation prize.

2011-07-30T19:32:00.000-07:00

i haven't blogged much lately. life got really busy all of the sudden, which will be the theme from now until forever or so it seems, and i haven't taken time to put down my thoughts. i also have been thinking a lot about things that i don't feel ready to share right yet, even if it is only with my six internet readers, and that one person from singapore who keeps showing up on my online tracking.

so here i begin by tackling a subject that has long been a thorn in my side. metaphorically speaking. on a side note, the night of junior miss i was carrying some roses on top of my plaques (pretty sure that's spelled wrong) and i literally got a thorn in my side. one of the best moments of my life simply for the irony involved.

here i am to do my own personal version of mythbusters, and the myth that i am busting is THE SUPER CHRISTIAN.

i think this is probably a blog post that needs a lot of background information and i will do my best to give it to you. i will start by saying that i love Jesus. i am a Christian. i hope that you already knew that by the way i live my life but i will not humor myself into thinking that is always true.

i dislike church. most churches at least. i have for a long time. i have a really hard time with so many things about the church, and though the church does for sure fall short of what Christ intended it to be, that is only because it is composed of human beings like myself who are imperfect.. and human.

so everyone knows what the super christian looks like, correct me if i'm wrong. the most tell-tale sign is a profile picture with an obviously underprivileged minority child. you know what i'm talking about. and before i go any farther, i invite you to look at my facebook profile pictures and assure you that you will find one of these pictures of which i speak.

there are other signs. i won't describe them, because honestly i just feel like a horrible person right now for even writing this.

and i know, i really do, that when you are truly in love with Jesus, you want everyone to know about it. i know that. but i also know that of the handful of people i know who have hearts closer to God than i could ever describe to you, none of them are in this group of people of which i speak.

because it lacks authenticity to me. it really, really, does. and i know that i am wrong for even slightly judging another person's relationship with God or Jesus Christ but i just really think that if you are truly close to the heart of God, you won't be so worried with looking like a great Christian, you'll just be concerned with loving God.

and now i'd like to say with all honesty and transparency and also some shame and heartbroken-ness that i am not close to God right now. i believe that you are always walking toward or away from God, or at least drifting, and i just caught myself drifting and i have been for at least a month.

i always feel judged by christians. and i am a christian. how horrible must it be for non-christians to deal with us? i can't even imagine. i feel like these "super christians" are looking down on me because sometimes i say words like damn and shit and i'm not super involved in a youth group. that's why i shy away from those people. i don't like them. i'm just being honest. i don't like someone who is in my face JESUS JESUS JESUS LOOK AT ME I'M A CHRISTIAN YOU'LL NEVER BE AS GOOD OF A CHRISTIAN AS ME because it makes me feel bad and then i feel silly for feeling bad because, as a wise friend pointed out to me recently, there is no such thing as being a "better Christian". and he's right. that whole mentality is opposite of God. it's a selfish mentality and a true relationship with the Almighty involves losing yourself. if king david had a facebook i doubt he would have been like "I'M A MAN AFTER GOD'S OWN HEART, SUCKAS!"

i feel like this has been horribly organized and explained, and i am sorry for that. i am more of a sinner than most, i assure you.

2011-07-29T21:59:00.000-07:00

i met an amazing kid today. his name was kenneth. he had the handshake of a man; he said his mom taught him. he looked me in the eye the entire time i talked with him. he grinned with appreciation for my attention. he had a beautiful soul. he will grow up to be a great man one day. and that makes my soul feel good, just knowing that there are humans like that. there was something steady and quiet and genuine and sweet about him.

i can't wait to raise a boy that will be a great man.

the things i will do for college scholarships

2011-07-25T12:28:00.000-07:00

So here I am, searching Fast Web for college scholarships, because everybody needs a hobby, right? So I come across a scholarship for blogging and I'm like, HEY, I BLOG, let's get this show on the road. The scholarship requires that you write a blog about your ideal property from Vacancy.com, which is actually a pretty cool website, with pretty pictures you can click on and other various cool website-y things. So I'm sitting here, looking at the 50 states, and of course I click on Hawaii first, but there are no properties from Hawaii on the website. Which is a bummer. So I go to the logical next choice, Nebraska. Ah, Nebraska. I actually couldn't even find it on the map without looking it up, though I am ashamed to admit it. Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, they're all the same. Over here in the East we had some pretty good boundary disputes and rivers to make our states a variety of shapes, but out there they just blocked off some squares and called it a day. I then picked Lincoln as my city, mainly because I figure ya can't go wrong with a city named after the President who kind of ended slavery and ended up on multiple types of currency. I then chose this apartment complex: WHISPERING RIDGE APARTMENTS. Because, really, who doesn't want to live in something as mythical and mysterious and marvelous (got carried away with alliteration there) as an apartment in WHISPERING RIDGE? Very Agatha Christie, or at the very least, Days of our Lives.
All in all I'm very glad I have particpated in this scholarship because I have never been completely convinced that anybody even lives in Nebraska, but judging by this apartment complex, someone does, though I have yet to see a picture of an actual person and I still feel that the whole state might be a cover up for some government experimental ground or something. But the pictures of rooms are nice- very contemporary and clean and there's a fitness center, so if there ARE people in Nebraska, they can get in shape 24 hours a day! It also has it's own movie theater and billiards table, which makes me think maybe Nebraska is better than I thought, because that seems like a pretty awesome amenity for an apartment complex. And they have a washer and dryer, so rest assured, the Nebraskians, if they exist, clean their clothes. If they exist. I'm still not convinced.

2011-07-24T21:33:00.001-07:00

i'm good at reading people. probably because while most other people have actual hobbies, my only real hobby is.. people. but it can get me into trouble. i infer too much from small gestures, and judge too quickly. it's a huge fault of mine. and sometimes, my judgments are correct. (pause: if you're self righteously thinking something about 'oh she's bad she judges people i don't judge people' you are judging me for judging people so admit that you're a hypocrite, it will improve your life i promise and we can move on with this blog post. anyways.) sometimes, though, i am so wrong about people.

for instance: yesterday was junior miss. two weeks ago we started practice, and i was not excited at all. i thought i would hate it, i thought i would hate the girls, i thought they would hate me, blah blah blah, i was very pessmisitic and negative nancylike.

but last night was one of the best nights of my life. not because i got some awards, either. because i got to spend time with 12 girls that are really just incredible, good hearted people. all very different, but all great, great people.

annalise said "i have 12 new best friends." and i love that. she's so right. and i teared up when during the group prayer before the show, alex thanked God for "these girls that have restored my faith in people." cause i feel like that too.

it's so hard to have faith in people, especially seventeen year old girls. i mean i know myself and i'd like to think i'm in the better half here of teenage girls and i quite honestly just suck a lot of the time. but i got to spend two weeks with a group of girls that had so many wonderful traits. they are kind hearted, sweet, sincere, hilarious, silly, strong, intelligent, caring, talented, beautiful, wonderful people that i'm glad i know. every single one of them.

so that's this week's life lesson. people will surprise you. for the good.

2011-07-20T19:07:00.001-07:00

i care too much and it hurts me.