just when you think it's all figured out

Sometimes you think you know what you want for yourself, or what you need to be the best you can be but then you go to obtain those things and every single plan you have made crumples just when it's within reach.

Then what?  What happens when you are left with nothing?

Start by sitting down in the rubble, examining a handful of broken dreams and hopes, and figuring out why it didn't work out.

And then the rebuilding starts.  The restructuring of your future, your dreams and hopes, your ideas of who you think you want to be. Pick up whatever remnants are left and then make up stuff to fill in the gaps. 

But this time take a moment to be influenced by the people and things around you, by the small signs that you have been noticing but ignoring because you hate to be wrong.  Let them take part in the shaping of your soul. And don't focus on the past: let new people and experiences in.

Not taking those thing into account is probably why everything failed to begin with.

Take the time to be upset, to be disappointed.  But don't dwell too long on what you've lost because there is something absolutely amazing just a few steps into the darkness of the future, waiting for you to put your damn shoes on!

My "normal" self (the person that most of you reading this know and remember me as) would now insert a great bible verse or relation to how great our Father is and how His timing isn't the same as ours.  Except I'm not the same person you guys knew, and I'm just starting to come to terms with and accept the fact that I may never be as preachy or religious as I was, or at least not in the same way I was.  I'm starting to accept the fact that my life fell apart and the way that I put the pieces back together made me different...no better, no worse.

If nothing else, the nineteen years and two months I've existed have been full this cycle. I build a plan, watch it collapse (usually at the most awful time), break down because of it, resist accepting that things are changing, and then embracing it and allowing myself to be remolded into something new.

All we can do as human beings is try our best not to mess up too terribly and hope that we leave an imprint on someone's life.

Actions and Words

Actions prove who someone is, 

Words just prove who they want to be.

Dang, how true is that?  How often do we see someone in our lives saying something but doing the opposite? How often do WE do that? 

But what's wrong with hoping to be more than we currently are, with wanting others to see us in a better light?  I think that it is more of a problem to think you are okay and have no way to improve...God made nobody perfect.  

We are human. We hurt people. We get hurt.  We are sad and lonely and angry at the world sometimes.  We laugh at things that shouldn't be funny.  We do things we know are wrong just because of some strange impulse.  We live the only way we know how, the way we think will bring us the most pleasure.  

Yet, more often than not, the way we live is hurtful and harmful and needs improvement. One of the best things about being human beings is having the opportunity to change the course of our lives a hundred times before we reach the end of it.  We start out with the most basic goals as children: to have fun, hot dogs in our mac & cheese, and our favorite toy tucked into bed with us.  From that point our views of what's most important will change a thousand times: boys, marriage, partying, careers, vehicles, animals, staying out of trouble, God, our health, moving, being happy, having children, growing a record-size tomato, walking to the bathroom by ourselves, family.  

What makes us who we are is constantly changing.  What we want, what we dream of, what we pray for, what we work towards is constantly changing.  So yes, our actions prove who we are today and who we were in the past, but our words prove what we aspire to be tomorrow and the day after that and the year after that.

People change and as hard as it is to accept, sometimes the changes cause friendships to break, relationships to end, beliefs to disappear, morals to be altered, and lives to flip-flop. 

We are on this crazy, crazy ride and the best we can do is hold on through the flips, curves, slopes, and hills.

Livin Young and Wild and Free

My heart got broken in the most unexpected place, by the most unexpected person, at the most unexpected and worst time a few months ago.  A normal girl would cry, get mad, and then get over it.  I, however, don't seem to have been blessed with normal coping mechanisms.  I get angry and snap at undeserving people. I get wreckless and do things I know I shouldn't do because I'm so hurt that I'm numb.  I push away the people that love me.  And this time, I pushed away any of the faith I still had in tact after my first semester of college.   

I thought that my college experience would bring me closer to God since I entered into the experience with a good relationship with Him, a confidence in who I was, and the stubborness to not turn into one of "those" girl.  Those girls who step onto campus and throw every moral they grew up with out of the window.  Instead, what I got was a fall and winter full of struggle followed by a whole awful lot of self-defeat as I stopped working on my relationship with God (acutally, I stopped really working on all of my relationships) and focused instead on making sure that I felt alive by doing whatever crazy thing crossed my path.

I didn't want to end up this way, I didn't expect to. Yet...here I am. I am thirty credits into my college career, I have no idea what I want to do with my life, and I have no solid faith in the one thing that has been a truth in my life for years and years. Luckily, my friends are kind and smart and here for me even when I disappear for weeks without a single text or skype call.

"Faith is funny that way.  Sometimes we don't even know why or how we have it. It's  just there, it's there to get us through things and to reassure us that anything is possible." --Vinz

"Maybe you are just turning into the person you were meant to be all along" -- Ali

Sometimes (a lot more often that not, actually), getting out of bed it too overwhelming for me in the morning and sometimes being nice and "okay" is an impossible task.  Right now I can't seem to focus on anything but myself, my own struggles, and the fact that I am nothing like the person I was seven months ago.  Of course, the core of who I am is still here; I still don't know how to think before I speak or get to class on time and I still love sitting down with a good book on a rainy weekday, but everything else feels different.  I am seeing the world so differently and I'm not so sure I like these new lenses or not.

So no, I don't want you to tell me it will be alright.  I don't want to listen to you preach or read about how awesome your God is, at least not right now.  It makes my heart sick and my thoughts negative to hear it.  I don't want to be reprimanded for doing "bad" things, or told that I'm different than who I was...I already know that I could get hurt, and lose control, and that I'm a little off-center.  I don't need your condolences or words of wisdom because no, you have no clue how I'm feeling or what is going on in my head. 

What I want is to ride this section of my life out.  I want to work on being feeling happy again, even if it starts by having fun late at night with my friends and I want to work on that without the knowledge that I'm disappointing anybody or scaring anybody or disgusting anybody.  I want more happy and okay days than I have sad, hard, and lonely days.  I know this will end, my heart will heal and my life will find some normalacy but right now I just want to do whatever it takes to feel even a shadow of happiness and belonging. 

So maybe Young, Wild, and Free is the perfect title for this little chapter in my life, maybe this chapter is what I need to become the fantastic person I'm sure to become.