Patient. Fine. Balanced. Kind.

If only someone could speak of me the way she talks about you.

Here's the thing. As much as I would like to be able to be stoic, as much as I'd like to just sit back and have fun and not care about other people, as much as I wish I could escape the romantic in me, that part will always be there. I will always care too much. I will always put other people's needs before my own. I will always want a Jane Austen/John Green style love.

And it makes me wonder. How does it happen that those of us who want it so desperately are unable to achieve it? Or maybe it's that we want it so badly because we can't find it in our own lives. And so we go through our lives hoping each and every day that maybe, just maybe, that day is going to be the one when, by some strange miracle, we meet the person with whom we'll find it. Maybe it'll be the day that someone tells us they can't live without us, that every day is an adventure when they're with us, that they blush too easily when they look at us because they don't want to stare, that we are so incredibly beautiful  when we're asleep next to them, that they would do anything to make us happy.


Then we get to the point where we're convinced that no one ever will say those things to us. We think we're not worth the wasted breath. We're crazy for so many different reasons, and no one should care about us past the point of friendship because in the end they're only going to tire of us. They're going to get sick of supporting us through our emotional ups and downs, they'll be weary of saying "I love you" because we need to hear it every 10 seconds just to reaffirm it. We're not going to be enough to keep them interested.

Meanwhile our friends tell us that we just need to stop trying and it'll happen for us when we least expect it. And we'll scream inside our heads, "It's not that easy! You can't just turn hopeless romanticism off!" But we won't say it out loud, and we'll just spend our days waiting. We'll pretend we don't look for our person everywhere we go, that we don't hope someone's vague, angsty Tumblr posts are about us.





I need someone who will be my Augustus Waters, and I will be their Hazel Grace. I want to be the Alaska to someone's Pudge, and I want to equally be the Pudge to that person's Alaska. The drizzle and the hurricane, both of us. Maybe you have no idea what that means yet, but you will, and it's important. I want it so, so badly. I will be patient, as much as I can possibly be. Because as much as I don't believe it, I still hope that my friends are right when they say it'll happen for me. I'll try to keep believing that I'm worth it, that someone will want to know every intimate detail about me. It's so hard to hold on to that. But I will wait for you.

Ricochet. Take your aim. Fire away, fire away.

I've been avoiding this.

I don't know how to explain everything that's happened in the last 3 months.

Most of you know already, so I guess I'm just going to skip over most of it.

Basically, I am not the same person I was just a few months ago. I have no idea where my life is headed. I don't even know what the next 3 months have in store for me. I have never been so emotionally stable in my life. I don't even have enough money in my checking account to pay rent this month (thankfully I do in my savings, though). I'm taking a year off from school - or at least I think that's the plan. I'm not currently registered for any classes. That could change. Who knows?

The strangest part of all this is that I am completely okay. I feel like things are just washing over me, like everything is actually going to work out in my favor at some point.

Like I said, emotionally stable.

Approximately a week and a half ago, I was actually able to flip a switch and completely turn off my feelings for someone for the first time ever. I've never understood how people go from intense attraction to "just friends" so easily, but I'm finding out how it is to have a normal range of emotions. I'm beginning to be more reasonable, to be able to isolate myself from a situation and know that things are not my fault.

It is the strangest feeling.

And even with the stability, I'm still able to express my emotions fully. I am sad when I should be, I am (usually) happy when I should be, I am angry when I should be. It's when I lose the control I have over those emotions that the depression starts creeping in, but that happens so much less now.

So, to wrap up this update, I'm starting a new job this week, trying to determine plans for a weekend trip to Minnesota, being artsy when I feel like it, working out consistently, figuring out my insulin pump, and allowing myself to feel attractive/recognize that people actually are attracted to me. I am starting to be the best me, and it feels so good.

P.S. - Looking over the past few weeks' Post Secrets, I just can't help but wonder if people have secrets that involve me and who/what they are. Secrets are so fascinating to me. I can't even decide what mine would be.

Who am I?

This was already in my journal. I'm thinking it's appropriate for tonight.


I am a girl who loves most people more than they deserve. I am driven by feelings and sometimes that overwhelms me. I am scared of most forms of pain, so it takes a lot of encouragement to put myself out there. At the same time, I love attention, so every once in a while I'll belt out a song or turn heads on the dance floor. As soon as I'm criticized, I never want to do that activity again - at least not in front of the critic. I am trying to stop refusing compliments, but that takes a lot of work. I am lost sometimes. Okay, maybe a lot of the time. I don't know where exactly my life is headed. But I have plenty of friends who love me for all that I am and who are more than happy to help me find my way back to reality when I need it. I have friends who understand my emotions and know how it feels when they don't make sense. I have friends who don't ever want me to change the core of who I am, even when I'm unable to see it.


So I guess that's me in a nutshell, and I'm okay with it. Nearly every other person in my life is okay with it too - more than okay with it, really.

I feel alive

I went to a concert tonight. The band?

Fun.

It was so great. And I know, I should listen to The Format because it was Nate's original band and everyone says they're better. But there's just something about Fun. that I...I don't know, something that I just love so much.

They must be relatively crazy themselves, because some of those songs just perfectly describe me at my craziest.

UGH I CAN'T EVEN. I can't even talk about it because I don't know what to say!

The Gambler WILL be played at my wedding. It will.

Please pardon my fangirling. I don't even care how annoying it is tonight, because I am on such an emotional high from that concert.

I drowned out all my sense

...That's what you get when you let your heart win.


The next month is going to be tough, let me tell you that.


I can do this.


I can do this.


I can do this.


Easter break was full of weird happenings and life alterations and craziness (see my last post). But now that all of that has happened and I've had a couple episodes of dead-to-the-world thinking, I'm feeling more able to put things into perspective. I reminded myself of some good advice that Shannon sent my way last summer, originally from an awesome blog called The Frenemy. I even typed it out onto a sticky note on my computer desktop so that I could see it every day...and maybe made it my cover photo on Facebook...and maybe even wrote it out and hung it above my desk.

Now is the time when I start pulling my life together. In the last couple months, I lost a lot of sense. It's time to toughen up and stop avoiding things (again). It's time to stay tough, stay confident. Because life is weird and difficult and confusing and frustrating at times - hell, most of the time. But life is also pretty awesome, and living is worth the work. So it's going to be a really trying month or so until finals are over, but you know what?


I can do this.


I can do anything, riiiiight?


Right.

And I don't even need your love

I have my bad days, and I have my good days. Lately there have been more bad days than good ones. Today was a good one, all things considered.

Life is hard, you know?

I have things complicating my thoughts. I have to do my job, I have to find a new job, I have to find an apartment, I have certain people sitting in my mind and refusing to leave, I have diseases to manage, and I have school. Even if I didn't have the other things to do, I don't think I'd be able to completely tackle school.

And I am so unmotivated to do it...any of it. I want to leave. I want to get on a train and go where it takes me. I want to disappear for the weekend and see if anyone notices. I want to be good at something, the way some people are good at reading people or at creating poetry or at flirting. I am finding that I am mediocre at all these different things but not good at any of them in particular. I mean, I'm good at math and grammar but a) what are those going to do for me, and b) there are plenty of people who are so much better at them.

I've been stuck in a rut of complacency. I need to get out of here.

It's okay if no one believes like you

I think life lately has been telling me to watch this again. A friend showed it to me for the first time at least a year ago, but just in the last few weeks, it's been mentioned at least three times by different people. I took it as a sign that I've been needing to see it again.

How To Be Alone - Tanya Davis

If you are at first lonely, be patient. If you've not been alone much, or if when you were, you weren't okay with it, then just wait. You'll find it's fine to be alone once you're embracing it.

We could start with the acceptable places: the bathroom, the coffee shop, the library. Where you can stall and read the paper, were you can get your caffeine fix and sit and stay there, where you can browse the stacks and smell the books. You're not supposed to talk much anyway, so it's safe there.

There's also the gym. If you're shy you could hang out with yourself in mirrors, you could put headphones in.

And there's public transportation, because we all gotta go places.

And there's prayer and meditation. No one will think less if you're hanging out with your breath seeking peace and salvation.

Start simple. Things you may have previously based on your "avoid being alone" principles.

The lunch counter, where you will be surrounded by chow-downers, employees who only have an hour and their spouses work across town and so they - like you - will be alone. Resist the urge to hang out with your cell phone.

When you are comfortable with eat lunch and run, take yourself out for dinner - a restaurant with linen and silverware. You're no less intriguing a person when you're eating solo dessert, cleaning the whipped cream from the dish with your finger. In fact, some people at full tables will wish they were where you were.

Go to the movies, where it is dark and soothing, alone in your seat amidst a fleeting community. And then, take yourself out dancing to a club where no one knows you. Stand on the outside of the floor til the lights convince you more and more and the music shows you. Dance like no one's watching...because they're probably not. And if they are, assume it is with the best of human intentions. The way bodies move genuinely to beats is, after all, gorgeous and affecting. Dance until you're sweating, and beads of perspiration remind you of life's best things, down your back like a brook of blessings.

Go to the woods alone, and the trees and squirrels will watch for you.

Go to an unfamiliar city. Roam the streets - there are always statues to talk to, and benches made for sitting give strangers a shared existence if only for a minute, and these moments can be so uplifting and the conversations you get in by sitting alone on benches might've never happened had you not been there by yourself.

Society is afraid of alonedom, like lonely hearts wasting away in basements, like people must have problems if, after a while, nobody is dating them. But lonely is a freedom that breathes easy and weightless and lonely is healing if you make it.

You could stand, swathed by groups and mobs or hold hands with your partner, look both further and farther for the endless quest for company. But no one's in your head and by the time you translate your thoughts some essence of them may be lost or perhaps it is just kept.

Perhaps in the interest of loving oneself, perhaps all those sappy slogans from preschool over to high school's groaning were tokens for holding the lonely at bay. Because if you're happy in your head, then solitude is blessed and alone is okay.

It's okay if no one believes like you. All experience is unique. No one has the same synapses, can't think like you - for this, be relieved. It keeps things interesting, life's magic things in reach.

And it doesn't mean you're not connected, that community's not present. Just take the perspective you get from being one person in one head and feel the effects of it. Take silence and respect it. If you have an art that needs a practice, stop neglecting it. If your family doesn't get you, or religious sect is not meant for you, don't obsess about it.

You could be in an instant surrounded if you needed it. If your heart is bleeding, make the best of it. There is heat in freezing. Be a testament.

We've got a lot to learn

God knows we're worth it.


There's been a lot happening in my brain lately. I didn't even realize it until today. I've been having anxiety attacks that cause me to get so overwhelmed with emotion that I just need to lay in bed and sleep for a couple hours. I haven't had an appetite, I've been angry and feeling the need to punch things, and I've been hypersensitive (yes, even for me).

But you know what? I'm not going to let it get worse. I'm done with this. I know how to combat it, so now I just need to actually take those steps - go for a run when I'm angry, eat healthy food on a normal schedule, think before I react.

I'm going to do it, but I'm going to need help from you, my friends.

"I won't give up on us, even if the skies get rough. I'm giving you all my love. I'm still looking up."