Don't say it just yet.

I'm a strong believer that the words "I love you" should only be used when they're actually meant. It's such a strong emotion and people tend to throw it around like it means nothing. I tell my friends I love them, I say I love a pair of shoes, but put me in a relationship and the little "L word" will not slip out of my mouth. Don't tell me you love me if you just kind of like me. Don't tell me you love me if you like me a lot. Don't tell me you love me until you actually love me.
Life isn't a Disney movie, as much as I'd like it to be, it isn't. This is life. We don't all get fairy tale endings. Some of us don't end up with the guy of our dreams. The sweet girl doesn't always get the hot popular guy. Love takes knowledge. Love takes time. You may fall into deep infatuation with someone where they're all you ever think about and they make your world spin around and they are all that matters. Throwing in the love word too early can scare someone away. It did me. This amazing boy I dated a long time ago told me he loved me after three days.  3.  I panicked. We didn't last long.
I don't want to hear I love you on the first or second or third date. I want to hear it when you mean it. When you know the good, the bad, the ugly, the stupid, the silly, the thoughtful, and all the other sides I have and still think you'd have me no other way, that's when I want to hear it.

What I need

I need someone who is prepared for:
-A million questions
-Uncontrollable laughter
-My family
-Musical outburst
-Random dancing
-My friends
-Happy/Sad tears
-Deep talks
-My imagination
-Random texts
-My sense of humor
- and absolute acceptance of me
I'm a lot of things. I'm crazy, loud ,silly, dumb ,shy, smart, girly, country, sweet, sad, broken, happy and almost every other emotion and adjective you can think of, all in a concoction that created someone unique. It created me, and I'm like no one else around. I need someone who will accept all the strange and quirky things about me that I hate about myself.

Late night musings

He broke her. In every way possible. He broke her heart. He broke her hope. He broke her will to love. He broke her trust. From that day forth she was never truly whole again. For how could she be? When the only man that held her heart and soul and world proved to be nothing more than an ignorant boy who delighted in playing games with her heart.

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All Over Again

He makes my heart speed up.
He makes my head spin.
He makes me question all the choices I've ever made.
I'm not sure he realizes what he's doing to me from so many miles away. When he was here it was different. I couldn't stop thinking about him. He was my first thought in the morning and my last thought at night, and I "knew" I loved him. But he left. And every day with him gone, my heart got a little lighter. The burden of unrequited love wasn't as heavy because I wasn't so sure it was love at all. I figured out how to breathe without him. My heart had room once again for someone else. I found a "someone else". He's perfect. He's gorgeous. I thought I was doing a fabulous job of getting him to talk to me until he started talking to someone else. As my heart tries to figure out what it wants, he comes back, out of nowhere, my first love, my knight in shining armor. Though now, he seems to be more of a loser wrapped in crinkly tin foil than a majestic knight who can ride in and save the day.
He was absent from my life for so long, I forgot how much it hurt to even see his name. Now, he's thrown himself into my life. His name pops up on my phone and I dismiss his text message. His name pops up on any number of my social media sites and I close the notifications with a sigh.
I thought it might be easier to figure him out when he left, but he's all the more confusing with distance between us. I don't understand what he wants. His name lights up my phone again and I read his name on the screen over and over. Ive decided to engage in his silly texts and his useless comment conversations. I'm in deeper now, I think to myself. I never should have given in. I never should have replied. A lot of good this realization is doing me now, after the fact. Now that I cant change things. Now that I've let him in again. Now that I'm falling all over again and am facing inevitable collision that is sure to hurt in the end. Now I'm in too deep. Now I'm falling in love.

Books in essence

So, I've been reading a lot lately, a lot of fiction, a lot of romance, a lot of fairy tales, a lot of tragedies. They all seem to weave themselves together in a strange way to mirror different aspects of my life. Then again, I guess that's what all books do. I mean, that's why we continue to read them right? Because they whisk us away from our problems and our trauma. But something in them has to connect to something inside of us, of else we would never be connected enough to finish a book. Something has to tug on our heart, something has to pull us in, we have to relate to something or someone or some situation. For me, I have to like the main characters name. Stupid right? I read a book once, and I didn't like the girls name. It just wasn't pretty enough for me, and I couldn't find anything relatable and I didn't even finish the book.
I love those connections. I love thinking "oh my gosh I've been there" or "yeah I know exactly how that feels". I think we all do in some way. I think we all want to feel like we aren't alone, and that's we let ourselves get emotionally invested in the well being of fictional characters within the pages of a book.
Books are where we can run away and hide for as long as we want. Books are a safe place where nothing can happen to us and no one can hurt us. Books are a place where we can have innumerable friends and have adventures that we would be too terrified to attempt in reality. Books are a safe place. Yes, indeed, they are one of the safest places I know of. And I cherish every safe place I've found so far.

"Books don't offer real escape, but they can stop a mind from scratching itself raw"

Unexpected Tragedy

The thing about unexpected tragedy is, it effects all aspects of your life.
You never know when emotions are going to come flying in and make your heart ache and burn and race. You never know when the realization will hit you that this thing has actually happened to you. You never know when you'll realize that this isn't just a bad dream, and that you cant just wake up from it. You never know when you'll realize what you've lost. You never know when you'll just begin sobbing uncontrollably, the kind of silent sobbing that makes you hold your face and hold your breath so no one hears you. You never know when you'll be furious at the entire would around you for no reason at all. You never know when you'll become so delirious that you just laugh at everything to avoid crying. You never know how each day will go.
I woke up this morning, and yesterday, and the day before that, with a sinking, broken heart. It just feels painful to smile sometimes. The afternoon is the easiest. I get a second wind and I'm in that delirious mood where everything is hysterical for some reason. Night is hardest. That's when scenes from that day play out over and over in my head and I cant stop them. They scare me. They scar me. They hurt me. They break my heart. Mornings are just sad. I wake up with a frown and a sick feeling in my gut. Yesterday, in the drive through at McDonald's, I just started sobbing, out of no where. I cried and cried and cried. I thought I wouldn't be able to stop. Likewise, today in the middle of cleaning my room, I just started crying. It hurts so bad sometimes. I know time will help as our tragedy happened only a week ago, but it doesn't make it any easier now.
I'm sorry to keep writing such depressing, sad stuff. We lost a family member about a week ago and its hitting me hard. I promise I'll lighten up eventually.
Anyhow, I'm just so sick of feeling sick. I feel broken and hurt and sad and abandoned and I don't know how to fix it. I cant fix it. I just miss her so much... I wasn't ready for her to leave yet. I love her so much, and that will never, ever, change.

"Grief is like the ocean; it comes on waves ebbing and flowing. Sometimes the water is calm, and sometimes it is overwhelming. All we can do is learn to swim"- Vicki Harrison

My Place

The cold winter air hits my face as I run. I just want to get away. Away from the pressure, the stress, the chaos of my life here. Everyone wants things for me that I have never wanted. They do not understand me here. I run as fast as I can. I only hear my heart beat racing in my ears. I tear down their streets and sidewalks into my place. Into my forest. I got lost here once, as a child. I fell in love with the mystique of the trees and the low slung fog that ambles around in the evening. I feel safe here. At peace. It is as though no one can find me here, in my place. No one knows of it. No one knows I come here. No one knows I love this place like a second home, that I feel so at ease here. This is not a place people around me know of, or would like to know of. They are stubborn. They are spoiled. They are only intrigued with things like wealth and appearance. This place, my place, is too lowly for them. I doubt they know it exists here, behind their glistening buildings and rush hour traffic. They have not the faintest idea of what beauty lies but a few hundred feet from their high heels and noses held higher. They don't understand my fascination with the beauty of simplicity. The beauty of nature. They don't see it, but that's okay. They don't really see me either, and when they can't see me, I can slip away. Here, to my place. My place, without them.

Free

People look at her, but they never see her. If they do, all they see is a quiet, introverted, terrified, child. All of which she is not. Her friends look upon her with pity. They know she has fallen once again into his trap. He will never love her, they know this, as does she, but she doesn’t care. He holds a small part of her world and almost the entirety of her heart. She has fallen into this spell before. A kind word, a smile, a nod of acknowledgement is all she will ever get from him, but to her, he is perfect. Sometimes, she comes out of her haze, and snaps back to reality. Sometimes when his disinterest becomes abundantly apparent. It doesn’t last long. Soon she is faded into a hazy, love-veiled waltz through life once again. She builds him up in her mind. Creates a super hero of sorts that could ride in and save her from her problems and whisk her off her feet. But usually, he is her only problem.
She has a happy life. Loving parents. Many friends. As any other teenage girl, she has her spells of arguments and embarrassment and loneliness and anger, but her life is far from broken. It’s rather whole, in fact. But her mind is her greatest enemy. She can’t stop thinking. Even if it’s becoming destructive. She plots and imagines and daydreams her days away and often finds him in the middle of her make-believe turmoil. She asks herself the riddle: how can he save me from himself? And she tunes back into reality. She goes on a binge of hateful thoughts and comments to convince herself of his worthlessness. He hasn’t done anything wrong. It just makes it easier for her to unstitch herself from him if she can feign anger. In reality, he hardy knows she exists. In reality, he is blameless. His imaginary faults are her own.

After her fictitious anger comes tangible sorrow. Fits of tears and nights of silent sobbing accompany her broken heart. She cannot help it. She is fragile in her love for him. She is weak and the unstitching process might just break her heart irreparably.

She realizes, for a final moment that he is not good for her. Now, she moves on, completely. His name is not her first thought every morning. His smile is not the last thing she sees in her head every night. Her heart no longer stops when someone mentions his name. She sees him around their tiny town and hardly realizes. Though her heart is not whole, it is no longer crushed or crumbling. Her world is once again turning and the sun shines once more upon her smile. She is free.

My Sanctuary

I have many sanctuaries. My room, anywhere with a good book, my grandma's house, and the actual sanctuary at my church. Last night and this morning, I spent a lot of time in the sanctuary of my church. It's a place where I feel closer to God, and a peace settles on my soul. It's also a place where some of my closest friends and extended family gather on a weekly basis. It's like a family reunion twice a week. It's great. We have this awesome maroon carpet that I love to pieces and these old maroon pews that have a special spot in my heart, and it's a place I'm so familiar with, that when I bring my friends, its almost awkward to show them around. I know where more cleaning supplies are in the church kitchen than in my own home.
In my eighteen years of existence, I have only ever visited two churches other than my own. One was a mission that we support. I went with some of my church family. The other, was a sister church in Georgia which our youth group attended while on a mission trip in the area. Though I haven't been physically exposed to many other churches, I'm quite happy with my own. I dread going off to university when I finish community college for fear of having to find a new church. My church is so happy. So welcoming. So open. So nice. Every morning, I'm greeted with smiles and hugs and kisses from so many people that have watched me grow up, it's almost overwhelming. They've seen me through some of the roughest and some of the happiest times in my life. I love them dearly. I'm so thankful God has placed me in this place, in this home, in this church, surrounded by these people. It truly is a blessing.
"Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the father, but by me" John 14:6

Blogging maybe?

So I guess I'll try my hand at blogging. I haven't ever done this before, so forgive me as I learn. I want to be a writer, so this is going to, essentially, be a place for my mid-day inspiration and story fragments and whatnot. feel free to read or, if I'm not your cup of tea, you wont hurt my feelings if you pass me by.
xoxo -muse