Christmas Cheer is GRAND(parents)!

As I get older and older it takes a lot more for me to get into the Christmas spirit. I'm either too busy, too tired, not interested, or just down right forget what a special time of the year it is. Today however is the first time I've felt in the Christmas spirit! I got to finally see my Grandparents (my mom's parents) in which I haven't seen in a VERY long time! It was the funnest thing, I talked literature and great books with my Grandma and just sat and admired my Grandpa and his company all afternoon. Turns out that we have read a lot of the same books, my Grandma and I, (even the great book I just finished; The Glass Castle), we recommended books to each other, and discussed our favorites for the year. We went out to dinner and chatted about recipes and boys and just had a splendid time! I need to make more of an effort to call them because we have so much in common! I am so happy that they are here celebrating the holidays with us and they could bring me some Christmas cheer! Love you Grandma and Grandpa!

Undergrad soldier

Sitting huddled over my computer
I push up my spectacles and rub my eyes for about the 20Th time.
Stretching my arms up in the air over my head,
I sigh the biggest sigh of stress you've ever heard.
The campus is in a busy frenzy.
People just trying to get through the hardest week of the semester.
My yawn starts a copycat train down the row,
As my neighbor in the cubical next to me Yawns
then nods in agreement as if to say; "I feel ya!".
I haven't eaten a real meal in days.
Sleep is just out of the question
And my glasses have become my best friend,
because my eyes are just too tired.
Sticky note 'to do lists' liter my pockets, notebooks, and my computer.
as a constant reminder of all the things I have to accomplish to succeed.
"This is for my future", I say to myself!
As I continue to push through the tiredness,
discouragement and overall defeat of finals week.

Every goodbye makes the next hello closer

I've said a lot of Goodbyes this semester, hard goodbyes, necessary goodbyes, forced goodbyes, and finally just the normal goodbyes that everyone has to go through in life.

The first major goodbye, I was standing in the Seattle Airport with two suitcases not only full of clothes and shoes, but also full of memories of the best summer that I had ever had. I was heart broken and fought back tears saying goodbye to my parents, thinking the whole time how ridiculous I should feel, but not feeling any shame for my sadness. Three months after High school graduation I moved out and went to college, never spending more than 2 weeks at time back home with my family, either working through the summer or doing summer school. This summer was different, I spent 6 weeks with them, basking in the sun on the dock, swimming in the lake, eating the most delicious food, taking long walks around capital lake, and just spending every moment with them that I could. It mended my broken heart, cleared my head, solved all my problems, and saying goodbye to them and those precious moments pulled at my heart strings. Blinking back the tears, I handed the security officer my boarding pass and crossed the invisible line back to independence and adulthood knowing there was no turning back now.

The second major goodbye was necessary. Realizing that a substantial person in my life wasn't the person that I thought she was anymore and finally knowing that I couldn't surrounded myself with her almost destructive presence anymore, I separated myself. I felt like in order to progress in life we no longer could be friends. Doing so proved to be much more beneficial then costly. People change and in tough situations it either brings out the worst in them or the best. Unfortunately, I realized I couldn't give anymore to this person and that nothing would ever be good enough for her. There would always be a problem that was unfix-able, and no matter how much I tried or worked at the relationship, I'd always come out feeling like the one at fault. So I moved on and although it hurt, I said a necessary Goodbye.

Sitting on my bed last week, tears streaming down my face in true sadness, I said the final and last goodbye. Being so prolonged the tears where not only for sadness but for relief. A sense of freedom washed over me, everything was finally over, I let go of someone I'd known for so long and had trusted with my heart. So I said goodbye. I knew that I lost something that I could never replace again, but the goodbye was so essential for my life that it didn't matter. Asking myself how can it take just one minute to say hello to someone and a lifetime to say goodbye. They say a goodbye is never truly painful unless you're never going to say hello again, and I think that's why this goodbye was so real, because I will never say hello to him again, never talk to him the same way again, this goodbye was forever.

Luckily I've said many Hello's this semester as well, and with those came the reopening of my heart to friendships and different types of relationships. I said hello to the most unlikely friendships I've ever had but also the best I've ever had.

I said hello and opened the door to one of the most beautiful friendships I've ever had. To someone who I know I'm going to be friends with for a long long time, forever. The friendship is equal, well balanced and both of us carry an equal weight and strive to feed the fire of the friendship everyday. She's always there for me with my ridiculous insecurities, always laughs at my funny sayings, and lends an ear to hear the deep secrets of my life. She is my sanity, my strength, and my rock to lean on when the storm of life is too much. One night both of us vulnerable, we told the stories of our life, the pain, the joy, the things that define our souls, even the people we've loved and lost along the way, that night I said Hello to my best friend.

I never realized how saying hello can be so hard, how opening a window and putting yourself out there can be so difficult, but the Story of life is to count and hold on to all those hellos, like your soul depended on it.

When all is said and done.

I wish for a better day.

When you and I were hand in hand walking on our way to freedom.

Where I held your face in my hands and whispered things to you i've never spoken since.

Days that could last forever and were noted as perfect.

I wish for Halloween time.

The night I first met you across the way.

and gazed in your eyes for hours and felt your perfectness infold all around me.

Where the couriousity almost killed me.

I wish to go back to December 2009.

The exact night after your christmas party when I whispered those three little words back.

Where the heart flutter wouldn't stop for hours
and all I needed was you.

I wish it was summer again.

Sitting by you in the sunshine, smiling, drinking pink lemonade.

Driving in the car, singing at the top of our lungs eating icecream and dr. pepper slurpies.

Wanting those moments to last a lifetime and thinking they actually would.

I wish for convience.
When you lived only five minutes away.

and it only took a crying phone call at 3 am for you to come in your chariot to save the night.

For the day you jumped out of my two story window and bruised your tailbone.

I wish for one more night.

Planned perfectly, eating chinese and drinking oversized cokes.

Where I could pour out my soul to you and finally feel whole again.

Begging for forgiveness and praising you for everything you've given me.
I wish for happiness.

Forever, for always, for eternity.

As you take this journey, hand in hand, soul to soul,
with another.

If I die in the library, leave my corpse in the Periodicals!

OH MY GOODNESS! Its a beautiful Saturday afternoon and i've been in the library studying and doing homework all day! I swear I'm always here! There is a section in the periodicals way in the back that Kathryn and I love to come to (thank to my Lab partner Reece for showing me). Here amoungst the books and magazine, is my quiet sactuary, where I get some of my best work done, and where I see that with hardwork my dreams will eventually come true. So if I die of overload of homework, bury me in the periodicals!

A Dream For Tomorrow.

I think everyone has had those nights where sleep doesn't come until the wee hours of the morning and laying in bed with your thoughts isn't the companionship that you hoped for. The mental lists, the inner reflections, the regrets, even the triumphs, flood your mind like a broken pipe bursting with energy. But it's 3 am, how could my best ideas, most thought out plans, come at 3 am? You know they say, ideas in the middle of the night are never that good in the morning, and I tend to disagree. See, often in the night probably around 1:30 am or so, my thoughts turn into my dreams. Not dreams of far of places, or heroic events, but my life dreams. Dreams that are achievable but not yet attainable. Noble dreams of a career, family, what I want my house too look like, what the people in my life will look like and be like, where i'll live, what my new hobbies will be, oh how the possibilities are endless at 3 am. It's 2 am, and here I lay in my bed, computer on top of my knees, dreaming about tomorrow and the next day and the next day. For just a moment, a small second perhaps, my insecurities, fears and adulthood pain, leave for a moment and I drift off to sleep with a smile on my face.

Impacted

There are times in life where things really impact you and make a difference in your life. Times where you wish you could relive certain moments, times where something simple really makes you feel blessed and loved, and times where bad things impact your life by making you learn hard life lessons forcing you to see things in another light.
This last Thursday I was walking to work in the morning as I usually do, cutting through the parking lot of my apartment complex, when I noticed that my car had definitely been impacted by another car. It kind of shocked me at first and I just stood there starring, the right side of my car was pretty badly dented and impacted in pretty far and there is significant damage. There was no note on my windshield, no sign of the impact(er's) remorse, nothing to really make me feel better about the fact that someone just hit my car and then left me with the damage. I was never really angry about this, but I definitely felt a weight added to my shoulders and it just felt like one more thing added to my plate.
Later on that day I was walking home from class, thinking a lot about what had happened and thinking about how the other person who hit my car might feel; guilt, anxiety, remorse, frightened to come forward with the truth, etc. I was approaching the cross walk to get to the other side of the street, when a car suddenly struck a girl riding her bike in the crosswalk. The girl was significantly injured and the ambulance came and took her away immediately. It was right then and there that I felt so grateful for the dent in my car, and how it is only a dent (that suddenly got significantly smaller in my head). My car it's an object, a valuable thing none the less but a 'thing' all the same, it gets me around and is a huge blessing in my life but at the same time not worth hurting another person or myself. I am so thankful that nobody got hurt in my little hit and run and f0r the forgiveness that entered my heart that day. Truly it was just a small impact on my car that ended up having a huge impact on my heart.