Two...Years...Later...

So it appears another two years have rolled silently by since the last time I made a post. In fact, today is only the fifth day of 2016. My life has taken a lot of twists and turns since my last post. I have gained back thirty pounds, I no longer have to work because I'm in school at MSU full time, and me and Jared are currently broken up. I moved back to Eaton Rapids to stretch my loan money as far as possible. So many many things have happened. I don't really feel like getting into any of them. Since I was the one to initiate
the breakup between Jared and I you would think that I would feel better, like a weight had been lifted. Because this is what I wanted right? Wrong. I feel miserable about it. I miss my best friend and I miss our relationship. But there is an invisible barrier keeping me from going back. A barrier of pride, ego, confusion, and standards. Because, truth be known, I do want something more for myself than Jared was able to give. The catch is I want to be with Jared, I just want the more grown up version of him. Plus, I fucking hate my body right now. I despise it. I weigh 170 pounds. It's complete torture. Things aren't all bad, they're really not. I have amazing friends who are always there for me, I'm closer with my family than I've ever been, I'm getting serious about my goals and working hard at school. But inside I just feel empty. And feeling empty emotionally while being so so heavy physically, it's not a good combination.

Happy.

Today is Sunday. I woke up with warm sunlight wrapping me, I yawned, stretched and relished the feeling of sleeping in. I watched Jared get up and get dressed for work, admiring his lean body and smiling at how lucky I am to get to wake up next to him every day. I laid in bed for a while, looking out my second story window at my neighborhood covered in snow, melting and pooling on porches and sidewalks. I finally rolled out bed, put on my favorite sweater and yoga pants, and made my way downstairs. I brewed coffee and fixed myself breakfast while Jared made a run to the store before work to get me a pack of smokes.

I kissed him goodbye and said I love you, and it felt sincere and real. I had my coffee and morning cigarette on the front porch while having a conversation with my roommate about his night before. Everyone left and I had the t.v. to myself for the first time in weeks. I watched shitty and frivolous fashion shows and makeover shows and snuggled with the puppy on our overstuffed, old, ratty couch while I was wrapped in a blanket.

Now I'm sitting here, wallowing in my happiness. Days like this, moments like these, they make me sincerely acknowledge how happy and content I am in my life. I realize how fully happy I am to have Jared in my life, and I appreciate that I don't have to question and  compare our relationship constantly anymore. I love him completely and I love so many things about our life together. I love having time to myself and feeling like a real adult with a day off. I'm truly starting to feel like a twenty-something, as I should because I am now a 22 year old woman. But for the longest time I just felt more like a teenager and less like a young adult.  

A Good Workout and a Lackluster Holiday.

Before: 199 lbs, 2012

After: 138 lbs, 2014

I've been struggling to keep up with my weight, if not just my health in general since I've gotten so comfortable around Jared. I love him for making me feel so beautiful in my own skin, but I don't want to let everything I've worked for slide away just because he thinks I look ok with a few extra pounds. Another thing I may have neglected to mention, since I have not posted in so long, is that I have lost a total of about 60 pounds, give or take. I started at 199 as my highest weight and my lowest weight so far has been 134, but I currently weigh about 140. For some reason I've just started noticing lately that I'm not as happy at this weight as I was a year ago. I keep comparing myself to everyone around me to see if I look normal or if I'm still fat and no one has bothered to tell me.

This is a lingering habit from when I was really overweight, walk into a room and assess whether you are the largest person there. I still don't see myself as an attractive person, I still see myself as overweight, chubby, and just not put together right. But Jared loves my body in such a genuine way it makes me question whether we're looking at the same person sometimes.

I just finished a very hard workout because I wanted to burn as many calories as possible. I'm hoping that Jared and I will go out for dinner or something of that sort when he gets out of work tonight, because it's VALENTINE'S DAY! This is the first year of my entire life that I have had a boyfriend, a real, serious, not unrequited crush BOYFRIEND. Although he is a boyfriend who has no money, so I didn't get flowers or a cute box of chocolates or anything. But he did try adorably hard to give me a gift by making me a candle lit lunch of grilled cheese today. Actually, the fact is that Jared and I have been together for an entire year now and I have never gotten a nice, real, bouquet of flowers from him. No teddy bears, no chocolates, no cutesy stuff of any kind. Not even a mix cd.

I know I shouldn't complain, love makes up for all of that and blah, blah, blah. But dammit, I try really hard to be a good girlfriend to him and I would really like some cliché boyfriend stuff once in a while! I don't think he sees it as something that matters to me, because I don't want to make it a big deal or make him feel inadequate, but damn if it isn't a disappointment sometimes.

Wow. Hello again.

I can hardly comprehend the amount of time that has passed since I have written anything here, even looked at old posts. My life has changed immensely since the last time I was on this website. I'm not sure if I had even written anything about moving out of my old home at Porter street and moving into a new place in Lansing with six other people, including my boyfriend. I can't believe I haven't even recorded that I have a boyfriend. We started dating officially about a year ago, a year ago exactly on the 23rd of this month (February). Being in a relationship with him has changed everything about my life, my perspective, my comfort level, my confidence. He is one of the most unique and amazing people I've ever known, and he loves me in a way I always wanted to be loved. Unconditionally. Having his love, his affection, his humor, his hands, his mouth, his eyes, having his presence in my life has changed me.


When we got together everyone told me it would not last, it was a bad idea. When I met him he was living at his mom's house, he had no money, no job, no car, no ambition, and he lived 45 minutes away. But he was so adorable, tall and thin with ratty punk clothes that hung off his body and the way he smoked cigarettes, with the smoke trailing nonchalantly after him, it infatuated me. He kissed me for the first time while we sat in the parking lot of the Jackson Library listening to a Modest Mouse CD, it started skipping as soon as our lips met. He told me things that no one had ever told me, he said I was beautiful. He touched my body with hands and lips full of lust, his words made me blush and his eyes were so sincere as he looked up at me. And everyone was wrong, it has been a full year and I still wake up every morning in his arms, it is still the greatest feeling I've ever experienced to be wrapped in his embrace and feel him sigh with contentment as he pulls me in closer.


The house I live in now, and the roommates I live with who all started as close to me as my own family, it's all grown volatile, tense, and tiresome. The roommates are clique-y and over the last couple of years I've strange experiences with each of them. Couples have broken up, friendships have dwindled. My job at MMOI has been sucking the life out of me for months now. I wake up miserable to go in, miserable to be alive just because it means I have to go in. I put in my resignation with my new boss, my last day of this job will be May 2nd of this year (2014). By that time I will have been sitting at the same desk, doing the same thing, five days a week, for over two years. And people ask me why I could possibly hate my job.
This summer Jared and I are putting an end to our desk job boredom by taking a leap off the edge of society as we know it. We are going to pack the van up with all our necessities, and JUST FUCKING LEAVE. We are going to drive across the country and hopefully find somewhere to stay, if not set up a place with workaway before we go. We are going to just fucking experience life for a few months. And this plan is not a pipedream like the other ones I've written about here. I have almost $3,000 dollars saved in my bank account as of today. This is fucking happening. I think the day I leave my job and never look back, will ultimately be the best day of my 22 years of life.


So these are the updated going-ons in my life. My hope is to start posting here regularly again, to keep tabs online of my life. I sincerely doubt anyone is left that reads this, it's been years since I've posted and I don't blame you, but that's comforting. I can post anything I want, and count on the fact that not one pair of eyes will read it.

goddamnit.

I have been so fucking anxiety ridden lately. Every waking moment of the day. I cannot take my mind off of this topic that plagues me. then I tell myself I'm gonna do something about it and I convince myself and then nothing happens. When the topic rises to the surface of my mind, which it does every few seconds, I feel like simultaneously crying and vomiting. It's like a million little panic attacks every day. And it's weird to have to so strongly repress that feeling and so often. In the middle of a sentence, in the middle of a crowded room, anywhere. I have to just crush it back down, grit my teeth. Not let tears spring up. And not tell ANYONE. I think I'm literally sliding away from myself because I can't get this off my chest. I don't want to bother anyone with it, or seem like I'm dramatic or being a crybaby. I'm never emotional and I don't want to make it seem like anything is wrong. But there is something wrong deep down to my core, to my soul. An empty, hollow, screaming, lonliness that I am so incredibly fucking terrified will never go away. That I will never conquer it. And the world will forever view me this way, I'll forever view myself this way. I feel trapped, like there is no escape, no person left to turn to, no excuse left to use. But the fear I feel is overwhelming. It's suffocating. I can't function, I can't grasp the idea of overcoming a fear like that. I can't comprehend how people do this on such a regular basis!! I'm so fucking alone. So fucking scared. I just need to not feel this panic, this helpless feeling, just for a day. Two days. An hour. Any amount of time where I could breathe and not feel like my words are being stolen, my breath is being sucked out by this supressing anxiety.

art

I am very confused as to what I want to do with my life right now. I am utterly in love with art history but I also realize how incredibly impractical it is as a major and a career choice. I feel like I want so many things. I want to travel, study abroad, graduate. I want to go to Rome, Paris, Venice. I want to sit in the Louvre and gaze at works by Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio. I feel so completely engulfed and immersed and overwhelmingly swallowed up by art when I see it. I want to spend my life devoted to teaching others about art. I want, more than anything, to indulge this passion of mine. But I just don't think I have it in me to get a masters degree, especially in an area that is so difficult to break into. I wish there was another way to use Art history that didn't require a masters or a PHD. I want art to always be a part of my life, it makes me whole, I come alive when I see a beautiful painting. I light up in a way that nothing else causes. It's cheesy, but it really stirs something inside of me and I don't know how to explain it. But I don't want to let it go. I don't know how to hold onto it. Maybe it's just some stage of my life, a phase I'm going through. Maybe this will pass. But I just fee like I shouldn't take for granted the fact that I am so completely and utterly in love with this.

To be a traveler

What does one require to become a traveler of the world.
Money. Of which I have very little. But I wonder how far I could get on what I have in my bank account right now. Maybe out of the country if I'm lucky.
Guts. Bravery. I don't know if I have guts or not. I've never been in a situation that was extreme enough to find out. Which makes me worry I've never really felt what it's like to be alive.
I just feel that someone who travels the whole globe on a whim and has the guts to go into places they've never been, attempt languages they've never spoken, and befriend people they have never met, are daring. That's the only word I can think of. And I don't know if I've ever thought of daring as a word that comes to mind when describing myself. I wish it was. I wish I had the strength to jump into the deep end feet first without a second thought. I know what I want. I want to travel the world. I want to see things, meet people, fall in love, actually experience something, really fucking FEEL something. I feel like I'm living my life with the lights off. I need to open my eyes. How does a person become daring anyway? Because I want to leave right now. Pack a bag empty my bank account and just fucking GO SOMEWHERE. But I can't do it. I'm paralyzed by the unknown. Insecure about things I might fail at so I never try. I feel like I'm just waiting for my life to begin.