I don’t like getting close to people. I just don’t. Guy or girl, friend or more. I don’t like it. And tonight was exhibit A why. It’s not for me. AT ALL. I like just keeping to myself sometimes. That’s kind of the life I want for myself. Not to sound like a total loner, I just prefer to live in a world of ‘good’ friends… I don’t want any ‘tight bffs’ … honestly, I am above it. #weirdpost

I’d say I miss you. And I am okay with that. Its true, I am in a foreign country, living the dream, a few drinks in, and all I can think is, ‘man, I wish you were here to experience all this.. you’d love it’. I do not think that at any point in that past 3 years I have been okay with missing you, but right now… I am. I know you don’t care anymore, but I hope you’re happy, I really do. Miss you

<3 ‘Lou”

xoxo

But I think you are REALLY rather selfish.

but it does. I know people would think I am ridiculous and stupid for straight up worrying about this, but I am, so I am putting it on here, where no one knows and no one cares, but I can vent. I am having the time of my life exploring a new country right now and I am bogged down right with how much weight I am gaining. All we do is eat and drink and its been so cold out that aside from walking around a lot I am getting no real physical activity. I am most upset because I am erasing all the hard work I have already put in for like 3 years, and I did it in 2 months. Between the summer before my freshman year and the summer after my sophomore year, I was told that according to my physical forms (which I refuse to look at because I do not want to see numbers) I had lost almost 20 pounds, which I would say is a pretty decent amount. I was really trying to watch what I ate and then working out every day (saturdays and sundays excluded). I really did try hard because weight has CONSUMED my life for most of my life. I hate that it does, and I know that it is a choice and that I let it, but I can’t seem to stop. When people started all telling me how much weight I looked like I had lost, it made my WHOLE world. No one will ever know how much it meant to me. Problem is that it meant too much, I felt like I was worth something for once. Just cause of a weight loss. I do not think anyone knows how much it really consumes my thoughts and world. I have always been obsessed with my weight and image but it really takes control sometimes, too much, more than friends and family really know. And now I am in this new country, seeing and exploring new things and I am eating foods like I never have before, I never let myself eat like this, and I am so upset with myself. Which isn’t good cause I am trying to move past all this self hatred stuff, and weight should not be the main reason for one to hate themselves. I do not want to return home being the, “wow , she put on a lot of weight” one, or the “overweight” one. I can’t believe I let all my work go away so quickly… do you think the weight really comes back that quickly? Like how long will it take me to lose again? Well, I am starting the healthy eating up again, I hope. I just needed to vent… I wish I didn’t have to watch my weight so closely. Meh.

Well it is finally here, it is the night before I start a whole new chapter in my life. Tomorrow I leave for Florence, Italy which will be the place I will call home for the next 4 months of my life.  With all the planning, and worrying, and stress, and the money, and the forms, and tying up all the lose ends, it finally came. I am about to study and travel around Europe for an entire semester and it all begins in less than 24 hours. To be honest, I do not even know what to feel. For most of my high school and college career I was never really quite sure of what it is I wanted for my future. I did not know what classes I wanted to take, what schools I wanted to look at, what school I wanted to go to, or whether or not I even wanted to take the college route at all. Then I got settled into my college and from there it continued, I did not know what I wanted to major in or what career paths I wanted to begin to pursue. There was just nothing I was ever really sure of, A or B, right or left, up or down… I don’t know, nothing ever really seemed to pull me in life, not whole heartedly anyway. But not this. This I knew. Studying abroad was the ONE thing I have always known I wanted for myself. I want to travel and explore and be thrown outside my comfort zone. I want to be scared and nervous and excited all in one. I want to become totally lost and then find my way out. Save myself. From what you may ask… well that I do not really know either… I want to find the love and beauty in life, the magic of it all. I want to find it in the culture, among different types of people, people who live in a different world, I want to find it in the breath taking views that another place has in store for me. I want to discover me. I know this all sounds unbelievably corny, like text book cheesy corny, but its true. I need something bigger than myself to ‘blow my mind’. And because I have such strong feelings and desires for this trip, I am ready. I am ready to go. I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what is about to come my way, and that may be one of the scariest things ever to have happen to me in  my life so far… and dealing with the unknown has always been something I have feared… so with this trip comes facing the unknown. Facing it as myself. Time to change… time to let the world mold me into the person I want to be. So here it goes… look out Italy, I am on my way… YA READY? 

Its a funny thing really. Happiness. People are always after it, trying to find it, trying to be it, trying to produce it, trying to replicate it, trying to fake it… but what is it really? What is happiness? I have been thinking a lot about it lately as it seems that ‘happiness’ is something that many people  seem consumed with, something that they feel they must prove… to him, or to her, to the world, or to themselves really… but I don’t think that is how the concept of ‘happiness’ works. Happiness isn’t something you get, or something you win or even something that you can show or put into words. In fact thats just it, happiness isn’t something people should conceptualize, you can’t… that is how it works. Happiness isn’t something you ‘get’ you cant ‘get happy’ … happy is moments, happy is getting a 100 on your exam, happy is finding a ten dollar bill on the ground, happy is a night out with your friends, happy is free tickets to a concert, happy is a large cup of coffee to kick start your day… happy isn’t who you are, it is not a characteristic. Bad things happen. Its part of life, its inevitable. You failed your exam, you lost your wallet, you got stuck late at work, you missed the bus, that guy cut you off, you spilled your coffee everywhere after you ordered, people die, friends lose touch, boyfriends and girlfriends break up, things change… and so, in those moments chances are you are not so happy. How can you be? Thats life and sometimes it sucks. And that is okay, the world, your world, is allowed to suck sometimes… for whatever reasons that it may be. And in those moments where you are not blissfully happy, the world does not get to define you and judge you and pigeon hole you for it… the world instead says, “ugh, thank god… you are human” the world then says, “you’re welcome” now you will recognize and appreciate those true happy moments. We feel, thats what we do, you cant BE happy, its not a characteristic or personality trait, life just isn’t designed that way. You’re allowed to be sad, you can have bad days, you can have rough months or rough years you can cry sometimes and you can yell sometimes and you can be mad as hell on a Friday if you damn well please. But face it. Feel it. Let yourself go through it, don’t run from it. Find the source and learn to help yourself and to fix it… learn what it is you need and do it in your own way.  Happiness is not who you are. Happiness is within and throughout the things you cannot label, hell I don’t even think the word should exist. You should just feel it. We spend so much time trying to discover it and retrieve it, that we don’t notice it and we miss it.  When its there and when its right, feel it, and feel it for yourself. Happiness is moments. Go make them happy ones.

As I said, I would be a bit behind with the whole ‘New Years Resolution’ stuff. I find the whole making resolutions things kind of funny in retrospect, I mean people go to town with revamping themselves and coming up with these new and better ways to live their life and then by March, life seems to get in the way of all those big plans you made. Further more, it always seems to me that people make the same resolutions year after year. ‘Lose weight’, ‘say how I feel’ ‘join new activities’ ‘work out everyday’ ‘live,laugh,love”…blah blah blah. I’m not saying I am above it, I just think its funny. But i guess the whole transition from one year into the next gives people a a free-be, a little sense of hope, a chance that all the mistakes and screws up and slip ups and regrets from the previous year don’t define who you are and certainly do not define your future. So after all my rambling on resolutions and how they are some what ridiculous, I did what all humans do and I gave into something bigger than myself and am giving myself a ‘free-be’ and a second chance and made some resolutions for 2012. So without further a do, we begin… 

FAITH

This year I vow to have a little more faith. Faith in the good, faith that things will work out the way that they are meant to, faith in others, and most importantly faith in myself. Sometimes in life we spend so much time trying to make things work, trying to prevent things from failing, to prevent hearts from breaking, that we end up screwing it up further in the process. Sometimes I think it is more important to just sit back and trust in it all, this life is too big and crazy to try and make rational sense of it all, somethings don’t make sense because their meaning and value are above our understanding. Trust yourself, trust the things you believe in.. if something was real for you it was real, if it was love it was love, if she is sorry she is sorry. Have a little faith. Relax.

FORGIVENESS

This year I vow to learn how to better forgive, to really forgive. Mostly I vow to learn how to forgive myself. I am angry with myself for many things, many mistakes, many words I said, many words I didn’t say, many actions I took, and many actions of should have taken. But I HAVE to learn to forgive myself. I am human and not a bad one at that. Forgive yourself for saying that to him, forgive yourself for eating too much that day, forgive yourself for not working out, forgive yourself for things that were out of your control. That is one the most important things. There are things, and situations and happenstances in life that are out of my control, and I can try and handle them the best way I know how , but sometimes that will not always work out and thats okay, I have to learn to forgive myself for those things. Forgive people. Holding on to those negative feelings will only hurt you… it takes twice as much energy to hate than it does to love. Let it go. Find a way to make peace with things and people. It okay… its only life.

ACCEPTANCE

This is my biggest new years resolution. And I am going to keep making it, every year if I have to, and I will. I have to learn to accept things. Accept that he has moved on. Accept that we are no longer friends and she and I are probably better off without one another. Accept that I am never going to be a size zero. Accept that I will never be athletic. Accept that I got hurt. Accept who I am. Accept who I am not. Accept that things do not always work out, and thats okay as long as I can forgive and have faith in it all. 

… You see, my New Years resolutions work in conjunction with one another. Its like a recipe, with out all the ingredients you cannot make the final dish, not successfully anyway, there will always be short comings. Its been a big self year to say the least… learning who I am and embracing it and learning what it is I can bring to the table. So heres to 2012, another chance to start over, to take what you learned in 2011 and use it. Use it to be better, to do better, to love more, to hate less, to smile more, to cry when you need to, and to laugh when you should, to say you’re sorry, to say thank you, to say please, to hold the door, to leave the change, to let go, to hold on, to fight, to walk away, to live. Happy New Year…

I need to be needed. I need to be someone’s first… someone’s best.

Per usual, I am little behind everyone else. Everyone else kick started their brand new year right at the stroke of midnight leading to January 1st, 2012. But as in many other turning points in my life, I was not ready yet. I too have wanted to sit down and and reflect on everything that happened in my life the past year and then proceed to write about all the big plans and changes I had prepared for 2012, but I needed a little extra time to really reflect on 2011. It was a big year full of a roller coaster of emotions for me. Last year, last spring specifically, the beginning of my ‘2011’.. I had what I would call a ‘breaking point’ and I went through some really hard times, times that were leftover from years upon years of things I didn’t deal with, or didn’t deal with in the best way possible. So last spring, March, I did something I had never done before… I asked for help. Something I had been meaning to do for maybe 8 years and I finally did it. And for me, that was a HUGE milestone in my life. No one ever knew, I just did it for me and I do not know if it really helped per-say but it did something, it helped me get a kick start on ‘doing me’. I had a lot of changes I needed to make, mistakes I needed to forgive, and situations I had to accept, and none of those things can be done until you first give yourself a little help. “You keep apologizing saying you are being ridiculous, but the only one I can see in this room who thinks that.. is you” … words that really stuck out for me (thank you Paul Cody)… So, we move along. The spring finished up, I tried to tie up lose ends from my past the best I could, but I don’t really think it worked. So we move along into summer, which was very different from any other summer I have had. But I guess I grew up a little, but it was very ‘off’ to say the least. Then we fast forward to fall. A big section of my 2011 year for reasons I will never know. When people ask me about my semester I tend to keep summing it up with ‘I was kind of lost in my own head’ which is virtually the only way I can describe it. I got lost in my thoughts and feelings. It was a very different semester for me, I virtually had absolutely NOTHING going for me anymore. I had no advances academically, or in career path or internship, no love interest, not even a slight one, completely alone. And so most would probably look at that and say, well gee it sounds like you had a pretty sucky semester… but I didn’t. I had a great semester with myself and up until the end of it all, I was pretty god damn happy, for no reason at all… which I think is pretty wonderful! :) I did nothing spectacular or great or amazing this semester and for reasons I will never fully be able to put into words, I was happy. Not to fear, I will not be succumbing to and accepting to this life of ‘nothingness’ , it was just a lull that I think I needed to learn some lessons. There are lessons I need to learn and things that I really do need to deal with and this semester gave me time to fully understand what those things are. I had time to really analyze and get to know myself better which I think everyone should do. I spent a semester dating myself. And me and myself had a pretty good time. But its time to start acting on all the plans and changes that I had prepared for myself during 2011. I think whether or not it is always apparent, I grew up in 2011. I became more honest with myself and I got to know myself. So yes, while everyone is ready to kick 2011 out the door and embrace 2012 and never look back, I wanted to take sometime to say thank you 2011, you were crazy and maybe not AMAZING but sometimes in life the very simple things can rock your world even more. Thank you 2011 for getting me ready for 2012. 

Dear 2012, I shall be writing to you very soon. Get ready.

Christmas came and then Christmas went… and you know what, it never once felt like Christmas at all. I am a huge Christmas fanatic. I love it. Every year, even though it lost some magic due to the lack of Santa and his eight reindeer, I was still always able to find the magic of Christmas. It was a feeling, it was in the air, in the lights, in people and places… I don’t know, I just always managed to find it. I loved the holiday and all that came with it. But it didn’t happen this year, I waited and waited and I tried to force it, but for the first time in 20 years I didn’t feel the magic of Christmas… something was different or off. I guess if I could place it on something, I would say I feel like the world has lost a bit of its magic. Nothing really feels the same anymore. I feel like everyone I know is just going through the motions of their life, no one seems excited anymore, about anything. I kind of feel like I have been doing that all year. Everything is fine. I have good friends and a wonderful family, I go to a great school and I have a good life. But thats it. Its just fine. There is no magic in it anymore, nothing great, nothing that lights a fire underneath me anymore. Nothing takes me breath away, nothing excites me, nothing changes me or moves me, nothing makes me ‘feel alive’. My life is fine, I know I cant complain… I just think I am stuck. I am stuck and I don’t know how to free myself. I want to be inspired again, I want to feel. I don’t think I feel anything anymore. I want passion and excitement and adventure. I know that all sounds cliche and stupid but I need something to shake me up again to awaken me from whatever spell i’ve fallen under and succumbed to. I want to feel the magic in life again. I am 20 years old, I shouldn’t be this jaded and bored with my life, I have so much ahead of me. I need to start living, I am just wasting away my youth and I am the kind of person who wants to be young forever so I better hurry up and make it last. Dear Inspiration, please find me <3 foryoufromlou